36. Attempt to Taiwan

When you enter someone’s home, or, in rural Japan, when you encounter people in their village, you say, “Konichiwa, ojamashimasu”. This means “Hello, I am sorry to enter your space or your village”. It is important to say this, to acknowledge the other person’s right to occupy space and that you are a visitor. We Westerners don’t do this, as we expect that we should be free to wander anywhere we want without restrictions. We take the space. I wonder if this is why we accept so readily the power of large corporations to move in and take our space. The joint stock companies that England pioneered, such as the East India Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company, ended up seizing vast areas of India and North America mainly for the benefit of a few nobles and grandees who lived far from the places of conquest. Technical breakthroughs and efficiencies that these corporations have pioneered have enabled huge numbers of people to live satisfying lives. This has been especially true for people in rapidly industrializing North America and Europe after the war and more recently in Asia. Over time, though, the large global corporations inevitably became more powerful and managed to reduce and eliminate the laws and regulations that had been set up to limit their actions. Today large corporations control industry and trade across the globe with little oversight and no thought about the space or rights of local inhabitants. Increasingly most of the benefits are now accruing to a small number of managers and shareholders. Competition has decreased markedly. This path to riches has run out. We see dangerous and growing inequality, and of course, environmental destruction.
It is hard to see how meaningful change in inequality and environmental protection can take place without first changing the structure of large global corporations and having a broad mix of socially engaged people on corporate boards, in positions of power. Don’t expect corporations to do it themselves: people must organize and demand that governments act. For life on this amazingly beautiful planet.
The dinners at our hotel in Hoshidate have been a wonderful assembly of mysterious small fish, sea food and vegetables. All of it delicious. As I was enjoying this, I began to wonder, how do they do it? There are 127 million people on these islands, and everyone eats sea food. I believe most of the fish come from local waters. How is this sustained? It seems as if the spirit of ojamashimasu runs through fishing culture also. Some of the first official no-take fishing zones were established as early as 1895 but these were just official recognition of pre-existing self-imposed zones that had been agreed upon by community members 250 years ago.
It may seem amazing to modern fisheries managers, but fishers back then realized the importance of no-take zones for the welfare of the community. Today there are more than 1,000 fishery cooperatives in Japan and, not surprisingly, also more than 1,000 MPAs. Most are no-take zones. Some are managed top-down by the government and some bottom-up by local communities. Almost all, though, are based on historical territorial use by local communities. This is a maddeningly complex country. The local fisheries are organized on sound, sustainable principles that work. But the large, subsidized international fishing fleets? They’ll chase big predators such as blue fin tuna to the ends of the earth and people are prepared to catch, and eat, the very last one. As far as I can see, no one is speaking up about this.
 

October 1, 2018, Hotel in Ishigaki
It’s nice not to be camping on the concrete slope of the fishing port. We are staying at a hotel recommended by Shinpei. We were surprised when we got here to see lines of young women on either side of the street standing around, looking bored and unhappy, waiting for men. He stays here with his wife and young son Shinjiru? I guess the price is right. Shiro says that the women only talk to lonely men, there’s no other action. Really? There is a sign in our elevator: no visitors allowed.
We left Iriomote because, after the first typhoon pounded by another was forming even bigger than the first, which had been the biggest of the year. Just like Genghis Khan when he twice tried to invade Japan, we have had no luck with typhoons.
These days the situation is worse. 90% of the heat generated by our GHGs since industrialization has been absorbed by the oceans and in this part of the world it is coming right back at us. Dead coral and super typhoons are the result. There just hasn’t been enough time between storms for the seas to settle down enough for us to go. This hasn’t been much of a kayak trip, but it sure has indicated the planet is heating up. I promised Theresa that this would be my last kick at the can as far as getting to Taiwan is concerned. I’ve timed out. So be it.
We’ll be going to Naha tomorrow to visit old friends. Particularly, I want to see Naky, my old paddling partner, and Keiko, who is suffering from brain cancer. Between working his 100 beehives (down from 200) and being Keiko’s primary care-giver Nakamura-san has time only for a short visit. We’ll also visit with his two sons. They are a close-knit family. Then we will head to Makino, Shiro’s home on Lake Biwa. The typhoon that just preceded my visit here loosened some tiles off his roof and now Super Typhoon Trami is headed straight there. He needs to check. Then we will paddle somewhere where there is no typhoon for a few days. Hopefully.
 

October 7, 2018, Makino
Yesterday we drove to the Lake Biwa Museum and aquarium. En route we were talking about why North Americans burn through 250 kwh/day while Japanese, with an advanced industrial economy, use 125 kwh/day. Just half. How do they do it? Smaller houses, more trains, smaller cars? There are some full-sized SUVs, mainly in the big cities like Tokyo and Osaka, but not many. We had been traveling through many places and I had yet to see a full-size pick-up truck. Not one. I asked why Japanese go for small cars? Carpenters, plumbers, and such tend to use small panel vans. Others go for hatchbacks like the ubiquitous Toyota Aqua hybrid hatchback. It rains a lot in Japan so there are not many open trucks. As we were passing by the Hotel Chapel Christmas the reason hit us: The Japanese don’t need big cars because they can go to the love hotels. Brilliant.
Of course the fact that Japan has no fossil fuels and must import all its fuel has a lot to do with it. Since the 1950s Japan has built a modern industrial economy while being frugal with imported energy sources. For years Japan has had the most fuel-efficient vehicle standards in the world, even surpassing Europe. In Canada we have something Al Gore has called “resource curse”. We rely on cheap energy and squander it. Now, as we have to learn to scrimp on energy use for environmental reasons, it’s coming back to bite us and causing real disunity in the country. For me, the success of Japan is cause for hope. If we look at their example and learn from them, we know that we can do much, much better.
In the aquarium Shiro talked about the fish and explained how each tasted. Basically, if they have gills, you eat them. It doesn’t matter how small. I remember in Iriomote eating mouthfuls of tiny fish. It was like eating rice with eyes. They were tasty protein. I wondered about fish bile. When you eat a fish, you normally clean it first to remove the bad parts. But you consume copious numbers of these, all parts included. Is fish poo a bad thing? How much can you consume? Of course, I ate them all, they tasted fine and nothing happened.