“So Great Is the Demand, There Is No Place for the Auction”: Scaling Up and Fishing Down in the Interwar South China Seas

On April 22, 1938, a Japanese motorboat named “Taisei Maru,” landed a cargo of catch at Batavia’s central fish market in the Netherlands Indies. The Taisei Maru was nearly 800-miles from its homeport in Singapore. What struck authorities was the unusually large amount of fresh fish the Taisei Maru unloaded. But this wasn’t its first spectacular landing. According to colonial inspectors, this was the Taisei Maru’s sixth consecutive landing with no more than 8 days in between each delivery. In a matter of weeks, the price of fresh fish had plummeted. A buying frenzy ensued. One fisherman noted, “so great is the demand, there is no place for the auction.” Merchants and authorities initially wondered whether or not the Taisei Maru had discovered a new fishing ground, but their belief in this possibility was short-lived. Officials were convinced that one of Singapore’s Japanese fishing kongsies (companies) was illegally feeding fish to the Taisei Maru while it was out at sea. Inquiries into the scandal called the suspected practice “clandestine fishing.”

This paper explores how Japanese fishing kongsies, such as the one that owned the Taisei Maru, came to dominate the fresh fish market in Southeast Asia during the interwar period. By looking at the South China Seas, or those upwelling waters between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the essay argues that Japanese control over the seemingly limitless supply of cheap fish was based on scaling up, fishing down, and operating illegally. In supporting this argument, the paper narrates the rise and range of these Japanese kongsies, and the ecological impact of their operations. It concludes by suggesting that while the ocean has long been central to facilitating human and material circulations, its more recent history as a place of production and encounter has eluded historians and therefore deserves critical attention.