The Marius B. Jansen Memorial Lecture | The Machine in the Ocean: Japanese Fisheries and the Industrialization of the Pacific

Japan’s fisheries were the most productive in the world through most of the twentieth century. Their growth and global ascendance were fueled by the progressive industrialization of the harvest, processing, and distribution of seafood, as technological innovation allowed for dramatic advances in the scale, scope, and speed of fisheries and drove the standardization and commoditization of marine products. Using the case study of surimi (fish paste), this talk will examine the evolution of the Japanese fishing industry and the development of “engineered seafood” through the lenses of environmental, oceanic, business, technological, and food history.