Yurika Arai: Don't cast all Japanese as villains in whaling issue

Yurika Arai

Once, long ago, whale used to be just another kind of meat for us Japanese, literally. It was almost 40 years ago when I was a kid.

We often had it for school lunch. The calories were counted, the nutrition specified. Whale meat was just another part of it. But that was in the "age of innocence", before the era of Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd. I didn't think of anything when I ate it.

I didn't even imagine we would eat it so much that it would be gone some day.

But it seems the whales are almost all gone, and because of us Japanese. So once again we have become the villains.

Thanks to whaling, our national image nowadays, at least in New Zealand, is somewhat closer to that of zombies - monsters feasting on someone's friends.

Of course Norwegians, Icelanders and Inuit eat whales, too. But they are different because they hunt in their own seas.

Only the Japanese come to the Antarctic sea, the "backyard" of New Zealand, to hunt. I am sure most Kiwis are wondering why. But please don't ask me why. I'm Japanese but I honestly don't know the answer. I really want to know why my fellow countrymen/women still hunt and eat whales.

But it probably won't help asking around in Japan either, because I'm pretty sure ordinary people have no answer.

The fact is we import plenty of beef and pork from places like the US and Australia, and chicken from Brazil.

We have enough to eat. Even if we stopped whaling today, nobody would starve to death.

Still, one thing is very clear to me as a Japanese. When it comes to being criticised over whaling, it feels like we are being looked down on by Westerners.

Being despised (or imagining being despised) by the West, has been something very familiar to the Japanese since the 19th century. I think we are a bit too sensitive.

Part of this sensitivity is revealed by the media in Japan. Thanks to a daily check on the Japanese newspaper websites, I know every word uttered by [Peter] Bethune during his trial. The Japanese media report all this because we are so eager to examine it for the tiniest hint of someone "despising" the Japanese.

Or because we have this burning desire to see some sign of regret for the perceived insult (for the record, Mr Bethune tried to say that he had no animosity towards the Japanese on his final day of testimony).

The Herald recently published an article written by a scientist regarding this issue. It was a good article but it seems to me that she had addressed it to the wrong people.

Her message should have been to the Japanese media who have been working so hard to make this whole issue as emotive as possible. But even if she gets her article translated and sent to Japan, she might heed to the following advice - be conciliatory.

Admit that Westerners have been whaling for a long time too. Then, nicely ask the Japanese to stop whaling without sounding like you know everything better than they do.

Please note that the average Japanese person knows perfectly well that certain species of whale are being driven to extinction and that the so-called "scientific research" is just a disguise for getting whale meat.

And don't forget that next time you see angry Japanese protesters on television, you're often dealing with die-hard right-wingers who are a highly organised version of chauvinistic rednecks with shotguns. They love to hate people with stink bombs and an agenda.

* Yurika Arai is a tutor in Screen & Media Studies, The University of Waikato.