抄録
The IUCN listed Apostichopus japonicus (Japanese Spiky Sea Cucumber) as “endangered” in their Red List of Threatened Species in 2013. A. japonicus foodways complex can be observed in East Asia such as in China, South Korea, and Japan. For example, dried A. japonicus has been a major export commodity from Japan to China for at least 350 years. Almost all A. japonicus harvested in Japan are wild and not cultured. This is one of the prominent characteristics of Japanese A. japonicus fisheries. At the same time, the Japanese developed a taste for sea cucumbers from the 17th century quite different from that of the Chinese. The first section of the present article compares Chinese, Korean, and Japanese A. japonicus foodways in the 16th and 18th centuries. A description of the trade of dried A. japonicus from Japan to China during the 18th and 19th centuries follows. The third and the fourth section of the article explore current A. japonicus fisheries: its land and export data. Around the mid 2000s, new types of sea cucumber products such as salt-preserved body wall, became common among Japanese processors. They are exported to China and processed into a dried product there. To confirming the new trends in the sea cucumber trade, an exploration of Japanese A. japonicus in the Hong Kong and Chinese markets is provided. Then, the article points out the problems related to the shift of sea cucumber processing from dried to salt-preserved products. Finally, the article introduces efforts of local sea cucumber fishermen and processors to enhance the domestic sea cucumber market in order to maintain sustainable sea cucumber fisheries. Due to page restrictions, the present article will provide the first two sections and the rest will come out on a different occasion.
