CNN Alerts: Japan defends whaling 'tradition'

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>11/18/07 07:51 AM, EST

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Japan defends whaling 'tradition'

* Story Highlights

* Pro-whaling Japanese think anti-whaling movement is

discriminatory, hypocritical

* 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling

applies to high seas

* Small-time whalers commercially hunt whales not

regulated internationally

* Anti-whaling activists believe killing whales an

environmental and moral crime

WADA, Japan (AP) -- A whale's bleeding carcass bobbed in the surf, a

steel harpoon jutting from its side. Then butchers at this Japanese

fishing village went to work, turning a motorized winch to haul the

beast ashore.

On the flensing floor, the men blessed it with rice wine -- then

hacked through blubber and sinew with long-handled knives, slicing

vermilion flesh from the massive spine. Blood gushed from the 30-foot

Baird's beaked whale like water from a hydrant.

Finally, the meat was chopped into brick-sized blocks, weighed and

priced for townsfolk who lined up for their purchases. Restaurateurs

drove away with plastic drums of whale.

For the world's anti-whaling activists, it's an atrocity that must be

stopped. But the men who harpoon, flense and sell these whales at

four small-scale coastal hunting communities have another word for

it: tradition.

" Coastal people have been eating whale for 400 years and we have a

right to decide what we eat, " declared Yoshinori Shoji, head of the

Gaibo Hogei whaling company, based in Wada, a two-hour drive east of

Tokyo.

These days, that tradition is much harder to maintain.

Even though the 1986 international moratorium on commercial whaling

applies more to the high seas than to Japanese coastal outfits, it

has severely cut supply, driving prices higher and speeding the

meat's plunge in popularity.

The ban also restricts the types of smaller whales that can be

hunted, such as a former favorite of the coastal operations -- the

minke. Small-time whalers now commercially hunt only whales that are

not regulated internationally.

Japan's coastal whalers also suffer from a global PR problem.

Amid an active anti-whaling movement, many people in Europe, the

United States, Australia and New Zealand consider killing whales an

environmental and moral crime, and grisly scenes such as the ones in

Wada reinforce the image of whaling as barbaric.

The campaign touches a nationalist chord among Japanese, who feel

it's discriminatory and hypocritical, given that Japanese whaling

only took off after World War II because U.S. occupation authorities

encouraged it as a source of food.

" They just completely reject people whose thinking isn't the same as

theirs, " says the industry's point man in the southern whaling town

of Taiji, Yoji Kita. " In their `global standard,' there are a lot of

double standards. "

When people here speak of tradition, they mean family-owned company

boats targeting small game just 20 miles from the shore, rather than

the Japanese factory fleets, which range as far afield as the

Antarctic and pull in a total of more than 1,000 whales per year.

This year, coastal whalers operating out of four main ports are set

to take a total of 66 Baird's beaked whales, 72 pilot whales -- which

look like dolphins -- and 20 Risso dolphins.

Minke whales, of which they used to take 300 a year, have been banned

from the hunt by the International Whaling Commission since the

1980s, though Japan takes many minke whales -- and eats the meat --

as part of an IWC-allowed scientific whaling program.

The whaling companies, however, say the moratorium is sinking their business.

Japan's eight coastal whaling companies now use only five of their

nine whaling boats for coastal operations. Populations in whaling

towns have dropped, and village administrators complain about

shrinking tax bases.

" Everyone here is in the red, " Shoji said as his men sliced fat from

the cubes of meat and dumped buckets of innards into a huge vat for

processing into fertilizer.

The complaint gets little international sympathy.

A Japanese proposal to win " community whaling " status that would have

allowed limited minke whale hunts failed at an IWC meeting in May.

Critics argue that Japan's coastal operations are strictly

commercial, using modern industrial methods such as mechanized

harpoon guns, while community hunts are conducted by aboriginal

people as ceremonies or to harvest a vital food source.

" Long ago, they used their own boats and caught whales with nets. But

since the early 1900s, they've been using methods imported from

Norway, " said Junichi Sato of Greenpeace Japan. " So it's not at all

as if they were preserving a tradition. "

Japan's industrial whaling may be 20th century, but its roots are old.

Organized whaling began in the early 1600s in Taiji, a town about 300

miles southwest of Tokyo, whose phone book is full of names rooted in

whaling: Seko -- harpooner; Ryono -- whaling boat sailor.

Shrines to the animals, including one where feudal hunters brought

fetuses found in pregnant whales, dot the town. Villagers stage a

whale festival on the bluff where spotters in the 17th century

watched for approaching whales.

" Whaling is not just an occupation for them -- it's pride, it's

history, " said Hayato Sakurai, curator of the Taiji Whale Museum,

which was established in 1969 and features an enormous replica of the

skeleton of a blue whale.

The town's hunts of old involved hundreds of daredevil hunters on

wooden boats who would surround the whale, spear it and drag it to

shore. But those ways vanished when a typhoon wiped out Taiji's fleet

in 1878.

By around 1900, whaling was based on modern steam ships and grenade harpoons.

Today Taiji is feeling the pressure, and Western visitors to City

Hall and the wharves draw looks of suspicion that they have come to

smear the town.

Coastal whalers argue that while they hunt whales as food and

fertilizer, the Western whalers of old were only after them for their

oil and discarded the rest.

Also playing into the argument are race, the legacy of the war and a

sense of Japan being perennial odd man out in global affairs

dominated by the United States and Europe.

" It looks like we're part of the club, but then something happens,

and they point at us and say, `You're the country that started the

war! " ' said Kita. " I feel the whaling issue is a racial

discrimination issue. "

This touchiness is heightened by the Taiji area's autumn and winter

dolphin hunt, when boat crews surround schools of the animals and

slash them to death. The kills are often filmed by animal rights

groups and broadcast worldwide.

Towns like Wada and Taiji have responded with campaigns to teach

pride in the whaling tradition in local schools, where whale meat

often features on the lunch menu, despite evidence that whale and

dolphin meat is contaminated with mercury.

Wada, for instance, hosts school groups to witness whale flensings,

though the copious blood and stench occasionally sickens a student.

The kids then gather at a nearby cafeteria for a whale meat breakfast.

" We want them to know about the things that are done in the town

where they were raised, " explained Tomokazu Shoji, a teacher

accompanying his 5th graders to flensing.

Meanwhile, old-time whalers mourn the passing of a culture.

Tameo Ryono, 70, worked on whaling ships in the Antarctic and other

seas for some 40 years. The son and grandson of whalers, he grew up

in Taiji watching his elders harpoon the beasts. The thick meat was a

common meal on the Ryono dinner table.

" This is how we provided for our families for generations, " he said,

opening a box of black and white photographs of old hunting ships.

" Since the moratorium, kids even in this town don't have many chances

to see whales, " he said. " They don't dream of being whalers anymore. "

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This

material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

 

 

 

 

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