Word: whaled
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...there is more than just fish politics and food culture at stake for Japan when it comes to whaling. Even though few Japanese ever sit down to a plate of whale sashimi, they still resist viscerally the idea that the international community could force Japan to stop whaling. A country that arguably never returned to full sovereignty after World War II - its constitution greatly limits its military, and U.S. armed forces are still based throughout Japan - can get tired of the world telling it what to do. As a Japanese chef told me at that whale festival...
Indeed, even in Japan, whale meat isn't that popular. Though some coastal towns have hunted whale for centuries, relatively few Japanese ate whale regularly before the postwar years, which is when it took off. What changed? Blame U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, head of the U.S. occupation of Japan, who thought whale meat would be a cheap source of protein for an impoverished country and effectively launched the modern Japanese whaling industry. A generation of Japanese schoolchildren grew up accustomed to having whale in their lunch boxes...
...been decades since Japan could be described as impoverished, and a 2008 survey found that 95% of Japanese either eat whale meat very rarely or not at all. The fishing company that owns Japan's whaling ships estimated that annual per capita consumption from its catch might amount to less than four slices of sashimi a year. If Japanese whaling - which is allowed under the international ban only on a very small scale, as "scientific research" - ended tomorrow, your average salaryman in Osaka would barely notice...
...whale wars continue - and even seem to be worsening. In January a vessel belonging to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a group that tries to disrupt Japanese whaling on the high seas, was badly damaged in a collision with a Japanese whaling ship. On March 12, the Japanese Coast Guard in Tokyo arrested Peter Bethune, a member of Sea Shepherd, after he tried to board a whaling ship without permission in February. Yet Sea Shepherd - the subject of the popular Animal Planet reality show Whale Wars - isn't holding back. "Nothing is going to keep us from trying to save...
...neither is Japan. In part, the Japanese may be protecting their right to whale as a stand-in for a separate issue they actually care about: fishing for bluefin tuna, which is popular in sushi. The Japanese eat an estimated 80% of the world's catch of the species, which many scientists believe is in danger of being fished out of existence. If Japan holds the line on whaling, the argument goes, it would send a signal that limits on bluefin tuna aren't up for debate either...