Why Do the Japanese Hunt Whales?

1533 Words4 Pages

“As a Christian, I live by the Bible, so I never indulge in such activities,” Mr. Nanyaro said to undercover reporters (Ogilvie, 2010). He is one of the commissioners in the International Whaling Commission (IWC), and he admitted that Japan provided prostitutes when he visited Japan and lived in a five-star hotel. Meanwhile, according to Ogilvie (2010), Tanzania’s IWC commissioner was recording saying that politicians from his country were flown to Japan where they were offered prostitutes (Ogilvie, 2010), and these bribery allegations came just a week before the IWC meets in Morocco. Moreover, this meeting will decide whether Japan has the rights for the limited commercial whaling. However, Japanese government is yet comment on these bribery allegations.

The issue of Japan’s whaling has existed for a long time in the world. McCurry (2010 ) maintains that according to the IWC’s 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling, Japan is allowed to kill about 1,000 whales from Antarctic waters every winter for scientific research (McCurry, 2010). However, today’s Japan bribes small nations for their support on the success of the proposal of limited commercial whaling. Japan not only maintains that it has the right of scientific whaling but also proposes that they should have the right of commercial whaling at the Morocco meeting. Why does Japan stubbornly insist on whaling?

The most official version of the possible reason, which comes from Japan’s government, is scientific research. According to Japanese government’s Institute of Cetacean Research (2010), Japan maintains that the purpose of the whaling activity is to identify whale stocks, estimate abundance and population structure, reproductive data and general health dat...

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...tures reveal truth about Japan’s scientific whaling. The Independent on Study. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/pictures-reveal-truth-about-japans-scientific-whaling-779802.html

McCurry, J. (2010, April 8). Japan’s whale meat obsession. Global Post. Retrieved from http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/100407/japan-whale-meat?page=0,0#

Ogilvie, F. (2010, June 14). Japan whaling bribery claims common knowledge. ABC News. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/14/2926496.htm

Sekiguchi, K. (2007, November 20). Why Japan’s whale hunt continues. Time Inc. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1686486,00.html

Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. (2010). The economics of whaling. Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. Retrieved from http://www.wdcs.org/submissions_bin/Iceland_whaling.pdf

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