‘Research Hunt’ Criticized : Japan Tries New Tactics to Keep Whaling Industry

Hiroji Shoji spends a lot of time thinking about Eskimos these days. After 40 years of plying Japan’s coastal waters for whales, he hopes to set sail this spring as an “aboriginal subsistence whaler.”

Shoji says he has visited an Eskimo whaling community in Barrow, Alaska, twice during the past two years to learn more about his unlikely brethren.

“I don’t think I’m much different from an Eskimo,” says the 59-year-old whaler, who operates two 63-foot chase boats from the port of Wada on Chiba Peninsula near Tokyo. “Our standard of living may not be the same, but our cultures and philosophies are very similar.”

Emulating Eskimos may seem like a desperate subterfuge, but Shoji’s interest in anthropology shows the extent to which the Japanese whaling industry is hunkering down to survive.

International Moratorium

Japan agreed, in principle, to abide by an international moratorium on commercial whaling from the beginning of this year.

There are few signs, however, that its 300-year whaling tradition has finally come to an end. Despite mounting condemnation by conservationists and foreign governments, the culture--and economy--of Japanese whaling refuse to die.

Officials plan to seek an exemption from the ban for small whalers who, like Shoji, hunt whale along Japan’s coasts, on the grounds that they are engaged in the same subsistence whaling permitted the aboriginal people of North America and Greenland.

Subsistence Whaling

Shoji says he plans to keep his 22 employees on the payroll until the International Whaling Commission decides on Japan’s request to allow subsistence whaling. To be sure he can qualify, Shoji has studied the IWC definition. He has taken steps in recent years to ensure that his catch was sold only in regional markets and consumed locally, not in Tokyo restaurants.

Shoji’s operation and seven other small whaling concerns like his killed 330 whales last season.

While the larger coastal whaling companies may be doomed to extinction, there is still hope for many of the 1,000 people employed last year by Japan’s last deep-sea whaling fleet: research.

The cooperative that operated the fleet until last year was dissolved but a new company sprang up in its place, leasing the cooperative’s whaling ships and providing experienced crews to a government research organization, which still hunts whales in the Antarctic Ocean.

Robust Populations

Industry and government officials here say dispassionate analysis suggests that the populations of some whale species are robust enough to support commercial whaling--indefinitely. All they want is an opportunity to offer scientific proof of this to the skeptical world.

With that aim, Japan’s supposedly decommissioned deep-sea whaling fleet steamed off to Antarctic waters in late December to kill 300 minke whales in a “research whaling” expedition that has drawn rancor from conservationists and censure from the IWC.

The controversy has taken on strident, emotional overtones. Some adversaries portray the hunting of whales as barbaric and immoral. Japan tenaciously defends its whaling interests by citing unique dietary habits.

“This isn’t like eating dogs,” says Takeji Ai, an official of the Japan Whaling Assn. “I remember the day when Americans couldn’t understand why we ate sushi.”

Stock of 30 Tons

Meanwhile, a popular restaurant in central Tokyo specializing in whale cuisine has stocked 30 tons of frozen whale meat, enough to supply it until 1990, when the whaling ban is scheduled to expire.

At times, the whaling imbroglio mirrors the worst of U.S.-Japan trade friction: accusations of broken promises, bureaucratic intransigence by the Japanese and Japan-bashing by foreigners.

“Some of our top officials complain that the anti-whaling campaign is racist, that it discriminates against Japan,” says Junichiro Okamoto, assistant director of the Fishery Agency’s deep-sea fisheries division. “Sometimes we are forced to pay attention to such opinions.”

But Japan also has to pay attention to international opinion. The Antarctic hunt triggered symbolic sanctions by the U.S. Commerce Department, which this month slashed by half Japan’s fishing quota within the 200-mile zone of territorial waters in which the United States exercises control of marine resources.

Allocation Cut

Japan had pledged in a 1984 agreement with the United States to stop commercial whaling this year if it could keep its fishing quota, which at that time was about 900,000 tons. But the allocation has been halved each year since because of a U.S. policy, unrelated to the whaling dispute, of promoting America’s indigenous fishing industry.

Last year, the fishing quota stood at about 75,000 tons. This year it was set at zero.

Japanese officials say the sanctions still carry a “psychological” sting. Some observers suggest that the U.S. action has the effect of branding Japan an outlaw whaling nation.

Yet Japan vows to continue the hunt. Japanese officials maintain, and some U.S. officials privately concede, that the research is legal under the 1946 international convention that created the IWC. Article Eight of the convention provides that member nations may kill whales for research without seeking permission from the commission.

Gathering Data

Although the stated purpose of the whale-killing is to gather data on life span and reproductive patterns, whale meat from the scientific harvest is to be sold to help defray the cost of the 60-day expedition, estimated at about $11 million.

Outraged conservationists charge that this is commercial whaling in disguise. They say the killing is not necessary.

“What we can learn from research whaling is only one small aspect of what we need to know,” says Toyono Eito, a representative of the World Wildlife Fund in Tokyo. “There are many other ways of gathering data.”

Soon after the mother ship Nisshin Maru No. 3 and its two catcher boats began taking specimens last month, a coalition of conservationist groups went to court in Washington, demanding that the U.S. Commerce Department punish Japan with sanctions.

The U.S. government fought a similar suit all the way to the Supreme Court in 1986, successfully defending its right to decide whether to impose sanctions. Japan was then whaling, despite the IWC ban, but had agreed to stop this year, and had not yet proposed its controversial research plans.

Not Cooperating

This time, however, the government sided with the anti-whaling lobby. Commerce Secretary C. William Verity on Feb. 10 “certified” that Japan is “diminishing the effectiveness” of the IWC, or in other words, not cooperating.

Under an amendment to a federal fisheries law, Japan’s fishing quota is now theoretically cut in half. In practice, that means slashing any allocation that might be negotiated later this year, in the event that American fishermen catch less than anticipated and distribute the unused part of their quota to foreign fleets. Next year, unless the whaling stops, the quota would be frozen at zero.

Conservationists continue to lobby for another anti-whaling sanction, one that bans seafood imports from the offending nation. However, Japan imports four times as much seafood from the United States as it exports to that market, and has hinted that it might retaliate or complain to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Meanwhile, Japanese experts say research whaling is necessary to accurately assess whether stocks can sustain a resumption of full-scale whaling at some time in the future. The IWC has called for a comprehensive assessment, but has sanctioned no major studies to date.

“Who will take the responsibility to do the study if we don’t?” asks Okamoto of the Fisheries Agency.

Edge of Extinction

Many species of whale are on the edge of extinction, but the minke whale is not on the endangered species list. With a population estimated at 440,000 in Antarctic waters, Japanese whalers believe it is thriving.

Shoji, the aspiring aboriginal whaler, says the small minke whales that he hunted off the coast last summer and fall seemed plentiful. He got his quota of 59 ahead of schedule.

“I don’t think they’re declining in stock at all,” he says. “They’re getting easier to catch.”

Japan got a hostile reception at the annual IWC meeting last June when it proposed research that would kill 825 minke and 50 sperm whales, or more than 40% of its 1,941-whale limit of the past two seasons.

Kill 300 Minkes

The IWC asked that the plan be withdrawn after scientists questioned the validity of proposed research methods, specifically the random sampling process. Japanese delegates to the IWC scientific committee later presented a plan to kill 300 minke whales for a scaled-down “feasibility study.” But they still failed to persuade the group’s anti-whaling majority that their methodology was sound.

The IWC then took a mail vote on a resolution urging the Japanese to stop research whaling until “serious uncertainties” were resolved. It passed, 19 to 6, the commission announced on Feb. 15.

Japan is not completely isolated, though. Some of the five pro-whaling nations that joined Japan in opposing the measure--the Soviet Union, Norway, Iceland, Canada and Denmark--are interested in conducting research whaling of their own. Iceland started last year, overcoming U.S. objections by promising not to export more than half its catch to Japan.

The demand for whale meat here appears insatiable. Ai, the Japan Whaling Assn. official, estimates that the Japanese would eat as many as 100,000 tons, or about 20,000 whales, annually, if it were available. That is slightly less than half the amount consumed in the early 1960s, when whale meat was a major source of protein here.

Black Market

Indeed, demand is so great that it has spawned a black market. Late last month a district court in northern Japan convicted four men of smuggling 279 tons of illicit whale meat from Taiwan. Prosecutors said the smuggling ring was connected with the country’s top organized crime syndicate.

Still, whale meat has nearly disappeared from the Japanese kitchen. Annual per capita consumption of whale was 3.5 ounces in 1986, compared to 10 pounds of beef and 22 pounds of chicken. In 1960, the average Japanese ate 3.5 pounds of whale, double the amount of chicken in the diet.

Whale became rooted in the psyche of the modern Japanese as a staple in subsidized school lunches during the impoverished years following World War II. Schools continued serving it into the 1970s, making it an object of sentimentality, and sometimes revulsion, for many Japanese.

Choice Cut for $23

The shortage now makes it a somewhat expensive delicacy. At Ganso Kujiraya, the Tokyo restaurant with 30 tons of whale in the freezer, a choice cut of raw meat costs as much as $23 for a small serving. A meal of whale sukiyaki goes for about $16.

“I wouldn’t say it’s delicious, but it doesn’t taste bad. It’s unusual,” says Hisao Kurita, a 31-year-old garment company worker who eats at the restaurant about once a year. “I suppose we should stop eating it if it’s about to go extinct, but I’d feel a sense of loss if this restaurant were no longer here.”

Other whale-eaters are more enthusiastic. Oji Tanaka of Tokyo says in a recent letter to the Japan Times that whale cuisine should be regarded as a cultural legacy, noting that it is eaten at weddings and New Year celebrations in some parts of Japan.

“Our foreign friends should understand,” he writes, “that whale is for us on special occasions as turkey is for them.”