Some lakes around Abashiri in Hokkaido prefecture, Japan, are unique for thepractice of under-ice net fishing, but it's contemporary and historical situation has not been systematically researched until now. There we can find some types of winter fishing have been practiced: seine fishing in Lake Abashiri and Lake Akan, gillnet fishing in Lake Notoro and Lake Saroma and set net fishing in Lake Notoro and Saroma and several lakes in the east part of Hokkaido. Especially the under-ice seine fishing in Lake Abashiri is important in that it has been practiced regularly from the moment of propagation from Lake Hachiro, Akita prefecture in 1920's. The under-ice seine fishing in Lake Abashiri has some features: seining rope and net by gasoline engine from 1970's, Wakasagi-Japanese smelt as main target with low bycatch of other fishes, corrective fishing with sharing the catch income among 10 groups of workers. This article has put special accent on the relationship between environmental change and this type of fishing activity in local economic and cultural aspects. Abashiri region is not the place of exception of the climate change process and warming tendency of local climate might has affected the fish resource and ecology, but such researches are mostly under process. Generally, the winter seine fishing has been executed by local communities around the lake coast because of the necessity of numbers of workers. It is one of factors why this type of winter fishing has been existed until now. As for the influence of the climate change we can't detect corresponding factors of the fishing catch change directly, even if some resource decline is reported by fishery researchers. In the last 20 years or so the ratio of winter (under-ice) fishing in the all season's Wakasagi catch is relatively high - about half or more and we can estimate that the vulnerability of this winter fishing exists but it has functioned as a subsistence activity for this region.
千葉大学人文研究 = The Journal of humanities (44) 135-173 2015年
Under-ice fishing is a unique way of subsistence activities in high latitude regions seen in Eurasia and North America. The distribution areas are widely spread but the population that practices this fishing method is mainly limited to indigenous peoples.\n In Japan, under-ice fishing method has been practiced in such lakes as Lake Abashiri, Notoro, Saroma, Akan, Furen(Hokkaido prefecture), and Lake Ogawara(Aomori pref.). Of types of ice fishing, seine, gillnet, and set net are common methods. Historically, under-ice seining had developed among Lake Suwa(Nagano pref.)by 1870's and in Lake Hachiro-gata(Akita pref.)by1960's: the ice seining method in Lake Suwa was propagated to Lake Hachiro-gata in the end of18th century, and then from Hachiro-gata to Lake Ogawara in the beginning of20th century and from Hachiro-gata to Lake Abashiri a little later. In Lake Suwa and Hachiro-gata, gillnet fishing and set net under ice targeting freshwater fish like carp and flatfish also have been practiced.\n In Lake Abashiri, ice seining, the main target of which is smelt, has become an ordinal commercial fishing using gasoline engine for pulling net. In its neighboring regions, gillnet and set net have been practiced in Lake Notoro and Saroma. In several lakes in Nemuro and Kushiro region, set net also has been practiced.\n Unique under-ice fishing is thus observed in Japan today. Furtherstudies on the diffusion process of under-ice fishing into Japan as well as within Eurasia and America is crucial to understand the winter mode of subsistence of indigenous people. In addition, as the mode of subsistence highly depends upon ice coverage condition on the lake or river and the Indigenous Ecological Knowledge, continued research on how global warming process affects under-ice fishing is also expected.
The Nenets, one of the indigenous peoples of the North in Russian Federation, can be divided into two dialect groupsーthe Tundra Nenets and the Forest Nenets. The latter is minority even among the Nenets (42,000 peoples) and numbers just about 2,000 peoples, living scattered in the Forest Tundra -Taiga vegetation zones of the southern part of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District and the northern part of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District in West Siberia. The Forest Nenets, as the most of nomadic Tundra Nenets, is also famous as reindeer people, but their dependence on reindeer herding itself as the subsistence activity is lower than that of the Tundra Nenets. Beside reindeer herding they are engaged in fishing, gathering and so on. In this article the author introduces the contents of the main academic works which refers to reindeer herding and published in Russia from 1920's to nowadays. Each article or book about reindeer herding mainly concerns with the typology of herding - summer herding pattern, usage of the mosquito-fumigation, existence of reindeer house, small or large number of the herd, the borrowing relationship in the technique of herding with the neighboring people groups - Tundra Nenets, Khanty, Selkup, Enets, Tungus and other elements of the reindeer herding and husbandry, typical for the Forest Nenets. Their reindeer herding, and the Forest Nenets themselves, are on the verge of the catastrophe, faced with oil-natural gas exploring activities from 1970's and pollution problems as a result of such activities, and the socio-economic changes.
This article concerns about the analysis of recent reindeer herding situation among the Tundra Nenets in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, Russian Far North. After the breakdown of the U.S.S.R. in this District, apart from other regions, the number of domestic reindeer has constantly increased and they constitute over 400f the total number of domestic reindeer in Russia (circ. 1.3million head), over 601143501444f which are kept under private herders. The author analyzes structure of the reindeer herds inside the District, especially among the Gydan Nenets in the Tazovsky administrational region. The result of this analysis shows that ratio of certain categories of the herds (female, male deer and the castrates) reflect the herds' scale and character, and that among private herders the Nenets have routine practice of using female deer as sledders. The author's observation of the reindeer herding in some spring camps inside Gydan Tundra in 2005 made some characteristics of private herds clear, for example: birth season's special care for the herders, the female deer with antler in power, usage of ''longali'' (hanging wooden stick for obstacle to running fast) for the castrates and so on. Beside that, the contemporary practice of using of property marker for reindeer (earmark/khavontir/and body marker/pidte''ma/) is described with concrete examples, corrected during author's fieldwork.
T. Hiyama, H. Takakura (担当:共著, 範囲:Chapter 9: Reindeer Herding and Environmental Change in Reindeer Herding Regions of the Sakha Republic: Comparison with the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, Pp.145-160.)