Japan and the whaling issue: A viewpoint based on a review of “Whaling in Japan: Power, politics, and diplomacy” by Jun Morikawa

Abstract

1. “Business as usual”Surrounded by a mixed chorus of fear and hope for a compro-mise in the most recent 62nd annual meeting of the InternationalWhaling Commission (IWC62) in Agadir, Morocco, the negotiatorsended up postponing a decision on the compromise, which, inother words, means “business as usual” in the IWC. Another aspectof business as usual was the anti-whaling groups’ (not all of them)campaign of taunting and criticizing Japan, which is best repre-sented by the cartoon of a whale harpooned by the Japanese flag(no such cartoon was drawn of other whaling nations) in Eco, theirflagship publication. What was not business as usual was thatevery day during the meeting, Eco featured a book titled Whalingin Japan (Columbia University Press, New York) written by a Japa-nese professor, Jun Morikawa (Morikawa, 2009). In this writing, Iwill review the book and comment on some implications of thisreview on the current state of affairs regarding Japan and thewhaling issue.2. Reviewing Whaling in JapanTo beginwith, it is very difficult to understand the objective andthe intended audience of this book. The author states that theobjective is “to look beyond the rhetoric and critically explore the[whaling] issue from an academic perspective that provides ananalytical framework for examining Japan’s whaling policy andpolitics” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 4; parenthesis added). However, hefailstociteimportantacademicliterature(e.g.,Blok,2008;IshiiandOkubo, 2007; Miller and Dolsak, 2007) and does not make anyattempt to establish an analytical framework. Regarding the targetaudience, Japanese readers are clearly not the target. Non-Japanesereaders who can read English are also not the target because thereis no explanation of the basics of the Japanese society and policy-making, which is a prerequisite to make the issue understandableto non-Japanese readers, and it refers largely to Japanese materialsthat are mostly unavailable to the non-Japanese. Furthermore, itneither explains the whaling regime in general nor the so-called“scientific”