Japan's whalers are at sea again, harvesting meat that few will eat

[Guest guest]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japans-whalers-are-at-sea-again-har\

vesting-meat-that-few-will-eat-1884359.html

 

Japan's whalers are at sea again, harvesting meat that few will eat

 

By April, another 900 whales will have died for little profit. So what drives

the Japanese to go on defying world opinion?

 

By David McNeill in Tokyo

 

Sunday, 31 January 2010

 

In an annual ritual as seemingly unstoppable as the tides, Japan's whaling fleet

is again ploughing the Southern Ocean hunting and killing whales. Bitterly

criticised, harried by eco-warriors on Sea Shepherd's ships and tracked by the

world's media, the fleet may be slowed but it won't be stopped. On its return to

port in April, the refrigerated holds are likely to be stuffed with the meat

from 850 minkes and 50 fin whales. Next year, 50 endangered humpbacks could be

added to the list.

 

Japan has so far been largely inoculated from debate on the annual cull, but

that may be about to change. Next month sees the first public hearing in the

trial of Greenpeace activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, accused of trespass

and theft in their attempt to expose the embezzlement of whale meat by crew

members on board the fleet, who sold it for personal gain. Activists believe the

so-called Tokyo Two case could put the entire whaling programme in Japan on

trial.

 

Japan's stubbornness on whaling is one of the mysteries of world diplomacy. Why

does the country turn angry and unyielding when it comes to whaling? Why does it

continue to snub one of the environmental movement's few lasting triumphs: the

1986 moratorium on commercial hunts?

 

Oddly, very little is known about the dynamics of whaling in Japan, probably

because foreign media do such an awful job of reporting it. Without an

explanation, Japan's taste for " whale blood " (as The Independent once put it)

seems irrational and barbaric, fuelling racist stereotypes that the Japanese do

not deserve.

 

Clearly, it is not because Japan's citizens love whale meat. A 2006 Greenpeace

survey concluded that 95 per cent of Japanese had " never or very rarely eaten "

it. Outside of a handful of local ports, fresh whale is as rare as, say, veal,

in the UK. Pro-whalers respond that it is so only because foreign pressure has

made the meat so expensive to harvest. But even after the 1986 international

whaling moratorium and the start of Japan's " scientific " whaling, 70 tons of

whale meat was left unsold from a catch of 1,873 tons after the fleet returned

to port in spring 2001 – a fraction of the 230,000 metric tons consumed in the

peak whaling year of 1962. Although some middle-aged citizens remain fond of it,

most youngsters would rather eat almost anything else. The mass consumption of

whale meat, and the industry that supports it, was essentially forced on Japan

by a lack of alter-native resources half a century ago.

 

So, boring as it sounds, Tokyo's relentless drive to reverse the whaling ban is

essentially political, and understanding why means casting our minds back to how

the ban came into being. The Japanese Fisheries Agency (JFA), which controls the

nation's whaling policy, feels that it was bamboozled and blackmailed into

abandoning commercial hunts by the US-led West.

 

One date, in particular, is for ever burned into the JFA's collective

consciousness. On 30 June 1979, anti-whaling protester Richard Jones, who later

became an Australian senator, dumped red paint over Japanese delegates at the

International Whaling Commission's (IWC) conference in London. Caught up in the

growing environmental movement, the bureaucrats professed no idea why they were

being blamed for the destruction of whale stocks, when historically the US and

Europe had hunted far more whales.

 

In the 1980s, as a bitter trade war raged between Japan and the West, Washington

came under pressure to limit access to its coastal waters, which yielded nearly

a million tonnes of fish per year to Japanese boats. In a deal struck in the

middle of the decade, Japan agreed to withdraw its objections to the IWC whaling

moratorium in return for a US pledge to keep this access open. But months after

Japan formally agreed to the ban in July 1986, its US fishing quota was halved.

Two years later, it had fallen to zero and an angry JFA responded by

kick-starting the now infamous practice of " scientific whaling " .

 

The JFA knows it has zero chance of winning a two-thirds majority to overturn

the IWC ban. It also knows there is no chance of reviving the commercial

industry, which is kept alive on government life-support. What the agency can do

is fight for the symbolic right to whale sustainably, and occasionally skewer

Western hyp-ocrisy, which it does quite well. Why do American hunters kill five

million " beautiful, Bambi-eyed deer " annually, wondered Japan's top whaling

diplomat Joji Morishita at a January press conference. " I've no problem with

that, as long as it is sustainable. "

 

For some Japanese politicians, the appeal of the pro-whaling campaign is quite

clear: Japan can let off steam in the foreign political arena.

 

Fixing what is basically a case of wounded national pride should be

straightforward, but after two decades the pro- and anti-whaling camps are

deeply dug in and have little reason to compromise. Western politicians lose

nothing domestically by not budging an inch on Japanese whaling. Their Tokyo

counterparts can condemn Western " cultural imperialism " and bask in the

reputation as defenders of Japan's right to the " sea commons " .

 

So what to do? One solution has been around for at least two decades: allow

Japan the right to hunt more whales around its own exclusive fishing waters in

exchange for scaling down or pulling out of the high seas. This essentially is

the so-called " compromise package " that has been discussed for the past two

years behind the scenes at the IWC. The details are forbidding. How many whales

would Japan catch? How would the hunts be monitored? Would such a deal not be

simply rewarding Japan for a decade of brinkmanship, during which it gradually

scaled up its Antarctic hunts to the current 1,000 whales a year?

 

But one reason Norway, which hunts almost as many whales as Japan, gets far less

attention, is because it doesn't send its trawlers outside its own waters. Some

Japanese diplomats have taken note, and are growing tired of the battering Japan

takes every time its fleet leaves port. If Tokyo can be persuaded to abandon its

Southern Ocean cull, limit or stop expeditions to the North Pacific and submit

to monitoring of its coastal catch, shouldn't this initiative be given a chance?

 

As Sato Tetsu, professor of ecology and environmental sciences at Nagano

University, says. " It is not really a problem of reviving the whaling industry

now; it is a problem of national pride, or at least government and bureaucratic

pride. They basically need a symbolic victory. "

[Guest guest]

Interesting article and decent reporting, thx!

Jigs

 

 

 

 

Masako Miyaji <masako_m_2000

Mon, 1 Feb 2010 03:27:50 -0800 (PST)

<aapn >

Japan's whalers are at sea again, harvesting meat that few

will eat

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japans-whalers-are-at-sea-again

-harvesting-meat-that-few-will-eat-1884359.html

 

Japan's whalers are at sea again, harvesting meat that few will eat

 

By April, another 900 whales will have died for little profit. So what

drives the Japanese to go on defying world opinion?

 

By David McNeill in Tokyo

 

Sunday, 31 January 2010

 

In an annual ritual as seemingly unstoppable as the tides, Japan's whaling

fleet is again ploughing the Southern Ocean hunting and killing whales.

Bitterly criticised, harried by eco-warriors on Sea Shepherd's ships and

tracked by the world's media, the fleet may be slowed but it won't be

stopped. On its return to port in April, the refrigerated holds are likely

to be stuffed with the meat from 850 minkes and 50 fin whales. Next year, 50

endangered humpbacks could be added to the list.

 

Japan has so far been largely inoculated from debate on the annual cull, but

that may be about to change. Next month sees the first public hearing in the

trial of Greenpeace activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, accused of

trespass and theft in their attempt to expose the embezzlement of whale meat

by crew members on board the fleet, who sold it for personal gain. Activists

believe the so-called Tokyo Two case could put the entire whaling programme

in Japan on trial.

 

Japan's stubbornness on whaling is one of the mysteries of world diplomacy.

Why does the country turn angry and unyielding when it comes to whaling? Why

does it continue to snub one of the environmental movement's few lasting

triumphs: the 1986 moratorium on commercial hunts?

 

Oddly, very little is known about the dynamics of whaling in Japan, probably

because foreign media do such an awful job of reporting it. Without an

explanation, Japan's taste for " whale blood " (as The Independent once put

it) seems irrational and barbaric, fuelling racist stereotypes that the

Japanese do not deserve.

 

Clearly, it is not because Japan's citizens love whale meat. A 2006

Greenpeace survey concluded that 95 per cent of Japanese had " never or very

rarely eaten " it. Outside of a handful of local ports, fresh whale is as

rare as, say, veal, in the UK. Pro-whalers respond that it is so only

because foreign pressure has made the meat so expensive to harvest. But even

after the 1986 international whaling moratorium and the start of Japan's

" scientific " whaling, 70 tons of whale meat was left unsold from a catch of

1,873 tons after the fleet returned to port in spring 2001 ­ a fraction of

the 230,000 metric tons consumed in the peak whaling year of 1962. Although

some middle-aged citizens remain fond of it, most youngsters would rather

eat almost anything else. The mass consumption of whale meat, and the

industry that supports it, was essentially forced on Japan by a lack of

alter-native resources half a century ago.

 

So, boring as it sounds, Tokyo's relentless drive to reverse the whaling ban

is essentially political, and understanding why means casting our minds back

to how the ban came into being. The Japanese Fisheries Agency (JFA), which

controls the nation's whaling policy, feels that it was bamboozled and

blackmailed into abandoning commercial hunts by the US-led West.

 

One date, in particular, is for ever burned into the JFA's collective

consciousness. On 30 June 1979, anti-whaling protester Richard Jones, who

later became an Australian senator, dumped red paint over Japanese delegates

at the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) conference in London. Caught

up in the growing environmental movement, the bureaucrats professed no idea

why they were being blamed for the destruction of whale stocks, when

historically the US and Europe had hunted far more whales.

 

In the 1980s, as a bitter trade war raged between Japan and the West,

Washington came under pressure to limit access to its coastal waters, which

yielded nearly a million tonnes of fish per year to Japanese boats. In a

deal struck in the middle of the decade, Japan agreed to withdraw its

objections to the IWC whaling moratorium in return for a US pledge to keep

this access open. But months after Japan formally agreed to the ban in July

1986, its US fishing quota was halved. Two years later, it had fallen to

zero and an angry JFA responded by kick-starting the now infamous practice

of " scientific whaling " .

 

The JFA knows it has zero chance of winning a two-thirds majority to

overturn the IWC ban. It also knows there is no chance of reviving the

commercial industry, which is kept alive on government life-support. What

the agency can do is fight for the symbolic right to whale sustainably, and

occasionally skewer Western hyp-ocrisy, which it does quite well. Why do

American hunters kill five million " beautiful, Bambi-eyed deer " annually,

wondered Japan's top whaling diplomat Joji Morishita at a January press

conference. " I've no problem with that, as long as it is sustainable. "

 

For some Japanese politicians, the appeal of the pro-whaling campaign is

quite clear: Japan can let off steam in the foreign political arena.

 

Fixing what is basically a case of wounded national pride should be

straightforward, but after two decades the pro- and anti-whaling camps are

deeply dug in and have little reason to compromise. Western politicians lose

nothing domestically by not budging an inch on Japanese whaling. Their Tokyo

counterparts can condemn Western " cultural imperialism " and bask in the

reputation as defenders of Japan's right to the " sea commons " .

 

So what to do? One solution has been around for at least two decades: allow

Japan the right to hunt more whales around its own exclusive fishing waters

in exchange for scaling down or pulling out of the high seas. This

essentially is the so-called " compromise package " that has been discussed

for the past two years behind the scenes at the IWC. The details are

forbidding. How many whales would Japan catch? How would the hunts be

monitored? Would such a deal not be simply rewarding Japan for a decade of

brinkmanship, during which it gradually scaled up its Antarctic hunts to the

current 1,000 whales a year?

 

But one reason Norway, which hunts almost as many whales as Japan, gets far

less attention, is because it doesn't send its trawlers outside its own

waters. Some Japanese diplomats have taken note, and are growing tired of

the battering Japan takes every time its fleet leaves port. If Tokyo can be

persuaded to abandon its Southern Ocean cull, limit or stop expeditions to

the North Pacific and submit to monitoring of its coastal catch, shouldn't

this initiative be given a chance?

 

As Sato Tetsu, professor of ecology and environmental sciences at Nagano

University, says. " It is not really a problem of reviving the whaling

industry now; it is a problem of national pride, or at least government and

bureaucratic pride. They basically need a symbolic victory. "