Japan resumes commercial whaling after 30-year hiatus.
Producers plan to market the meat to high-end restaurants
TOKYO — Japan resumed commercial whale hunting Monday after a hiatus of more than 30 years, defying calls from conservation groups to protect animals once hunted to the brink of extinction.
Now whalers, who have long depended on government subsidies for their survival, face the much tougher challenge of defying basic economic reality: The market for their product is declining while labor costs across the nation are on the rise. Japanese production of whale meat peaked in 1962, and the taste is generally preferred by an older generation.
As commercial whaling ships prepared for the start of the season, officials in the port cities of Shimonoseki in western Japan and Kushiro in the country’s far north predicted the new era of whale hunting would bring economic benefits to their constituents.
“The restart of commercial whaling is a cause for great celebration,” Shimonoseki’s mayor, Shintaro Maeda, told reporters last week, adding that he was looking forward to promoting the city’s efforts “across the whole nation.”
But the industry’s future is bleak, according to people on both sides of the debate over the contentious practice. The government hopes to start reducing the $46 million in annual subsidies it pays to whale hunters within three years. The value of previous catches, obtained under the auspices of scientific research in the Antarctic, totaled only about a half to a third of that.
“Will whaling succeed commercially?” said Masayuki Komatsu, a former government official who oversaw Japan’s international negotiations on the subject and now works at a think tank in Tokyo. “No way.”
Industry experts say they expect costs will come down as ships move their whaling operations from the far seas to waters closer to home. Producers also hope to increase the appeal of whale meat by promoting it among high-end Japanese restaurants, said Konomu Kubo, secretary of the Japan Whaling Association.
Tokyo has for decades fiercely defended whale hunting despite heavy criticism from the international community. The government and local authorities celebrate the practice as a tradition with a long history and cultural significance akin to the hunting of whales in countries such as Norway and Iceland, where commercial hunting is permitted, or among indigenous communities in the United States