REGIONAL STRENGTH

THE DISTINGUISHED ISLANDPRODUCING THE“WORLD’SBELOVEDYELLOWTAIL”
Nagashima

Cultivating Japanese yellowtail to meet the needs of the global market, residents of a vibrant island off the coast ofKyushu have turned fisheries into a growth industry.
Surrounded by plentiful seas, Japan features avariety of high-quality, local seafood found in eachof its regions. While overseas demand for marine
products from the country has increased in recentyears—driven by the world’s growing appetite forJapanese food—domestic consumption has been
shrinking owing to changes in the food culture.
Its fishery industry is also faced with an aging
workforce and a shortage of successors. Amid thosecircumstances, Prime Minister Suga’s administration
has pledged more support to boost total annual
exports for agricultural, forestry, and fisheries
products and foods roughly five-fold to 5 trillion yen(45 billion dollars) by the year 2030. Through suchstrong initiatives, the government aims to give fresh

Nagashima Town, encompassing a series of fishing grounds
stretching across several island bays, is famed for the production
system that it developed for exporting fish year-round. The
younger generation is actively participating as well: according to a2018 survey, some 42% of individual owners who own family-run
fisheries have successors, a much higher rate than the national
average of 17%.

vigor to these primary sectors and turn them into
growth industries, leading to the revitalization oflocal economies.
Nagashima Town in western Kagoshima
Prefecture, is one region that has already madegreat strides. Kagoshima is a major production areafor Japanese yellowtail, an endemic fish species insurrounding waters of the country. The fish is known
as hamachi in Japanese, and as buri when mature. The
town has only 10,000 or fewer residents, yet produces
more than 2 million of the fish each year, the biggest
output of buri in the whole of Japan. In 2001, it
launched the BURI-OH (literally, “king of buri”)
brand, and now is responsible for one tenth (over1000 tons) of the country’s annual export of Japaneseyellowtail, boasting sales to as many as
31 countries and territories, mainly in
the United States and Europe.
A union of about 120 independent
its launch, the BURI-OH brand has
fish farmers, the Azuma-Cho Since
been enjoyed in Japanese restaurants overseas,
Fisheries Cooperative Association, mainly as sushi and sashimi.
which handles everything fromquality control to shipping, began exports of buri
While Nagashima Town is blessed by all the optimal
to the United States in 1982. To meet the high conditions for farming fish—warm seawaters andfood-safety standards required for overseas markets, abundant tidal streams—it is also blighted often by
the association became the first fish farming damage from red tides caused by algal bloom. Whenorganization in Japan to acquire Hazard Analysis a total of 2.7 million fish succumbed to large red tides& Critical Control Points (HACCP) certification, in 2009 and 2010, “everyone here thought it was thethe internationally recognized risk-based system for end of fish farming,” said NAKAZONO Yasuhiko,managing food safety, back in 1998. In order to give head of the association’s sales division. But that wasthe BURI-OH brand its distinctive fleshiness and followed by a series of innovative measures. Not only
flavor no matter who has farmed it, the association did they nurture fish to be shipped out before thedeveloped a rigorous production control system to summer red tides came, they also successfully createdrecord daily data on fish growth, together with an new and productive fishing grounds in waters further
original, standardized fish feed. It was also essential to offshore, where such problems occur less frequently.
design a “market-oriented” approach in order to build Those efforts and the positive results helped to alleviate
a strong brand. Considered a high-end ingredient anxiety among local young people about pursuing
served in sushi restaurants, buri is enjoyed for its careers in the fishing industry, thus paving the way for ahigh fat content and full flesh in Western countries. new generation of confident successors to Nagashima
To enable such succulence, fish for overseas market Town’s fish farms. “We will continue to take on new
are farmed differently from those for the domestic challenges so that the new generation of farmers canmarket: they are raised for a longer time period, and pass on their trade to the next,” says Nakazono.
raw fish is added to their feed.
The approach taken by Nagashima Town, which
In Japan, in the face of dwindling sales, small, family- cherishes the symbiosis between the local environment
run fishing businesses are increasingly finding it and its people, while sufficiently addressing industry’s
difficult to maintain their operations and to compete structural problems and carving out a path ofwith larger companies, but Nagashima Town has economic growth, may be just the model needed tosuccessfully overcome such hardships, maintaining generate greater prosperity in Japan’s local regions.
independent and family-based operations. This
success was possible due to their collective and longterm efforts to develop and improve quality-control
techniques and a market-oriented approach, enabling
export products that are lucrative on the foreign
market. Much of that achievement owes to the leadingrole played by the Azuma-Cho Fisheries Cooperative
Association. However, another important factor
in the town’s success is the trust placed in thecooperative, which always puts its farmers and theirfinancial and operational stability first, along with thefarmer nourishes the fish with original, standardized feed. Rigorous
can-do attitude of the people of Nagashima Town, Aproduction
control is carried out in each fish pen with data taken daily on
who are eager to take on the unknown.
everything from the amount of feed and dosage to the size of the fish.