Equipment for Herring Fishing at Rumoi (former Saga Family Fishing Ground)

3,745 Items, Designated by the State in 1995

Equipment for Herring Fishing at Rumoi (former Saga Family Fishing Ground) (留萌のニシン漁撈（旧佐賀家漁場）用具) is held at 13 Uketo-cho, Rumoi City, Hokkaido, and was designated by the state on 26 December 1995. Its category is that of important tangible folk cultural properties.

The quantity is 3,745 items. The owner is Rumoi City.

The breakdown gives 1,059 items of nets and net gear, 340 of boats and boat gear, 1,486 for landing and processing, 307 for repair, and 553 for premises and management.

Made Ready for a Catch That Never Came

The season these things were prepared for never arrived.

The Agency records that herring fishing in Hokkaido came to its end with the catch of 1955: 317 koku at Rumoi and 36,314 across the whole of Hokkaido.

It continues that Rumoi fished on in a small way through 1956 and 1957, and that this collection is the set of gear made ready for the herring run expected the following year.

Gear assembled for the fishing of 1958 has come down just as it was. The herring did not come.

At the Kubiki Railway locomotive shed, the doors are gone and the arched frame remains. There a thing was used and then lost.

Here the things were never used at all. The record closes that the gear of that time survives just as it stood, and is valuable for that.

Counted by the Item

The quantity is reckoned neither in buildings nor in units.

It is 3,745 items: the sum of the pieces, counted one by one.

Buildings are counted in structures. The Yakushizawa waterway works are given as one place, Futatsuzuka Kofun as one tomb.

This is a gathering of implements, and implements are counted by the item. It is the largest quantity met here.

The breakdown runs to 5 classes besides: nets, boats, landing and processing, repair, and premises and management.

Landing and processing gear is the largest class at 1,486 items; repair gear the smallest at 307.

One Place Designated Twice, in Two Categories

The same ground carries two designations of different kinds.

This one covers the equipment, as an important tangible folk cultural property, from 26 December 1995.

The fishing ground itself was designated a historic site on 11 March 1997, with Rumoi City appointed as managing body on 15 March 2005.

The implements came first and the place second, 2 years apart.

With the okichimozuku habitats, 3 places where one organism grows were designated separately, in prefectures far apart.

Here one place is designated twice over, its contents and its ground taken in turn.

Visiting

The collection is held at 13 Uketo-cho, Rumoi City, Hokkaido, owned by the city.

The Agency records that Rumoi lies midway along the Japan Sea coast of Hokkaido, that its chief industry is marine processing, that it prospered in its day on herring, and that it still produces more than half the herring roe in the country.

The Saga family took up fishing-ground management at Rumoi in 1844, having lived in a village in Mutsu province and carried on fishing and shipping for generations.

Their house mark was Kakudai, taken from a merchant of Matsumae: under the contracting system of the day, managing a fishing ground required Matsumae residency.

The city owns the collection, so opening and hours follow the owner's arrangements. Check before travelling.