Japan Reboot Whaling

An episode of the Quirky Japanese Podcast podcast, hosted by Yuto Ito, titled "Japan Reboot Whaling" was published on July 8, 2019 and runs 7 minutes.

July 8, 2019 ·7m · Quirky Japanese Podcast

Summary

Last year Japan announced it would leave the IWC. Japan’s member of the IWC failed to convince the other members to support a return to “sustainable” commercial whaling. “Japan is out of step with the international community", Sam Annesley, director at Greenpeace Japan, said in a statement. Japan’s whaling ships have a permit to catch totally 227 whales this year in Japanese waters. The targets are like minke whales, Bryde's whales and sei whales. Last year, until the last March, Japan’s whalers killed 333 minke whales during their final “research” expedition to the Antarctic sea. But, In previous years, Japan’s whalers killed almost 1,000 a year. Last Monday in Kushiro, Hokkaido, five ships left the port for hunting the whales. At the same day, in shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, three whaling boats left the port. Nicola Beynon of Humane Society International said "This is a sad day for whale protection globally," accusing Japan’s act as a "new and shocking era of pirate whaling". Two big anti-whaling country is Australia and England. Somehow, both of them is set no comment. British former PM Teresa May has no power to bring up the criticism to Japan. But, there is a rumour, at the G20 summit last month, Abe convinced AUS PM Scott Morrison to not speak out about whaling. Japan’s fisheries agency invest the biggest budget on whaling. They explains the whales meat is the important resource for its citizens. And secondly they say Japanese has the unique culture of eating the meat. Japanese used to eat whale’s meat “broadly”. There is a subtle meaning between the sentences. I admit ancient Japanese was catching a whale as part of a ceremony. But, people started eating the meat broadly after the WWⅡ. There is a huge time gap between the lines. The supplying of whale meat was higher than the any other meats at a points after the war. Japan wasn’t set up for the other meat products like beef, pork and chicken. Until the imports of the other meat products became stable, the supplying was dependent on the whale meat. The head of the fisheries agency Shigeto Hase commented that he believes the young generation heritage the culture and he also believes the taste is good. I studied the Japanese history in the high school but I’ve never heard the ceremonial culture is important or unique in the history book. In fact, the other country has similar circumstances like Indonesian or coastal Indian. I personally never liked whale meat. It’s simply no good. There is so many delicious seafood around our nation. It’s so weird and sad. Whale is so smart and adorable. It’s so stupid the fisheries agency treat the whale as fish. So embarrassing. I don’t think it’s gonna be successful. I introduce one comment from the Guardian. Patrick Ramage, the director of marine conservation at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said the resumption of commercial whaling “will not magically increase market demand”. “The palates of the Japanese people have moved on,” Ramage said. “They have lost their yen for whale meat, even as their government has spent billions in taxpayer yen trying to prop up this economic loser. What we are seeing is the beginning of the end of Japanese whaling.” I guess it is true that less news media or mass media accuse Japan compared to the 5 years ago. Japan “prouldly” announced this withdrawal. To me it looks like Japan was abandoned from the IWC, the rest of the country.

Episode Description