TOKYO: Japan’s seaweed harvesters have missed out on growth plans. Seaweed harvesting is the city’s biggest industry. Futtsu is less than two hours’ drive away from the capital Tokyo, but despite this the locals – mainly fishermen – feel left behind by the recent economic upturn.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s programme of economic stimulus – nicknamed “Abenomics” – seems to have passed by Futtsu. Today there are other seaweed providers, business is getting tougher for the industry which is in decline. “We are competing against China and South Korea,” says Mr Koizumi. “A free trade deal that the government wants to sign would seriously threaten us.” During our visit, in the darkness before the dawn, the fishermen and women are gathering around bonfires. At the edge of the water, more than 100 boats are anchored before setting out for the daily catch.
As the sun rises upon their return, I can see the faces of the fishermen and women more clearly. There are a lot more wrinkles than I had expected. Men and women who could be old enough to be my grandparents are carrying baskets full of the edible seaweed, nori. It is an ageing industry where people are struggling to find successors.
It is also costly. The machinery required to process the raw seaweed into dried sheets costs $200,000 (£130,000) a unit. What used to be done manually for centuries is no longer economically viable. But places like Futtsu are outside of this economic cycle. Before returning here to run the seaweed shop that his late father opened, Mr Nakazawa worked as a salaryman in Tokyo and he remembers Japan’s economy at its peak.
“Big cities may get a boost from Abenomics but we are losing young people in Futtsu which means the city will get less tax revenue,” he says. On the same street where Mr Nakazawa’s shop is located you can see stores that have been shut for many years, overgrown with plants and shrubs. By Japanese standards, the city looks run-down, or at least to someone like me who was born and bred in Tokyo. My cameraman and I went to Futtsu because it warned last year – it might run out of money by 2018.
