Industrial Commons

I N D U S T R I A L CO M M O N S

Common spatialities in the Japanese fishing industry Benjamin Wells 2016

Industrial Commons Common spatialities in the Japanese fishing industry Benjamin Wells - Jan 2016

Preface Resource depletion is one of the most difficult dilemmas of our time, and one which is particularly potent in the fishing industry as it relies on one of the world’s fastest depleting resources - fish. As one the world’s largest consumers of seafood, Japan feels the effects of this depletion acutely.

This essay introduces the concept of commons - shared resources managed collectively - and discusses the potential benefits it offers to both the Japanese fishing industry and associated communities.

This essay looks at the historic management of Japan’s fishing industry and how various events from industrialisation to natural disaster have impacted this. The city of Ishinomaki (in North Eastern Japan) provides a case study for this analysis, as its fishing industry is one the largest in Japan and provides an example of an intense industrialisation that has led to a multitude of problems.

This provides the background for an exploration into the spatial dimension of collectivity, and its potential in restoring an industry that has systematically removed dynamics of commonality.

This essay’s aim is not to offer any kind of detailed strategy for tackling the industry’s problems, rather it records the existence and subsequent degradation of common spatialities - therefore building the theoretical case for reinstating them.

‘The organising of social relations around production, commodification, exchange and consumption.’ (Granovetter, 1985) / New Year at Nihonbashi Fish Market. Sadahide Hashimoto, 1860

The spatial commons The concept of commons is in vogue once again and its definition has subsequently become convoluted1 .

In essence it is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all, held in common rather than owned privately. The concept of the ‘tragedy of the commons’2 was prevalent in early economic theory, which was widely used to advocate the removal of collective rights in favour of private property or state control3. This was later questioned by Elinor Ostrom4, who studied a series of communities that managed communal resources and found a number of recurring characteristics that ensured sustainable management. The first of these is the recognised boundaries of the resource itself. The second factor is resource dependency; there must be a perceptible threat from resource depletion with no obvious substitute. The third factor is the presence of a community; stable communities with strong social networks that encourage conservation for a collective good. The last factor is a system of community defined and enforced rules for encouraging sustainable use and punishing overuse. Many communities have independently defined these systems over time, and they are therefore intrinsically linked with local culture, politics and geography.

As a consequence of Ostrom emphasising the importance of a community, the definition of commons has expanded from referring to solely physical resources to the collective, social institutions that manage them5 .

Resource management is therefore a social dilemma; the ‘perpetual conflict between the short-term self interest of users and and the long-term interests of the user community’6 . It is not only ‘the earth we share but also the languages we create, the social practices we establish, the modes of sociality that define our relationships’7 . As a product of (and producer of) these social systems, space is, by extension, a commons8 - democratic space which affords communities the agency to manage a resource sustainably. However, commons exist in a tense relationship with state and market, both of which continually seek to exploit and control them9 , and the systematic degradation of these common spatialities and social institutions has played a significant role in creating the environmental catastrophe that now grips the planet.

Japan’s fishing industry as commons Japan’s fishing industry has traditionally been a hugely complex system, managed by a multi-layered structure from national organisations to local cooperatives and family businesses. In the 1980’s, this was considered the most advanced fishery management system in the world, and Japan’s marine resources were managed and protected as a crucial commons10. This management system was built on traditional

Lucía Jalón Oyarzun writes that even this is “a seizure of the common enacted through the emptying of its meaning. A hollowing out that conceals the processes of expropriation, privatisation and manipulation that are taking it over.”

Quoting Peter Pál Pelbart, ‘Una crisis de sentido es la condición necesaria para que algo nuevo aparezca’, in Fuera de lugar: conversaciones entre crisis y transformación, ed. by Amador Fernández-Savater (Madrid: Acuarela Libros, 2013) 1

‘Tragedy of the Commons’, coined by William Forster Lloyd in 1832. to denote a situation where individuals acting independently and rationally according to each other's self-interest behave contrary to the best interests of the whole by depleting some common resource.

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Hardin, Garrett. The Tragedy of the Commons, Science, 162, 3859 (1968), pp. 1243-8.

Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions 1990. p. 18-21.

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These institutions are not necessarily juridicial, but a system of mental ownership on a collaborative basis.

Van Vugt, Mark. Central, Individual, or Collective Control? Social Dilemma Strategies for Natural Resource Management. University of Southampton. American Behavioral Scientist January 2002 vol. 45 no. 5 783-800 6

Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 139. (Quoted in Oyarzun’s Common Spatialities: The Production of the Multitude. Footprint, Commoning as Differentiated Publicness, 2015) 7

Oyarzun, Lucía Jalón. Common Spatialities: The Production of the Multitude. Footprint, Commoning as Differentiated Publicness, 2015, p. 51-68 8

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Dellenbaugh, Mary; Schwegmann, Martin; Kip, Markus. Urban Commons. Moving Beyond State and Market. Birkhauser, 2015

Murota, Takeshi. Fishery Commons in Japan. Their Legal Framework and Recent Crises. Sustaining Commons: Sustaining Our Future. Conference paper. 2011 10

ecological knowledge11, of which the concept of sato-umi provides some insight. The Japanese word ‘sato’ refers to a local community or village where people live, and ‘umi’ is the common word for sea; ‘sato-umi’ therefore denoting the symbiotic relationship between onshore human activity and natural resources at sea12. It describes the sustainable management of coastal areas and their ecosystems through community efforts in a comprehensive and integrated manner - as a commons.13 There are various spatial typologies that allowed this empirical knowledge to accumulate, such as the port, the marketplace and the fisherman cooperative14 .

FCAs - the institutional management of production The empirical knowledge of sato-umi manifests itself institutionally, and spatially, through Fisherman’s Cooperative Associations (FCAs), which define harvest times, fish nets sizes and other regulations for maintaining sustainable yields as well as controlling rights over fishing grounds15 . Each FCA acts independently, albeit under national guidance, and can therefore be considered as a common. Fisherman are members of their local FCA, and attend annual assembly meetings as well frequent smaller meetings of fishing squads (han) and residential groups (ku) which come together to form the larger cooperative. FCAs are the social institutions that hold the shared knowledge of local fisherman, and ensure decisions are made for the long-term sustainability of resources as well as individual benefit. FCA youth groups play a critical role in research and innovation activities, and encourage youth to join the industry.

Japan’s FCAs are the social frameworks which allow the collective management of a shared resource, and mediate individual interests with the collective interests of the commons. There has traditionally been a FCA in most ports, sometimes directly connected to a marketplace where fisherman sell their catch, as well as prefectural institutions that are connected with research and education facilities. The spatiality of these institutions has been intrinsically linked with the industry, offering direct services, support and community to fisherman at the individual level as well as guidance at a national level. It is this multi-level system that has long ensured the sustainable management of the commons16 .

The marketplace - the institutional management of consumption Whilst the FCAs (supported by various government institutions and conservation bodies) have managed the production (or supply) of the industry, consumption has an equally important role in managing the commons. Whilst the dynamics of demand does not always appear to be directly linked to strategies for conservation17, understanding these social institutions is crucial in developing a holistic approach to management of the commons.

The local fish marketplace is the spatial typology that most clearly represents the social institutions that regulate and mediate demand. Usually owned by the local government as a civic building, the marketplace houses the social interactions and transactions between producer and consumer, ensuring that supply responds to demand but also that demand is dependent on supply (a paradigm that has been weakened

H. Wilhelm, Johannes, Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the Beliefs of Japanese Fishing Villages: With Special Reference to Yoriiso (Miyagi) and the Sanriku Region. Japanese Religions Vol. 30 (1 & 2): 21-53. Paraphrasing work of Kalland, Arne. 1990. Sea tenure and the Japanese experience. Resource management in coastal fisheries. In: Unwrapping Japan.

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Hénocque, Yves. Sato-umi, the Wealth of the Commons. Moderator’s Summary. 2015

This concept developed from the much older satoyama which refers to rural land management. There are various examples of traditional sustainable management processes - such as the Prof. Komatsu’s example of marine eelgrass used as fertiliser for agricultural land. ‘land is giving nutrients to the sea and in return, the sea is giving the fertilisers for cultivating the land.’ Hénocque, Yves. Sato-umi, the Wealth of the Commons Moderator’s Summary. 2015.

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The aim of this essay is not to offer a complete study of the social institutions that once managed the Japanese fishing industry, rather an overview of their existence and the common spatialities that facilitated them. This study could also be extended to restaurants, research facilities, education centres, community centres and various other extensions of civic into industry.

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Hannesson, Rognvaldur. Fishermen’s organisations and their role in fisheries management: Theoretical considerations and experiences from industrialised countries. The Norwegian School of Economics http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/T0049E/T0049E01.htm 15

Jean-Marie Baland, Jean-Philippe Platteau. Halting Degradation of Natural Resources: Is There a Role for Rural Communities? Food & Agriculture Org., 1996. p.364.

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Perhaps due to the fact that supply and demand have become geographically distanced as a product of globalisation. Therefore consumption’s impact on production is indirect, considered statistically rather than spatially.

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with globalisation). DeLanda describes this scale of market as a ‘network market’, which is defined as a spontaneous local market consisting of an assemblage of self-organised interactions between individuals, usually ensuring that individuals are held accountable and exposed to public scrutiny. Even as public markets grow, their economic activity is always embedded in social institutions and shaped by the ‘cultural and social currents of Japanese life’18, which in turn prevents ‘individual rational actions from having irrational collective results’19 . At the scale of a small fishing village, it is the concentration of the various stages of the industry from production to consumption which highlights their symbiotic relationship, centred on the marketplace20. Even at the scale of Tokyo’s Tsukiji market, there is a complex social network (along with the influence of a public outer market) that ensures that trading is transparent and not monopolised.

Regardless of the scale or institutional structure of a public market, they all have access to a common spatiality - publicly owned space that facilitates these social dynamics and fosters a sense of community.21 A social commons with common grounds The examples above give an outline of two of the institutions that have traditionally managed the common resources of the Japanese fishing industry. Much research has been done into the specifics of how these institutions ensure accountability, conservation and sustainability, but of course it varies by case and is not directly applicable to current situations. The focus here is on their parallels - they are all inherently social/ collective and have space as a ‘produced and productive condition’22 of their common. These communities have a wide range of benefits, from food supply to resource conservation23, but are ultimately dependent on their common spatialities.

Fishermen call on the government not to raise fuel prices for their boats. July 15, 2008 (Image: Tomohiro Ohsumi / Bloomberg)

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Bestor, Theodore. C. Tsukiji. The Fish Market at the Centre of the World. California Studies in Food and Culture. 2004

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Swedberg and Granovetter, The Sociology of Economic Life. Westview Press 1992

As Ostrom pointed out, it is an awareness of this symbiotic relationship that fosters a desire to conserve for the collective good. The marketplace is where the individuals of production and consumption meet, forming a community.

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21 It is the manipulation of these markets that begins the capitalist process of controlling supply and demand dynamics so that prices no longer match them; DeLanda refers to this as the ‘antimarket’. This usually results in monopolisation and the subsequent suppression of innovation and slowing of progress; a model to provide standard quality in abundance. Monopolisation secures the degradation of the social institutions that once managed and helped conserve resources, and with this the removal of the common spatialities that gave them agency. (DeLanda, Manuel. Markets and Antimarkets in the World Economy. http://www.alamut.com/subj/ economics/de_landa/antiMarkets.html) Oyarzun, Lucía Jalón. Common Spatialities: The Production of the Multitude. Footprint, Commoning as Differentiated Publicness, 2015 22

A report from the Food Organisation of the United Nations states: “The multi-faced functions, other than just food security, of fisheries and fishing communities, such as conservation of natural environment, national security and promotion and succession of the traditional culture, are also highly recognised and appreciated.”

Fishery and Aquaculture Country Profiles. Japan. http://www.fao.org/fishery/facp/JPN/en 23

Ishinomaki’s Industrialisation By 1939, Japan was the world’s leading fishing nation, and its fishing fleet was used as a symbol of modernisation and industrialisation by the Japan’s government24 . After destruction during world war 2, it was rebuilt under American occupation, and reached its peak yield in around 1985.

During this period Ishinomaki’s fishing industry grew into one of the largest in Japan, due to its proximity to one of the world’s three best fishing grounds. A once collectively managed resource for a local community became a mass supply zone for an external core - namely Tokyo. However, the industry still had a vast network of locally based actors impacting its operations, from the public market to the adjacent restaurants, from active fisherman cooperatives to community events.

In 2011, Ishinomaki was hit by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami that destroyed its entire fishing port, facilities and most of the fishing fleet. This was a critical moment in the industry’s history, resulting in a series of political and economic decisions that have radically transformed it into an extreme example of the monopolisation and decommonisation of industry. In short, the Japanese government used the destruction as an opportunity to streamline management, optimise production and execute their plan for a ‘Sixth Industrialisation’. Below is an outline of some of these changes and the impact they had on the industry.

Ishinomaki’s rebuilt market, where fish are unloaded, sorted and auctioned, has the largest capacity in the world. Photo: Author

The consolidating of cooperatives Whilst the merging of fisheries cooperatives has been an ongoing process since 2000, the 2011 tsunami ‘strengthened attempts to change fisheries governance in the name of recovery’25 . The result has been a merging of port FCAs into one FCA for Miyagi prefecture26; this has increased economic efficiency but also led to a systematic loss in the social institutions that once managed local fishing resources27 . With this there has been a loss in the shared local knowledge that once manifested itself in local FCAs, and an increase in the anomie amongst local communities28 . The once intrinsic and embedded social institutions have become extrinsic and external, acting through centralised market mechanisms rather than local communities. The parallel displacement of common spatialities has led to a separation between place and space, which runs the risk of disenfranchising locals and increasing unsustainable management.

Bsumek, Erika Marie. Kinkela, David, Lawrence, Mark Atwood. Nation-States and the Global Environment: New Approaches to International Environmental History. Oxford University Press. 2013 24

Delaney, Alyne Elizabeth. Japanese Fishing Cooperative Associations: Governance in an Era of Consolidation. Chapter in Interactive Governance for Small-Scale Fisheries. Springer International Publishing. 2015 25

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This FCA, merged in 2007, is located in Ishinomaki, but North of the city centre, away from the fishing port.

Delaney, Alyne Elizabeth. Japanese Fishing Cooperative Associations: Governance in an Era of Consolidation. Chapter in Interactive Governance for Small-Scale Fisheries. Springer International Publishing. 2015 27

H. Wilhelm, Johannes, Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the Beliefs of Japanese Fishing Villages: With Special Reference to Yoriiso (Miyagi) and the Sanriku Region. Japanese Religions Vol. 30 (1 & 2): 21-53.

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Reconstruction In 2013, the Miyagi prefectural government announced the nation’s first Special Fishing Zone in Ishinomaki, which allowed fishing zones to be given to private business rather than allocated through FCAs. This deregulation has attracted the capital for the quick reconstruction of port facilities, but raises concern for the long-term sustainability of the fisheries. The government claimed that deregulation would restore the local economy and solve longstanding problems, but this was ‘ideological, not scientific, and lacked real knowledge and engagement with local fishermen’29. Large, profit-driven business now dominates the industry, escalating the degradation of the social institutions that once managed the commons.

The Sixth Industrialisation The government initiated ‘Sixth Industrialisation’ refers to the addition of secondary and tertiary industries to the primary fishing industry, to add value to products before export. These additional industries are the processing, as well as marketing and sales, of the primary product, to support the industry and help with local employment. The local organisation encouraging the implementation of this plan emphasis its potential for ‘local production for local consumption’30. However, the plan has followed a very different trajectory, leading to a situation of local production for global consumption31 . The optimisation of the industry has led to a decrease in employment and the dominance of the private sector has led to a series of businesses with individual interests, with no social institution mediating them all.

Ishinomaki Fish Market Following the tsunami, the prefectural government aimed to rebuild the market building (where fish are sorted and then auctioned) as quickly as possible, and to use the opportunity to increase efficiency, hygiene and capacity of the building. They achieved all these aims, but the marketplace now operates as a enclosed, restricted building, uninviting to the public and only accessible to the 120 registered buyers (the majority of whom represent the processing factories). The marketplace has lost its ability to act as a civic building in the way that many Japanese marketplaces do32, and is therefore unable to host the social institutions that, as highlighted by Ostrom and others, are so beneficial to the successful management of a resource. Of course the marketplace is still run by a social institution, but one regulated and controlled by a single firm with a predefined range of actors - thus making it hierarchal and exclusive. It is no longer a common spatiality managed by a community33 .

The externalisation of consumption As a result of these changes to the fish market and industry, Ishinomaki has also lost many of its places for direct consumption (sushi bars, restaurants, fishmongers) that once thrived in the area34, further deteriorating the communities that once managed the commons. The only place in the fishing industry area that one can consume local fish, and indeed the only defined common spatiality, is a small canteen still housed in a temporary building with makeshift facilities; a visual metaphor for the devaluation of common grounds in industry.

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Kayo Murakamia and David Murakami Wood.Planning innovation and post-disaster reconstruction: The case of Tohoku, Japan. 2014

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Ishinomaki 6 primary industrialisation, local production for local consumption promotion centre. http://ishinomaki-6jika.jp/about.php

In Ishinomaki there are now just 3 places where locals can buy local fish, and therefore the vast majority eat imported seafood bought from supermarkets. Does this simply reflect changing consumer trends, or is it as a result of lack of provision?

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Kesennuma, just North of Ishinomaki, provides evidence of this. It’s market is the centre of the city, facilitating festivals, community events and tourist visits. Its architecture is defined by its openness, acting as a bridge, rather than a barrier, between the city and sea.

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It is also worth noting that the market building is designed to reach a capacity that is both unsustainable and unachievable due to decreased fish stocks, and therefore much of it lies redundant.

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They thrived on a direct connection to a public market, to enable the freshness so crucial to Japanese cuisine, along with the social networks between fisherman and consumer that ensured the best produce.

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Ishinomaki’s fishing industry has become very efficient as an exploited supply zone as it can supply huge demand within an optimised framework, but this has led to the diminishing of the social institutions and communities that one managed the industry sustainably35 . The industry is built on a model of perpetual growth that is unsustainable for both the resource and the community that once managed it.

Ishinomaki’s fishing industry now faces a multitude of problems; the majority of fish stocks are dangerously overexploited, climate change is pushing fish stocks North, almost half of fisherman are over the age of 60, there are very few new employees due to depopulation, and the industry is heavily reliant on government subsidies (issued despite its huge losses and environmental damage).

Inside Ishinomaki’s market - built to facilitate an unattainable capacity. Photo: Author, 2015

Industrial Commons The argument put forward here shows thats as the industry has grown, it has lost the various social institutions (the FCA, the marketplace, the local community) that once held it accountable. The formerly local, embedded networks of actors have been externalised, and replaced with institutions of an inherently different structure. The industry has lost its transparency, and therefore greatly reduced the scrutiny that it is subject to. This is projected as a necessary consequence of industrialisation - the industry now serves a much larger and diverse community than the locality - but despite this homogenisation of industry, its effects are inherently local. The diversion of the public gaze is no doubt seen favourably by the monopoly and even the state, as it reduces interference and accountability, but this is seems counterintuitive when the performance of the industry is so fundamentally reliant on the ‘extension and vitality of the community of its practitioners.’ ‘The expulsion of individuals not only raises a social problem for a city, but results in a depletion of the very fundamental resources (knowledge, skills, and experience) that sustain the industry’36.

This paradigm is evident in the industry’s striking lack of preparation for the problems which it knows it faces37 .

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This removes the perceptible threat of resource depletion that is so important so sustaining it. (Ostrom)

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Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco, The End of the City of Gold? Industry and Economic Crisis in an Italian Jewellery Town. 2013. p.236.

From personal interview with Kunio Suno, CEO of Ishinomaki Fish Market. He expressed a deep concern for the various problems facing the industry (fish stocks, climate change, lack of youth employment etc) but felt he had very little agency to address them.

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Regardless of whether it is a product of or productive of, the loss of social institutions is directly related to the loss of common spatialities that once facilitated them. Latour’s conceptualisation of how collectives (‘parliament of things’) should be formed gives urban form an active role in the construction of the social realm; architecture is most effective when it corresponds to its social visions38. Architecture therefore does not just facilitate this collectivity, but also creates it.

The destruction caused by the 2011 tsunami resulted in the complete removal of any common spatialities, and using private rather than state funds to rebuild ensured that the current industry is not open to community intervention. If social institutions, or communities, are so crucial in the sustainable management of common resources, then common spatialities are needed to facilitate them. The provision of democratic, publicly owned space, inspiring, fostering and displaying a sense of community that encourages sustainability - not just environmentally, but economically and socially. This requires an acceptance that whilst the industry feeds the city, the city (and its community) is also fundamental to the long-term prosperity of the industry39 . This requires a spatial integration of city and industry; common grounds for diverse communities.

Postface Whilst the scope of this essay is to make the case for (rather than a plan for) an integration of commons into industry, below is a brief exploration into architecture’s role in facilitating and creating collectivity in Ishinomaki’s fishing industry.

The introduction of common spatialities into the industry would be of obvious benefit to organisations such as the FCAs and the auction house, but could also be used more broadly to include trading (a public marketplace), consumption (restaurants, sushi bars), research (scientific facility), education (academic facility). All of these social institutions impact the industry, and an architecture that could facilitate a multitude of them would encourage the commons to be considered as a holistic whole - a spatial integration that has been lost with industrialisation. This would help foster a community that was aware of the whole industrial process, which would likely encourage a collective interest in acting for the ‘common good’.

Furthermore, the conceptual framework set out in this essay seems to point beyond specific institutions, to unprogrammed but defined common ground. Democratic public space that encourages and facilitates the blending of the individual institutions; hosting the community as a whole. Perhaps this is best compared to a public square, a piazza, which can host a weekend market, a gathering, a performance, a protest. This reflects on the fact that collectives exist at a variety of scale, from individual fishing boat crews to whole communities. There are many interesting utopian visions of architectural form reflecting social visions, as well as the current trend of small scale interventions (‘urban gardens’ and the like) which offer alternative models to the capitalist production of space, but this project provides an opportunity to explore the integration of a collective spatiality into an existing industry of very different priorities. If the multitude of problems facing the industry are to be tackled seriously, perhaps this is the ideal place to start - at the very source - where an architecture of commonality, of collectivity and of transparency could be so transformative.

(For more information, please see project…)

Latour, Bruno. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. London: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Labour’s ‘parliament of things’ is the flexible framework between humans and non-human agents and between stakeholders, procedures, technologies and physical objects - a livelihood common to all. Collectives have a significant role to play in reassembling a world that has been divided into matters of fact (science) and matters of concern (politics). Collectives bring together facts and values to create a new constitutional framework that represents a group’s common will - through physical and non-physical things.

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Industrial urbanism - an awareness of the symbiotic relationship between city and industry, and the spatial integration they require.