Daryl Hannah joins Sea Shepherd’s pirate ship

Jason:

As far as I can understand, the Japanese government have to keep telling people that whale is a Japanese Tradition, and evil foreigners want them to stop because they dont understand. Domestically, the Japanese government presents itself as protecting japanese culture from stupid foreigners on this issue.

Thanks to groups like Sea Shepherd, they can continue to claim this. Seeing foreign groups use violence and intimidation to force their cultural views about what animals should not be used for food only makes a backlash. Sea Shepherd is doing a truly great job at helping build support for the whalers in Japan.

Since the Japanese had no factory ships before the Meiji era, I think it is OK if they row out and kill a whale with there bare hands in the ‘traditional’ way, but not until we sold them whaling ships did they go to the Antartic to hunt.

Japan does its whaling in the antarctic because whale populations in that area are at a level that can support a very limited hunt. Centuries of whaling from non-Japanese ships wiped out much of the whale populations in Japanese costal waters.

If we can give up our whaling ‘tradition’, so can they.

Our whaling tradition was one of harvesting oil. We gave up that tradition because we found better sources of energy. You really can’t compare it with Japan’s culture of actually eating whale meat.

the Japanese news never mentions that in most countries Japanese whaling is seen as vile.

I’ve seen plenty of media reports that mention how public opinion in Europe/North America/Australia/New Zealand is against whaling.

It would be dishonest for them to report that “most countries” think Japanese whaling is vile, because most countries don’t seem to care much either way.

I agree with you about the popularity of whale meat in Japan. Most people don’t care for it, and actual consumption is very low. As this is the case, there is really no reason to worry much about Japan’s whaling program. At its current level it kills an insignificantly small number of whales, and there is no domestic demand that would call for a huge increase in their quotas.

True, Japan has found better sources of food, and there isn’t a strong traditional nationwide tradition of eating whale meat that goes back for centuries, but I think food carries more cultural value in peoples’ minds than oil.

Some of the Japanese who grew up eating whale meat developed a taste for it and there’s a certain emotional attachment to it. Some of them might want their kids or grandchildren to share their love for a certain seafood, or at least be able to eat whale meat at certain niche restaurants. They don’t choose what food they eat based on how efficient it is to harvest, they just eat it because they want to.

In the west, whale oil was used for lighting and machine lubrication, and when superior alternatives became available whale oil was replaced. A few old folks might have had a fondness for whale oil lamps, but there wasn’t much of a case for keeping them around when cheaper and brighter electric/natural gas lamps became available. Businesses saw cheaper and more efficient energy sources, so the whaling industry pretty much died in those countries.

My main point was that you can’t really compare hunting animals for food with hunting them for the use of their fat as an energy source. The argument of energy sources to use usually has a lot to do with a rational breakdown of cost/efficiency, but when arguing over what food to eat it becomes more about personal tastes and emotional attachments.