Otaru City Museum Director Naoaki Ishikawa Updated 2020.10.26

"Kitamae-bune" has become a fairly common term, even appearing in the Japan Heritage site "Kitamae-bune Ports of Call and Shipowners' Settlements," which Otaru City has been recognized for. However, it's fair to say that there's no established definition. The image used in the Japan Heritage site is "a sailing ship that, during the Edo period, connected Osaka with ports on the Seto Inland Sea and the Sea of ​​Japan, sailing all the way to Matsumae in Ezo." Another definition often adds "buying ships," meaning ships that repeatedly traded goods, taking advantage of price fluctuations at ports of call. Soichi Koshizaki, a pioneer in regional history research who established the term "Kitamae-bune" in Hokkaido, describes it as "a thousand-koku ship that, from the Tokugawa period through the Meiji period, carried goods between Hokkaido and the Hokuriku and Kansai regions, passing through the Sea of ​​Japan."

On the other hand, fundamental questions remain unresolved, such as whether "Kitamae-bune" was an appropriate name for ships that traded on the so-called Nishiki-mawari sea route during the Edo period. While the term has already become established in high school Japanese history classes and is widely used, it was originally a name used in certain regions. For example, in Hokkaido, it is known to have been called "Benzai-bune," "Bezai-bune," or even "Sengoku-bune." However, in the aforementioned writings of Mr. Koshizaki, his grandmother is recorded as saying, "Your grandfather came to Otaru from his hometown on a Kitamae ship," suggesting that the term may have also been used in the Hokuriku region (the Koshizaki family came to Hokkaido from Kaga) or Hokkaido.

What ships came to Hokkaido?

Further complicating the Kitamae-bune issue are the changes that have occurred over time. During the Edo period, present-day Hokkaido was divided into the "Wajinchi (Matsumae-chi)" in the south, under the rule of the Matsumae domain, and the "Ezochi" in the east and west, which were outside the shogunate-feudal system. Travel from the Wajinchi to Ezochi (by Wajin) required permission. In exchange for providing rice stipends to their samurai, the Matsumae domain granted trading rights in Ezochi, dividing up designated trading areas (shoba, basho). This was done under a system known as the "shoba chigyo system." Initially, the Ainu people of the region traded the fish and marine mammals they caught, but later outsourced this to merchants in Omi and elsewhere. With the advent of the so-called "basho shigi" (place contracting) system, merchants began lending out boats and nets, encouraging fishing, and even employing the fishermen. Around Otaru, the Nishikawa and Okada families have been engaged in large-scale herring fishing since at least the late 18th century, and the herring meal produced there was shipped all over Honshu. But was this herring meal transported by the Kitamae-bune? The answer is "almost certainly no."

Merchant ships could navigate freely (with restrictions of course) up to Matsumae, and from there onwards only ships owned by or chartered from location contractor merchants could sail, and basically only to those locations.

This was abolished in 1869 (Meiji 2). The "maritime customs office" that controlled ship navigation was relocated to Otaru, allowing free navigation to Otaru and resulting in a flood of ships. In other words, the Kitamae-bune in Otaru is a post-Meiji phenomenon (with some exceptions), and has slightly different elements from the "Kitamae-bune" that is generally associated with the rest of Japan. Furthermore, no matter what statistical book you look at from the Meiji period, you will not find the name "Kitamae-bune."

"Japanese-style sailing ships" filling the harbor

The Otaru Port Map, drawn by Imamura Mitsumine in 1880 and housed at the Otaru City Museum, depicts the port filled with sailing ships, most of which are Japanese-style ships with a single sail. These are generally identified as Kitamae-bune, but the route and cargo handling method are unclear from the illustration. In fact, there were many ships that transported cargo from Honshu to various ports in Hokkaido. Records from this period, which can be said to be the heyday of Kitamae-bune in Hokkaido, show ships entering and leaving the port as two categories: steamships and sailing ships. Furthermore, in the 1880s, these categories were further divided into three: steamships, Western-style sailing ships, and Japanese-style sailing ships, with Kitamae-bune included among the sailing ships that fall under the category of Japanese-style sailing ships.

The cargoes carried have also changed since the Edo period. In fact, I believe the most important role played by Hokkaido's Kitamae-bune ships was as ships that supported the livelihoods of immigrants from Honshu. The museum's collection includes statistics from 1877 that provide a detailed breakdown of goods imported from Honshu. At this stage, the main ports of departure were still along the Sea of ​​Japan coast, such as the Hokuriku region, and traditional forms remained. Rice was still the top imported commodity, but lacquerware, building materials, and other daily necessities, as well as raw materials such as paper and cedar bark, were also transported in large quantities. Twenty years later, in 1905, rice remained the top import, but agricultural products and other industrial products accounted for roughly the same amount.

Roof tiles and Otaru

There was one major imported product that does not appear in the statistics on imported goods: roof tiles. Because Hokkaido is a snowy region and has a cold climate not found in Honshu, roof tiles are not a suitable building material for the region. However, because they have excellent fire resistance, they were often used by the wealthy and in large buildings. In the Otaru area, while some roof tiles are from Hokkaido, it has been confirmed that roof tiles from Echizen, Wakasa, and Kaga were also used.

Until about five years ago, Wakasa tiles were also used at the former Otaru Warehouse, with 200 to 300 tiles replaced each year. Otaru was a warehouse district lined with mansions for the wealthy from the Meiji to Taisho periods, and there must have been a considerable demand for tiles. In recent years, some research into tile consumption has begun to produce results, but why do the large quantities of tiles that were transported not appear in the statistics?

As is often said, it is true that tiles were loaded as weights to balance the Kitamae-bune ships, but it is also true that they were circulated as a commodity. Many of the large warehouses that were built one after another in the 1880s belonged to people who made their fortunes through Kitamae-bune trade, and they were able to transport large quantities of inexpensive tiles from the Hokuriku region on their own ships. However, with the spread of even cheaper fireproof building materials such as corrugated iron and the withdrawal of the shipping industry, tiles gradually disappeared. However, they are also a legacy left behind by the Kitamae-bune, sailing ships that sailed around the Sea of ​​Japan and supported the lives of the people who lived in this area, leading to the modernization of Otaru Port and Hokkaido.

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