Almost every night we would be awakened by the siren whistle bringing the news of more whales. If I did not at once stir, the little amah (maid), always devoted to my interests, would quietly slide back the paper screen to the sleeping room and say, “Andrews-san, go Hogei wa kujira ga torn mashita” (Hogei No. 5 has caught whales). When I had rolled out of the comfortable futons and begun to dress, I would hear little Scio-san pattering about in the other room, gathering my pencils, notebook, and tape measure. Looking like a beautiful night-moth in her bright-colored kimona, with the huge bow of her obi (sash) always neatly arranged, she would be there to help me into the greasy oilskins and rubber boots, and would clump along in front to the wharf, lighting the way with a chochin (paper lantern) that I might not bump my head on the eaves and rafters of the low station shed.
“Transverse incisions were made in the portion of the body remaining in the water, a hook was fastened to a ‘blanket piece’ and as the blubber was torn off by the winch the carcass rolled over and over.”
Every day Scio-san religiously went to her ugly little stone joss in the playhouse temple on the hillside and prayed that the “American-san” might catch many whales and porpoises for the hakubutsu-kwan (museum) in the wonderful fairy city across the Pacific, of which he had so often told her. And when the season was ended and she had ventured to ask the American-san himself to thank the joss, and to please her he had done so, her joy could hardly be contained and the tip of her little nose was almost red from constant rubbing on the tatami (floor matting) in her bows of thanks and farewell.
Even though it was the very middle of the night when a ship’s whistle sounded, long before the whale had been dropped at the wharf, paper lanterns, flashing like fireflies, would begin to shine and disappear among the thatched-roofed cottages and the crowd of villagers gathering at the end of the wharf. Half-naked men, child-faced geishas, and little youngsters carrying sleeping babies as large as themselves strapped to their backs, formed a curious, picturesque, ever changing group.
Fires of coal and fat in iron racks along the wharf threw a brilliant, yellow light far out over the bay filled with whale ships, heavy, square-sterned fishing-boats and sampans, and gave weird fantastic shapes to the cutters as it glistened on their dripping knife blades and danced over the pools of blood. But the work always went on as quickly as in the daytime, no matter what the hour or weather, for the meat and blubber must be hurried on board fast transports and sent to the nearest city to be sold in the markets and peddled from house to house.
The inner side of a strip of blubber as it is being torn from a whale.
Few people realize the great part which whale meat plays in the life of the ordinary Japanese. Too poor to buy beef, their diet would include little but rice, fish, and vegetables, were it not for the great supply of flesh and blubber furnished by the huge water mammals. In winter, if there is little fish to be had, the meat of the humpback whale, which is most highly esteemed, sometimes brings as much as thirty sen (fifteen cents) per pound; but this is very unusual and ordinarily it can be bought for fifteen sen or less. But the edible portions are not only the flesh and blubber. The heart, liver, tongue, intestines, and other parts of the viscera are prepared for human consumption, and what little remains is first tried out to extract the oil, then chipped by means of hand knives, and dried in the sun for fertilizer.
