Post by LSDeep on Jan 25, 2006 8:15:18 GMT -5
News Feature/Commentary, Christopher Reed,
New America Media, Jan 24, 2006
TOKYO, Japan--Environmental opponents of Japanese whaling in Antarctica, where recent ocean confrontations have become dangerous, are increasingly reminded of Oscar Wilde's famous dismissal of the tally-ho types who went fox hunting in Britain: "The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable."
Hostility to Japan reached a new level on Jan. 19, when Greenpeace activists dumped a 20-ton, 56-foot fin whale corpse outside the Japanese embassy in Berlin. They were making the point that cadavers like this mammal that had died naturally in the Baltic are available for "scientific research" -- Japan's rationale for its current four-month, southern-sea hunt for the warm-blooded ocean titans.
Up until their whale-dumping protest in Berlin, two boats crewed by Greenpeace activists clashed with Japanese vessels in Antarctic waters for three weeks. Deadly harpoons narrowly missed protesters and vessels collided amid fears of serious injury or death. The New Zealand air force has flown over the site and the Australian government is closely watching.
By continuing whaling in the name of science, Japan avoids the International Whaling Commission's 20-year worldwide ban on the commercial industry. But this season already, the Japanese whaler Nisshin Maru's slaughter of over 125 Antarctic minke whales, with a target of over 900 in all, has caused 17 nations to demand that it cease its bloody business. Tokyo has declined.
Although Norway and Iceland have also done some whaling, Japan earns conservationists' extra wrath because of what, say activists, is the dubious nature of another of its claims (rather than racism, which some Japanese have suggested). Japanese like to eat whale flesh, the argument from Tokyo goes, and have done so for more than 1,000 years. Unfortunately for its dwindling enthusiasts, these arguments are easily disproved.
These days, almost no Japanese under the age of 60 eats whale meat; it was only consumed on a large scale during shortages after the end of the Pacific War in 1945. Where it is available today, customers are almost entirely elitist gourmets with plenty of money -- or misguided nationalists.
Undisputed research by a British opinion-poll firm in 1999 found only 1 percent of Japanese acknowledged eating "kujira no niku" -- whale meat -- even once a month, and 61 percent said the last time they ate it was as children. My own telephone inquiries at three leading supermarket chains found not one selling it these days, even canned, and an Internet search of gourmet restaurants showed it to be rarer than lamb chops in this mainly fish-eating nation.
One restaurant in Shibuya, Tokyo, called Kujiraya -- "the whale place" -- offered five styles of the meat at nearly $60 per person, and individual steaks at $15 each. In the Shinjuku district at a restaurant called Taruichi, its owner Takashi Sato acknowledged that his whale meat dishes were continuing a tradition of his father's, but lost money. Only in the southern island of Kyushu, Japan's historic whaling location, were restaurants that offered the dish commonplace.
A dish available by mail order is whale "bacon" -- the meat is salted, smoked and thinly cut -- but that can cost about $150 a pound, way above the choicest beef steak. Eating it raw, sashimi style, costs $5 for one paper-thin slice smaller than a visiting card.
McDonald's in Japan, where fish hamburgers are popular, need fear no competition in taste from the flesh of Balaenopterae. But an element of nationalism can creep in. Some Japanese, encouraged by the government and its Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) in Tokyo, which is also the pro-whaling public relations office, regard opponents as foreign bullies.
Taruichi's Sato, for instance, proclaimed that opposition to Japanese whaling was "American culinary imperialism," although the United States was not among the 17 protesting nations headed by Brazil. Sato added: "Telling the Japanese not to hunt whales is like telling the British to stop drinking tea, or denying the French their pate. This is how you start a war."
Apart from culinary or cultural reasons, the ICR's "science" explanation for killing Antarctic minkes is vague; the World Wildlife Fund describes it as "sham." The ICR also admits that the whale meat supplying restaurants is left over from research -- and last year, 20 percent of the 4,000-tonne haul, half this year's expected catch, had to be frozen and stored unused.
One ICR research finding might offer a sounder scientific reason for Japan's unpopular insistence on continuing to kill whales. The minkes, it states, eat "three to five times" the marine life caught for human consumption, including popular Japanese fish dishes such as anchovy, Pacific saury, cod and walleye pollock, all "commercially important species."
But as Greenpeace campaigner John Frizell has noted: "As long as opponents can be presented as international bullies, the Japanese can keep the controversy going." Perhaps, but not the customers coming.
PNS contributor Christopher Reed, a former correspondent for the London Guardian, lives in Japan.
New America Media, Jan 24, 2006
TOKYO, Japan--Environmental opponents of Japanese whaling in Antarctica, where recent ocean confrontations have become dangerous, are increasingly reminded of Oscar Wilde's famous dismissal of the tally-ho types who went fox hunting in Britain: "The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable."
Hostility to Japan reached a new level on Jan. 19, when Greenpeace activists dumped a 20-ton, 56-foot fin whale corpse outside the Japanese embassy in Berlin. They were making the point that cadavers like this mammal that had died naturally in the Baltic are available for "scientific research" -- Japan's rationale for its current four-month, southern-sea hunt for the warm-blooded ocean titans.
Up until their whale-dumping protest in Berlin, two boats crewed by Greenpeace activists clashed with Japanese vessels in Antarctic waters for three weeks. Deadly harpoons narrowly missed protesters and vessels collided amid fears of serious injury or death. The New Zealand air force has flown over the site and the Australian government is closely watching.
By continuing whaling in the name of science, Japan avoids the International Whaling Commission's 20-year worldwide ban on the commercial industry. But this season already, the Japanese whaler Nisshin Maru's slaughter of over 125 Antarctic minke whales, with a target of over 900 in all, has caused 17 nations to demand that it cease its bloody business. Tokyo has declined.
Although Norway and Iceland have also done some whaling, Japan earns conservationists' extra wrath because of what, say activists, is the dubious nature of another of its claims (rather than racism, which some Japanese have suggested). Japanese like to eat whale flesh, the argument from Tokyo goes, and have done so for more than 1,000 years. Unfortunately for its dwindling enthusiasts, these arguments are easily disproved.
These days, almost no Japanese under the age of 60 eats whale meat; it was only consumed on a large scale during shortages after the end of the Pacific War in 1945. Where it is available today, customers are almost entirely elitist gourmets with plenty of money -- or misguided nationalists.
Undisputed research by a British opinion-poll firm in 1999 found only 1 percent of Japanese acknowledged eating "kujira no niku" -- whale meat -- even once a month, and 61 percent said the last time they ate it was as children. My own telephone inquiries at three leading supermarket chains found not one selling it these days, even canned, and an Internet search of gourmet restaurants showed it to be rarer than lamb chops in this mainly fish-eating nation.
One restaurant in Shibuya, Tokyo, called Kujiraya -- "the whale place" -- offered five styles of the meat at nearly $60 per person, and individual steaks at $15 each. In the Shinjuku district at a restaurant called Taruichi, its owner Takashi Sato acknowledged that his whale meat dishes were continuing a tradition of his father's, but lost money. Only in the southern island of Kyushu, Japan's historic whaling location, were restaurants that offered the dish commonplace.
A dish available by mail order is whale "bacon" -- the meat is salted, smoked and thinly cut -- but that can cost about $150 a pound, way above the choicest beef steak. Eating it raw, sashimi style, costs $5 for one paper-thin slice smaller than a visiting card.
McDonald's in Japan, where fish hamburgers are popular, need fear no competition in taste from the flesh of Balaenopterae. But an element of nationalism can creep in. Some Japanese, encouraged by the government and its Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) in Tokyo, which is also the pro-whaling public relations office, regard opponents as foreign bullies.
Taruichi's Sato, for instance, proclaimed that opposition to Japanese whaling was "American culinary imperialism," although the United States was not among the 17 protesting nations headed by Brazil. Sato added: "Telling the Japanese not to hunt whales is like telling the British to stop drinking tea, or denying the French their pate. This is how you start a war."
Apart from culinary or cultural reasons, the ICR's "science" explanation for killing Antarctic minkes is vague; the World Wildlife Fund describes it as "sham." The ICR also admits that the whale meat supplying restaurants is left over from research -- and last year, 20 percent of the 4,000-tonne haul, half this year's expected catch, had to be frozen and stored unused.
One ICR research finding might offer a sounder scientific reason for Japan's unpopular insistence on continuing to kill whales. The minkes, it states, eat "three to five times" the marine life caught for human consumption, including popular Japanese fish dishes such as anchovy, Pacific saury, cod and walleye pollock, all "commercially important species."
But as Greenpeace campaigner John Frizell has noted: "As long as opponents can be presented as international bullies, the Japanese can keep the controversy going." Perhaps, but not the customers coming.
PNS contributor Christopher Reed, a former correspondent for the London Guardian, lives in Japan.