Will Japan return to commercial whaling?

By D.M. | TOKYO

THREE decades after a global moratorium ended commercial whaling, Japan is again threatening to withdraw from the organisation that oversees it. Japan’s government says the International Whaling Commission (IWC) long ago abandoned its original purpose of managing whale stocks, which allows hunting within the limits that science deems justifiable, and is now a conservation body. “There are certain species of whales whose population is healthy enough to be harvested sustainably,” argued the Japanese delegation to the IWC’s annual meeting in Florianópolis, Brazil, last month. The rejection of that argument prompted Masaaki Taniai, Japan’s fisheries minister, to warn darkly that he would have to consider “every available option”.

A handful of whaling nations have tirelessly lobbied to reverse the 1986 moratorium, which the environmental movement counts as one of its most important victories. Japan relies heavily on the sea for food and insists it has the right to sustainably hunt everything in it. Britain and the rest of the anti-whaling camp reject that on conservationist and humane grounds. Both sides assiduously court supporters at the IWC, but neither can score the knockout blow (either an overturning of the moratorium or Japan’s confirmation that it will never return to commercial whaling) that would give them victory. In the meantime, Japan controversially skirts the ban to pursue “scientific whaling” (the 1946 international convention that regulates whaling includes a clause permitting them to be killed for scientific purposes). That allows a small number of whales to be culled every year, some of which end up on the plates of diners in high-end Tokyo restaurants.