Whaling and Japan: Japan persists in its quest for whalers' rights, despite fierce opposition and even demonization by foreign media. Is Japan being treated fairly? This summer's International Whaling Commission meeting in Berlin promises to heat up the great whaling debate

Japan, Inc., June, 2003 by Debbi Gardiner

IN MID-MARCH, ON the Polynesian island Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific, aid officials from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) found themselves in a stew. According to local reports, delegates from the inter-governmental organization offered to help Tonga rebuild a hospital in the island of Nuku'alofa. Theoretically, there should be nothing wrong with the gesture. But what rankles officials is the condition of the loan: in exchange, Japan wants the island Kingdom to support its bid (along with Norway's and other whaling nations') to overturn the IWC's moratorium on commercial whaling.

Nobody mentioned in the local articles could confirm allegations of Japanese vote buying. But because of similar previous allegations and the knowledge that Japan wants the ban lifted, the mere mention of the incident makes environmental groups and journalists seethe. NGOs like Greenpeace say that despite the 1986 moratorium, Japan is illegally killing hundreds of the endangered mammals each year. Natalie Brandon, oceans campaigner for Greenpeace in the US, says: "There are still several threats to whales, including ship collisions and toxic chemicals in the ocean. Commercial whaling is just one that shouldn't be there."

The Tonga incident has added salt to the open wound of the more than 30 year-old whaling debate. With this month's annual IWC meeting in Berlin, the finger-pointing and mud-slinging between NGOs, whalers and anti-whalers is intensifying. Japan and other whaling communities in Norway, Iceland and the US state of Alaska would like to resume sustainable whaling this year, citing cultural, nutritional and economic factors. To achieve that goal, they need three-quarters of IWC members to vote for change. At last year's IWC meeting in Shimonsoseki, Japan's bid to resume commercial whaling was rejected by 25 votes to 16. While resumption is blocked by countries such as New Zealand, Australia, the US, UK, France and Germany, environmentalists are annoyed that the Japanese are daring to try again.

The environmental debate

The whaling debate is extremely emotional. Spokespeople for the Japan camp interviewed by J@pan Inc all claim to have been harassed by environmental groups for their views. One scientist says he has received death threats. For Japan's part, efforts to remove the ban invite a tirade of criticism and rage. And yet the nation clearly wants the right to whale again.

Mike Donohue is the senior international relationship Officer for the Department of Conservation in New Zealand and its principal spokesman on the whaling issue. Donohue says the major problem environmentalists have with Japan and other whaling countries is a concern that the world's whale stock is depleting. Commercial whaling, he says, is from a time that was already passed. The New Zealand government does support indigenous whaling--people who have a nutritional and cultural reliance on whaling, says Donohue. "But Japan is into commercial, not nutritional, whaling."

Also riling the environmentalists is the belief that by exploiting the guise of "scientific" whaling, Japan is selling whale meat on the market for profit. Using the scientific clause of the IWC, Donohue says, Japan has killed more than 6,000 minke whales in the Antarctic. "And yet everything Japan purports to be demonstrating or researching they could find out through non-lethal means," he says.

While whaling communities in Norway, Iceland and Alaska claim to need of at least strongly desire whale meat in their diet, environmentalists say Japan overrates the demand. A survey by the Asahi Shimbun showed that only 47 percent of Japanese support whaling. Only 6 percent of those wanting to resume whaling gave eating whale meat as their reason.

The whaling argument

Experts and many Japanese and researchers outside of Japan question whether whale populations are depleted at all. Milton Freeman is a whaling expert at the University of Alberta in Canada. He has attended several IWC meetings, including one in Japan where he saw how local communities were affected by the ban.

Freeman says there are three times as many minke whales as there were 30 years ago, and humpbacks are increasing by 17 percent a year.

Greenpeace and other NGOs argue that whalers want to whale for simple profit. The Cetacean Research Institute, a government group which markets whale meat in Japan, says raw whale meat sells for up to $100 per pound in Tokyo supermarkets and whale meat sales are estimated at $36 million a year. Even so, experts now say that since whale oil is no longer used, the real money-making days of whaling are over.

Some communities are doing fine despite the moratorium. In Wakayama prefecture, Taiji, which has been at the center of Japanese whaling since the 1600s, has hardly suffered. Thanks to tourist interest, the town has accumulated enough funds to give welfare services to the townfolk after the ban on minke whaling was administered.

But a book by researchers at the Cetacean Research Institute explains that communities located in rocky areas where agriculture cannot be developed have experienced severe disruption.