Film about “secret” dolphin hunt in Japan to compete at Sundance

A documentary film claiming to expose the “secret” dolphin slaughter that takes place every year at a cove in the Japanese fishing village of Taiji has been selected as a finalist for the Sundance Film Festival:

Titled “The Cove,” the full-length film directed by former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos and featuring former “Flipper” trainer Ric O’Barry of the Save Japan Dolphins coalition, will have its premiere at the festival before entering worldwide distribution.

In addition to showing the savage, government-sanctioned killing of dolphins herded into a small cove via cameras and underwater microphones, the film highlights the dangers facing those who eat the mammals’ meat.

If you’re looking for some information about the Taiji dolphin hunt, I’d suggest this 2007 article by David McNeill. It includes an interview in which Ric O’Barry expresses his contempt for Japanese anti-whaling activists:

I knew about the slaughter about 10 years ago but I was under the impression that other NGOs were working on it. I didn’t realize until I came here that all they’re doing is putting these graphic pictures on their websites and telling people to write to the prime minister of Japan. And that won’t stop it.

The Japanese groups are under an umbrella and they’re all upset with me because they don’t like westerners coming here and interfering. They say ‘we’ve been working on this for 20 years.’ I say, ‘So how come the Japanese people don’t know this is going on? What have you been doing for 20 years? They say we’re not against whaling, we’re for the whales. It is some kind of politically correct, fucking mumbo-jumbo, what does it mean?

It’s really not so hard to imagine why Japanese activists have had less success with this issue. Western activists can draw upon the financial support of Hollywood stars and people who share their views about the special status of dolphins, giving them a lot of resources with which to carry out their activities. Japanese activists are likely to have far less cash, and the fact that they have to stay in Japan and live with the consequences of their activities would discourage them from some of the law-breaking methods used by foreign film makers. Domestic activists would also probably have less luck with the kind of arguments employed by foreign activists such as O’Barry. Calling a dolphin hunt “genocide” might work in Hollywood, but in Japan it’s mumbo-jumbo.

While most Japanese people think dolphins are cute and probably wouldn’t want to eat them, I doubt many of them think that dolphins should be singled out as special creatures that cannot be eaten. The Japanese media also doesn’t appear to consider the slaughter of dolphins to be any more newsworthy than the slaughter of pigs, cows, and other animals used for meat.

Note: The man in the white car who follows around the activists in the trailer is not a police officer or a gangster. He’s just some fisherman who is monitoring the movements of the foreign activists that try to obstruct his business.

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