Japan ready to battle 'culinary imperialists'

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THE ZEIT GIST

 

Japan ready to battle 'culinary imperialists'

 

Global whaling debate set to turn very nasty

By DAVID MCNEILL

 

Earlier this year I was commissioned by a British

newspaper to research a Japanese company called

Hakudai, which was reputed to be putting whale meat

into dog food.

 

I found the company in Chikura, a sleepy fishing town

in Chiba Prefecture with a long tradition of whale

hunting; local supermarkets were selling fresh minke,

and prowhaling advertisements decorated the walls. One

poster showed a whale gobbling fish from an image of

the earth with the top sliced off. The blurb, written

by the Fisheries Agency, proclaimed that " whales eat

five times more fish than humans " so they " must be

caught within limits. "

 

Hakudai turned out to be a shop attached to a small

plant employing about two dozen people, some of whom

were cutting slivers of whale meat and drying them in

the sun. The boss was 43-year-old Kiyoshi Okawa, who

inherited the shop from his grandfather.

 

The shop sold small bags of whale jerky for 400 yen

each. " People like to spoil their pets with treats, "

explained Okawa.

 

Okawa was friendly and open, even though he

acknowledged that whaling was unlikely to get a fair

hearing in Britain. " I know how you people feel, but I

honestly can't understand how you can consider whales

cute. Lambs are much cuter to me than whales, and I

don't eat them. "

 

When I pointed out that lambs are not going extinct,

he said he was assured by the Fisheries Agency that

there are " plenty of whales, " especially minke. " And I

believe them, " he said.

 

I sent off the interview transcript, minus any

editorializing, knowing that the eventual story

written in London would likely play into the

stereotype of the cruel, barbarous Japanese.

 

In the end, my story was trumped by a rival newspaper,

which splashed the article prominently and helped make

Hakudai the target of an e-mail campaign that forced

its Web site to shut down.

 

Okawa thought I was the culprit and left angry

messages on my answering machine: " You've ruined my

business, " he said.

 

Last month, I got an even more angry letter from the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- my first -- after the

newspaper I write for in the U.K. published a separate

story on Japan's push for an end to the 1986 whaling

ban. The letter said our coverage was " illogical " and

" discriminatory. "

 

Foreign journalists here have long struggled to bridge

the cultural divide over whaling between this country

and the readers they cater to abroad. But this job is

about to become much more difficult.

 

Japan and the prowhaling nations of Iceland and Norway

are likely to win control of regulatory body the

International Whaling Commission (IWC) when it meets

in the West Indies in June.

 

Led by Tokyo, which has tirelessly lobbied for the

return of commercial hunting, the three countries hope

to secure 51 percent of IWC votes, paving the way for

the reversal of the whaling ban that the environmental

movement counts as one of its biggest victories.

 

Although scrapping the ban requires a 75 percent

majority, control of the commission will be a huge

propaganda boost to Tokyo's campaign and allow secret

voting and other measures likely to help its cause.

 

The prospect of an end to the two-decade moratorium

will make the conference the most vitriolic yet, after

years of tension between the two bitterly opposed

camps.

 

The IWC has failed to stop the three prowhaling

nations from killing about 2,000 whales a year.

Japan's whaling fleet recently returned from a

" scientific expedition " to an Antarctic whale

sanctuary with a haul of almost 1,000 whales, in

defiance of the whaling body.

 

Pictures of the harpooned, bloodied animals went all

around the world and Australia was one of several

countries that labeled the expedition " a sham. " But

Japan has worked for years to win the support of over

a dozen smaller nations, by buying their votes with

foreign aid, claim critics.

 

Tokyo says the IWC has been hijacked by

environmentalists and is " totally dysfunctional. "

Armed with its own surveys on whaling stocks, the

prowhaling lobby is relishing another skirmish with

what it calls the West's " culinary imperialists. "

 

" We think it's possible to use whale resources in a

sustainable way, " says Hideki Moronuki of the

Fisheries Agency. " We don't have much land, we have

the sea. Japan has lost so much of its own culture

already. Countries like the U.K. and America have

their own resources. We don't tell them what to eat. "

 

But strip away the rhetorical fog about " culture " and

the issues become clearer. Sending factory ships

thousands of kilometers from Japanese ports to hunt

whales in sanctuaries is not the same as some

idealized picture of locals engaged in sustainable

fishing.

 

The agency claims there are close to a million

Antarctic minkes and that it can hunt at a

" scientifically sustainable " level, but so many other

sources dispute those figures that it is simply

impossible to take them at face value.

 

Moreover, " sustainability " arguments were heard when

other species, such as gray whales, were being hunted

to near extinction.

 

These issues, and the enormous damage that an end to

the ban will likely cause to Japan's international

reputation, should be the topic of a national debate,

but the media here has so far remained silent.

 

In the meantime, the terms of what little debate there

is are being set by a small nationalist clique.

Indeed, most foreign journalists are stuck by the tone

of wounded national pride that emerges in discussions

with whaling supporters.

 

" The consumption of rice has decreased because we were

forced to consume bread in school after World War II

in order to import huge amounts of flour from the

U.S., " argues Moronuki.

 

Japan's whaling " research fleet " is backed by a lobby

of nationalist politicians in the Liberal Democratic

Party, including Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

Minister Shoichi Nakagawa The lobby has spent billions

of yen in a tireless diplomatic offensive to reverse

the 1986 ban. The same LDP politicians can be found

behind other rightwing causes, such as revisionist

history textbooks.

 

Without their support, there is little prospect that

whale hunting would be economically viable: the sale

of whale meat barely covers the cost of sending

Japan's eight whaling ships out of harbor.

 

One problem faced by this lobby is falling whale meat

consumption. Even before 1986, when the moratorium on

whaling began, whale eating was declining and about

one percent of the population now eats it regularly,

say most surveys.

 

With whale cuisine confined mostly to a handful of

outlets, the prowhalers have struggled to dispose of

Japan's growing stocks of whale meat -- almost 5,000

tons, according to one recent report.

 

This problem is being worked out by stealth. Last

year, schoolchildren in rural Wakayama Prefecture

found deep-fried whale in their lunchboxes, and

similar schemes are afoot in government-related

organizations that don't have to struggle for the

consumers' pocket.

 

" It should be simple to work out our differences but

things seem to get so emotional, " said Okawa.

 

Now the whaling discussion is about to get even more

emotional.

 

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The Japan Times: Tuesday, May 30, 2006

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