On Asada Mao And Mori Yoshiro - By Request

No question as to which country she hails from: Asada Mao's profile on the Japan Skating Federation website lists her blood type.

In comments I was asked my thoughts as regards Tokyo 2020 Olympics Organizing Committee Chair and former prime minister Mori Yoshiro's comments on skater Asada Mao’s performance in the short program half of the women's singles figure skating competition at the Sochi Olympics. (Link)

Mori Yoshiro has reputation of saying idiocies when he should know not to. I would argue that Mori is no more of an idiot than the average run of Japanese politician and is far more entertaining than most. He knows what he thinks and is willing to say what he thinks. This makes him a great guest on morning talk shows, as he ends up talking wonderful trash about the current prime minister, the Liberal Democratic Party, the nation's sports organizations...whatever.

Where Mori tends to get into trouble is when he tries to explain why he thinks what he thinks. He could take the easy route and simply excuse himself for following his instincts. Instead he tries to provide an explanation on the fly for opinions he himself has not, until that very moment, thought through. To add a layer of complexity (thereby guaranteeing failure) he tries to read the mood and intellectual level of the room and gear his ad hoc explanation to whatever audience he thinks is out there.

The results are not pretty.

The architecture of his controversial comments on Asada's collapse goes something like this.

a) Asada Mao fell down in the short program in the women's singles figure skating.
b) She fell down because she felt pressure.
c) She felt pressure because she felt responsible for the poor showing of Japan in the team competition.
d) Mao fell down in the team competition, skating the women's short program segment.

SKIP

x) The Reed siblings live in the United States.
y) The Reed siblings are mediocre ice dancers who had no chance at representing the United States.
y) The Reed siblings represent Japan because Japan has no ice dancers.

SKIP

Ergo: Asada Mao fell down in the singles competition because the Reed siblings are not really Japanese?

(Link - J)

Of course, Mori being Mori, the above was not bad enough. He had to go and make the whole thing personal:

"I was watching thinking, 'C'mon girl, give it your best shot for us.’ However, Mao, brilliantly, fell down. That girl, whenever it's really important, she falls down, doesn't she?"*

The tragedy in the complete train wreck of racism, sexism and misguided sports nationalism is that there was in it the germ of an idea, one that was indeed worthy of one whose responsibiilties include the goading of everyone into making an Olympian effort for 2020:

"Mao-chan tends to fall down and usually at the very worst moment. Everybody knows this. She should therefore have never competed in the team competition. When she fell in the team competition's short program segment she felt responsible for the team's finishing out of medal contention. That led her to overcompensate in the singles competition, leading to her breakdown in the short program.

Japan's real problem is that it has no ice dancers or pairs skaters worth a damn. If you look at the final team competition standings, Japan finishes in fifth place with 51 points. Mao finished third in her group, contributing a respectable 8 points to the final tally. Japan's pairs skaters and ice dancers both finished in eighth place in the preliminaries and dead last in the six-team finals. (Link)

How lousy is our domestic ice dancing program? We have to rely on the Reed siblings -- who are Japanese neither by residence nor upbringing and who have zero chance of ever making the U.S. Olympic team -- to fill out our roster."

Does anyone know -- did Mori saying anything about the pairs where Japan's representatives were young, inexperienced, shaky and also not Olympic caliber?

[Takahashi & Kihara finished 18th out of 20 pairs; the Reed siblings finished 21st out of 24 pairs.]

What complicates the story is that Mori's original, unadorned reaction to Asada falling down (and doubling a planned triple jump) in the short program -- “I was watching thinking, 'C'mon girl, give it your best shot for us.' However, Mao, brilliantly, fell down. That girl, whenever it's really important, she falls down, doesn't she?" -- is probably what at least half the country was thinking, and probably still thinks.

Asada is a ferociously talented and dedicated skater, one of the greats. She is also almost never able to put together two clean programs in one competition (I have seen it happen only once: her victory in the nationals in 2009). She is also a national emblem, her image used to sell a huge variety of products, her face the image of Japan’s winter sports programs. Feed those three items into a heady mix of an underperforming country (Link and Link - Gremo Slovenija!) looking for well-groomed sports heroes (Japan's X-sports stars being, for what are sadly obvious reasons, not seen as big corporate sponsorship material) to fight against a beautiful South Korean super villain -- and you get a huge, resentful reaction by half the nation to a young woman's losing her concentration at what future generations will mock as Vladimir Putin's Potemkin Village Festival.

In truth, Asada Mao's legend was best served by her short program collapse and her stunning long program skate. First, it was true to her longtime personal narrative of blowing the short program only to claw back into contention in the free skate -- the 2010 Vancouver Olympics being the one time her long program proved her downfall. Second, had she been in contention after the short program, her immaculate free skate performance, glorious in its pointlessness, would have been swallowed up in the grubby competition for the medals (Link). I have yet to see a commentator or announcer on television point out that Asada skated her program, technically the most difficult of all those competing in Sochi, as well as she possibly could, earning a personal best score-- and still managed to only finish third in the free skate . If she had skated two clean programs she might have won, yes -- but then again, she might have ended up in third or even fourth place.

Asada's plummeting to 16th place in the short program and the lackluster performances by Suzuki Aiko and Murakami Kanako kept Japanese well away from medal contention and thus a safe distance from South Korean anger over the final result. Given Japan's relations with both South Korea and Russia, being away from the fray is very definitely in the national interest. (Link - Nota bene: if you have to put "politely" in your message, your request ain't too polite.)

Asada seems destined to go down in history as the magnificently flawed hero, the skater who was at her best only when she was at her worst, driving her countrymen and countrywomen to distraction and despair.

So Mori-sensei, keep voicing amazed frustration. It is a feeling one can enjoy on its own terms, without explanation.


Later - To clarify what I mean by sexism, Asada Mao falls down once and earns demeaning commentary. Male singles Olympic champion Han'yu Yuzuru falls down twice and is a national hero.

---------

*「頑張ってくれと見ていましたけど（浅田）真央ちゃん、見事にひっくり返りました。あの子、大事なときには必ず転ぶんですね。」If anyone has a suggestion on how to translate this passage so as to better capture the semi-sarcasm of migoto ni please post it in comments.

Abe Shinzo's World, Framed

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo chairing a meeting of the Ministerial Council on Monthly Economic Report and Other Relative Issues on 19 February 2014. Image courtesy the Prime Minister's Residence website.

It is a good day when one article helps illuminate the substrate of reality beneath the facade of events.

If so, yesterday was an amazing day.

- In refutation of Abe Shinzo's remarks in Davos on the severity of the threat posed by China's rise (Link), Robert Dujarric takes apart the idea that China is this century's Wilhelmine Germany. (Link)

Dujarric's arguments notwithstanding, Abe was not wrong to at least try an association of 2014 with 1914 (Link). He seems to have a sense, and it is not an unreasonable one, that the rest of the world has caught up with where he and his friends were on China during the first Abe Administration. Abe and Company's Sinophobia made them freaks in 2006. In 2014, their paranoia is mainstream. (Link)

An acid "We told you so!" from Abe and his supporters would not be out of place.

- Illustrating the extent to which a desperate desire for autonomy (What I have identified as the revisionist right's fervent and quixotic hope that Japan can become the Turkey of East Asia) drives even the Abe Administration's macroeconomic policies is Andrew Browne's interview of Abe economics guru Honda Etsuro (Link). There is nothing in Honda's righteous and occasionally maudlin performance that should come as a surprise to anyone who has listened to Japanese business executives, politicians and academics -- men and women -- talk these past two decades. The huge audience for the the books of Hyakuta Naoki (Link) and the big turnout for General Tamogami Toshio in the Tokyo gubernatorial election show that a sizable fraction of the general population is sympathetic to the revisionist project as well -- far more than Japan explainers have been willing to admit. What is interesting is Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga Yoshihide reached into to his rapidly depleting store of credibility to deny in the Diet that Abenomics has a military objective. (Link)

The inescapable problem with the Japanese revisionist quest for autonomy (the right, for example, for Japanese school curricula to be as crammed with nationalist claptrap as the school curricula of China and South Korea) is, beyond all else, where to get the money for it. The governments national and local are in debt up to their eyeballs, the national government relying on ridiculous levels of deficit financing to keep the economy from cratering. Demographics is hammering down Japan's potential rate of growth. Raising Japan's defense spending to meet the challenge of China's rise would require either heftier taxation or nonsensical cuts in current government spending on non-security programs.

Abenomics, if a full program of easing, stimulus and restructuring were carried out, would go part way toward funding a more autonomous Japan -- but only part way. What the revisionists would never admit is they have no answers for how to pay for the whole journey.

NHK Answers None Of Your Questions

NHK president Momii Kasuto at the microphone, Diet Budget Committee session, 20 February 2014. Image courtesy; Shugiin TV.

Ask me no more questions.
I’ll tell you no more lies.

- “Miss Suzy" (traditional)

It has been an angry morning in the Diet Budget Committee. NHK president Momii Katsuto has been called to the microphone time and time again (Does the chair really have to say "Nippon hoso kyokai" every time, when just saying "NHK" would save three to five seconds?). Momii was asked time and time again to grapple with simple logic. Time and time again, logic came out looking the worse for wear.

Among the concepts the Democratic Party of Japan questioners were asked to accept:

- That under NHK rules Momii lacks the authority or personal capacity to interpret or explain his own remarks

-- Momii cannot confirm or deny the accuracy of his own previous Diet testimony

The head of NHK management Hamada Kei'ichiro had perhaps the winning entry in the contorted thinking category. He offered an argument that, if taken to its logical conclusion, would say that Momii cannot testify about what he said at a meeting of the NHK governors because he has not confirmed with himself the accuracy of his personal recollection of his own remarks.

The complete insanity of the NHK representatives's non-testimony and Budget Committee chair Nikai Toshihiro's unwillingness to threaten Momii and Hamada with contempt led to five interrurptions of the session, with DPJ deputies barking and Nikai ordering the sound feed from the committee cut off.

Momii, an Abe Administration albatross (Link) has proven himself useful in at least one way. After his performance this morning almost anyone else standing behind a Diet microphone, no matter how stubborn or prickly, will seem by comparison a model of cooperation and clarity.


Later - Broken link in above now repaired.

Where's Shinzo? - The Snow's Fallin' Edition

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo on the telephone with Olympic gold medallist Han'yu Yuzuru on 15 February 2014. Image courtesy The Prime Minister's Residence.

The great snowstorm of this past weekend is becoming, albeit weakly so far, a Katrina moment for the Abe Administration. The damage is stunning, particularly to homes and Japan's winter food production infrastructure. An astonishing number of communities remain cut off five days after the snow began falling in earnest. The entire prefecture of Yamanashi entered Monday without a single surface transportation link to connect it with the outside world, this despite decades of loving attention from the Liberal Democratic Party's Road and Construction Tribes.

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s whereabouts and actions during the storm and its aftermath have become a matter of controversy and criticism both in Diet sessions and on the Web. (Link)

For the record, here is my annotated translation of the prime minister's schedule as it appeared in my morning newspaper, detailing where the prime minister was and what he was doing the day the storm arrived and the two days afterward:

Friday, February 14
Morning
7:58 leaves Prime Minister's Residential Quarters for Prime Minister's Residence
8:02 Arrives Prime Minister's Residence.. Chairs meeting of the Headquarters for the Promotion of Social Security Reform (Link)
8:22 Cabinet meeting
8:36 meets with Minister of State for Gender Equality Mori Masako
10:46 meets with Paddy Burke, Chairperson of the Senate of the Republic of Ireland (Link)
Afternoon:
12:01 meets with Minister in charge of Trans Pacific Partnership Amari Akira
12:58 arrives Diet Building
13:02 arrives at plenary session of the House of Representatives
13:03 meets with Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Ishiba Shigeru
13:22 arrives Prime Minister's Residence
14:02 meets Saiki Akitaka, Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs
14:13 meets Kozuki Toyohisa, Director-General of the Division of European Affairs, MOFA
15:41 meets Thomas Enders, CEO of The Airbus Group
16:01 meets Kitamura Shigeru, Director of Cabinet Intelligence
16:31 meets Minister of Defense Onodera Itsunori and Administrative Vice Minister for Defense Nishi Masanori
17:12 chairs meeting of the Council for Science and Technology Policy (Link)
18:20 summit meeting with Christopher Loeak, president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (Link)
18:49 joint press announcement with President Loeak
19:01 Arrives at Prime Minister's Residential Quarters. Formal dinner with President Loeak
20:24 Bid farewell to President Loeak. Returns to Prime Minister’s Residential Quarters.

Saturday, February 15
Morning:
Receives no visitors, stays at the Prime Minister’s Residential Quarters
Afternoon:
14:25 interview by members of the domestic broadcast media
14:31 telephone call with Han'yu Yuzuru, gold medallist, men's singles figure skating, Sochi Olympic Games (Link)
14:54 Arrives at personal residence in Tomigaya, Shibuya City, Tokyo

Sunday, February 16
Morning:
Receives no visitors, stays at his personal residence in Tomigaya
Evening:
17:49 Dinner with supporters (unnamed) at Akasaka tempura restaurant Rakutei.
20:05 Returns to personal residence in Tomigaya

If the Democratic Party of Japan had half a gram of political sense it would have its members hogging every microphone, preening before every camera and tying up Diet proceedings, demanding that the Prime Minister explain his and his administration’s dilatory response to the weather catastrophe -- no matter how petty, superficial, crass, exploitative and petulant it makes the DPJ look from afar.

Because as we know from what happened after 3/11 that is exactly what the LDP would be doing, if it were still the main opposition party.

If I-Phones Are To Blame For Lousy GDP

The JapanRealTime blog has a post up arguing that a significant portion of bad news in the GDP net negative trade figures arises from durable goods retailers having imported in the expectation of a rush to buy before the rise in the consumption tax on April 1.(Link)

If so, then figures to look at to answer the question "Is Abenomics a bust?" will be the monthly retail sales figures. If they do show tradeable durable goods flying out of the nation's showrooms these next two months, great. If not, then look out below -- especially since the alternate explanation, that Japanese consumers after 20 years of deflation are shrugging their shoulders at a sudden 3% increase in prices, is simply ridiculous.

If the data fails to shows retailers moving mountains of inventory, then we will not need to wait for the next GDP release to hit the panic button.

Let us all, Abenomics believers and skeptics alike, pray the retail figures show folks on a spending spree.

Of course, the heavy importation figures in 2013 Q4 could also have been done in anticipation of the yen falling further against major currencies -- a reasonable supposition that has just not panned out.

Of course, there are those who see a silver lining in every cloud -- such as today's lousy GDP figures  pressuring the Bank of Japan to increase the pace of its radical easing measures, leaving cash lying around for the markets to sop up, making the Nikkei a buy. (Link)

An LDP Trying To Take Sexual Images Seriously

With more and more devices being equipped with camera lenses, astonishing data capacity of even tiny items and the transnational space of the Internet, the question of the legal status of uploaded still and motion imagery of one's private sexual behavior is not trivial, particularly in this blessed land where a reputation is still a highly valued if schizophrenically protected asset.

Nevertheless, the shoulders bunch up at Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council announcing the establishment of a Special Committee on Revenge Porno (Ribenji poruno tokumei iinkai) studying what the government can do, if anything, about the uploading of private sexual content to the Internet (Link - J). It might be because of the gratuitous use of loan words in the name of the committee -- gratuitous in that if the effort were sincere there would be a recognizable kanji-based description of the subject being tackled. Perhaps it is because LDP Policy Research Chair Takaichi Sanae's discussing almost any subject tenses the shoulders (NHK had her and the other party policy chiefs on Nichiyo Toron yesterday -- and her every pose and utterance telegraphed her contempt and boredom at the proceedings).

Most likely, however, it is the announcement that the chairman of the special committee on "revenge porno" will be Hirasawa Katsuei.

While there are likely defensible expertise and organizational reasons why Hirasawa might be qualified to lead the committee, it would seem reasonable, given the delicate nature of the assumed offense, to choose a standard bearer who could conceivably be a victim -- or at least would not lead the lay person to titter at the absurdity the thought of the standard bearer ever being a victim. Sadly, of all the members of the LDP, Hirasawa has to be least plausible potential victim of the uploading of his/her private sexual content -- the only "revenge" being what the imagery would be doing to the viewer's retinas and brain. To be fair, the party has named Mihara Junko, a far more plausible potential victim to be Hirasawa's lieutenant. (Link - J)

The announcement of the formation of this committee reeks of insincerity, trendiness and desperation. It is is too small an issue -- at least as packaged -- for Takaichi or even Hirasawa to be handling. That Takaichi feels it necessary to show she has a grip on this problem indicates either she has no sense of proportion or that much of the heavy lifting of policy making has been taken away from the LDP policy research council.

The latter possibility, where a defanged LDP PARC has ceded to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister's myriad advisory committees the role of policy incubator undercuts LDP President Abe Shinzo's favorite talking point on his commitment to women's empowerment. He never stops reminding audiences of his having appointed Takaichi and Noda Seiko, the chair of the General Council, to high party posts. That these posts have nowhere near their former importance (the General Council seeimng to be a body in search of a purpose, given the demise of the factions) would be a most inconvenient truth for the PM to face.

Takahashi Kosuke On Abe Shinzo's Nationalist Plan

Rare it is that I find myself reading an essay where I am in total concord with the views expressed.

That is why I am a bit taken aback by Takahashi Kosuke's essay for The Diplomat entitled "Shinzo Abe’s Nationalist Strategy" (Link). The opening sentence is shaky but the rest of the piece is solid.

It is clear that what underlies Abe Shinzo's attempt to escape from the postwar regime is the faith that the United States will sign off on on pretty much any plan changing Japan's position in the world order as long as interoperability of Japanese Self Defense Forces and U.S. military arms is increased. What is unclear is whether the Abe team is aware that keeping the Pentagon happy is only one facet of a program of increased national resilience -- that the ideological self-indulgences of the escape from the postwar regime can interfere with the hard work of restructuring the economy for growth.

Tip of the hat for the link to Neojaponisme.

Japan's Unfun Olympics

Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games members.
Source: Japan Olympic Commitee website

Japan seems on course for a horrid Olympics. Not the games in Sochi, which are progressing pretty much as can be reasonably expected, the only real negative surprise being World Cup sensation Takanashi Sara’s failure to medal on the normal hill.

No, the games that are shaping up to be a downer are the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. One does not have to be looking under rocks for yakuza, as Jake Adelstein would have us do (admittedly, it would take a huge rock to hide the oily bulk of International Sumo Federation chairman Tanaka Hidetoshi - Link). One just has to look at the membership of the Japan Olympic Committee's executive board (Link) and the announced lineup of the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Tokyo Orinpikku Pararinpikku Soshinki Iinkai).

The JOC has 30 members, 2 of whom seem to be women of the female persuasion. The JOC is supposed to be face of Japan's Olympic movement and not even 7% of it is allowed to be feminine?

As for the Soshiki Iinkai, it currently has no women members.

Possibly worse than the exclusion of women is the exclusion of anyone with experience running events or in sports management or sports promotion. Instead, the non-automatic, appointed membership of the board is a collection of Abe Shinzo cronies from politics, the bureaucracy and megabusiness, only one of whom is under 70 years of age.

Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games

Chairman - Former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro (76)
[Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's former faction leader]

Honorary Chairman - Canon Chairman and President Mitarai Fujio (78)
[Former chairman of the Nippon Keidanren -- his term of service being a grand step backward for the organization]

Vice-Chairman - Former Vice Minister of Finance Muto Toshiro (70)

[Twice failed candidate for Governor of Bank of Japan, most recently suggested by Abe Shinzo]

Vice Chairman - Toyota Motors President Toyoda Akio (57)
[vocal and loyal supporter of Abenomics - see picture]



Executive-Director - JOC President Takeda Tsunekazu (66)
[automatic selection]

(Link - J)

Is anyone clear on the concept that we are in 2014 -- and that Tokyo will be hosting the Olympics in 2020? Mitarai will be 84 years old; Mori 82. I have nothing against experience and street cred with the nation's largest corporations -- but it is my understanding that the Olympics are sort of a celebration of vitality -- which, if it is going to be exhibited by the present members of the committee, will probably require intravenous drips.

As for "fun" -- or however much fun is left in hosting the Olympics after they are wrested from Vladimir Putin’s stainless steel grip -- the quintet so far? Not fun people (Well maybe Mori). Toyoda, the stripling, plays the "tense and defensive oyaji" role about as well as it can be played.

With the exception of Takeda, all of the members of the committee are folks to whom Abe Shinzo owes favors. It is true that one has to pay the piper and dance with thems that brung you. But do we all have to be condemned to a construction industry and zaikai hog fest, with the details probably assigned to Dentsu, just because Abe owes his current position to big business bosses?

Robert Dujarric On Abe Shinzo's Confusing Priorities

In a chatty, laid-back piece for The Diplomat Robert Dujarric wonders why Prime Minister Abe Shinzo seems to have so little commitment to concrete action strengthening Japan's self-defense capacities. (Link)

The snap, smarty-pants answer?

"Transforming Japan into a country both at peace with its neighbors and capable of defending itself and its core interests would involve real sacrifice."

Put another way,  beneath all revisionism and nationalist posturing is a desperate attempt to avoid doing actual work.

Collateral Damage -- Great Whale By-Catch Figures

Apology to readers - this is yet a another post about Japan and whaling. If you are looking for good reads on Japanese politics and nothing else, see Okumura Jun's look at Sunday's election results (Link) and Joe Jones's plunge into what the weekly magazines have been printing about Tokyo Governor-elect Masuzoe Yo'ichi's unconventional private life (Link).


Minke Whale, accidentally drowned in a fishing net, prior to processing. Hakodate, Hokkaido, 2007.

The whale wars go on in the South Pacific, most recently dragging the government of New Zealand into a conflict that inflicts brutal costs on Japan's international reputation. (Link)

Meanwhile, without fanfare or activists with television contracts, a meaningless drowning of thousands of cetaceans is taking place in the fishing nets of every ocean-faring nation. Whatever the figure is, the numbers of cetaceans large and small being killed as collateral damage to the ocean's being strip mined of fish is many, many times the numbers killed by Japanese hunters (I cannot, for example, imagine any whale lasting for long in China's half of the East China Sea). Most of this killing goes on unreported, the remains being cut away and left to the ocean's scavengers.

We have some idea of the level of carnage taking place in the near waters of Japan because, unlike most countries, a dead whale in a  net around here has market value. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries provides a thorough accounting of the sale of whales mistakenly killed -- precisely because they end up in the nation's food markets.

The number of great whales -- whales currently under an International Whaling Commission moratorium -- caught and processed due to accidents is surprisingly large:

Year / number of great whales landed and processed

2006 / 151
2007 / 158
2008 / 136
2009 / 122
2010 / 135
2011 / 126

Over 95% of the great whales accidentally caught and brought in for processing are Minke . Most of the remainder are Humpbacks, with only a rare drowned Eastern Gray, Fin or Pacific Right Whale making its way into the MAFF figures. Sperm Whales, which are toothed whales, are recorded as baleen whales -- the last recorded instance of one being one caught and processed coming in 2006.

The high percentage of Minke is almost certainly due to the huge population of Minke relative the populations of other great whales. Physical bulk also probably plays a part -- large whales like Fins being probably too big to tow into port.

Why are the by-catch figures significant?

1) The number of whales processed as by-catch is larger than the number of whales caught by Japan’s small-scale coastal hunt for Baird’s Beaked Whale, the one big-bodied whale commercial hunt still in existence.

2) While the dolphin meat trade seems a sham, the whale meat trade is clearly economically viable. It is worth a fishing crew’s while to tow a huge creature into port for butchering, using equipment not meant for such an endeavor.

3) While participation in the pelagic North and South Pacific hunts, the small-scale coastal hunt and the dolphin hunt are restricted to a small number of persons in a tiny number of local communities, the by-catch take is national, with whales being butchered and their meat wholesaled in ports in 23 of Japan’s 47 prefectures.

One of the prevailing and self-serving myths of the anti-whaling movement is that the IWC moratorium of 1986 ended commercial whaling. Even discounting the pelagic "research" hunts (why no one in the activist community does diddly about the North Pacific JARPN pelagic hunt has always been a mystery to me) commercial whaling activity in Japan simply shifted to non-IWC protected species. As for IWC-protected whales, their meat is being cut up and sold all over Japan, in what is a fairly sizable, if ostensibly accidental, trade.

For annual figures (Japanese language only) for whale by-catch, the form of distribution of meat, by prefecture and species, see: http://www.jfa.maff.go.jp/j/whale/w_document/index.html


Later - Meanwhile, from the Department of Unlikely Invitations comes a potentially very stupid proposal regarding Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and the Taiji dolphin hunt. (Link)

Hat tip to reader BF.

Original image source: Stranding Network Hokkaido