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Sanriku Fukkō NP, Miyagi
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Shizugawa’s Amakoro oysters are raised one per basket and harvested after about 10 months, before spawning. Their name blends amai (“sweet”) with korogaki, a local word for shell-on oysters.
After the 2011 tsunami swept away Togura’s oyster rafts, growers rebuilt with just one-third as many, easing overcrowding. By 2016, their farm became Japan’s first oyster operation to earn ASC certification.
Red tides once made Kesennuma oysters unsellable “blood oysters.” Growers formed an Oyster Forest group in 1989; a local poet gave the movement its name, “Forest is the Sea’s Lover.” About 30,000 broadleaf trees were planted upstream.
Miyagi’s oyster-shell seed collectors reached the world: a suspended-shell method was devised in 1924, and seed-oyster exports followed. Shipments to the United States hit a record 100,000 cases in 1955.
A longline method for hanging oysters was developed at Matsuiwa, Kesennuma, around 1952. It spread through Miyagi and into Iwate from 1955, then was adapted to farm wakame, sea squirts and scallops, too.
Togura oyster farmers returned their fishing rights to the cooperative so it could divide the reduced raft allotment fairly; negotiations even considered which family businesses had successors.
