Sigh... I blame Greenpeace. Really. Japan was slowly moving away from whale meat. The only people who ate it were older people who nostalgically ate it because it used to be in their school lunches 50 years ago. Everyone I ever talked to said that they didn't like it the few times they ate it. "The Cove" was aired and it moved public perception of eating dolphin meat and whale meat into something embarrassing. It was almost certainly going to disappear.<p>And then Greenpeace decided it would be a good idea to confront Japanese whaling ships and throw rancid butter onto the decks. It hit all the big news outlets in Japan. From that point on, all I heard was, "What are these people children? Why are they doing such anti-social things to our fishermen?" It put <i>everybody's</i> backs up. In defiance, a few izakayas started featuring whale meat. It still wasn't popular but there was this idea of "This is our cultural identity and it's under attack". So people ate it.<p>Now whale and dolphin meat are in every supermarket I've been to in the last few months. It's so incredibly stupid. On top of that, I'm hearing people talk about tuna stocks and say, "All those foreigners are eating sushi now and the tuna is disappearing. It's not <i>their</i> culture. Why does Japan have to suffer from the selfishness of others?" Of course, the average Shunsuke in the street has no idea that Japan takes 80% of the tuna catch and that it's been unsustainable for decades.<p>It is so frustrating when I see people make such hamfisted efforts on such important issues. If you want to convince Japanese people, you <i>can't</i> use the tactics you used in other cultures. You need to understand Japanese culture and you need to be very careful because if you get it wrong it <i>will</i> backfire spectacularly.
This seems a little overblown when put into context...<p>Commercial fishing kills 300k cetaceans annually. [1] For contrast, at the peak of Japanese whaling, less than 40k were killed per annum[2]<p>China alone, in 2010, had 8.8 million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste came from China with an estimated 3.53 million metric tons of it ending up in the ocean. [3] What happens when cetaceans lose their only environment to pollution?<p>I'm a conservationist, myself, but I feel so much energy of conservationists is misdirected at things of little consequence (banning plastic straws is an international debate among first world countries), whereas many of the big issues (unsustainable fossil fuel use and farming techniques) is ignored.<p>1. <a href="http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?281850/Bycatch-is-the-biggest-killer-of-whales" rel="nofollow">http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?281850/Bycatch-is-the-biggest...</a><p>2. <a href="https://www.organicauthority.com/energetic-health/commercial-fishing-killing-whales" rel="nofollow">https://www.organicauthority.com/energetic-health/commercial...</a><p>3. <a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting-the-oceans-the-most/" rel="nofollow">https://www.statista.com/chart/12211/the-countries-polluting...</a>
Please keep in mind, Japanese consider cetaceans just another fish. They simply don't understand all the anti-whaling rhetoric.<p>The other thing to keep in mind is the demand for whale meat has sharply decreased. Japanese would rather eat beef. If you want to eliminate whaling, do so with economic tools. I.e. cheap beef.<p>Lastly, if you find you are anti-whaling but love a juicy steak, I consider you a hypocrite. They're both mammals. I've never seen any conclusive evidence that whales are any better than cattle. All the 'intelligent' behavior I've ever seen reported of is comparable to other animals 'intelligent' behavior that most have no issues of eating.