抄録
Demand for small furs of high commercial value in Northeastern Asia, which was prevalent among people ranging from the aristocracy to the general public during early modern times, encouraged indigenous peoples to adopt or invent efficient kinds of hunting methods such as traps, enabling intensive hunting of fur-bearing animals. This overview also applies to sea otters, a marine resource. From the late eighteenth century sea otter hunting in the North Pacific Ocean replaced the hunting of the endangered land-based sable, and sea otters newly appeared on the import lists in Chinese markets and enlarged their importance as fur products (Graph 1 and 2). On the other hand, the exchange of trade goods for animal furs was a direct incentive to integrating indigenous peoples into a global economic system, by making specific familiar animals valuable commodities. With improvements in technology the Ainu, Aleut and Koniag succeeded in efficient hunting of sea otters in the Kuril Islands, even though this hunting did not last for an extended period because of the low reproduction rate of sea otters. Most of the captured sea otters were brought by Japan and Russia into big markets such as China, Central Asia and Europe via both the north and south of the Kuril Islands. Although the Chinese market for sea otters began to decline by the 1830's (Graph 2), sea otter hunting in the Kuril Islands continued for a while even into the 1910's (Graph 3).
