Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

I had experience with most types of big-game fishing.
Fierce fighters like sea bream, yellowtail, striped beakfish, tuna, and sharks had all surrendered to my hands, but I had yet to subdue a whale.

Given that fishing was my hobby, I wanted to try catching the largest animal currently living on Earth.
Though whales were the largest animals, even at the peak of my skills, I couldn't possibly catch one—so I had resigned myself while nurturing this longstanding fervor for whaling over many years.

However, recently, from Mr. Mitsutaka Murata, Secretary Section Chief of Kyokuyo Whaling Company,

“Why don’t you come observe whaling?”
he invited me.
“Count me in!”

The time had come—I answered without hesitation.

I departed Ueno Station on the 3rd.
Around noon on the 4th, I arrived at Ayukawa Port—located at the tip of Miyagi Prefecture's Oshika Peninsula that juts into the Pacific Ocean at Japan's eastern extremity.
When entering Ayukawa town, a bizarre stench assaulted the nostrils.
Houses, roads, rivers, gardens—even the people passing by reeked absurdly.

“It’s really quite foul.”

“This is Ayukawa Port’s defining feature—since Ayukawa is a town that lives off whales, the scent of them has permeated everything.”

Mr. Murata remained unfazed.

“My nose is about to curl—”

I finally let out a scream.

“You get used to it.”

Mr. Murata couldn’t care less about my scream.

I peered into the spacious garden of a certain house.
However, the entire garden was filled with finely chopped pieces of whale meat, viscera, and bones laid out to dry.
The sun's rays beat down on them, rotting away as heat waves shimmered upward from the decaying mass, emitting a noxious stench that threatened to suffocate.
When imagining Ayukawa town, I had always pictured a place filled with the sea's refreshing breezes rustling through abundant coolness—but.

“For Ayukawa’s townspeople, this scent is more precious than perfume.”

“Ah—they say ambergris extracted from whales forms the basis of perfume.”

Then he guided me to Kyokuyo Whaling Company’s processing facility overlooking Ayukawa Port.
As we approached the processing facility by small boat, the seawater turned a blood-like crimson.

A whale was moored to the processing facility’s pier.
Supervisor Hamakubo of the processing facility took on the role of guide,

“This is one of four whales caught this morning—a forty-seven-foot sei whale.”

he explained.
It was certainly enormous.
When we ascended the pier to the wide plank floor of the workplace, a sei whale nearly fifty feet long was being dissected with halberd-like cleavers wielded by workers, separating meat, bone, and intestines.
It was work akin to demolishing a mountain.

As we proceeded further inside, two pitch-black objects resembling freight trains stood lined up.

“What is this?”

“This too is just the heads of two sperm whales caught this morning.”

"Whoa…"

I had heard whales were large, but even just their heads were as big as the houses we lived in.

"In this single head alone, there's enough oil to fill about 240 or 250 oil drums," he explained. "When you calculate the oil, skin, meat, and internal organs from a single sperm whale, it would roughly amount to about ten thousand yen, I suppose."

“Amazing!” I exclaimed.

“This is nothing much,” he continued. "When it comes to large blue whales, a single one can fetch up to twenty-five thousand yen."

he explained.

They say that since ancient times, catching just one whale would bring prosperity to seven villages—and I was deeply impressed that this was no mere tall tale.

II

We were finally going whale catching in the Pacific off Kinkasan Island.
Mr. Murata and I boarded the whaling ship Dai-ni Kyomaru at midnight on the 4th.

The Dai-ni Kyomaru was a 340-ton proven vessel that had ventured to Antarctic waters with the whaling mother ship Kyokuyo Maru from last October through April of this year and captured 170 massive whales as a catcher boat.
After returning to Japan in April, it had been based at Ayukawa Port while venturing far offshore of Kinkasan Island daily in pursuit of large catches.

Excluding Antarctic waters, when considering how many whales are caught in Japanese coastal waters, in recent years the number has exceeded two thousand. Of these, three-tenths—over seven hundred whales—are caught in the turbulent currents off Kinkasan Island. Of the numerous fishing grounds stretching from the Kuril Islands in the north to Taiwan in the south and Korea in the west, the waters off Kinkasan yield the largest catches. It should make sense why I targeted the waters off Kinkasan Island for whale watching.

The sky over Ayukawa Port hung thick with clouds, blotting out the moon.
The ship left port with red lights blazing on its port side and blue lights glowing starboard.
Yet the sea lay sealed by dense fog that swallowed all visibility beyond an arm's length.
They say on clear days you'd see Aji Island to starboard and Kinkasan Island—home to wild deer—to port, but now our course ahead drowned in unbroken darkness.
Through this void, the Dai-ni Kyomaru advanced with silent caution.

When I dozed off and emerged from the cabin onto the deck, the ship had already traveled seventy miles into the Pacific offshore. Checking my watch showed seven in the morning—the sun should have been high, but here too the fog hung so thick that five or six hundred meters ahead remained invisible.

"Spotting whale pods would be near impossible like this," Captain Tange remarked, tilting his head. He explained that in clear conditions, one could see whales swimming twelve or thirteen nautical miles ahead from the cross-nest—the lookout basket on the mast—but presently, visibility barely reached four or five hundred meters. Undeterred, the ship kept searching offshore, carving zigzag patterns through the water like lightning.

From the bridge, I glanced to port and saw a massive dolphin pod streaking through the air at breathtaking speed, keeping pace with our vessel just yards away. A staggering multitude—one thousand, maybe two thousand strong. Each creature measured ten to fifteen feet long. The Pacific truly brimmed with vitality.

We drifted on the swells until the fog lifted.

Captain Tange, Mr. Murata, and I sat cross-legged on the plank floor by the harpoon cannon.
The sea during the rainy season was calm.
While taking a smoke break, Captain Tange cheerfully began to talk.
According to his account, he had served exclusively as captain in Antarctic waters until April, but since he would be taking on additional duties as harpooner starting this October, he was now conducting target practice for whale hunting here off Kinkasan Island.
However, hitting a whale fleeing at speeds around fifteen knots from the bow of a ship tossed by waves was said to be no easy feat.

The conversation then gradually turned to whales' life histories—he explained that the largest whales were blue whales at 110 feet, followed by fin whales at eighty feet, sperm whales at sixty-five feet, while sei whales, humpback whales, and Bryde's whales measured over fifty feet each; even the smallest pygmy right whales and pilot whales grew to more than thirty feet. Converting one hundred ten feet into six-foot measures yielded a little over eighteen ken—truly enormous creatures. He elaborated that since whale weight converted at one ton per shaku, a 110-shaku blue whale would weigh 110 tons—more substantial than most hundred-ton ships. Calculating hypothetically, he noted that even if someone ate nothing but whale meat at three-and-three-quarter kilograms daily, they could never consume an entire blue whale within a human lifetime. Such mass meant a small whaling vessel could be capsized by a single headbutt or tail swipe. To emphasize this danger, Captain Tange chilled us with a tale: "A few years back off Kinkasan Island, a sperm whale rammed a catcher boat—shattered its hull and claimed multiple lives."

The thick fog showed no sign of lifting.
The whale pods showed no sign of appearing.

Announcing that lunch was ready, the ship's young steward came to fetch us.

III

When I looked at the table in the ship’s dining room, there lay a mountain of delicacies.

The first thing I reached for with my chopsticks was the whale meat sashimi.
Incredibly delicious.

I was eating whale sashimi for the first time in my life, yet found myself astonished by its refined flavor profile.
It lacked beef's tongue-weighting density nor tuna fat's cloying greasiness that lingers in the mouth.
Truly delicate.
And there was a whisper of light fat.
Next, whale cutlets materialized on the table.
These too were excellent.
Tender.
Not a trace of that canned whale meat funk.

While chomping vigorously, I exclaimed in admiration.
At this, Captain Tange explained—this was sei whale loin meat, found in small quantities near the tail—that this particular meat remained delicious whether prepared as sashimi, cutlet, steak-grilled, minced, miso-marinated, soy-marinated, in vinegar-miso dressing, or sukiyaki-style.
"We find that when we eat nothing but whale aboard ship, we want for nothing else—" he proclaimed with evident pride.

Mr. Murata too appeared to be quite the whale advocate and interjected—“I usually have whale meat shipped from Ayukawa Port’s processing facility to Tokyo for my meals,” he said with a laugh,“but recently when it went out of stock and I ordered some from a whale meat shop in central Tokyo,I was taken aback when they charged me four yen fifty sen per hundred momme!”

By the time we finished our meal, the ship was cutting through waves a hundred nautical miles off Kinkasan Island.
The fog grew denser still.
I think it was around three in the afternoon.
Through the thick mist came a ship's horn blaring like a shrill scream.
Startled, I rushed up to the bridge and saw a large merchant ship passing perilously close alongside ours, moving parallel through the murk.
We nearly collided.
Kuwahara Kuwahara.

Around six that evening, a wireless marine weather report arrived.
It stated thick fog would persist tomorrow from Choshi's waters clear to the Kurils.
Both crew and I felt our spirits sink.

They decided to let the ship drift on the waves that night.

Night fell imperceptibly through the fog, and the steward came to inform us that another meal was ready.
When I looked at the table, there was whale meat nigiri sushi.
I took a big bite in one go.
I wanted to say it resembled delicious chu-toro sushi, but the flavor was far lighter than that.
A whale meat tekka roll also appeared.
Salt-grilled sea bream, and sea bream broth.
Whaling ships are places that serve quite a feast.
For someone like me with a voracious appetite, it was paradise.

The second morning since boarding the ship arrived.
However, the thick fog showed no sign of clearing.
Captain Tange also seemed at a loss.

However, when nine o'clock approached, a pale sun emerged in a perfect circle within the fog.
A cheer rose from inside the ship.
Gradually, the fog thinned.

When the horizon came into view, all crew members tensed up.
The bosun climbed up to the cross-nest on the mast and gazed out at the distant open sea.
After a short while came the signal that a whale pod had been discovered.
The crew's activities suddenly intensified.
Captain Tange ran along the gangway.
He gripped the cannon’s trigger.

The operator gripped the controls and stared out to sea.

“Full speed ahead!”

From the bridge to the boiler room, commands were relayed through the speaking tube.
The interior of the ship gradually grew restless.
The ship charged ahead, churning up white waves.

From the bow, on the waves fifteen or sixteen chō ahead, I caught sight of spray rising at a low diagonal like mist.
A pod of whales.
Someone—

“Sei whales!”

the bosun shouted.
It felt like encountering an enemy for the first time.
I scrambled up onto the bridge roof shelter before anyone else.
This was the vantage point offering the clearest view of the open sea.

IV

The ship appeared to be gradually closing in on the whales.
Suddenly—just for an instant—a large, black, round object surfaced onto the waves about thirty or forty ken from the ship’s starboard side.
My chest leaped.

“There are two of them!”

The bosun shouted from atop the cross-nest.

For just an instant—what appeared before my eyes was the whale’s rear end, plump and thick and enormous.
Its black back bore a small dorsal fin.
But the head was not visible.

It sank into the water.

“Give chase, full speed ahead!”

A fierce command was relayed from the speaking tube to the boiler room.
It seemed they had caught up to the whale pod again.
Commands like "Port (left)" and "Starboard (right)" were frequently relayed to the helmsman.

When pursued by ships, whales fled through the middle layers of the sea in lightning-shaped patterns at full speed.
The ship too took the helm in lightning-shaped patterns and pursued.
The helmsman's hands moved in a dizzying blur, working frantically.

Following the "Half speed" command came the call of "Choice low."
They had drawn near enough that once more - at close range - the whales would surface on the waves before the harpooner.
Next, the command "Brislow" was called.
At that moment, no sooner had the bosun in the cross-nest let out some fierce cry than the captain at the bow swung the cannon muzzle toward the portside sea surface, crouching into position with legs braced.

He targeted the whale that would any second now reveal its massive back between the waves. Chased by the ship, its breath growing urgent in that split second before it could spout spray skyward—this was the breath-stopping spectacle.

When its back broke through the waves, that would be the moment before the harpoon launched from the cannon’s mouth.

All crew members gathered on the deck, bridge, and gangway, sweating with tension. On the bridge roof, I stared wide-eyed at the waves where the cannon was trained, holding my breath. My breath caught.

That moment—

There it is!

Five or six people shouted in unison. Off the port side, about twenty or thirty ken away, two sea monsters surfaced their massive backs in unison. I—Ah!—thought. And in that split second considered this must be the right distance to fire. But likely because the angle between cannon and whale proved unsuitable, Captain Tange never pulled the trigger. The whale hurriedly vanished beneath the waves. What a shame. After that moment, it never resurfaced—having fled beyond knowing.

Ten minutes later, the bosun atop the mast discovered a whale pod that had fled half a nautical mile ahead and surfaced on the sea.
Their escape was swift.

“Full speed ahead!”

The ship continued its relentless pursuit.
The two whales were fleeing for their lives.
After two hours of chasing right and left through the waves, the thick fog descended once more.
The bosun fruitlessly descended from the mast.
The captain, too, released his hand from the harpoon cannon’s trigger.
The whales vanished permanently into the thick fog.

"Unbearable!"

I involuntarily blurted out, but Captain Tange—

"There's no need for despair—there are still plenty of whales."

—consoled me.

Again, lunchtime came.
On the table sat a whale sukiyaki pot.
We wiped the sweat dripping from our brows and chests as we devoured and savored the steaming delicacy.

Around three in the afternoon, the fog began to thin again.
Until now, there had been nothing on the sea except our ship, but through the thinning, dissipating fog, we faintly spotted a single bonito fishing boat.
Two or three crew members ran out to the port side, waved their hands, and called out to stop the bonito fishing boat.

Five

That was the Dai-go Myojinmaru, a bonito fishing boat from Aji Island.
About fifty fishermen stood on board.
Before we could say anything from our side, a crew member from the bonito fishing boat shouted in a loud voice—

“From here, about fifteen or sixteen nautical miles to the southeast, there are countless large whales swimming,” he shouted.
At this, Captain Tange proposed exchanging beer for bonito with the bonito fishing boat.
They immediately agreed.
After tying three beer bottles to a rope and floating them over to the bonito fishing boat, the other side sent us seven freshly caught bonitos—each likely weighing close to four kilograms—still vibrant from recent capture.
Cheers erupted.
They had caught bonito with beer.

In the evening, the bosun spotted a whale pod swimming in the distance from atop the cross-nest, but as they soon vanished into the fog, pursuit was abandoned.
The fog’s evening gloom arrived.

On the evening dining table, that bonito appeared as thickly sliced sashimi with its skin still intact.
Umami—gastronomic desire danced on the tongue.
A maritime delicacy.

The third morning arrived.
At eight o'clock, when we checked the incoming marine weather report, it stated there was a low-pressure system about 150 nautical miles off Kamaishi.
The low-pressure system was located no more than forty or fifty nautical miles from our Dai-ni Kyomaru’s position.
The fog remained thick, the waves were high, and the wind began to blow.

“Will this voyage end without catching even one whale—”

Captain Tange wore a forlorn expression—toward us and himself.
Then around one o’clock came word from offshore bonito boats—the fog had cleared some 120 nautical miles southeast of Kinkasan Island.
And with it, a wireless message—countless whale pods sighted.

The crew surged with vigor.
They resolved to make haste for those waters.
Thirty, forty nautical miles lay ahead.

On the breezy bridge, the talkative Captain Tange began explaining various matters—every summer around Kinkasan Island, sardines, squid, mackerel, and all manner of small fish gather, so whale pods come chasing them from distant waters. Whales from as far as the Arctic Ocean apparently come here too. Moreover, whales from Canadian waters also come here by way of the Aleutian Islands. Whale pods from the South Seas are also mixed in. Since whales swim so quickly, even those coming from the Arctic or Canadian waters might consider the journey here no more strenuous than us taking a stroll from Tokyo to Yokohama.

Among whales, sperm whales are slow to rouse.
When discovering a sperm whale pod, they would start by killing the largest one—but upon firing a harpoon into this giant, smaller whales—perhaps accompanying females or calves—would gather around the mortally wounded giant whale. Five or six of these compact creatures would press their heads against the dying whale’s body, lingering and refusing to depart—a heartrending spectacle.
Even for business—when faced with such scenes—there were moments he thought this slaughter should not be done—

“—But when I landed a direct hit on a hundred-foot blue whale’s massive frame with that harpoon—whether I called it exhilaration or sublime intensity—I truly felt the profound fulfillment of the whaling trade—” mid-sentence

“Spotted!”

From the speaking tube came the bosun's voice resounding from the cross-nest. I checked my watch—10:55. Then came his report that the whale pod was extremely close.

"Full speed ahead!"

The ship plunged forward in a straight line, cutting white through towering waves. After fifteen minutes of running, orders shifted from half speed to slow ahead, then back to half speed again. When I looked out, countless seagulls were soaring over the sea—proof that a massive school of sardines thrived in the upper layers. A school of bonito came leaping into view, chasing after the sardines.

And—I was astonished.
Between the sardine and bonito schools, five or six massive whales heaved their enormous backs above the waves!

Six

The Belly Slow order was relayed to the boiler room.
Captain Tange ran straight down the gangway to the harpoon cannon and gripped the trigger.
Following the bosun's shouted commands from the masthead, he swung the cannon muzzle left and right.
The ship began tracing a circle across the sea around the sardine and seagull swarm, leaving visible wakes in its path.
This time, Captain Tange's stance made clear—if the whale surfaced, he would fire without hesitation.

A giant whale suddenly breached, its massive back emerging from the waves at a V-shaped angle relative to the ship's bow. Distance: about fifty-four meters. The moment that giant whale’s back registered in my vision—

Boom!

The cannon's roar reached my ears at the precise moment—
In that instant—the massive harpoon launched from the cannon muzzle flew through the air at bullet-like speed, trailing its thick pure-silk rope (1.5 inches in diameter) with a whirring resonance, and Thunk! pierced the whale's large black blubbery back.
It pierced through.
The sharp harpoon tip pierced true through the whale's dorsal flesh.

Simultaneously, fresh blood gushed from both the whale’s wound and blowhole. The surrounding sea surface turned crimson. This fleeting moment of violent convergence—wonder, exhilaration, terror, visceral shock, devastation—what analogy could possibly contain it? Was this not akin to a heavy artillery’s precision strike scoring a direct hit on an enemy pillbox?

I stared transfixed at the sea surface as though consciousness had left me, gripping the bridge roof beam with both hands.

The wounded giant whale ferociously plunged into the depths of the sea. A terrifying speed. A terrifying force. At the same moment, the thick silk rope—over five hundred fathoms long—snapped taut, stretched to its limit, and was drawn so tight that its diameter narrowed to nearly half. At any moment, it might snap. The ship raced at full speed, pursuing the fleeing whale.

The crew assumed their positions with precision, their movements silent.
The wounded whale’s strength seemed to have weakened somewhat.
As the winch gears creaked sharply, the fully extended rope was hauled in.
In agony, the whale darted off again through the midwater.
They took the rope, worked it, and after nearly an hour of struggle, finally hauled the massive body close to the bow.
But the whale assumed a final desperate dash, thrashing its massive body amidst the waves.

Boom!

He fired the second harpoon.
It struck squarely into the whale's midsection.
It must have pierced the heart.
The whale exposed its white, thick belly sideways.
He dealt the final blow.
The creature lay sideways exposing its belly—such immensity—
“Forty-seven or forty-eight feet.”

After confirming that the final harpoon had indeed pierced the heart, Captain Tange walked back from the cannon platform along the gangway to the bridge and said to us:

“It’s a female whale.”
“This is a sei whale—not particularly valuable—but even one like this brings in three thousand yen.”
“Considering how many bigger ones are swimming out there in the sea, this is still something.”

Then, they pumped air into the whale's belly with a pump, erected a marker flag, and set it adrift on the sea.
The whale floated gently in the vast sea with its large white belly turned upward.

Leaving it thus，we set out to search for other whale pods that had hidden themselves away somewhere after being startled by our cannon fire.
But once startled by those cannons，these sei whales had become remarkably cunning.
Though we ran our vessel hard for thirty minutes and caught up with their pod again，they stubbornly refused to let us enter firing range.
For two hours we pursued two whales swimming side by side through those waters—but never gained a clear shot.

“One whale should be enough—”

To Captain Tange, who was urging them to push on harder, Mr. Murata responded.

It was 2:00 AM on the 8th when the Dai-ni Kyomaru returned to Ayukawa Port, securing the large whale alongside its hull.