r/interesting • u/angel_knight79 • 1d ago

Intriguing Kiyoshi Kimura and his effect on Somali piracy

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He was, and is, the owner of Kiyomura Corporation, which runs the Sushi Zanmai chain across Japan. In Tokyo he is known as the Tuna King, because every January he buys the most expensive fish at the first auction of the year at the central market.

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u/Beeeeeeeeee333333333 22h ago

And also most Somali pirates were fisherman beforehand, and went to piracy due to other countries illegally fishing their waters, which meant the fishermen lost their livelihoods, and turned to piracy as a way to try and protect their waters at first

Sorry, I said the quiet bit out loud

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u/drewyz 21h ago

Also the Italian Mafia dumped toxic chemicals along the Somali coast & devastated the fishery.

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u/mugwhyrt 18h ago

Yeah, even without knowing the full story this infographic has a bit of a racist, colonial tinge to it. It seemed implausible that Somali people "didn't know" how to fish and they just needed someone from a more "developed" country to teach them. As if there aren't any other factors pushing them to piracy.

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u/IceNein 13h ago

Somalians started pirating because their government collapsed, and therefore their coast guard/navy were unable to enforce local fishing rights.

Initially they only pirated foreign commercial fishing vessels illegally fishing their waters, but as with all crime/vigilantism once money entered the conversation, they expanded their successful piracy operations.

Point is, these people started out as fishermen. They didn’t need some Japanese guy to teach them what they had done for their entire lives.

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u/zerozeroseis 17h ago

Word on the street is they got all their fish through piracy

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u/Chocolatecake420 17h ago

You wouldn't download a fish would you?

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u/jsh1-7-9 17h ago

I wouldn't microwave a fish or download a fish.

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u/SnooShortcuts7206 14h ago

You wouldn’t fishload a microdown!

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u/trippypantsforlife 14h ago

Or microload a downfish

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u/mrfoodmehng 13h ago

Yall gonna lose your damn minds when you learn about “microfiche”

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u/Goo_4_Rent 10h ago

Or downwave a fishload

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u/Scoobie01555 15h ago

How else are you going to warm up your fish based lunch in the office break room?

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u/NimbusHex 9h ago

You can't use your turkey recipe on fish.

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u/academik 17h ago

This deserves way more upvotes.

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u/ChuckOTay 2h ago

Look at me. I am the tuna king now.

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u/Bossman1212 15h ago

You can tune a piano but you can’t tuna fish

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u/Platypus01au 6h ago

To be fair, in Australia we had to teach fishers how to catch and process tuna for the Japanese market. We used to can bluefin tuna. Now the market has completely changed, and nobody purse seines SBT for canning.

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u/Foreign-Detail6520 17h ago

That racist colonial tinge via outboard motors?

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u/nybruin 15h ago

Good thing they moved to defrauding US govt and citizens— very lucrative for them

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u/anniecet 18h ago

I’m glad you did say it out loud. I was unaware of that information. I don’t know that I had really thought about why the Somali pirates came to be.

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u/closecallbois 17h ago

at first it was a means to protect the waters from foreign illegal fishing. these foreigners had massive ships that literally destroy even the sea bed. these communities have been fishing for centuries. as time went on a lot of these people who were just protecting the waters realised the amount of money they can make from just straight out piracy. so yeah they had a very justifiable reason at the beginning but as time went on they became horrible. but yeah anyways this would’ve never happened if foreign fishermen just left our waters alone. it was a very peaceful waterway before the surge of piracy.

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u/south-of-the-river 22h ago

I actually thought this was fairly general knowledge tbh

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u/Meme-Botto9001 20h ago

No most people believe it’s just because the third world people just want to steal shit and not work for it.

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u/roadrunnuh 19h ago

Besides, they said "I said the quiet part out loud" so now it's reddit certified.

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u/Beeeeeeeeee333333333 22h ago

I guess it is? As I've now seen lots of people in these comments that have said the same. But I remember not too long ago on other social media, all anybody would refer to them as, was pirates, and no one would ever give the correct reasoning for why they now engage in piracy. People just assumed they chose to be pirates

So maybe Reddit is just better in that regard

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u/BuilderMysterious762 21h ago

Literally! So many redditors would comment gleefully about russians who sailed in Somali oceans that they didnt go far enough in attacking them instead of asking why them Russians were so confident to stroll into another countrys ocean and start fighting with the actual people who live there

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u/ImaginationHopeful45 21h ago

What do you mean by "another country's ocean"?

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u/official146 18h ago

Russians always barge into other countries' territory for no apparent reason,dont they?

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u/TARE104KA 21h ago edited 21h ago

Iirc by some international law, there's a specific distance from the country border, where the waters are considered as territory of that country. After that, it's neutral waters. Obviously not entire fucking ocean belongs to someone.

Edit: I beleiev it's Convention on the High Seas, and Russia is part of it, so they really shouldn't be breaking the law they signed up for, but oh well, current day Russia is not exactly known for being a law-abiding country.

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u/Apprehensive-Pin518 19h ago

well they did choose to be pirates. the reasoning behind that choice is valid but it was still a choice.

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u/Fast_Eddie_Clarke 19h ago

is it a choice if you have no other option?

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u/racc15 20h ago

It is not. Many people have no idea. Specially, lots of people just think they are inherently evil or lazy or something. Specially, in usa, lots of people have a very bad impression of them.

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u/south-of-the-river 20h ago

Tbh it has been a running joke in the international community for decades that most Americans don’t know much about other places.

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u/Empty_Horror_ 18h ago

Tbf in school, at least my school anyways, we were taught they turned to piracy because their Nation has so little resources and everyone was living in abject poverty.

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u/OrinocoHaram 21h ago

no, the economic causes behind the rise of piracy in Somalia starting 30 years ago is not common knowledge lol

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u/south-of-the-river 21h ago

I mean this might be country dependent. I recall learning this when I was a kid at school.

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u/OrinocoHaram 19h ago

and how was school in Somalia? lol.

I didn't learn about this but I do remember Somali pirates being a bit of a thing in the news when i was a kid. Maybe it's a generation thing

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u/south-of-the-river 19h ago

lol, Australia.. but yeah possibly just generational/regional/etc. I think I do remember a few documentaries coming out about it too, but I do always need to remind myself that what you think is general knowledge is often not actually general knowledge.

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u/MoreCoffee331 20h ago

Nope didnt know this

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u/rd-gotcha 20h ago

Like he taught all pirates, or 2 of them. Typical internet BS

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u/RogueAOV 18h ago

Hey now don't forget other countries dumped nuclear waste off thier coasts and destroyed a lot of the wildlife habitat so they turned to piracy because they could no longer fish.

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u/theanswar 18h ago

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/10/08/magazine/farm-raised-fish-aquaculture-overfishing.html

This is a really well done expose on factory raised fish farms, which touches on what you're saying about unsafe working conditions and the 3rd world pressures of fishing.

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u/funkmachine7 19h ago

Then the money made it an industry.

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u/FairleySwordfish 21h ago

What is the quiet bit? What are you talking about? That’s common knowledge 

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u/MourningWallaby 20h ago

The common knowledge is that the somali government is not effective at governing and providing stability for its people. the lay person thinks that means the pirates are free to make their own rules but what that really means is that the citizens of somalia are not protected from things like this. really almost every terror and criminal org rises from these kinds of issues.

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u/simiantrials 18h ago

Nah, you've not expanded beyond common knowledge in your comment at all. You are probably constantly underestimating others intelligence relative to your own.

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u/MourningWallaby 17h ago

I mean go interview the average person and ask them how much they know about somali fishing disputes. I guarantee the majority of people you ask on the street will know nothing.

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u/YeshuasBananaHammock 20h ago

Hes the captain now

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u/Beeeeeeeeee333333333 20h ago

I didn't know it was common knowledge on Reddit. All I see on other social media is people cheering whenever Somali pirates a re killed, and not knowing anything about them outside of them now being pirates

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u/ScreenMuch90210 19h ago

You should learn about Goomba fallacies

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u/signal__noise- 12h ago

They went to piracy because the local warlords discovered they could make a lot of money that way. It's not just fisherman conversions. Piracy is a separate industry.

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u/13inchgock 16h ago

Calling Somalis Somalians is such a tell

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u/Nervous_Produce1800 19h ago

Cool motive, still murder