January, 2008 

This is an edited excerpt from an opinion article published in The Australian newspaper in 2006. 

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 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 International Whaling Commission, which gives 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.

But 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, public surveys consistently claim that a small minority of Japanese eat whale meat frequently, while a majority say they have never eaten whale or had eaten it only as children, in lunches provided by schools. 

So if 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.

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 agency in charge of fisheries, a rather stuffy and conservative department compared with the more outward-looking foreign affairs ministry. Fisheries 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 go along with the moratorium. 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 in Japan's 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 Japan. 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, or during slow news months like January. It also takes the focus off more important issues, such as its own intransigence on global warming.

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 NGO's have suggested. More important, merely tut-tutting Japan's rather insidious vote-buying tactics at the annual IWC meetings or supporting heroic efforts of Sea Shepherd serves no one's cause, least of all that of whale conservation. It's time to get down and dirty, even fishy.

by Masako Fukui, full article originally published in The Australian, June 15th, 2006 |