Building the Future after the Earthquake Disaster - A Story of a Leader Who Tries to Revive the Japanese Seafood Industry (Part 2)
INTERVIEW
Fisherman Japan was established in May 2014, three years after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011, by a group of young fishermen and young people who wanted to rebuild the fishery industry in the disaster areas. With the mission of becoming a top runner in implementing the “new 3K” (“kakko-ii”(cool), “kasegeru” (profitable), and “kakushin-teki” (innovative)) in the fisheries industry from the sea of Sanriku, Fisherman Japan has been taking on the challenges of the local fisheries industry, including the lack of successors.
Yuki Tsuda, a founding member of Fisherman Japan, is the successor of a fishmonger from Ishinomaki. He says that the family business wasn’t attractive for him that much, and that he even considered quitting after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011. However, how did he come to lead Ishinomaki’s fisheries recovery as a member of Fisherman Japan? We also asked him about the business strategy of Fisherman Japan Marketing, where he serves as representative director.
Yuki Tsuda
Born in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture in 1981. Completed a master’s degree in Business Administration at the Graduate School of Management, GLOBIS University. While he was running his family’s seafood retail and wholesale business, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami happened in 2011. In 2014, he founded the general incorporated association Fisherman Japan with several young fishermen and young people who wanted to rebuild the fishery industry in the disaster areas to address the lack of successors in the local fisheries industry, and other problems. In 2016, he was appointed as CEO of Fisherman Japan Marketing, the sales division of Fisherman Japan.
–Fisherman Japan was established in the wake of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. How did you become involved in it?
I used to run a fish shop in Ishinomaki and Sendai, but on the day the disaster struck, I was joining a promotion event in Sendai and did not witness either the earthquake or tsunami. However, when I returned to Ishinomaki five days later and saw the devastation with my own eyes, I felt how it was hopeless and something impossible to manage by myself, so I took my parents and went to live with my older sister in Sendai. For the next three years, I was occupied with rebuilding my family business in Ishinomaki.
Before the earthquake, the fisheries industry in Sanriku area had faced many problems, which were brought to light by the disaster. However, they were not something that could be solved by an individual or a single company. So, together with fishermen and fishmongers from Miyagi Prefecture, IT company employee from Tokyo, and eleven volunteer immigrants, we decided to finally do something and established Fisherman Japan.
The death of a classmate also influenced my decision to establish Fisherman Japan. I had originally been working in a different industry from the seafood business, but after I failed, I half-heartedly took over the family fish business. Then the disaster happened, and a thought that it might be a good time to quit crossed my mind. I was trying to run away from the seafood business. But then I learned of the death of a local classmate and his family. I was 29 years old at the time. My classmate died at 29; why should I be permitted to run away? Even if I were to devote 10 years of my life to the recovery of my hometown, I would still be 39 years old, and I could do whatever I wanted after that, so I decided to devote my coming 10 years to the local seafood industry with all my might.
–That’s an excellent choice. I see that Fisherman Japan has two organizations, Fisherman Japan and Fisherman Japan Marketing.
Fisherman Japan was established first, in 2014. After the disaster, we were able to manage hardware problems such as equipment with subsidies, but there was a lack of workers. So, in an effort to attract people while improving the image of the seafood industry, we started educating leaders, bringing in human resources from the outside, and promoting the industry (information dissemination and PR). Since we promoted ourselves with a stylish image, we were picked up by the media, and thanks to this, people gradually began to come together.
The current Fisherman Japan. With members from all walks of life, including designer, former trading company employee, and former magazine editors, Fisherman Japan is steadily increasing the number of broad sense of “fishermen” which means people work in the seafood industry.
However, the problem was that the seafood industry was not profitable in the first place, so people left after the disaster. Fisherman Japan’s activities attracted young people, but it was obvious that when they moved on to the next stage of their lives, such as marriage, they would quit because of the low income. So, in order to create a new seafood supply chain, we established Fisherman Japan Marketing in 2016 as a sales division, and I am the representative of this company.
–What kind of business does Fisherman Japan Marketing do?
Currently, we are engaged in four main businesses. The first is the sales business, in which we work with seafood companies to promote catalogue sales and connect hotels and seafood processing companies to create menus using local fish products.
The “Sanriku Seafood Gastronomy Project,” in which menus were developed with hotels using local seafood
The second is the restaurant business. We operate a restaurant called Fisherman-tei at Sendai Airport. This restaurant uses MSC and ASC-certified fish from Miyagi Prefecture and other areas in Japan, while the entire process pursues further business efficiency. We use high-quality frozen meal kits and have introduced a cashless self-checkout system to reduce labour costs. In addition, we have introduced AI machine to collect data on customer demographics and menu items ordered, which is then used for product development. This is a business model intended to reduce labour costs and food loss as much as possible, and we are considering franchising it in the future.
The third is overseas business. We have created two organizations to export local marine products to overseas. One is the Ishinomaki Food Export Promotion Council, which is a joint export organization of more than 30 seafood, agricultural, and food processing companies in Ishinomaki City, with the Seafood Division of Ishinomaki City and our company serving as secretariat. This organization has been selected by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries as a “GFP Global Production Area Promotion Businesses,” and exports mainly to the United States. Under the concept of “one factory for seafood processing for the U.S.,” our sales staff receive the needs of American customers, and more than 30 companies in Ishinomaki cooperate as one seafood processing factory and provide products. With things such as selling octopus wholesale to Kura Sushi USA, we are on the verge of reaching the ¥100 million mark in annual exports overall.
The other organization is the Tohoku Food Culture Export Promotion Cooperative Association, an export trading company that brings together 30 companies in the livestock, agricultural, processed food, and beverage industries in the Tohoku region, not limited to Ishinomaki City. Sendai International Airport and our company serve as its secretariat and export to Asia and the Middle East. Our alcoholic beverages are also popular, and we export grape juice to Saudi Arabia, where alcohol is not allowed.
We are also involved in a project of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries to teach fish ikejime (slaughter) and storage methods in Tanzania, and to support cold chain management inland Uganda. This is a project started by a Ugandan company and our company in 2021, and we plan to go there again this year.
The fourth is the consulting business. We began our activities after the disaster and began to see results, and started receiving various requests from fishing villages all over Japan. From Hokkaido to Fukuoka (north to south), we are working throughout Japan to improve the situation in response to problems such as the decline of catch, low fish prices, and a lack of leaders.
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Yuki Tsuda launched Fisherman Japan in the wake of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and has been working hard to resbuild the fisheries business in Ishinomaki. At Fisherman Japan Marketing, where he serves as CEO, he is involved in promoting fisheries from Ishinomaki and other parts of Tohoku to Japan and the world, as well as providing consulting services to fishing villages throughout Japan. In the second part of the interview, he will talk about the blue fund established in 2023 and the Summit held in March 2024, as well as look back on the 10 years since the establishment of Fisherman Japan and his current thoughts.
Original Japanese text by: Shino Kawasaki
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