Catching a Whale, Then Eating It

OYAMADA, Tomokiyo 小山田与清.

<i>Isanatori ekotoba</i> 勇魚取繪詞 [<i>Drawings and Discussions of Whaling</i>].

40 double-page woodcuts. 81; 46 pages. Two vols. Large 4to (340 x 228 mm.), orig. stiff pale blue patterned boards, with orig. title-slips (one partially torn), orihon binding. [Japan]: Afterword dated 1829.

[with]:

—. Geiniku chōmihō 鯨肉調味方 [Ways to Season Whale Meat]. 31 folding leaves. 8vo, orig. wrappers with a manuscript title-slip, new stitching. [Japan]: [1832].

First edition of this very rare (only one set listed in WorldCat) and strikingly illustrated book on whaling and the consumption of whale meat in Japan. The fine series of 40 double-page woodcuts, richly printed in black & white with gray tinting and the occasional use of mica, are absolutely “action-packed” with every aspect of whaling and butchering the whales.

“Whaling groups each required a minimum of three hundred people to operate, the largest having around three thousand” (Arch, p. 7) The whaling industry “had a major role in the Tokugawa economy and in the subsistence of a large number of people up and down the extensive coasts of the archipelago. The whaling industry was one of the largest and most interconnected specialized fisheries that developed during this period, and in some cases made managers quite rich” (p. 77). As our set shows, this new kind of organized whaling had an impact on what people ate. “Whaling groups sold muscles and some sections of skin and blubber (particularly from the tail flukes) for consumption as whale meat” (p. 84).

The two volumes of Isanatori ekotoba — handsome large mino-sized sheets bound accordion-style — describe the process of whaling on Ikitsukishima island 生月島 in Hizen province 肥前 on Kyūshū. This is only the second book to treat whaling in this area, following Shiba Kōkan’s 司馬江漢 (1747-1818) Saiyū rodan 西遊旅譚 [A Diary of Travel in the West] from 1794.

Our first volume describes and depicts the location of the whaling group, the village and its inhabitants making nets out of rope, the boats lined up on land, packing supplies and setting out to sea, the boats surrounding the whale offshore, its capture using a net, the return of the boats to shore, the hauling of the whale onto land, the harvesting of its flesh, the preparation of whale oil, and other scenes.

The second volume focuses on the whale and its parts. We are shown the North Pacific right whale, a humpback whale, a fin whale, a whale giving birth, and a juvenile whale. A cross-section of a whale shows its skeleton and baleen. Different parts of the whale and the blubber are then shown, including a detailed chart of the inner organs. Boats and tools are also shown in detail, with explanatory legends.

Geiniku chōmihō provides instructions for cooking about 70 different parts of the whale. The book begins with the outer parts of the whale and then works its way inward. First is listed the “black skin,” or outermost layer, followed by other parts of the whale’s skin. We learn how to cook a number of parts of the whale, from the ears (mimi 耳) to something — we cannot figure out what — related to the humpback whale’s baleen, its “long beard,” which the book also calls its “drainboard” (sunoko 簀子).

Authorship of our books is ascribed to Oyamada Tomokiyo (1783-1847), a “national studies” (kokugaku 國學) scholar of the late Edo period who wrote the colophon, or his disciples. Information about whaling had been provided to him by Masutomi Matazaemon the fifth 益富又左衛門, who came from a family of whalers.

Fine set. In Isanatori ekotoba, the worming has mostly been carefully mended. In Geiniku chōmihō, some thumbing, mostly marginal worming (occasionally touching characters), and a little dampstaining. Preserved in two chitsu.

❧ Jakobina K. Arch, Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan (University of Washington Press: 2018).

Price: $55,000.00

Item ID: 10540