Claire Harvey: Japanese schoolkids are having a whale of a time

There are interesting little scenes taking place in Japanese schools these days.

In between classes and play-lunch, groups of primary-age children are herded into halls and gymnasiums to look at pictures of whales swimming placidly in the sea, listen to whale experts describe how wild populations of the mammals are growing larger every year, and then tuck into an educational snack - crispy deep-fried whale cubes.

It is all part of a whalemeat promotion organised by the Japanese Government and the hunting industry, an effort to introduce the taste for cetacean flesh to a new generation of consumers.

The idea is these junior gourmets will grow up with a passion for minke sashimi and sperm-whale tempura and reinvigorate Japan's taste for whale.

Don't the harpoonists know anything about kids? This education programme is a risky game, considering one of the major reasons Japanese adults already dislike whale meat - it is widely associated with unpleasant memories of school lunches.

Whale flesh, which until the 20th century was eaten only in a few coastal fishing settlements, became an official part of Japanese tuckshop cuisine after World War II, when officials saw it as a cheap, plentiful source of protein.

In the straitened economic circumstances of the 1950s, the Institute for Cetacean Research (created by the whaling industry in the 1940s to promote its products) began a promotional campaign in co-operation with the Japanese Government.

Recipes for preparing fresh and tinned whale meat were distributed around the country, the mass manufacture of inexpensive whale sausages began, and the Government passed a School Lunch Law incorporating the flesh into educational catering.

The kids hated it, probably because they recognised that it is a child's solemn duty to dislike whatever is being dished up in the school cafeteria, no matter how delicious or nutritious it might be.

Sixty-one per cent of adult Japanese have not eaten whale meat since childhood, according to a 1999 survey conducted by the British pollster MORI on behalf of Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

One per cent of the 1185 surveyed said they now ate whale meat at most once a month.

None said they ate it more than once a month.

Beef, pork, salmon, even hamburger mince are all vastly more popular in terms of per capita consumption in Japan.

Lucky Pierrot, a Hokkaido burger chain which started selling minke burgers last year in an attempt to revive the tradition of eating whale, tried to tempt hesitant consumers by saying it "tastes like beef or tuna, and since it is deep fried, it has no odour".

The shuddery tastebud twang which so many Japanese adults feel at the very mention of whale meat will be familiar to anyone who hasn't blacked out the lunchbox years entirely.

For Britons and New Zealanders, it's the sour whiff of warm milk, a foul revisitation of a government programme to eradicate calcium deficiencies by delivering crates of individual milk bottles to schools throughout the country every morning.

By break-time it was invariably tepid and beginning to acquire the peculiar and unmistakable clagginess of unrefrigerated dairy goods.

In Australia, the very word "choko" causes involuntary retching for a good proportion of the over-40s set, who associate it with similar school-lunch abominations.

Choko vines will grow almost anywhere (they seem to have a particular liking for the walls of outdoor dunnies), and so the starchy fruit was employed widely as cheap fodder for schoolkids, usually boiled into a steaming savoury mush.

Children's response to lunchbox food seems to bear little relationship to the actual taste.

The Greek kids in our playground used to groan with revulsion when unpacking mum's (undoubtedly delicious) home-made moussaka, and there was a Kenyan girl who would tip a tub of fragrant couscous into the bin about 12.31pm every day.

Jamie Oliver thinks British kids will grow up with sophisticated palates if their mums and dads make the effort to prepare something unusual for school lunches.

But if history is any guide, all Oliver's good work will simply create a generation of young adults nauseated by the smell of prosciutto-wrapped melon slices or mushroom risotto.

The Japanese whaling industry clearly doesn't give a stuff about all the international hand-wringing over its activities - not surprising, considering the International Whaling Commission and the world community have proven themselves completely unable to stop the slaughter of these endangered creatures, even in wildlife sanctuaries.

Hopefully, the Japanese anklebiters of today will grow up to form a society where whale-hunting is unpopular and unwanted; not because it's cruel, not because it's environmentally unsustainable, just because it's yucky.