Japan is likely to provoke the biggest diplomatic clash over whale hunting for years on Friday when it proposes doubling the number it is allowed to kill for ”scientific research”.
Japanese officials refused to discuss details ahead of the opening on Friday of a meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Ulsan, South Korea. But opponents say Tokyo wants to double its annual kill of minke whales to 800, and to kill 50 humpback and 50 fin whales, the first time it has hunted the two species since its research programme began in 1987.
The IWC’s 57 members are split. Opponents concede that it may take only several years for Japan and its allies to secure the three-quarters of the votes they need to resume full commercial whaling. Tokyo has repeatedly threatened to leave if the IWC continues to block a resumption of even a limited form of commercial whaling.
Scientific hunts are permitted under IWC regulations. Critics say they amount to a resumption because 2 000 tonnes of meat from the culls is sold in restaurants and supermarkets, fetching an estimated $51-milllion.
Trade in whale meat is not illegal: under IWC regulations countries may use the byproducts of scientific hunts as they see fit. In Japan, that means eating them. This week, the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, said Australia would work with the United States, New Zealand and Britain to persuade Japan to reconsider, although he did not support blocking Japanese whaling ships.
”There are other ways of trying to change what I regard as a very bad decision by the Japanese,” he said in a radio interview.
But Shigeko Misaki of the Japan Whaling Association dismissed his concerns. ”The Australians are not informed of the scientific facts, of the necessity of the scientific hunts,” she said.
”It is up to Japanese scientists to disseminate that information. The dissemination had been tardy and centred around the IWC scientific experts. This is causing all sorts of cultural discrimination against the Japanese consumption of whale, so we have to do a better job of public relations,” she added.
Green party politicians in the region have called for a boycott of Japanese products.
New Zealand’s conservation minister, Chris Carter, said his government was prepared to ”explore any avenue … to stop Japan slaughtering these whales,” including taking Tokyo to the World Court in the Hague.
Japan insists hunts are necessary to monitor changes in the makeup of the whale population, although it admits they are a precursor to a return to commercial whaling.
”We are conducting this research so that we can properly manage whale resources,” said Takanori Nagatomo, deputy director of the whaling section at Japan’s fisheries agency. ”To resume commercial whaling, we have to collect scientific data.”
Scientists say that the most reliable way of determining a whale’s age, for example, is by examining wax from its inner ear, a procedure that means killing the animal first.
Scientific arguments aside, many Japanese regard the ban as an attack on their way of life.
”I understand that they feel like that, but that doesn’t give them the right to stop us. All people have the right to decide how to live based on their culture. Eating whale meat is a part of our culture, and we want to protect it,” said Nagatomo.
”The government talks about our tradition of whaling, but there’s nothing traditional about hunting in the Antarctic using modern ships and equipment,” said Mizuki Takana of Greenpeace Japan.
”Most teenagers and people in their 20s have never eaten whale meat, so I don’t think we can say it’s a living tradition. Consumption is actually declining here.” – Guardian Unlimited Â