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Hatchery Flounder Going Wild:Authenticity, Aesthetics, and Fetishismof Fish in JapanSatsuki Takahashiaa Department of Sociology and Anthropology, George MasonUniversity, Fairfax, Virginia, USAPublished online: 30 May 2014.

To cite this article: Satsuki Takahashi (2014) Hatchery Flounder Going Wild: Authenticity, Aesthetics,and Fetishism of Fish in Japan, Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of HumanNourishment, 22:1-2, 5-23, DOI: 10.1080/07409710.2014.895566

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Food and Foodways, 22:5–23, 2014Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0740-9710 print / 1542-3484 onlineDOI: 10.1080/07409710.2014.895566

Hatchery Flounder Going Wild: Authenticity,Aesthetics, and Fetishism of Fish in Japan

SATSUKI TAKAHASHIDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

This article—based on ethnographic research on fish stocking anddiscourses surrounding authenticity, aesthetics, and taste of wildfish in Japan—examines the cultural production of the “wilder-ness.” While Japan’s seafood culture has long historical roots, thisfetishism of wild fish is a product of the recent advancement offisheries technology, namely aquaculture and fish stocking. Theexpansion of aquaculture has shaped not only the notion of the“cultivated” but also that of the “wild.” Simultaneously, the de-velopment of fish stocking—the national project to enhance wildfish stocks by releasing hatchery-bred juveniles into the ocean—hasalso contributed to the reimagining of the authenticity of “wild”fish while complicating it. By looking at flounder, one of the mostpopular species for fish stocking, this article reveals that tasting“wilderness” is a multisensory experience that reflects not only gus-tatory but also visual dimensions.

On September 29, 1981, the city of Tsurumi in Oita Prefecture—a livelyfishing town approximately 620 miles southwest of Tokyo—hosted Japan’sinaugural national fisheries convention, an event that continues to be heldannually, though in a different fishing town each year. The convention’s on-going theme is “Nurture the Abundant Ocean,” and its purposes include the

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Asian Studies Conference Japan(ASCJ) conference in Tokyo as well as the 2010 American Anthropological Association (AAA)annual meeting, and I thank participants for their suggestions. I am grateful as well toTheodore Bestor, Aaron Herald Skabelund, Heather Swanson, Colin Tyner, Chika Watan-abe, and David Leheny for their criticisms, encouragement, and thoughtful comments. YusonJung and Nicholas Standorff Cisterna carefully read the earlier drafts and provided me de-tailed and thoughtful feedback. I owe them special thanks. I also thank Rachel Black and twoanonymous reviewers for their insightful and very helpful comments and suggestions.

Address correspondence to Satsuki Takahashi, Department of Sociology & Anthropology,George Mason University, Robinson Hall Room B, 4400 University Drive, MS 3G5, Fairfax, VA22030. E-mail: stakahas@gmu.edu

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promotion and development of the nation’s fisheries industry, as wellas the drawing of citizens’ attention to the importance of cultivating thenation’s fisheries resources and conserving the precious “natural” ma-rine environment. In front of a throng of people, the chairperson of the1981 convention—the speaker of Japan’s House of Representatives at thetime—delivered a keynote speech that celebrated the dawn of the newera of Japanese fisheries, emphasizing resource management through tech-nological innovation. As the highlight of the event, the crown prince andprincess from Japan’s royal family released a bucket of hatchery-born juve-nile fish—sea breams, prawns, yellowtails, and mackerels—from the quayinto the ocean.

These fish species are all important commodities for Tsurumi’s local fish-ing industry. Since that year, at each annual national fisheries convention,the royal couple—who became the emperor and the empress in 1989—havereleased various selections of hatchery-bred juvenile fish species, depend-ing on locally important coastal resources of each year’s host town. Thosetiny fish are the products of the latest fisheries technology, hatched fromcarefully managed eggs and then raised in a giant plastic tub by marine bi-ologists. They represent a technological triumph. Released into the oceanby the hands of the royal couple, the hatchery-born juveniles are sup-posed to be the living symbol of a new era of Japanese fisheries. Un-like aquacultured fish, released hatchery-bred fish are expected to helprecover and enhance “wild” fish stocks. Enhancing wild fish stocks is thestate’s national project, which aims to maintain Japan’s coastal fishing in-dustry as well as to support its seafood-based gastronomic and culinaryculture.

The stocking of hatchery juvenile fish into the ocean, however, raisesquestions in relation to the concept of the “wild.” In the context of foodin Japan, designations of both “wild” (tennnen) and “natural” (shizen) addto the commodity value of natural resources, but wild products often fetchhigher prices than natural ones due to an imaginary proximity to “pure”nature. Conceptually, “wild” food implies the absence of human labor untilthe moment of gathering or hunting, whereas “natural” food—which couldbe either wildly gathered or cultured—suggests minimal addition of artificialingredients in the production process.1 Growing in a hatchery facility duringthe initial months of their lives, these fish first live away from the naturalenvironment. But after they are released into the ocean, growing up freelyunder the rough waves rather than barricaded by farming cages, hatchery-bred fish are not considered to be “aquacultured.” Once these hatchery-bredfish are caught by fishers at sea, they become a commodity labeled as “wildfish.” In many cases (e.g., salmon, trout, and clams), because there are noobvious visual distinctions between ocean-bred and released hatchery-bredfish, the difference in the birthplace is not an issue. Both kinds of fish lookalike and therefore they are both “wild.” In some cases, however, the visual

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Authenticity, Aesthetics, and Fetishism of Fish in Japan 7

difference is apparent. An example is flounder, one of the most popularfish in Japan and the most released finfish in the history of fish stocking.Hatchery-bred flounder have dark patches on their skin, leading them to benicknamed “panda flounder” (panda hirame). In provoking consumers todoubt the “wild” taste of panda flounder, the distinctive look affects sensoryexperiences of the wilderness, even as marine biologists and some fishmon-gers claim that the taste of panda flounder is as delicious as that of theocean-born.

In this article, by focusing on Japan’s fisheries management schemethat attempts to enhance “wild” fish stocks as well as on debates on thewilderness of stocked flounder, I examine the ways in which the taste of“wild fish” is crafted conceptually and technologically. While this articleconcerns wilderness taste, it draws partly from my broader ethnographic andhistorical research project, which is based on 19 months of fieldwork in 2006,2007, and 2011 in fishing communities north of Tokyo, and which addressesthe interconnected and shifting discourses of modernization, conservationpolitics, and human-ocean relations from the end of the World War II untilthe present. During the fieldwork, in addition to collecting historical archivesand oral history on the changes in the ocean, the fishing industry, and thefisheries policy, I conducted participant observation and interviews amongmen and women of fishing families at work and home as well as among“fisheries agents,” government officials dispatched to fishing communities.This article also makes use of my additional ethnographic research at fishmarkets—in order to provide a glimpse of how fishmongers can present wild-bred and hatchery-bred flounder to their customers—as well as discourseanalysis of technical reports by Japanese fisheries scientists and scientificliterature focusing on fish hatchery technology, especially the debates onthe “taste” of wild fish.2

While debates on wilderness have often focused on landscape (e.g.,forests and rivers), the production of such classifications, I argue, can befurther understood by looking into the ways in which these concepts areused in the context of food and taste. In turn, this article also suggests thatdebates on wilderness provide an additional lens for analyzing the knowl-edge and experiences of taste. This article does not, therefore, attempt tofit hatchery-bred fish into any of the classifications of “wild,” “cultured,”“natural,” or “unnatural.” Nor does it seek to promote a new and more ap-propriate version of these classifications or to suggest that hatchery-bred fishare better or worse than ocean-bred or aquacultured ones. Instead, basedon ethnographic observation of the fish hatchery program and debates onthe taste of wild fish, it aims to help us understand how the concept of“wild” is produced and altered culturally through politics, science, and themarket. Following the journeys of hatchery-bred fish—particularly of the so-called “panda flounder”—into and out of the ocean, as well as their role inour wilderness fetishism, this article reveals that sensory experiences of the

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wilderness are highly nuanced and also that the authenticity of “wild fish” isexperienced not only on consumers’ tongues but also based through broaderaesthetic and even technical judgments.

WILDERNESS FETISHISM FOR FOOD

As food critics and celebrity chefs will attest, a “wild” thing appeals becauseof the richness of its flavor. Preferring wild berries, wild mushrooms, or wildmint, for example, to “regular” ones, many consumers consider wildly grownfoodstuffs to be appetizing and of higher value. Such a perception on wildfood commodities is a form of fetish, which I call “wilderness fetishism.”I refer here to “fetishism” in the manner used by James Carrier, who—byextending Karl Marx’s original notion of commodity fetishism—calls atten-tion to “the ignoring or denial of the background of objects.”3 In analyzingthe commodity fetishism involved with ecotourism and fair trade, Carrierdiffers from Marx’s emphasis on a nearly complete disregard for context.He instead points to a certain selectiveness among consumers: For example,while consumers of fair-trade coffee recognize the growers, they tend to elidehuman labor involved between growers and purchasers, including those bythe roasters, shippers, and merchants.4 In the case of wild fish, consumersparticularly remember “nonhuman labor”—such as the work of waves, reefs,and other inhabitants—involved in nurturing the ocean’s blessings, and alsorecognize “human labor” involved in capturing them at sea, whereas theytend to ignore other aspects of human labor performed, for example, byconservation scientists, fisheries agents, wholesalers, and fishmongers.5 Inenhancing the value of the fish, this “wilderness fetishism” ignores particularhuman relationships involved in the process of producing them.

Although environmentally conscious commodities like fair trade andecotourism are relatively new phenomena, fetishism of wild nature in facthas deep historical roots. It has facilitated the creation of national parks andnatural reserves since the 19th century, particularly the establishment by theUnited States government of Yellowstone National Park in 1872. The main-tenance of such parks and reserves has helped to reproduce the mystifiednotion of wilderness as a natural entity separate of human intervention. Asmany scholars, including anthropologists, geographers, and environmentalhistorians, have suggested, however, the concept of wilderness and the du-alism of nature and society are products that are constructed culturally andpolitically through human-environment interaction.6 In Japan, the debateson the boundary between the wild and the tamed differ somewhat fromthose in western contexts because the perception of nature often includesan explicit place for humans.7 This does not mean, however, that all humanrelationships are included in the perceptions in Japan of the wild in terms oflandscape or food.

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Authenticity, Aesthetics, and Fetishism of Fish in Japan 9

In a seafood nation like Japan, the culinary concept of wilderness mat-ters most popularly with regard to fish. In his ethnography of the trade atthe world’s biggest fish market in Tsukiji, Tokyo, Theodore Bestor describes,“The conceptual distinctions between wild and cultivated mirror those be-tween pure and impure.”8 It is conventionally said in Japan that high-qualityfish should be “tennen,” or wild, and that wild fish taste better than theircultivated counterparts. The higher value is reflected in the cost, which isoften twice as much or more. Japanese consumers’ preference of wild tofarmed seafood also stems partly from a stigmatic image of aquaculture thatdenotes over-crowded farming cages, water pollution caused by feed waste,and the treatment of chemicals used in hormones, antibiotics, and pesti-cides.9 In recent years, however, aquacultured seafood has been gaining invalue, especially among environmentally conscious consumers, like those“ethical consumers”10 who purchase fair-trade coffee or participate in eco-tourism. This is in part due to the popularization of eco-labels, stipulatingthat these seafood products were developed with environmentally respon-sible technologies, granted by environmental organizations—such as MarineStewardship Council (MSC) and Friend of the Sea—and also the popularityof the Monterey Aquarium’s Sea Watch program, which provides species-based assessments regarding the level of environmental sustainability. Thoseseafood products that meet the organizations’ environmental standards in-clude both wild and aquacultured fish, but these programs certainly havehelped circulating the awareness of aquacultured seafood as an environ-mentally and healthfully acceptable option. This trend is especially notablein Europe, North America, and Australia, whereas in Japan, while ecolabelsand environmentally conscious branding have helped to improve the nega-tive image of aquacultured seafood to some degree, consumers’ preferenceof wild over aquaculture seafood remains strong.

In some ways, the debates about wild and aquaculture seafood aresimilar to those over organic and genetically modified (GM) crops, espe-cially with regard to the meanings of “naturalness” and “unnaturalness,”which are constructed and essentialized through the legitimation of “natu-ral” foods.11 Furthermore, as Hugh Gusterson points out, these debates arepolitical economic issues, and call for our close attention to the relation-ship between value and power.12 Similarly, the “wilderness” of wild fishis constructed imaginatively and discursively, and the process of fetishiz-ing the wild is a political-economic project, facilitating attention to cer-tain aspects of human and natural labor while ignoring and obscuringothers.

Hatchery fish are originally born as the handiwork of human scien-tists and then are released into the ocean. When the hands of fishers takethem out of the ocean, hatchery-bred fish become commodified as “wild.”At the seafood section in a Japanese supermarket, each fish (whole fish orfilet, though not processed fish products) has to have a label that states the

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species of fish, where it was landed, and stipulates whether it is aquacultured(yoshoku) or has been freeze-thawed (kaito). If it is not freeze-thawed, thestore will usually label the fish as fresh (nama), and if it is not aquacultured,it will be labeled as wild (tennen). The law does not require that anythingbe specifically labeled as fresh or wild, but both are understood as valuesthat appeal to consumers. The boundary between the wild and the aqua-cultured on such a label is rigidly drawn by the regulations of the Ministryof Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF). According to the JapaneseAgricultural Standard (JAS), which dictates MAFF’s food labeling standards,“aquacultured” is used to refer to fish that are grown on feed for the purposeof increasing weight or quality until the time that they are shipped out, andthe label is required for any fish meeting this definition. The codes, however,do not specify what exactly constitutes the wild.

Debates regarding taste and culture provide intriguing avenues for ex-ploring how this fetishism of wilderness can shape experiences beyondjudgments of the environmental landscape. As David E. Sutton demon-strates in his extensive review of the scholarly literature on food and senses,gustatory experience provides anthropologists with the opportunity to fur-ther understand cultural meaning in everyday life.13 He also notes thattaste is a multisensory experience that goes beyond the tongue. Theoriz-ing about taste is not new; Immanuel Kant for instance, referred to tasteas “a faculty of the social judgment of external objects within the imag-ination.”14 But recent waves of scholarship have also drawn attention tothe interaction between the imagination, cultural context, and individualexperience.15

As something taken directly out of the natural environment, wild food isa commodity that enables people to imaginatively enjoy the purified essenceof nature while simultaneously eliding—consciously or unconsciously—thehuman labor that helped producing the wild commodity. Wild food satisfiesfetishes of the wilderness and claims the authenticity of pure nature, fetishesthat are perhaps heightened by the seeming artifice of modern life in anadvanced industrial nation. Thus, the quest for the authenticity of pure na-ture through a highly advanced technology and market system means thatwilderness fetishism is a byproduct of the modern world.16

NURTURING THE OCEAN AS A MODERNIZATION POLICY

Food culture is often entwined with projects of the modern state. In his classicwork on the political economy of food and gustatory culture, Sweetness andPower: The Place for Sugar in Modern History, Sidney Mintz demonstratesthat the domestication of sweetness shaped vital parts of food culture in theCaribbean islands under colonial state organization.17 In Japan, fetishism forconsuming wild fish is a cultural construct which is deeply linked to the

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postwar history of the political economy of Japanese fisheries. I suggest thatJapanese fetishism for wild fish is not merely a tradition but rather a byprod-uct of Japan’s effort to modernize its coastal fisheries. While the advancementof aquaculture technology increased the market share of cultivated fish, theappreciation and the desire for wild fish have been rediscovered. Enablingthe maintenance of a high yield of wild fish without degrading the wild fishstock, the development of fish stocking technology has played a critical rolein reinventing and supporting the fetishism of wild fish.

The hatchery technology of marine species and the stocking of hatchery-bred fish juveniles were invented in the 1960s and heavily promoted by thenational government in the 1980s and 1990s as part of Japan’s fisheries mod-ernization project.18 This modernization project, focusing on coastal fishing,began soon after the end of World War II and has continued to be the pri-mary theme of Japan’s fisheries policy, as the annual fisheries convention’sconsistent theme demonstrates. What is considered to be a “modern” fishingpractice in Japan, however, has changed over time, depending on what isconsidered to be “the latest” technology as well as on larger policy direc-tions. Discourses of fisheries modernity in the immediate postwar decadesof the 1950–60s were shaped around the mechanization of fishing vesselsand equipment. A couple of decades later, beginning in the late 1970s butbecoming more apparent in the 1980s and 1990s, as international environ-mental concerns increased, modern techniques were understood to focuson scientific marine conservation practices. For fisheries scientists and ad-ministrators during the 1980s and 1990s, one of the primary agenda itemswas the improvement of so-called “farming fisheries” (saibai gyogyo), whichaim to build sustainable fisheries through fish stocking. The main objectiveof the Fisheries Agency is, as stated in “Fisheries White Paper” of 2009, toprovide a stable supply of seafood for citizens; 40% of animal protein inthe Japanese diet comes from fish and shellfish. Building a healthy fishingindustry is understood as crucial for sustaining the food culture of Japanas a maritime nation, just as maintaining the food culture is seen as essen-tial to supporting a healthy fishing industry. While aquaculture is designedto effectively increase the production of seafood as a whole, fish stockingspecifically aims to maintain high yields of wild fish. The method was heav-ily promoted by the Fisheries Agency throughout this period. The ministry’sslogan at the time went “From ‘fisheries that catch’ to ‘fisheries that nurture”’(‘toru’ gyogyo kara ‘tsukuru’ gyogyo e). The annual fisheries convention wasa way to spread this message at the local level.

Based on the idea of “fisheries that nurture,” the Fisheries Agency at-tempted to maintain both the populations of wild fish and fishing people.Guaranteeing job security for over 230,000 coastal commercial fishermen(according to the Fisheries Census of 1998) requires healthy fish stocks.Bioeconomic theories suggest that regulating fishing is necessary to discour-age catches beyond the level of an “optimum sustainable yield” (the level of

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catch that maintains the largest economic yield without decreasing the abilityof a renewable resource like fish to reproduce itself enough to maintain asimilar yield in the future).19 This yield, however, may not be adequate tosupport existing fishing families. Hatchery-bred fish juveniles can thereforebe additional tools to maintain a healthy level of fish recruitment that sus-tains fish stocks and the industrial employment base alike. For this reason,a substantial amount of government support has been devoted to the costlynational scheme of building and managing hatchery facilities around Japan’scoastal prefectures. By 1982, as much as 39 billion yen (approximately US$140 million at the 1982 exchange rate) was already spent for the construc-tion of hatchery facilities around the coast, and the total annual budgets in1982 devoted to the management of these facilities, combining those of thenational and prefectural governments, amounted to 2.2 billion yen (approxi-mately US $7.9 million).20 As a result, there are 16 state-operated and as manyas 64 prefecture-operated hatchery facilities designed for producing fish juve-niles for stocking. Forty of Japan’s 47 prefectures have coastlines, and almostall coastal prefectures have at least one facility, with some prefectures likeHokkaido having as many as seven facilities. For the past 30 years, a totalof approximately a half billion hatchery-born fish juveniles from 85 specieshave been released into Japanese coastal waters.21 In promoting this policy,officials claimed that the fishing sector requires modernization by endorsingthe idea of resource management. They emphasized that this practice is new(atarashii), modern (kindaiteki), and proper (tekisetsu), and that simply ex-ploiting natural resources without efficient management is unsophisticatedand out-of-date. This government rhetoric obviously draws a clear boundarybetween modern and backward practices.

But at the same time, it complicates notions of what it means to be “natu-ral” and “wild.” In theory, stocked hatchery-bred juveniles become membersof wild fish stocks. The boundary between natural and artificial is supposedto become invisible to our eyes once hatchery juveniles are released intothe sea. If there is no visible difference among wildly caught fish in terms ofwhether they are originally hatchery bred or ocean bred, there should be noissue in relation to the taste of “wild” fish. This is true for most species. Onenotable exception is flounder, the most released finfish in the 30-year historyof “fisheries that nurture.” In 2009 alone, approximately 22 million hatchery-born flounder juveniles—a third of the total number of finfish stocked thatyear—were released into the waters along the Japanese coast. On the bodyof hatchery-bred flounder, there are visible marks that make them look dif-ferent from ocean-bred ones. The visibility of the difference has also affectedthe ways in which people talk about and experience wild taste of flounder.People experience the taste of wild fish not only on their tongues but alsowith their eyes, and these sensory experiences become important evaluativestandards for differentiating “wild” from “cultivated” fish.

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Authenticity, Aesthetics, and Fetishism of Fish in Japan 13

THE AESTHETICS AND TASTE OF WILDERNESS:THE CASE OF FLOUNDER

The nickname of panda founder is given not because they are cute likefurry bears; it is because of the dark marks that appear on their stomachs,distinguishing them from the pale white bottoms of the ocean-bred flounder.Panda flounder are born in hatchery tanks on land, and then they are as-similated into the natural habitat when they are set free into wild waters. Asthey grow under the rough waves, their bodies become parts of the naturalenvironment. While their close-set eyes are looking toward the surface ofthe water, their stomachs always face the sea bottom. No matter how manytimes panda flounder rub their stomachs against the bottom; the dark spotswill not come off. But nobody underwater checks their stomachs. The originof flounder becomes an issue when they are caught by fishers and thereafter.Fishers flip flounder as soon as they haul them onto their boat decks, andsigh with regret when they find the panda stigma. Once flounder are pulledout of the water, their world stays upside-down for the rest of their lives sothat humans can see their bellies.

At a landing port, because fish are traded as whole fish, the size as wellas the aesthetics of fish bodies matter for pricing and therefore their valueas commodities. At an auction site of a landing port, flounder are displayedwith their bellies up. According to middlemen who buy whole fish at a land-ing port and sell them to wholesalers of the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo,a beautifully white stomach is the sign of a top-grade flounder. Indeed, asBestor points out, the outward form—the kata—matters in Japanese tradingof food including whole fish.22 Calculating bidding prices, middlemen take alook at each flounder and evaluate the whiteness of its stomach. Occasion-ally, they express regret over the appearance of dark marks. As they usuallyexpress, “Good size, but it’s too bad that it is a panda.” Middlemen claimthat the reason they give much lower prices to fishermen for panda floundercatches is this “unnatural” look.

Born in the same way in a hatchery laboratory, both the aquaculturedand the released have marks on their stomachs and are called panda. Theyseem to look the same despite having spent most of their lives in completelydifferent environments during their young and adult stages. Aquaculturedflounder spend the entire lives in plastic tubs indoors or in fish cages setin coastal waters, while released ones spend the rest of their lives in theocean. At a landing port, there are sometimes scientists from a fisheriesexperiment station who look for pandas in order to gather data to calculatethe survival rates of hatchery-bred flounder that they have generated. Whenthey find a panda, they do not express regret like middlemen; they evenlook happy sometimes. They measure the size and write it down on a surveychart. In contrast to the middlemen, fisheries scientists emphasize similarities

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between the ocean-bred and the released flounder. Comparing the two kindsof flounder, some scientists argue that there is no difference in the taste ofthe meat from ocean-bred and released flounder, emphasizing that the darkparts of the fish meat of both types are bright red because they exercise wellin the wild ocean, unlike caged aquacultured flounder with overly fatty meatwhich display dull-colored dark parts.23

In discussing the desire for “authentic” cuisine, Arjun Appadurai pointsout that “authenticity as a criterion seems always to emerge just after itssubject matter has been significantly transformed.”24 Similarly, constructionsof the appearance and taste of authentically wild fish emerge when differ-ences, like panda marks, stain hatchery-bred flounder found in the openseas. Fish specialists—such as fishmongers and sushi chefs—often arguethat true wild fish are supposed to have a nice crunchiness and that they areproperly lean, unlike aquacultured flounder, which are flabby and overlyfatty. The taste of authentically wild fish is, in this view, truly delicious,and a good deal of work can go into the effort to assure consumers inmyriad ways that the fish is in fact wild and tastes that way. Carolyn Ko-rsmeyer and David Sutton point out that the visual sense is an importantcomponent of taste experience,25 and Sutton has referred to the role ofsynesthesia in the taste of authentic home cooking in Greece.26 The senseof tasty wild fish is similarly determined by more than our tongues; it is alsojudged through our eyes. Because they have the same panda marks as theiraquacultured counterparts, stocked flounder complicate the concept of wildtaste.

It is not an easy task to convince consumers that the panda flounder,which deviate visually from their ocean-born friends, taste wild. A specialwebpage entitled “The Tale of Panda Flounder,” on the website of a fisher-men’s co-operative, uses bold letters/characters in a large font to emphasizethat “Panda flounder and wild flounder are the same.”27 Under this headline,it explains that according to research conducted by the prefectural fisheriesexperiment station, a comparative analysis between panda and natural-bredflounder showed that there is no difference in terms of the biochemicalcomponents that determine the taste of deliciously wild flounder. Accord-ing to the report published by the experiment station, the study determinedthat although there are significant differences between aquacultured floun-der and released hatchery-bred or natural-bred ones, released hatchery-bredand natural-bred flounder contain the same levels of water, crude fat, ash,crude protein, free amino-acid composition, and rupture strength (meat con-sistency).28

This claim of wilderness in taste becomes therefore a scientific manifestorather than an aesthetic judgment; released panda and natural-bred flounderare both determined to be wild. They are allegedly the same underneath theskin even as their surfaces differ. The next line on the webpage proclaims thatalthough brown-dappled stomachs make released flounder look different

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from the ocean-bred, the taste of the released and the natural-bred are thesame; the page guarantees the deliciousness of their panda flounder. The taleof panda flounder also contains pictures of the life journey of the averagepanda flounder: starting from a larva in an incubator, then growing up in abig tub, and finally being dropped into the sea as a juvenile to become, if itsurvives, a fine adult, wild flounder.

The tale in the webpage ends at the point that panda flounder join thewild marine environment. But the real-life journey for many continues, andit is accompanied by a story about the wilderness. In the summer of 2011when I visited a street near the fishing port lined by about two dozen fishshops, a fishmonger in front of his shop called out to me and a few otherpeople walking by, “All wild, landed here. They taste delightful!” Amongdozens of kinds of fish displayed on stands, there were three flat fish lyingbelly-up, all of them bearing the brown panda marks. He confirmed that theywere flounder. I asked him why the stomachs were spotted. He responded,“They are like freckles on our face.” He explained as if the marks weresimply evidence of a flounder’s individual character. I then asked him if theywere aquacultured (yoshoku)—which would have meant that they spenttheir entire lives in artificial environments. It was obvious that my questionirritated him. Denying it several times, he emphasized that they were all wild.

At the next fish shop, having both kinds of flounder with snow-whiteand patterned bellies, another fishmonger recommended the flounder withwhite stomachs. The price tag placed on a spotless belly indicated that eachwhole fish costs �1800, or approximately US $22 (see Figure 1).29 By the sideof the natural-bred flounder, the tag put on a spotted belly had the samefigure, except for a note that stated: “for three” (see Figure 2). Interestedin his explanation, I asked him why they were priced so differently. Hisfirst response was that it was because white-bellied flounder was biggerthan the spotted ones. The sizes were indeed different but only slightly; thecontrast was not so great to justify the large gap in price. He then additionallyexplained that the spotted ones were given a lower price because of themarks and told me that they were nicknamed “panda.” Responding to mynext question of whether or not they tasted the same, he said that therewas no difference in the taste. He then said, pointing his finger at the moreexpensive white-bellied flounder, “Okay. How about two for three thousandyen?”

The conversation with the fishmongers raises the question of relation-ships between a concept of wilderness and the senses of taste. For fish-mongers, the actuality of wilderness in taste, in a strictly gustatory sense,is not the only thing that matters; the visual appearance is equally crucial.Top-grade fish have to have the appearance of deliciousness. Because thesense of deliciousness is closely related to the aesthetics of wilderness, wildfish have to not only taste natural but also look natural. Fish presumably donot taste good if they do not look tasty.

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FIGURE 1 Wild-bred flounder, with a tag indicating that each whole fish costs �1,800.Photograph by author. (Color figure available online).

The taste of wild fish is a cultural product, one that is constructed bydifferent forms of expertise: the fish merchants who might consider first itsappearance, or the scientists who measure its chemical composition. In gen-erating the gustatory sense of wild fish, the modern market system playsanother critical role. “Wild fish” are not necessarily born in the wild ocean.Wilderness cannot be fully produced without the eyes of merchants andconsumers, and the wilderness of fish bodies themselves is not completedunder the waves. On the surface of their bodies, the released and the aqua-cultured flounder are the same, though underneath they might be different.Thus, as long as dark marks exist on their skin, released flounder will nothave the authentic appeal of the wilderness to customers, no matter howlong they spend in the wild ocean and how nicely their bodies are built. The

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FIGURE 2 Panda flounder, with a note: “�1,800 for three.” Photograph by author. (Colorfigure available online).

appearance in the skin is what matters. The taste of “wilderness” is indeed amulti-sensory experience.

THE SENSORY COMMUNITY OF WILDERNESS

Scientific efforts to solve the panda flounder dilemma resemble recent con-cerns surrounding genetically modified foods. In the United States, for ex-ample, shelves in a supermarket are loaded with various kinds of food thatare labeled as “all-natural”—such as fresh vegetables, juice, snacks, and evenpet foods. In his theoretical investigation of the relationship between foodtechnology and the concept of the natural, Mark Sagoff points out that theall-natural label is not a guarantee that informs consumers that the prod-uct inside of the package is processed with minimal technology or thatthe ingredients are naturally-grown vegetables or meat produced by the

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owners and workers of small farms in rural America.30 Sagoff demonstratesthat against the romantic perception that consumers often receive from thelabel of all-natural, the actual products are in fact mostly generated throughmass production in mega firms outside of the country—for example, in Cen-tral or South America—using highly engineered ingredients.31 Referring toMary Douglas’s essay entitled “Environments at Risk”32—which critically dis-cusses the ambiguity of the classifications of social life such as pollution,pure, and nature—Sagoff argues that the discourses of the natural, based on“all-natural” food technology, inform us of a problem posed by the geneticengineering that crosses moral, aesthetic, or cultural boundaries. Moreover,he further suggests, “the fact that the technology exists and is successfulshows, indeed, that the relevant biological boundaries (i.e. between species)that might have held in the past now no longer exist.”33

Hatchery-bred, released fish are supposed to be the symbol of Japan’srecent marine science and technology, and the fruit of the grand schemeof “fisheries that nurture.” As far as the government regulation of foodlabeling goes, ocean-bred and hatchery-bred released flounder are bothconsidered wild fish as they are caught at the sea. But the unnatural ap-pearance disturbs the imagination that searches for authenticity of the wildocean, and therefore, the dark spots cause a large discrepancy in its com-modity value. For this reason, the panda marks are also the symbols of acontinuing challenge for those hatchery scientists, pushing them to workfor the further advancement of marine technology. By providing scien-tific evidence of similarities of “deliciousness” between the ocean-bred andthe released flounder, scientists have tried to make up for the conceptualgap between the two; but these attempts have not successfully changedthe perceptions of fishmongers and consumers. Their primary mission isnow to erase those panda spots. These efforts to blur further the bound-ary between dark and white represent what I would call a “naturalization”project. The goal of this project is to visually assimilate the hatchery-bredflounder into the sensory community of wilderness. Moreover, the comple-tion of this project would also provide consumers with the taste of “wild”flounder.

While primarily working on the skin in order to improve the wildnessof hatchery-bred flounder, some fisheries scientists claim that naturalnesscannot be adequately improved without a consideration of genetics. As forflounder, current hatcheries mostly use eggs collected from hatchery-bredadult flounder instead of from ocean-bred adults because they are easierto manage; these hatchery-bred flounder reportedly have different geneticpatterns from ocean-bred ones.34 Through generating genetically naturalhatchery-bred flounder, these fisheries scientists argue that they will be ableto preserve the “natural” biodiversity and improve the pollution of the “nat-ural” genetic pool. According to this rhetoric, when not only the appearancebut also the genes are successfully naturalized, panda flounder—to some,

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the unnatural pollutants of the ocean—are eventually transformed into “trulynatural” flounder.

Before 1928, when the initial technology of marine aquaculture wasinvented,35 there was no classification of wilderness or naturalness for fishin Japanese social life. In those days, the fish that people saw—on the beachor at a fish shop—and tasted were simply fish. The invention of aquaculturegenerated the classification of wild and cultivated fish. The innovation of“fisheries that nurture” further complicated the classification. In the future,that classification might disappear. When that time comes, the fish will onceagain become just fish. They will be neither pure not impure, neither naturalnor unnatural, because, as Douglas has suggested, these classifications insocial life will be meaningless. Until then, however, this classification isdeeply intertwined with the discussion on the multisensory experience ofthe taste of wilderness.

Despite scientists’ great efforts to eliminate the marks or to encouragefishers and auctioneers to respect wilderness in the taste of panda flounder,the stigma, so far, still remains. What does the boundary of the wild and thetamed mean for flounder? Ocean-bred and panda flounder, once stockingcompletes, live alongside one another, without any boundaries. Either inthe hatchery or in the ocean in which fish are ideally born, they becomepart of the natural environment underneath the waves. Scientists wonder ifpanda marks will disappear from the stomachs of the next generation or ofthe following ones, or what happens to their genes when they cross-breedwith ocean-bred flounder. If their children come out with white stomachsand natural genetic patterns, it would probably prove the success of the“naturalization” project. But without any trace, no one can imagine how theboundary is being negotiated underwater. Once they are pulled out from thewater, the look is what ultimately matters in determining top-grade seafood;if there is no mark, the fish is wild. If they are genetically wild, they areperfectly wild.

Since the introduction of “fisheries that nurture,” millions of hatcheryjuveniles have joined the “natural” habitat, and fisheries engineering has pro-duced hybridized networks between human and fish throughout Japanesecoastal waters. On the one hand, these networks are becoming more andmore invisible in the discourses and the governance of wilderness as theytry to erase evidence that might be used to trace human-nature relations. Buton the other hand, the disappearance of obvious markers to divide natureand human stimulates people’s imagination and the desire for wilderness.One ongoing project of modernity is the drawing of connections and bound-aries between human and nonhuman actors, while making it difficult for ournaked eyes to see these inscriptions.36 As technology makes progress, theconcept of nature becomes more important in social life, and the hybridiza-tion of nature and human culture is further enhanced. David Sutton arguesthat the exploration of taste/sensory experiences allow us to think about

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larger social issues.37 Indeed, investigating the effort to manage the taste of“wild” fish enables us to further theorize human-nature relations.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Raymond Williams famously wrote in his book Keywords that, “nature isperhaps the most complex word in the language.”38 The word “wild” mightbe similarly imbued with complex meanings, in Japanese as well as in En-glish. This article has explored how, by releasing hatchery-bred fish intothe ocean, the Japanese fisheries modernization project sparked a debate ofwhat it means to be “natural” or “wild”—as well as “unnatural” or “cultured,”producing the fetishization of and demand for wild fish. The technologiesassociated with managing the taste of wild fish have produced especiallyanimated discussions about wilderness and its meaning.

Using the discourses that surround these “wild” fish, I have linked en-vironmental and gustatory debates throughout this article. Recent events inJapan and elsewhere call for careful and diverse investigations into suchlinks. On March 11, 2011, a massive tsunami destroyed coastal habitats—ofhumans and nonhumans alike—in northeastern Japan, and was the catalystof the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that has con-tinued to leak radioactive substances into the ocean. I have argued elsewherethat this combined disaster has made the complicated relationships betweenthe environment and food more visible than ever.39 Japan is not a sole ex-ample. The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon has caused not only theunprecedented water contamination of the Gulf of Mexico but also seriousanxieties about health risks produced by seafood harvested in the waters.The list of environmental/food disasters continues. Here, it is worth reca-pitulating one of Hugh Gusterson’s points about genetically modified food.In addition to the importance of analyzing GM crops as political-economicissues that demand close attention to value and power, he argues that it isalso important for us to discuss risk without invoking the authority of anessentialized nature or science.40 Indeed, if a discussion of risk, as well as itsfraught management, is likely to be a developing theme in studies of foodand foodways, it may be useful to investigate further relationships betweenthe environment and gustatory experience.

Japan’s seafood production and consumption offer valuable guides. ForJapanese fisheries and food culture, “wild” and “natural” are important com-modities, while “unnatural” is often considered as a blemish. The classifica-tion of wild fish is set by government regulation on the labeling of food;fish can be labeled as wild if they are caught at sea rather than shippedout from an aquaculture facility. But the sensory perception of wildernessor naturalness is much more nuanced. For marine science and technology,“wilderness” represents a new frontier. Supporting Japan’s fisheries industry,

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the state has been pushing forward the boundary of what it means to be“wild.” By releasing hatchery-bred juvenile fish into the ocean, the aim wasto maintain healthy “wild” fish stocks, which is necessary for families thatmake their living from fishing. But challenged by panda flounder, officialshave emphasized “wilderness” in the taste, even as scientists keep trying toerase the visible marks of their earlier lives in plastic tubs. Looking at themiscellaneously shaped patches on the white background, the stomach ofa panda flounder is a landscape of hybridity between the natural and artifi-cial and, at the same time, a map of the vivid boundaries between the tworealms. Perhaps, as the innovation of fisheries science continues and natural-ization projects improve, our eyes or tongues will not be able to recognizethe microcosmic relationships of human and nature, but they will be thereon the wild-looking skin—or the shell—and within the body of those fish infront of us.

FUNDING

The broader research from which I draw in order to write this article wassupported by the National Science Foundation under a Doctoral Disserta-tion Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG, Award #0612838) and a RapidResponse Research Grant (RAPID, Award #1137856).

NOTES

1. In keeping with the theme of this special issue, this article focuses on the concept of “wilder-ness” and related discourses in the context of food and taste. There is a large body of scholarly literature on“nature” and “naturalness,” but in the interest of space, I limit my discussion of the important differencesbetween “wild” and “natural.”

2. The interviews with fishmongers at the fish market were carried out as part of the fieldworkthat I conducted two months after the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami in order to observe the effectson the communities of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. In order to maintainthis article’s relevance to this special issue, I do not focus on the issue of radioactive contaminationexcept for a brief discussion in the conclusion that addresses the increasing importance of studying therelationships between wild fish and multisensory experience of taste.

3. James G. Carrier, “Protecting the Environment the Natural Way: Ethical Consumption andCommodity Fetishism,” Antipode 42.3 (2010): 674.

4. Carrier, 686.5. In his book, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York: Hill

and Wang, 1995), Richard White analyzes the Columbia River as an “organic machine,” which has beenhistorically produced through labor of human and nonhuman actors, such as, river flow, salmon, fishers,hatchery scientists, dams, and nuclear power plants, and even released radioactive substances. Buildingon White’s insights, I see wild fish as a form of “organic machine,” a product of both human andnonhuman labor.

6. The existing body of literature on this issue, among many, include Philippe Descola andGısli Palsson, eds., Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1996); WilliamCronon, “The Problem with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Uncommon Ground:Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. Ed. William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1996),69–90; Bruce Braun and Noel Castree, eds., Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millenium (London: Rout-

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ledge, 1998); Nancy Langston, Where Land and Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed (Seattle,WA: University of Washington Press, 2003); Hugh Raffles, In Amazonia: A Natural History (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Richard White, The Organic Machine.

7. See Shuichi Kito, Shizenhogo wo Toinaosu (Rethinking Environmental Conservations andPreservations), (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1996); Arne Kalland, “Culture in Japanese Nature,” AsianPerceptions of Nature: A Critical Approach. Eds. Bruum, Ole and Arne Kalland (London, UK: CurzonPress, 1995), 243–257; Pamela J. Asquith and Arne Kalland, eds., Japanese Images of Nature: CulturalPerspectives (London: Curzon Press, 1997).

8. Theodore C. Bestor, Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Cen(CLR)ter of the World. (Berkley and LosAngels, CA: University of Calfornia Press, 2004), 149.

9. The 2003 report Suisanbutsu o Chushin toshita Shohi ni kansuru Chosa (Study of Marine Prod-ucts as Commodities), published by the Japanese Fisheries Association (Dainihon Suisankai), indicatesthat a large number of Japanese consumers feel anxious about the safety of aquaculture seafood due toresiduals of such drugs.

10. Carrier, ibid.11. For the discussions on “naturalness” and “unnaturalness” with regard to debates on organic

and genetically modified food, see Mark Sagoff, “Genetic Engineering and the Concept of the Natural,”Genetic Prospects: Essays on Biotechnology, Ethics, and Public Policy. Ed. Verna V. Gehring. (Lanham:Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003). 11–25; Hugh Gusterson, “Decoding the Debate on ‘Frankenfood,”’Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties. Eds. Betsy Hartmann, Banu Subramaniam andCharles Zerner (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 109–133.

12. Gusterson, 127.13. David E. Sutton, “Food and the Senses,” Annual Review of Anthropology 39 (2010): 209–223.14. Immanuel Kant, “Objective and Subjective Senses: The Sense of Taste.” The Taste Culture

Reader: Experiencing Food And Drink. Ed. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. (New York, NY: Berg, 2005 [1798]), 213.15. The recent works on food, sense, and experience are included in the edited book by Carolyn

Korsmeyer, The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food And Drink (New York, NY: Berg, 2005).16. Although Richard Handler discusses “authenticity” as a cultural construct of the modern world

specifically in the Western context, I find his argument very useful in thinking about the authenticityof nature in Japanese discourses surrounding wild fish. Handler suggests, “Our critical awareness of‘authenticity’ will help us to bring new perspectives to bear on the study of others, and on ourselvesstudying others” (4). This notion of others, I argue, applies to “wilderness” as well. See Richard Handler,“Authenticity,” Anthropology Today 2.1 (1986): 2–4.

17. Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place for Sugar in Modern History (New York, NY:Penguin Books, 1986).

18. For the discussions on the technological development of Japanese fisheries, see Hirasawa,Yutaka. Nihon Suisan Dokuhon (The Reader of Japanese Fisheries). Tokyo: Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1973;Hiroyoshi, Katsuji, and Kazutoshi Kase, eds. Gyogyokanri Kenkyu (Studies of Fishries Management).Tokyo: Hokuto Shobo, 1991.

19. Fisheries economists, such as Milner B. Schaefer and Tanaka, offer detailed explanationsof bioeconomic models. See Milner B. Schaefer, “Some Considerations of Population Dynamics andEconomics in Relation to the Management of the Commercial Marine Fisheries,” Journal of the FisheriesResearch Board of Canada 14 (1957): 669–681; Shoichi Tanaka, Suisan shigen-gaku soron (Generaltheories on fisheries resource management). Revised volume (Tokyo: Koseisha Koseikaku 1985).

20. Shigen Kyokai, Tsukuru Gyogyo (Fisheries that Generate) (Tokyo: Shigen Kyokai 1983), 18.21. See http://www.yutakanaumi.jp/sub/saibaijisseki.html (accessed on May 7, 2011) for statistics

provided by the National Association for the Promotion of Productive Seas (Zenkoku Yutaka na UmiZukuri Sushishin Kyokai). In Japanese.

22. Bestor, 175.23. See http://www.epcc.pref.osaka.jp/osakana/jyouhou/katarogu/hirame/hirame.html (accessed

on April 19, 2011) for evidence from the Marine Fisheries Research Center of Osaka Prefecture regardingthe taste of ocean-bred and released flounder. In Japanese.

24. Arjun Appadurai, “On Culinary Authenticity,” Anthropology Today 2.4 (1986), 25.25. Carolyn Korsmeyer and David E. Sutton, “The sensory experience of food,” Food, Culture and

Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research 14.4 (2011), 462.26. David E. Sutton, “Synesthesia, Memory, and the Taste of Home.” The Taste Culture Reader:

Experiencing Food And Drink. Ed. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. New York, NY: Berg, 2005. 304–316.

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27. See http://www.jf-nakaminato.com/pandahirame.htm (accessed October 20, 2013). InJapanese.

28. Takanori Yanai and Akira Nihira, Comparison of the Muscle Constituents of Hatchery Releasedand Wild Japanese Flounder, Paralichthys olivaceus Nakaminato, Ibaraki: Ibaraki Prefectural FisheriesExperiment Station, 2001.

29. Calculated based on the exchange rate on May 9, 2011: US$1 = �80.30. Sagoff, 11–13.31. Sagoff, 13–15.32. Mary Douglas, “Environments at risk,” Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (New York:

Routledge, 1975), 247.33. Sagoff, 25.34. Shinichi Yamamoto, Thinking of Fisheries Research (Ibusuki City, Kagoshima, Japan:

Kagoshima Prefectural Fisheries Technology and Development Center, 2000); Yoh Yamashita, “Stud-ies on Early Life History of Coastal Fisheries Resources and Their Application to Stock EnhancementProgram,” Nippon Suisan Gakkaishi 72.4 (2006): 640–643.

35. Shigeru Miyashita, “The History of Marine Aquaculture Facilities and the Net-Cage CultureSystem,” Journal of Fisheries Technology 1.1 (2008): 13–19.

36. This account is obviously inspired by Bruno Latour. In his book, We Have Never Been Modern,Latour demonstrates the intertwined relationships between modernity, nature, and the state, and discusseshow two seemingly contradictory but mutually constituting projects—”purification” and “translation”between human and nonhuman actors—represent modernity. According to him, “translation” processesproduce hybrid networks among human and nonhuman actors by drawing the connections betweenthem, while “purification” processes generate a boundary between human culture and nonhuman natureby creating dichotomized realms. See Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, Trans. Porter, Catherine(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

37. Sutton, “Food and the Senses.”38. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Revised edition ed. (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 219.39. Takahashi, Satsuki. Fourfold Disaster: Renovation and Restoration in Post-Tsunami Coastal

Japan. Anthropology News 52.7 (2011): 5–11.40. Gusterson, 126.

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