[Iki-tsuki Island Whaling] Isana-tori Ekotoba (7) Iki-tsuki Misakiura Small Shed Illustration

The entrance to the small shed is tiled, and in the back, a thatched temporary hut is built in a row. There are two managers, one clerk, ten young men, four fish cutters, one cook, two drum guards (who serve as night watchmen from among the young men), two supervisors, and day laborers, totaling about 110 people, all working tirelessly and dancing about in their duties.

What is brought into this shed includes: mountain skin, fins, fan bones, meat from the large bones, abdomen, small whiskers, viscera (everything from here on is part of the viscera), throat rings, intestines, blowhole, esophagus, hundred-fathom intestine, clove, red intestine, large intestine, bean intestine, visceral meat, upper intestine, princess intestine, bitter liver, etc.

In general, there is no part of a whale—bone, skin, meat, or intestines—that cannot be used as food, but only this bitter liver is not eaten. It is said that the fish cutters keep it as a private stash, but I do not know what they use it for.

Now, the clerk sits at the entrance of the shed, and in the back, there is a small cutting area where about twenty people sit in a row, cutting the meat in the same manner as in the large shed. On the right side, there is a fish rack where they perform the usual cutting and scraping. Those with oil are boiled for oil, and bones that still have meat attached are scraped with an axe, and only the remaining bones are sent to the bone shed.

In the back, seven hearths are set up with large cauldrons to boil the oil, and it is stored in six large iron pots, flowing through gutters from the hearth fronts and inside the earthen walls, just as in the large shed. A guard sits at the entrance of the shed to watch for 'Kantarou' (thieves), searching for and confiscating any meat they have secretly hidden, which is a common occurrence.

There is also a separate 'tendon shed.' Seven young men, twelve tendon scrapers, and one supervisor are there to scrape and prepare tendons from the round-cut pieces sent from the large shed—such as the upper and lower parts of the three-part joints, both sides of the shells, and the back skin—to be distributed to merchant ships. 'Kosagu' (to scrape) is the same as 'kosogeru' in the Kanto dialect.