Japan to resume commercial whaling

Japan is going to re­sume com­mer­cial whal­ing next July. The Japan­ese gov­ern­ment con­firmed yes­ter­day that it was leav­ing the In­ter­na­tional Whal­ing Com­mis­sion (IWC). This de­ci­sion, which has sparked much in­ter­na­tional crit­i­cism, was an­nounced by the gov­ern­ment’s spokesper­son Yoshi­hide Suga, who said that after July whal­ing will re­sume within Japan­ese ter­ri­to­r­ial wa­ters.

The IWC was cre­ated over seven decades ago to guar­an­tee whale con­ser­va­tion and stop whales from being hunted in­dis­crim­i­nately, and Japan joined it on April 21 1951, and par­tic­i­pated in the mora­to­rium on com­mer­cial whal­ing agreed in 1982, al­though an­i­mal rights or­ga­ni­za­tions say covert com­mer­cial hunt­ing was being car­ried out, often under the guise of whale hunt­ing for sci­en­tific re­search. Whale meat is con­sid­ered by some to be an im­por­tant part of Japan­ese culi­nary cul­ture and Mr. Suga has stated that these cetaceans are no longer in dan­ger of ex­tinc­tion and that the IWC fo­cuses too much on con­ser­va­tion and not enough on sus­tain­able whal­ing.

Re­gard­ing Japan’s with­drawal from the IWC, Mr. Suga said that Japan will act as an ob­server in the com­mis­sion and that the Tokyo gov­ern­ment is still com­mit­ted to the re­spon­si­ble use of ma­rine re­sources.