Amidst significant global backlash, Japan on Monday resumed its practice of commercial whale hunting, with five small ships fitted with tarpaulin-covered harpoons setting sail off the Kushiro harbour to the north of the island.
The move follows the nation’s decision to leave the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in December 2018. The IWC bans commercial whaling with a few exceptions. Japan has long since maintained that the practice of whaling is intrinsically linked to its tradition and should not be subject to international scrutiny.
It has also put forth the view that very few species of whales are endangered in the first place and that the practice is not going to be any different from the breeding and culling of other animals for food. Among prominent campaigners who have been active on behalf of the whaling industry is Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose constituency includes a city that has whaled for a long time.
On Monday, thus, the atmosphere in Kushiro was one of celebration. The ships, which are set to be joined by vessels from the southern port of Shimonoseki and will spend much of the summer hunting for minke and Baird’s beaked whales, received a send-off attended by a quite a few people.
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“My heart is overflowing with happiness, and I’m deeply moved,” AFP quoted Yoshifumi Kai, head of the Japan Small-Type Whaling Association, as having noted while addressing a crowd of several dozen politicians, local officials and whalers.
“This is a small industry, but I am proud of hunting whales. People have hunted whales for more than 400 years in my home town,” Kai reportedly said.
His words were echoed by 66-year-old taxi driver Sachiko Sakai, who told Reuters that whales were part of Japan’s food culture and that if there was more whale meat available, he would eat more.
Scientific research or a ‘small’ industry?
Japan has set its own limit for whale hunting. This year’s quota for commercial whaling, including minkes, sei whales and Bryde’s whales, is 227, Japan’s official fisheries agency told Reuters.
As Kai observed, the size of Japan’s whaling industry is positively tiny. Whale makes up about 0.1% of all meat eaten in a year, with fewer than 300 people directly linked to the industry.
Crew members of a whaling ship prepare before sailing out at a port in Kushiro, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan on July 1, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Masashi Kato
Japan’s annual supplies of about 4,000 tonnes to 5,000 tonnes amount to 40 gm to 50 gm for each citizen, or about the weight of half an apple. Whaling supporters admit that building demand will take time.
The fall in demand could be attributed to disconnect its younger population may have felt to the practice of consuming whale. Japan abandoned commercial whaling in 1988. However, in 1987 it began a widely panned practice of whaling in protected Antarctic waters for what it called ‘scientific research.’
Activists have said the hunts had no scientific value. Meat from the 330 whales caught in the Antarctic ended up in Japanese markets for public consumption. Now, Japan is set to abandon whaling in the Antarctic and with it, the necessity to label the hunting as scientifically guided.
“The word ‘research’ may have been removed from the side of the factory ship, finally ending Japan’s charade of harpooning whales under the guise of science, but these magnificent creatures will still be slaughtered for no legitimate reason,” said Nicola Beynon of Humane Society International.
A ban on commercial hunting
The recategorisation of the nation’s intent behind whale hunting coincided with the ‘pause’ in commercial whaling effected by the IWC from the 1985-1986 season. As has been noted in the IWC’s official website, the the ‘pause’, referred to as the commercial whaling moratorium, remains in place today.
A whaling ship sails out from Kushiro, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan on July 1, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Masashi Kato
However, exceptions exist. Norway and Iceland both whale commercially. These countries establish their own catch limits but must provide information on their catches and associated scientific data, notes the IWC.
In April 2018, reported IceNews, the Icelandic whale hunting company Hvalur hf. said it would resume whale hunting after a two-year break. Made to operate under a 161-whale limit, Hvalur hf. said the whales that they caught will be used in research and manufacturing iron-rich food supplements and gelatine. Interestingly, the report mentions Norwegians’ hopes for a revival of Japanese markets.
Another exception exists to the whaling moratorium for countries and communities to whom “whale products play an important role in the nutritional and cultural lives”. The cases of four IWC member countries — Denmark (Greenland), Russia (Chukotka), St Vincent and the Grenadines (Bequia) and the United States (Alaska and also potentially a resumption of hunts previously undertaken by the Makah Tribe of Washington State) — are mentioned.
Japan, evidently, was not part of these exceptions, a fact which may have contributed to the country’s decision to quit the IWC. Meanwhile, environmentalists, marine life conservationists and celebrities from across fields have come down upon Japan heavily.
To what end?
Theories are already in circulation as to how Japan may have delayed the resumption of commercial whaling enough so that it does not coincide with the G20 summit of leaders. Yet other theories posit that the move to flout the IWC in full spirit is one that will bear so few dividends that Japan might be compelled to abandon whaling altogether.
Patrick Ramage, head of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, called the move a face-saving solution. “It’s a good decision for whales, it’s a good decision for Japan, and it’s a good decision for international marine conservation,” he told Reuters.
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Ramage’s words reinforce the idea that the practice of whaling is, quite simply, a lot of work and a lot of damage done for something that benefits society and economy very little.
In as early as the 1990s, scientist Alfred Berzin was contrasting Japan’s practice of whaling in the Antarctic with Soviet Russia’s project to kill some 180,000 humpbacks across oceans in the southern hemisphere. In a detailed and startling report by Charles Homan on the Pacific Standard, Berzin has been quoted as calling the Japanese’s crime a motivated one, one that was “at least understandable” in the light of the fact that at least 90% of the whales they caught were used.
In contrast, Homan focuses on Russia’s absurd conquest nearly fifty years ago for a strangely intensive whaling expedition that wiped out entire populations from the seas for reasons that do not seem to have been anything other than statistics entered in the government books.
(With Reuters inputs)