Live Blogging The FCCJ Press Conference Morishita Joji, Japan's Delegate To The IWCF

14:30 Nobody's home. Or almost nobody.

There is a reason, of course. The Foreign Press Center two days ago hosted a Morishita press conference. A lot of the foreign press went to that press conference. Today only 35% of the seats in this small room are occupied.

This is the second embarrassingly under-attended press conference I have been to this week. Wednesday's press conference of Eda Kenji on Wednesday, the urbane and erudite co-leader of the Japan Innovation Party, one of the only two significant non-Communist opposition parties, had rows of empty chairs in the working press -- despite our being in the midst of a crucial and increasingly combatative House of Representatives election campaign.

Then again, Morishita answers a length with a lot of victimization complaints, which can be a tremendous turn off.

He did answer my question on the scientific bases of the Revised Management Procedure (RMP) and a Minke harvest when the Minke are under pressure from larger Fin and Humpback. Seems to me that taking only animals from a population under pressure gives one a very skewed sense of the ecosystem's functioning.

Morishita is far more convincing, more accessible and more personable when he is discussing the possible scientific results from animal sampling. He should stay on arguing the science, exclusively. The "Us vs. Them" narrative simply irritates.

Later - Two observations

a) Morishita-san in his answers makes an unusual assumption: that their are folks who are interested in hearing how oppressive it is to not be liked.

b) that the under-attendance at both the Eda Kenji event and the Morishita event have a same cause: the sch Foreign Press Center's scheduling and promoting the first Morishita press conference two days earlier at the basically the same time as the FCCJ's Eda press conference.

Oh, The Persons You Will Talk To!

This was the scene in the Liberal Democratic Party cafeteria on Friday, the first of the "Whale Meat Fridays" demanded by General Council Chair Nikai Toshihiro and other scientific pelagic whaling-supporting party members.



In the center is Nikai, a representative of the Wakayama district that has in it the infamous town of Taiji, where the residents conduct coastal harvests of dolphins, porpoises and small whales not covered by the International Whaling Commission ban. He is holding aloft a hunk of sei whale (iwashi kujira - Balaenoptera borealis) a species which can only be harvest on the deep ocean. The meat has been deep fried Tatsuta style -- one of the two ways whale was being served on Friday (the other was in a whale meat curry). Former Defense Minister Onodera Itsunori (Miyagi, another whaling prefecture) is among the other politicians visible preparing to have their Sei.

"Whale in an irreplaceable part of Japan's food culture. If foreigners come [to this cafeteria] we will shower them with whale!" crowed Nikai. (Link)

Friday's very public eating of Sei whale conflates and confuses coastal whaling, which is traditional for communities with very little flat, arable land like Taiji or Chiba Prefecture's Wadaura -- and which I support -- and industrial pelagic whaling, which has no traditional basis and is a ward of the government -- a point conceded in the Yomiuri Shimbun's pro-pelagic whaling editorial of yesterday (Link).

Because it is my nature to never leave any dishonest and poorly thought out thing well enough alone, I decided to have a bit of fun on Twitter at the expense of Nikai -- whom I like immensely -- and the other politicians pictured.

Because nothing says, "Traditional Japanese culture" quite like eating whale in a curry or deep-fried using a fork pic.twitter.com/w1dKvgzLIl
— Michael Thomas Cucek (@MichaelTCucek) September 20, 2014

A cheap shot, perhaps. However, given the absurd bravura of Nikai's lofting of his whale-laden fork, a not entirely inappropriate cuffing of the chin, metaphorically.

Well, since having loosed the above, you can imagine the number and variety of folks of all persuasions have been blessing me with their opinions. Or perhaps you cannot. Anyway, it has been a lot of folks, some of whom did not see the humor intended.

Sitting On The Dock Of The Harbour

Funny thing about going to places rather than just reading about them is that by just walking around one can learn that which one should perhaps have known but never came across en la vie virtuelle.

Take for example the fine vessel pictured below -- which one can come across if one takes a walk around Sydney's breathtakingly glitzy Darling Harbour. With its shark teeth bow and camouflage paint job, it fits right in with the French fountain display, the graphic laser and 3-D light shows playing across all the buildings at night, the casino and every ersatz high brow, demeaning and incredibly high-priced tourist trap one can imagine.



The S.S. Sam Simon is the fourth and most recent addition to the Antarctic expedition fleet of the Sea Shepherd Society. That one would see this vessel berthed in Australian harbor should not surprise one. After all it was the Australian government that filed the successful International Court of Justice case against Japan's JARPA II Southern Ocean research whaling program.

What is surprising for a dweller of the northern hemisphere is where the Sam Simon is berthed: the pier of Australia's National Maritime Museum. To the right of the Sam Simon is the stern, for example, of the retired H.M.A.S. Vampire, the last of Australia's big gun warships and a part of the Museum's permanent collection.

It is not as though the relationship between an official Australian national museum and Sea Shepherd is a secret (Link). Nevertheless is is freakish that one buys the ticket to tour an ostensibly piratical vessel at the ticket booth of the museum built to commemorate Australia's water-borne heritage.

Australian sympathies as regards the killing of cetaceans are on display at the Museum. It is hosting not one but two exhibitions on whales, while in its little theater the Museum is running a National Geographic produced documentary on dolphins.

Do not call it overkill.

The other facet of the story I did not know -- and which shows either Sea Shepherd's delicious sense of irony, its appreciation for fine ship engineering, or both -- is that the Sam Simon was built in IHI shipyards for the Japanese government. Completed in 1993, it was christened the Seifu Maru (清風丸) and was -- and this is where the irony gets thick -- a scientific research vessel under the control of the Japan Meteorological Agency. It was decommissioned in 2010, bought in a private sale and reemerged on the oceans as the Sam Simon in 2012.

So in the Sam Simon we have a Japanese scientific research vessel, once used for actual research (in a curiously brief 17 year career) careening round the southern ocean pursuing and impeding the actions of the vessels of Japan's highly subsidized and completely bogus research whaling program.

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Looking upon the Sam Simon, embraced and celebrated by the organization tasked with preserving Australia's ocean-going lore, and upon the bottomless punchbowl party of the Australian economy of the last 20 years, turbo-charged as it has been by China's voracious demand for Australia's minerals and hydrocarbons, one senses that whatever Abe Shinzo & Company's plans may be for a union of maritime democracies to resist Chinese expansionism in the Western Pacific, getting Australia on board is going to be a daunting, if not a futile, task.

Which illuminates the scary stupidity of the Abe Cabinet's not telling Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa to just shut his mouth about a restart of a reformed JARPA II and its not telling Minister Amari Akira to stop dribbling the ball and just shoot for the goal in the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations.


Later - And in the more immediate future, Abe-san should not be stupid and offer Soryu-class submarines (Link)  at a discount "because we're friends." Make the offer to Mr. Abbott at full retail price; it's all Chinese money anyway.

Japan's Research Whaling: The Few, The Proud, The Few

The poor wee thing...

The speeches were defiant, the fists were pumped. Representatives from faraway locales feeling similarly beset came to show their support. (Link -J)

However, in the the bleak emptiness of what was once a crowded port area, the pathos of the start of Ayukawa's 2014 research whaling season could not be missed. As a surfeit of helmeted public security forces putt-putted around in the tiny harbor, disorganized ranks of hunters, their feeble numbers boosted by platooned female office staff members in uniform, pledged to fight to keep Japan's whaling traditions alive.

If this was an pep rally, it was for an industry on its way out. (Link - J -video)

The 18 April 2014 Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries handout makes clear, Japan's ambitions as regards a revival of commercial whaling are modest and growing ever more so.

In the aftermath of the International Court of Justice's invalidation of the Southern Ocean pelagic research whaling program (JARPA II), the Ministry hopes to submit a new Southern Ocean research whaling plan to the International Whaling Commission's scientific committee next year, with MAFF offering no projection of a desired date for an actual resumption of JARPA permit whaling.

As for the North Pacific research whaling program (JARPN II), rather than being increased to compensate for the loss of the southern hunt, it has seen its quotas lowered for all species, with a complete abandonment of the pelagic hunts for Minke and Sperm whales. (Link - J)

Species quotas for Japan's northern great whale hunts in 2014, and the previous year's quotas:

Coastal whaling

Minke 100 animals (120)

Pelagic whaling

Minke 0 (100)
Bryde's 20 (50)
Sei 90 (100)
Sperm 0 (10)

The start of the coastal portion of JARPN II 2014 was delayed for four days. According to new reports the cause of the delay was the implementation of measures responding to the ICJ's ruling. However, a wish to delay the opening of the season until after U.S. President Barack Obama was well outside the country might also have played a part in the decision.

Hayashi Yoshimasa, you do eat right (Link) but where is thy ambition? Why do you not adhere to the tradition of obdurate stupidity of the great MAFF minister of old?

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Screen shot of first Minke whale taken in 2014 coastal research whaling hunt courtesy NHK.

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

Someone To Watch Over Me And My Dirt

This New York Times article (Link) on the out-of-all-control Fukushima cleanup is probably making the rounds. Still, I would be in remiss if I were to not to link to the piece.

How can one resist the return of Hata Tsutomuesque nonsense?

Japanese officials said adapting overseas technologies presented a particular challenge.

"Even if a method works overseas, the soil in Japan is different, for example," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director at the environment ministry, who is in charge of the Fukushima cleanup. "And if we have foreigners roaming around Fukushima, they might scare the old grandmas and granddads there."

Oh I am sure the journalists responsible for the above probably did not feel themselves the stewards of Nishiyama-san's reputation. But then again, evidently, neither did Nishiyama.

However silly, the remark will probably not overly damage Nishiyama's standing in his ministry. Calling Minke whales "the cockroaches of the sea" before an International Whaling Commission meeting made Counselor Komatsu Masayuki a global laughingstock -- but it did not leave him an ostracized pauper. (Link)

Many thanks to reader JM for alerting me to the NYT article.

The Fleet Sails Burning The Midnight Oil

As expected (Link) the pelagic JARPA II whaling fleet departed on Friday from ports in Hiroshima and Yamaguchi Prefectures. It was a close run thing for the whalers: Friday was the last day of regular business prior to the New Year holidays. Departing after New Years would have curtailed the hunt in the southern oceans.

The Yomiuri Shimbun's coverage of the departure focused on the fears of the families of the whalers. The sailors aboard the whaling vessels face meeting, in the dark, cold waters of the Antarctic, the stink-bombing tossing pirates of the Sea Shepherd Society. (Link - J)

It was left to the reporters of the less slavishly pro-Liberal Democratic Party and pro-leader (the catcher boats are homeported in Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's district) Sankei Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun to point out that, just like last year, all the ships have Japan Coast Guard officers on board. (Link - J and Link - J) These JCG (the one branch of Japan's international defense forces that actually shoots folks) officers are purportedly armed. (Link)

Furthermore, the fleet this year is supplemented by the dispatch of an additional vessel with crew and equipment meant to thwart attempts to interfere with whaling activities.

The whaling fleet is also ostensibly protected by a U.S. court injunction. Issued against Sea Shepherd, the injuction prohibits the group from approaching within 500 yards of any of the whaling ships.

The oddity: the injunction was issued by the granola-crunching Ninth Circuit, which holds its hearings in the famously pro-whaling bastions of Seattle, Portand, San Francisco and Pasadena.

That the fleet is sailing out at all this year is a result of bad decisions by a number of political players.

First is former Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko and the leaders of the Democratic Party of Japan. In a rollback of pressure for reform of the bureaucracy, they allowed bureaucrats to compile the Third Supplementary Budget for Disaster Relief (Link) with zero political oversight. Bureaucrats from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) used the opportunity to create a bailout fund for the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), the non-profit nominally in charge of the pelagic research hunt. The Institute was deeply in debt due to declining income from whale meat sales and the costs of Sea Shepherd interference in JARPA II.

Letting the bureaucrats run amok in compiling the supplementary budget did not earn Noda and the DPJ an iota of gratitude, of course. Bureaucrats continued their happy non-cooperation with (or, in their undermining of Tanaka Makiko's attempt to clamp down on abuses in the conversion of two-year schools into four-year colleges, their de facto mutiny against) the DPJ-led government until said government's Hatoyama/Ozawa/Noda-inflicted demise of two weeks ago.

Second are bureaucrats from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT). Under pressure from MAFF bureaucrats and politicians wishing to pander to pro-whaling voters, MLIT gave a stamp of approval to an otherwise incomprehensible half-retrofit of the whaling mothership, the Nisshin Maru.

The ship is in bad shape, having suffered two major fires in the past few years, including one in Antarctic waters in 2007 that killed one of the crew. It needs a complete retrofit to be fully seaworthy.

The time required for a full retrofit of the vessel, however, would have forced the cancellation of the 2012-13 hunt. Since missing even a single year would undermine the international legitimacy of the hunt (this is the way that MAFF bureaucrats think) the screws were put on MLIT to allow the ICR to cut corners on the Nisshin Maru's safety upgrade.

Third, and most egregiously, is the Australian government. Canberra took an intrasigent stance in the 2010-2011 negotiations for an International Whaling Commission-controlled compromise. The plan was to balance a cutback in JARPA II in return for an expansion of Japan's whaling activities in the Northwest Pacific, probably restricting whaling to Japan's economic exclusion zone (EEZ). Even the most limited version of the compromise was projected to reduce the number of animals killed by 5,000 over a 10 year period.

The actual number of animals saved by any plan would probably have been larger. A major reduction in the number of kills under the research whaling banner would have sunk JARPA II as an enterprise, resulting in a de facto if not de jure ban on the southern hunt, if not all pelagic whaling. A resumption of a commercial hunt for Minke whales in the waters around Japan would have also ended the never-halted-or-reduced hunt for Baird's Beaked whale, Pilot whale and Risso's Dolphin -- three large-bodied species Japan's small-scale coastal whalers kill precisely because they are not on the IWC's protected list.

With a pro-pelagic whaling Liberal Democratic Party back in power there will be no compromises of any kind offered on JARPA II, JARPN II or anything else having to do with the plunging an explosive charge inside an animal, detonating it, and having the animal bleed to death.

Nice work, Mr. Garrett.

The outcome?

The whalers and their nemeses in Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace (which really should know better) burn diesel fuel and threaten each other's safety in some of the world's already most dangerous seas, sucking money out of wallets all over the globe (Do they send each other cards at Christmas time, each thanking the other for keeping the gravy train rolling one more year?).

Australian and Japanese governments find themselves at loggerheads over a valence issue at the cost of greater cooperation in substantive environmental, security and economic actions.

The Japanese people (most of whom, when shown the alternatives, want nothing to do with pelagic whaling) find themselves loathed around the world.

Hundreds of our fellow Earth inhabitants are needlessly killed in inhumane ways.

How indeed can we dance/When our Earth is turning?

And A Damn Shall Not Be Given

What are likely to be first victims of the Liberal Democratic Party's victory on December 16?

Japan-Australia relations, Japan-New Zealand relations and a few hundred minke whales.

Under pressure from pro-pelagic whaling members of the Diet, the government has had to abandon its plan to allow the industry to die from neglect. Rather than force the Nisshin Maru mothership to sit in port undergoing a much-needed retrofit throughout the length of the Antarctic summer, the government seems to have acceded to the ship's departing for the austral summer hunt having only undergone half-a-retrofit.

Why the government saw it necessary to lower safety standards and allow the whaling vessel set off to sail some of the world's most daunting seas is a mystery. Then again, the Democratic Party of Japan's bifurcated approach toward pelagic whaling has been baffling. The pelagic hunt was effectively nationalized through the government's paying off the Institute of Cetacean Research's debts – infamously, as we all recall, through the supplementary budget for Tohoku recovery. The Nisshin Maru was observed on the 13th having its engines tested at Innoshima in Hiroshima Prefecture (Link - J) which is in a swing district that until December 16 was represented by a DPJ member However, Nisshin Maru is homeported in Shimonoseki, represented in the Diet by a certain Mr. Abe Shinzo. (Link)

It is not like the DPJ was helping itself by bailing out the industry.

Abe could still stiff his constituents in a gesture of goodwill toward the Australian government. After all, his predecessor Noda Yoshihiko betrayed his constituents by selling out on electoral district reform, getting nothing in return.

I would not count on Abe making the strategic decision, however.

Nice Going JARPA II

Number for the day: 92.5

What is it?

Percentage of adult female Minke whales taken by the December 2011-March 2012 Antarctic research whaling expedition (total taken: 266 Minke, 1 Fin) which were pregnant at the time they were killed.

Source: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Link -J)

An old number...and in line with previous survey results.

Why have I never heard of it before?

Why am I even asking this question?

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The above was stimulated by Justin McCurry's write up on the pelagic whale hunt, an article unfortunately illustrated with an image of the small-scale coastal whaling abattoir at Wadaura, which has nothing to do with the pelagic hunt. (Link)

Does anyone remember where the statistics on the number of tons of whale meat in storage are?

Commercial Whaling Deal In Peril

On the verge of the most important meeting of the International Whaling Commission in decades, when the body will be considered the possibility of revising its easily evaded moratorium on the hunting of large baleen whales and sperm whales in favor of a strictly limited and regulated commercial hunt, the key actors in the drama are going to be absent due to illness. IWC chairman Christian Maquieira, whose plan to bring all commercial whaling back under IWC control from out of the metastasizing exceptions that have been undermining the moratorium, namely

1) Japan's scientific whale hunts

2) Iceland's and Norway's self-exemptions from the moratorium on principle, and

3) South Korea's and Japan's increasing by-catch numbers, both legitimate and not-so

will not attend due to a personal illness. Japan's nominal top gun on whaling issues, newly-appointed Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Yamada Masahiko, will likely skip the meeting because his every waking moment tied up with the consequences of the still-not contained Miyazaki Prefecture outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

With all the leg work that has gone into preparing for the Morocco conference and all the recent acrimony over Japan's scientific whaling program -- not to mention the unnecessarily petty and hopeless International Court of Justice suit filed against Japan's Southern Ocean scientific whaling hunt by the government of Australia -- that it all might come to naught over of the unfortunate absences of a small number of key decision makers is distressing

It is unfortunate that in the political turmoil that has taken place over these past few weeks (remember three weeks ago? Back when Prime Minister Hatoyama was receiving the Chinese premier and the Liberal Democratic Party was polling ahead of the Democratic Party of Japan in the proportional vote for the House of Councillors?) the important opportunity provided by the June 21 Agadir, Morocco IWC conference to quarantine the lingering and debilitating debate over Japan's whaling has been lost from view. Japan needs a high powered individual at the Agadir meeting, a dealmaker and strategic thinker, rather than a pinch hitter sent by the MAFF. Right now, both the meeting's maestro and the crucial main actor will be absent from the scene.

Considering the depth of the wound the scientific whaling program inflicts upon Japan and the unique opportunity presented by the Maquieira proposal for Japan to wriggle is way out of it, all whilst retaining its international dignity -- cries out for some bold, even whacky improvisation. Prime Minister Kan should send a special ambassador, extraordinary and plenipotentiary, to the Agadir meeting to negotiate in Japan's behalf. This person would need to be of extremely high rank, considered an advocate of the MAFF yet also with a clear vision of japan's overall strategic position and the imperative sometimes, in order to improve that position, of radical shifts in emphasis.

The ideal candidate: Ishiba Shigeru.

Yes, the idea the idea is daft: the gentlemen is a member of the opposition. The idea that one could convince the policy research council chairman of the LDP to depart on a government mission on the eve of an election that is crucial to his party's very survival is...nuts.

Nevertheless, who else could one send? The man is the former MAFF Minister of the most recent LDP Cabinet. He knows the MAFF bureaucrats, their strengths and their weak points. He is also the acknowledged of grand poobah of the security affairs wonks, able to discern the strategic long-term interest of Japan in the slightest shift in the winds of international opinion. He could never, ever, despite whatever concession he might accede to, ever be tarred with the brush of having "sold out Japan" on the issue.

Ishiba's party would gag, but why not reciprocate? Send Democratic Party of Japan Policy Research Council Chairman Genba Koichiro and House of Councillors member for Tottori Kawakawi Yoshihiro as his deputies? Kawakami has experience as the head of the DPJ's Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Committee, and his attendance at the meeting, along with Genba's, would blunt the impact of Ishiba's not being able to campaign in his home prefecture on behalf of the LDP's candidate there or LDP candidates around the country.

Just a thought. Actually more of a wild, flailing gesture desperately trying to save the limited, shore-based commercial whaling proposal, which I have written about earlier here and here.

More on Whaling in Japan

Bryan Walsh of TIME explains very little in what is supposed to be an explainer article, proving once again that the real endangered species is the American magazine editor who gives a damn. How could the following line ever get past anyone with even the slightest concern about informing the reader, one of the ostensible but clearly lesser goals of what is purportedly a magazine?

Japan is not the only country to refuse to sign onto the whaling ban, but it's the only one that pursues whale in any significant way.

Not one but two falsehoods, in only 25 words. That has got to be some kind of modern record.

By contrast, Banyan explains a great deal in what has to be some of his most impassioned writing, a Notebook post offering background to his most recent column for his home publication.

On one point Mr. Walsh, Banyan and myself are in agreement -- the degustation of whale flesh is, as a purely sensory experience, simply not worth the fighting for.

For the Australians About Whaling in Japan

Since the Australian government has taken the hardest of hardline stances regarding whaling in recent years, some random idiosyncratic thoughts about means by which a larger number of whales might get saved, particularly in light of the Maquieira proposal, where the operative paragraph is:

Fundamental components of this consensus decision are to: bring whaling by all members under the control of the IWC; reduce catch levels significantly; limit operations to those members who currently take whales; establish caps that are within sustainable levels for a ten year period; enhance monitoring and control measures; create a South Atlantic sanctuary; and provide a mechanism for enterprise and capacity building for developing countries. Members agree not to authorize whaling outside IWC control and not to exceed the prescribed catch limits (Appendix A). Subsistence whaling by indigenous people that was previously approved by the Commission will continue under existing management measures. The Commission will now refer to aboriginal subsistence whaling as indigenous subsistence whaling.

- Stop warning about catastrophe "after the resumption of commercial whaling" - Despite the best efforts of Greenpeace and others confuse the public on this issue, commercial whaling never ended in Japan. After the imposition of the moratorium in 1986, the five municipalities with small-scale coastal whaling operations (Hakodate, Ayukawa, Abashiri, Wadaura and Taiji) shifted from hunting the now protected and numerous Minke whales to hunting rarer toothed species: Baird's Beaked whales, false killer whales and Risso's dolphins. In addition to the small-scale coastal whaling operations some fisheries cooperatives in Hokkaido, Iwate, Wakayama and Okinawa prefectures conduct under-reported "hand harpoon" hunts of hundreds of toothed whales and smaller cetaceans.

A limited commercial hunt of abundant species carried out under international supervision seems preferable to the current policy, which has encouraged largely invisible hunts of species not protected by the IWC moratorium.

- Don't get hung up about the research whaling exception - Japanese negotiators are fighting for the right to continue conduct research whaling operations in the Southern Ocean even after the lifting of the moratorium on commercial whaling of some of the 13 IWC-regulated whale species.

Before gagging, remember that having the right to do something does not mean that one will do something. The costs of manning and sending a factory ship and harpoon ships south of the Equator, with the chance that the Sea Shepherd and its brethren will be waiting for them, all in order to collect only a tiny number of whales allowed under the new quota system, will not pass the fiscal sanity test. The Hatoyama government is already dragging every government-supported program over the coals in search of savings. It is not going to keep a factory ship program going when Japan's meat needs can be satisfied either by near-shore hunts in the North Pacific or imports from Norway and Iceland.

For a country that cannot use military force as a means of settling disputes, the protection of rights guaranteed by treaty, even useless ones, is an obsession. Japan's negotiators need to preserve the right to conduct research whaling even if (especially if) the new government wants to phase out the actual conduct of research whaling expeditions.

- Demand unified data collection - Currently, the data on number of small cetaceans killed and processed in Japan is collected by the individual prefectural governments and the five municipalities conducting coastal whaling. The pelagic research whaling expeditions report to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. With all the people at working in the Fisheries Agency, the purported scientific approach to whaling, and the international political pressure continued whaling brings upon Japan, one would think that the government would have a rigorous, unified, timely and easily accessible national database on whale hunts and the whale meat industry.

Not exactly.

- Get the by-catch numbers in the totals - One of the tragedies of normal purse sein and drift net fishing is that large numbers of seabirds, sharks and sea mammals die in the nets. For some reason, however, there is virtually no mention of the domestic market's absorption of the large number of baleen whales killed during the course of fishing operations. In 2008 (the latest figures I have found) 136 baleen whales (133 Minke, 2 humpbacks, 1 fin) were landed and recorded as by-catch. The flesh of all of these baleen whales was consumed, with 128 of them being sold for a profit in the domestic commercial whale meat market.

- Insist on commercialism - If commercial harvesting of IWC-regulated species is to resume, then the hunt has to be commercial. No more government subsidies to the hunters or their communities, or sleazy wheezes like distributing whale meat for free to the public schools so students "can get a taste of life as it was 50 years ago."

- Be patient - Impatience with the Japanese government, as exemplified by the direct actions taken as at sea of the Sea Shepherd Society, has hardened public support for Japan's various whaling operations. Rather than going for a complete reversal of prior behaviors, work hard to get a reduction in the numbers of cetaceans being killed, even if it means a resumption of commercial hunts of IWC-regulated species. After the new regime is in place, work on convincing the citizenry that whaling is inhumane and pointless. Make the decline or cancellation of the hunt due to domestic pressures, not international ones.

Besides, there is a new ruling party in Japan. The folks behind the "Japan" sign are different from the crowd at the 60th annual meeting. Sure, the ministry bureaucrat may be the same, but his/her boss is not. Work with these new people; they want to work with you.

- Forget about the International Court of Justice - For two reasons:

1) Only the very best of Japan's students pass the entrance examinations to enter Tokyo University...and only the best of those who enter Tokyo University enter the Faculty of Law...and only the very best of those who graduate from the Faculty of Law enter into the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs...and only the very best of those who enter the Ministry of Foreign Affairs get selected to serve in the Treaties Bureau. The Bruces and Sheilas of the Treaties Bureau know more about language than a cartload of philologists...and they know every comma, period, preposition, suffix, adverb and semi-colon in every treaty Japan has ever signed.

You think you can take these folks on?

What about the matter of the president of the International Court of Justice's being the Crown Prince's beloved wife's dad?

(What bureau was ICJ President Owada the Director-General of in the Foreign Ministry? The Treaties Bureau.)

2) Two years ago, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd characterized the whaling dispute as "an important disagreement between friends."

You do not sue your friends.

Save the Dugongs, Ya Bastards!

Moronuki Hideki and his band of merry pranksters in the whaling division at the Fisheries Agency, folks not known for their intellectual agility, have managed to raise an issue that, pushed the right way, has a decent chance of making Australian Government officials look like shambling, dissembling hypocrites.

Tokyo responds with dugong hunt attack
The Australian

Greg Roberts -- April 02, 2008 -- The spat between Japan and Australia over whaling has intensified, with the Japanese attacking Canberra's support for the harvesting of dugongs by indigenous hunters.

The Japanese will highlight the killing of dugongs by Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in a submission to the International Whaling Commission for its meeting in June in the Chilean capital of Santiago.

Islander leaders agreed yesterday that too many dugongs were being taken for traditional food.

Australia has 80 per cent of the estimated world dugong population of 100,000.

The Japanese planned to slaughter 985 minke whales last summer in Antarctic waters, ostensibly for scientific research, but harassment by anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd and monitoring by an Australian patrol vessel is believed to have reduced the kill by as much as half.

The number of minke whales killed annually by the Japanese is similar to the number of dugongs killed each year in the Torres Strait, home to 20 per cent of Australia's dugongs...

Of course, if this is the row Moronuki decides to hoe, then he is going to give the Japan-U.S. alliance managers fits.

But since when has Moronuki's gang or any of their predecessors given a damn about the pain the whaling division inflicts upon the rest of the government?

Later - Yes, I do have a soft spot for dugongs.

Down by the Sea

Though it is hard to believe that the top bureaucrats of the Fisheries Agency would accept the end of research whaling---the defense of which is the only way most of them have of becoming famous (if only as targets of intense, worldwide loathing)--The Independent reports that a revival of the commercial coastal fishery, the only solution that treats everyone, the biosphere included, with some semblance of respect, is finally being discussed.

Secret plan to let Japan resume whaling
The Independent

London meeting discusses compromise over much-flouted ban on commercial hunting

By Geoffrey Lean and Jonathan Owen - Sunday, 9 March 2008 - Controversial plans to lift the worldwide ban on whaling were presented to a secret meeting of more than 70 governments in London last week.

The plans, which have alarmed environmentalists, have been welcomed by both pro- and anti-whaling governments and seek to lift a long stalemate over hunting, enabling Japan officially to resume commercial whaling for the first time in more than 20 years.

The plans would permit the world's main whaling nation to carry out a limited hunt in waters close to its shores. In return, Japan would have to stop exploiting a loophole in international law, through which it kills hundreds of whales around Antarctica each year under the guise of "scientific research".

The plans – drawn up at another unpublicised meeting in Tokyo last month – were presented by the governments of Argentina and the Netherlands to a closed three-day session of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) at the Renaissance Hotel near Heathrow airport, which ended yesterday...

Coastal whaling is historic and cultural in a way that pelagic whaling is not (it was somewhat difficult to be a pelagic whaler during the Tokugawa period, you know, sakoku and all that). While pelagic research whaling is a ward of the state and of benefit to the bureaucrats who defend it, coastal whaling is commercial (well largely, anyway) and is of direct benefit to the communities practicing it.

Accepting coastal commercial whaling of Minke whales in the waters near Japan offers a workaround for some intractable differences of opinion. The IWC would extend its formal mandate over whaling, drawing in activities that have been destabilizing the organization--either through the abuse of the research clause (Japan), through whaling for non-baleen whales not on the IWC lists (Japan) and through out and out rogue whaling (Iceland and Norway).

It would establish a de facto Southern Ocean whale sanctuary.

The resumption of coastal commercial whaling will also relieve the pressures built up by multiple hypocrisies. IWC rules accept the hunting of the bowhead whale (Hokkyoku kujira - Balaena mysticetus) by North American indigenous peoples. In terms of impact the killing of an an individual adult has upon the gene variation within the population of the target species, permitting any hunting of the bowhead is madness.

Similarly unsound in terms of impact upon reputation of the IWC is the the continued legal Euro-American hunt for large bluefin tuna in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The number of wild adult bluefin has plummeted yet North American and European and fishermen to continue go out into international waters, hunt them and then send the carcasses to Japan. Banning Japanese hunting a small number of minke whale-- in raw numbers a more numerous species--inside their own EEZ looks a lot like discrimination.

Outsiders should also appreciate that by appearing to be a concession on the part of the international community, the resumption of coastal commercial whaling would remove an arrow from the nationalist quiver. The anti-whaling = anti-Japanese equation is a recurring charge of the right--and one that many Japanese can take seriously.

Allowing the resumption of coastal whaling for minke might finally give governments and activists some leverage in the struggle to abolishe the abominable Taiji porpoise and dolphin slaughters.

I can sympathize with the anti-whaling organizations; they feel final victory is so close. After all, the tactics they are using now against Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean convinced the Soviet Union (The Soviet Union! The Empire of Evil!) to abandon commercial whaling.

However, the tactics that brought the Soviet Union to heel will not clip the fins of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. In a democracy with superempowered rural votes, a bureaucracy with a chip on its shoulder and nationalism as the one, true political movement linking the cities and the rural communities -- the attempt to box in the whalers has an effect opposite to the one desired: it has swelled the ranks of true believers in the movement and has deepened national commitment to the cause.

There is a ticking clock. The confrontation in the Southern Ocean, should it continue, could prompt the dispatch of a Coast Guard cutter (the unofficial motto of the Japan Coast Guard: "Shoot first--and there will be no questions later") increasing the possibility of truly violent clashes. If the activists challenge the whaling vessels in the presence of the Japan Coast Guard, the possibility of a tragedy occurring will not be zero.

Let us hope that cooler heads and braver hearts prevail to find the middle ground.

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Last week Christopher Hogg produced a fair but perhaps overly dispassionate story for the BBC about the fishery in Wada, the whaling village closest to Tokyo (which, as you can see in the above photo, is all a-bustle on a Sunday afternoon). The Economist published a story on the town's claim to fame in July 2007.

For statistics and information about the existing commercial coastal whaling fishery, see the website of the Nihon Kogata Hogei Kyōkai. Its fey English language slide presentation can be found here.

For statistics and news about whale meat stocks, http://david-in-tokyo.blogspot.com/ remains the English-language site of reference.
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Wadaura Station
Minami Bōsō City, Chiba Prefecture
August 6, 2006
Photo credit: MTC