Japan Must Stop Killing Whales
Japan and its cruel whale hunting
When asked why Japan still does whaling, the Japanese govt. said — Whaling is an ancient part of Japanese culture, that fishermen have caught whales for centuries, and that Japan will never allow foreigners to tell its people what they can and cannot eat.
Don’t you think this is a shocking answer? In the name of culture, can any country slaughter whales and push them towards extinction?
Japan’s Cruel Whale Hunting
In the mid-1930s, Japan started whaling in the Antarctic on a smaller scale. But after WWII, the country came up with a huge whaling voyage to feed its struggling and starving people.
With the support of General Douglas MacArthur, Japan turned two huge US Navy tankers into factory ships and went whaling to the Southern Ocean. And you can easily assume why from the 1940s to the mid-1960s, whale meat was the single biggest source of meat in Japan.
In 1964, Japan killed more than 24,000 whales, and most of them were enormous fin whales and sperm whales.
Japan’s unquenchable thirst for whale meat continued to kill fin whales, sperm whales, minke whales, and more. So, on March 31, 2014, the UN Court of Justice declared Japan’s Antarctic whaling program illegal.
After that declaration, Japan stopped its whaling program for only a year, and it resumed again in the 2015–16 season in disguise of ‘scientific research,’ ignoring the international interference. This research was actually a loophole that keeps Japan away from the International Whaling Corporation (IWC) ban. Japan even gave incentives to many countries to join the IWC and vote in its favor.
In the 2017–18 season, Japan slaughtered hundreds of whales, and a figure revealed that 122 out of the 181 female minke whales killed at that time were pregnant.
Japan left IWC on July 01, 2019, and continued its cruel hunting of hunt Minke, Bryde’s, and Sei whale in the North Pacific. They also resumed their commercial whaling.
Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) states that in 2021, Japanese whalers will set sail to hunt 171 minke whales, 187 Bryde’s whales, and 25 sei whales.
Why Japan Continues Whaling
Like Norway and Iceland and the Inuit of northern Canada, coastal whaling is part of Japanese culture, says a BBC article. But among those countries, only Japan still sends a fleet of ships, including a large factory ship, to the Antarctic for whaling. You would be surprised to know that that factory ship can process hundreds of whales at sea.
WDC mentions that the Japanese government subsidizes whaling to the tune of nearly US$10 million per year.
It is extremely difficult for Japan to stop whaling due to some political reasons. It is a government-run operation with an enormous budget and related to several bureaucrat’s promotions and pensions.
To Conclude
Though hundreds of scientists have expressed their concern that we are moving closer to a number of preventable extinctions, Japan is not ready to listen to them. Now it has become a possibility that future generations will be denied the chance to experience these intelligent, social, and inspiring creatures.
And there is also a big misconception that Japanese people have been eating whale meat for thousands of years as a part of their culture. No, it’s not because whale meat became available and popular only after WWII.
WDC mentions that post-WWII whale meat made up 46% of total meat consumption but then it declined rapidly and nowadays it only makes up 2% of all meat consumed in Japan.
Thank you for reading.
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