Abstract
1. Fishing villages on Sanriku coast are suffering from a vast surplus population and most of them emigrate to Hokkaido and work as fishing laborers there. Especially the number of emigrants sent from the villages on the sandy coast immediately adjoing the fishing port of Hachinohe averages as many as 648. Thus these Villages may be more properly defined as emigrant villages than as fishing ones.
2. This is due to the fact that, which the construction of Hachinohe fishingport in the eighth year of Showa (1933) and the gradual completion of its various facilities since then, the capitalistic fishing system of Hachinohe has made such a remarkable progress that the port has got completely seperated from its surrounding fishing villages, while the latter, which were unable to adjust themselves to the modern system, was destined to declive as a result of annihilating exploitation of fishing resources by the modernized fishing methods and the lowered cost of production owing to mass production system.
3. Thus a large host of fishermen in these villages were thrown out of employment, while the modernized port of Hachinohe could not afford to employ them. The unemployed fishermen turned out to be farmers, but they were compelled to go to work on the fishing grounds in Hokkaido so that they might make up for the scanty production of their newly reclaimed land.
4. This shows what a great influence the modernized capitalistic fishing system has upon the decline and disolution of the feudalistic fishing villages, and at the same time offers an example of the transmutation process of Japanese fishing villages in general.
