Fishy politics

[Guest guest]

Pro-whalers' stand hard to swallow

The Australian

Masako Fukui

June 15, 2006

 

Japan bashing may become a more regular pastime in Australia

 

IT'S the season for Japan bashing and, this year, the level of acrimony and

vituperative exchange should reach fever pitch if, as expected, the

Japan-led pro-whaling faction gains control of the International Whaling

Commission at its annual meeting, starting tomorrow, at St Kitts and Nevis.

 

The pro-whalers' ultimate goal of overturning the 20-year-old moratorium on

commercial whaling is unlikely this time. But Japan's brand of quiet

diplomacy, more accurately described as bribery, should ensure that more

whales will end up on menus in the not-so-distant future. It's a thought

that should make avowedly anti-whaling Australians gag and could also lead

to another unsavoury result: Japan bashing may become a more regular pastime

in Australia.

 

The question is: why does Japan, a close friend of Australia and usually a

dutiful partner of the West on most international issues, display such

forthright belligerence when it comes to whaling?

 

The Japanese Government stresses that whaling is traditional and a cultural

right, and that the efforts by mostly Western countries such as Australia

and the US to halt the consumption of whale meat is a form of cultural

imperialism.

 

Yet traditional whaling seems to reside in that realm of mythical reality

that characterises so much of what's called tradition in Japan. After all,

whale consumption took off in Japan only after World War II, when US general

Douglas MacArthur encouraged whale consumption to supplement Japanese

protein intake. By the time of the moratorium in the 1980s, beef and other

sources of protein were being consumed in the Japanese diet. So when the ban

began in 1986, fewer than 1000 jobs were lost in the whaling industry.

 

It's true that there are a handful of traditional whaling villages in Japan.

But the Japanese Government is seeking to renew commercial whaling, which is

quantitatively and qualitatively different from the kind of traditional

whaling allowed by the IWC. The International Convention on the Regulation

of Whaling provides for aboriginal subsistence whaling, which gives the

indigenous people of Alaska, for example, the right to hunt and consume an

annual quota of bowhead and grey whales for cultural and nutritional

requirements.

 

Perhaps most pertinent is that eating whale is not economically or

culturally significant in 21st-century Japan. Though there are few unbiased

polls on Japanese public opinion regarding whale meat, one survey conducted

by national daily newspaper The Asahi Shimbun in 2002 claimed that 4 per

cent of respondents sometimes ate whale meat and 9 per cent ate it

infrequently. Meanwhile, 86 per cent said they had never eaten whale or had

eaten it only as children, in lunches provided by schools. These results

reflect those of a similar survey conducted by the newspaper in 1993.

 

So if most present-day Japanese people aren't into it and there is no viable

industry to save, why does the Japanese Government insist, indeed revel, in

being an international pariah by promoting commercial whaling? The answer

can only be fishy politics.

 

The problem is that although whales are mammals, Japan defines whaling as a

fisheries issue. The kanji character for whale is a combination of two

parts, the first being the sign for fish. Nearly all kanji characters for

fish names, from snapper to kingfish, are of the same two-part design. So

it's no surprise that Japan's diplomatic charge at the IWC is led by the

Fisheries Agency, a rather stuffy and conservative government department

compared with the more elitist and outward-looking Ministry of Foreign

Affairs. Fisheries Agency officials fear that if Japan backs down on

whaling, it will also have to back down on other fisheries issues, such as

tuna and salmon. That may sound like rampant paranoia, but history tells

another story.

 

In 1982, when the IWC voted for the moratorium on commercial whaling, the US

pressured Japan not to lodge a formal objection to the ban. Under article 5

(3) of the convention, any member state can opt out of binding resolutions

simply by lodging a formal objection within 90 days. In return for

compliance, the US granted Japan continued access to fish in US waters. But

that was later revoked, mainly as a result of domestic pressures within the

US, teaching the boys at the Fisheries Agency a valuable lesson:

compromising is a bad idea.

 

Of course, that the anti-whaling faction has little armoury except moral

argument to persuade Japan to conform to the international norm to conserve

rather than consume whales is another reason for the intransigence of

pro-whaling nations. Moral suasion is a blunt diplomatic tool and the

Australian Government's efforts to appropriate the high moral ground on this

environmental issue seems to be more for domestic consumption. It's timed

nicely to coincide with the annual migration of whales past Australian

shores and takes the focus off more important issues, such as its own

intransigence on global warming.

 

In addition, the fact the Australian Government in the past has boycotted

the scientific committee of the IWC, where the real nuts and bolts of whale

conservation science is debated, raises doubts about how serious Australia

is in stopping the drive to resume commercial whaling.

 

If Japan sees whaling as a fisheries issue, then it is worthwhile for

anti-whalers such as Australia to consider its own brand of fishy politics.

Anti-whalers can consider linking whaling with other fisheries issues to

pressure Japan to back down or to use other international legal forums, as

some environmental non-governmental organisations have suggested. More

important, merely tut-tutting Japan's rather insidious vote-buying tactics

at this week's IWC annual meeting serves no one's cause, least of all that

of whale conservation. It's time to get down and dirty, even fishy.

 

Masako Fukui, a Sydney writer, is a former journalist for the Nikkei

financial newspaper in Australia.

 

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20876,19473162-7583,00.html