Japan relishes another whalemeat clash with 'culinary imperialists'

TOKYO - Ask a Japanese person under 40 how much whale they consume and you're likely to get a blank look.

Most youngsters would no more go out of their way to eat whale than a Londoner would to eat jellied eel.

Consumption had been falling for years, even before the 1986 moratorium that banned commercial hunting.

Today, Japanese eat 40 times more beef-burger than whale, according to Greenpeace; surveys suggest that one per cent of the Japanese population eats it regularly.

Among the bulk of the population, the debate provokes more yawns than table-thumping, although some middle-aged Japanese wax nostalgic about eating whale after the war, when alternative sources of protein were scarce.

Why then has Tokyo spent two decades relentlessly pushing for an end to the ban in the face of bitter resistance from conservationists and at huge cost to its international standing? The answer has more to do with politics than culture or economics.

Of course, culture plays a part. Many Japanese are bewildered by what they consider Western sentimentality, and hypocrisy, about whale-eating.

In a typical comment, Kiyoshi Okawa, the boss of a company that makes pet snacks from whalemeat, recently said: "I can't understand how people can consider whales cute.

Lambs are much cuter to me than whales, and I don't eat them." Argue that lambs are not going extinct and you will invariably be told that neither are all species of whale.

Japan claims there are close to a million Antarctic minkes and that it can hunt them at a 'scientifically sustainable' level better than any other nation, thanks to advanced sonar and satellite technology.

"We think it is possible to use these resources in a sustainable way," says Hideki Moronuki of Japan's Fisheries Agency. "We don't have much land, we have the sea. Japan has lost so much of its own culture already. The consumption of rice has decreased because we were forced to consume bread in school since World War 2 in order to import huge amounts of flour from the US."

The problem for Japan is that conservationists dispute those figures and say the same arguments about 'sustainability' were heard when other species were being hunted to extinction.

But Mr. Moronuki's tone of wounded national pride hints at the real engine behind the whale campaign.

After decades living in the diplomatic and military shadow of the US, Japanese nationalists feel this is one area where they can make some noise.

And there is a practical consideration: if the nationalists back down on whales, they fear restrictions on other marine resources will follow, including that beloved staple of the Japanese diet: tuna.

Japan's whaling "research fleet" is supported by the Institute of Cetacean Research, one of Japan's odd private-public bodies that is in turn backed by a lobby of nationalist politicians, mainly within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

This lobby champions the 'tradition' of whale hunting in a handful of fishing communities, and has spent billions of yen in a tireless diplomatic offensive to reverse the 1996 ban.

But with whale cuisine confined mostly to a handful of expensive specialist outlets, the pro-whalers have struggled to find some way of disposing of Japan's growing stocks of whale meat - almost 5,000 tons, according to one recent report.

Last year, schoolchildren in rural Wakayama Prefecture found deep-fried whale in their lunchboxes and similar schemes are afoot.

Many of the same LDP politicians can be found behind other right-wing causes, such as revisionist history textbooks.

Without their support, there is little prospect that whale hunting would be economically viable: the sale of whalemeat, for instance, barely covers the cost of sending Japan's eight whaling ships out of harbour.

The pro-whaling lobby believes the International Whaling Commission has been hijacked by environmentalists and is "totally dysfunctional." Armed with more of its own surveys about the growth of whaling stocks around the world, the lobby is relishing another skirmish with the West's 'culinary imperialists' in June.

- INDEPENDENT