The seas surrounding the Japanese islands may be called a resort of fishes, for, in addition to numerous species which abide there permanently, there are migatory kinds, coming and going with the monsoons and with the great ocean streams that set to and from the shores. In winter, for example, when the northern monsoon begins to blow, numbers of denizens of the Sea of Okhotsk swim southward to the more genial waters of north Japan; and in summer the Indian Ocean and the Malayan archipelago send to her southern coasts a crowd of emigrants which turn homeward again at the approach of winter. It thus falls out that in spite of the enormous quantity of fish consumed as food or used as fertilizers year after year by the Japanese, the seas remain as richly stocked as ever. Nine orders of fishes have been distinguished as the piscifauna of Japanese waters. They may be found carefully catalogued with all their included species in Rein's _Japan_, and highly interesting researches by Japanese physiographists are recorded in the Journal of the College of Science of the Imperial University of Tokyo. Briefly, the chief fish of Japan are the bream (_tai_), the perch (_suzuki_), the mullet (_bora_), the rock-fish (_hatatate_), the grunter (_oni-o-koze_), the mackerel (_saba_), the sword-fish (_tachi-uwo_), the wrasse (_kusabi_), the haddock (_tara_), the flounder (_karei_), and its congeners the sole (_hirame_) and the turbot (_ishi-garei_), the shad (_namazu_), the salmon (_shake_), the _masu_, the carp (_koi_), the _funa_, the gold fish (_kingyo_), the gold carp (_higoi_), the loach (_dojo_), the herring (_nishin_), the _iwashi_(_Clupea melanosticta_), the eel (_unagi_), the conger eel (_anago_), the coffer-fish (_hako-uwo_), the _fugu_ (_Tetrodon_), the _ai_ (_Plecoglossus altivelis_), the sayori (_Hemiramphus sayori_), the shark (same), the dogfish (_manuka-zame_), the ray (_e_), the sturgeon (_cho-zame_) and the _maguro_ (_Thynnus sibi_).