What are the folklore of Japan regarding hunting and fishing?

Before coming into contact with the mainland culture, the "indigenous people" of Japan made their living by hunting and fishing, the so-called "gatherer's economy".

The slaughter of whales and dolphins is labeled as "traditional culture" in Japan.

The Japanese government allows 20,000 dolphins to be killed each year, and says the killing of dolphins in Japan is a tradition and a means of livelihood for fishermen that cannot be abandoned. Animal protection organizations have reportedly tried to buy the captured dolphins from local fishermen and use them to collect donations from around the world, but have been rebuffed by the fishermen.

Taiji Town, a small town in Higashimuro-gun, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, faces the Pacific Ocean. There are only 3,200 residents here, and they have a view of the blue sea right on their doorstep. But from September through April each year, it becomes a bloody slaughterhouse.

When the fishing season arrives, the fishermen will start their boats and drive hundreds of dolphins into the narrow bay here, starve them for days, and then screen and round them up in a hunting manner, and then finally swing their harpoons mercilessly at them. Instantly, the original blue ocean surface is colored into a sea of blood. The sound of dolphins shatters the tranquility of the harbor, but it is no longer a beautiful song, it is the wail of the dolphins as they are driven to the brink of extinction.

The Ainu, also known as the Ezo, were the earliest inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago, and Japanese history records that the Ainu were known as the "hairy people" in the fifth century A.D. because they were characterized by darker skin, thick and long hair, and European features on their faces. As the Ainu and Yamato people continued to merge, the present-day Ainu no longer have the characteristics of their ancestors. From the 16th century, some Ainu migrated to the Kuril Islands, and in the 17th and 18th centuries, most of the Ainu were wiped out by the Yamato people, leaving a total of fewer than 20,000 people, most of whom live in the central and northern part of Hokkaido, and some of whom are dispersed in Honshu and other areas.

The Ainu used to be a fishing and hunting people, and lived a free life with boats on the sea and bows in the jungle.

With the arrival of the Japanese, the Ainu people were deprived of the harmony of life with nature***. The Japanese confiscated the ancient hunting tools of the Ainu people on the grounds that "bow and arrow hunting is not safe", forcibly leased them hunting rifles and forced the implementation of the Yamato civilization, which made the original life of the Ainu people change, and gradually gave up fishing and hunting. gave up fishing and hunting and became sedentary farmers.

The plundering of the Ainu by the Japanese began in ancient times, and reached its peak during the Meiji period with the development of capitalism, when the Ainu began to lose their own living space, and a large number of Japanese swarmed to the Ainu, resulting in a large area of Ainu land becoming the private property of the Japanese, and the Ainu who were weak and weak were slowly turned into the loneliest and poorest inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago. and the poorest area of the Japanese islands.