Environment : Japan Is Set for a Whale of a Fight : At a key meeting next month, the government will be out to ease a moratorium on the hunting of the huge mammals.

They flirted with death on the high seas, battling frigid weather, wild storms and the mightiest creatures of the deep in a 400-year-old tradition that brought this town food, livelihood and a colorful legacy as the birthplace of Japan’s whaling industry.

But for six years now, the biggest adversary for the people of Taiji, a picturesque town of azure inlets and emerald bluffs in western Japan, has not been the whale. Rather, an international moratorium on commercial whale hunting has stripped the town of its most important industry, thrown scores of whalers out of work and threatened to obliterate what townsfolk say are rich local traditions.

“Even though there are a lot of whales out there, we were forced to quit because of international opinion,” said Wataru Kohama, 62, whose brown and weathered face reflects his 40 years in whaling. “The job that was handed down to me from my ancestors was just taken away.”

As the International Whaling Commission prepares to meet next month in Kyoto to review the moratorium, the Japanese government and whaling industry are stepping up efforts to lift the ban and restore limited hunting of the minke whale, a relatively small species that is not considered endangered. Armed with recent IWC estimates placing the Antarctic’s minke population at about 760,000, some Japanese scientists contend that several hundred minkes can be hunted annually without endangering the size of the stock.

(The IWC itself has not yet come to any conclusions about how many minkes could be safely hunted; the commission is first trying to complete work on a scientific method for managing and monitoring the process, one major item of business for the Kyoto conference.)

Japan’s position, one that is shared by fellow pro-whalers Iceland and Norway, places it on a collision course with the United States, France, Australia and several other members of the 36-nation commission.

The United States, bound by its own 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act barring the hunting of most warm-blooded creatures of the sea, is not likely to support a resumption of commercial whaling regardless of how many whales are out there. France, for its part, is planning to propose making the Antarctic a marine life sanctuary.

As a result, despite the reams of scientific data and mind-numbing technical arguments, the issue is not likely to be decided in the cool light of rational analysis. Rather, it may hinge on emotions over intellect, culture over science and attitudes and values concerning a creature that has long captured the imagination of writers, scientists and sailors.

To wit: Is the whale simply a resource to be used by man? Or is it a creature of special intelligence and grace that should be left untouched?

“There is a deep gulf between pro- and anti-whaling nations, and it comes down to differences between meat-eaters and fish-eaters,” said Fuzuko Nagasaki, the head of Japan’s government-supported Institute of Cetacean Research. The institute catches 300 minkes per year for research under an exception to the moratorium and sells the meat to local wholesalers.

“No matter how much you debate,” Nagasaki added, “that difference cannot be resolved scientifically.”

Michael Tillman, a U.S. federal fisheries official who serves as an IWC senior adviser, agrees that a fundamental philosophical gulf divides the two sides. But he said the difference is not driven by a Western abhorrence of eating whale meat, a common perception here in Japan. “The U.S. is perfectly willing to allow our own Eskimos to catch and eat bowhead whales. These are special people with special subsistence and cultural needs,” Tillman said. “What we object to, and what the world community objects to, is the commercial use of whaling. Is it necessary for whales to be caught so they can be sold at expensive restaurants in big cities in the world? Just because a marine resource exists doesn’t mean it should be exploited.”

Kazuhiko Ninomiya, a counselor with the World Wide Fund for Nature in Tokyo, said whales deserve special international protection for a number of reasons. They suffer from a notorious history of exploitation, with the blues, fins and other great whales hunted nearly to extinction. As opposed to land animals, they circle the world’s oceans and thus constitute a global treasure rather than any one nation’s resource. In addition, their reproduction rate is far slower than those of fish, and both pollution and the ozone layer’s deterioration pose threats.

But none of that sits very well in Taiji. Here, the whale has always been a source of cheap and tasty protein, as well as oil, leather, medicine and a host of other items. And after World War II, when food shortages ravaged the defeated nation, what had been mainly a local cuisine spread throughout Japan. Indeed, recalled former harpoon gunner Kohama, U.S. occupation authorities encouraged whaling and sent off his first voyage from Yokosuka with a brass band and exhortations to spear plenty of meat to feed the hungry country.

Eventually, Japan became one of the world’s largest commercial whalers and used the meat as its main source of protein. Even today, the Japanese public still generally supports whaling. A 1992 Gallup Poll found 54.7% supported hunting non-endangered whales for food, compared to Norway’s 62.7%, America’s 26.3%, Germany’s 21.9% and Britain’s 16.6%.

But since commercial whaling restrictions were first imposed in the 1970s and a total moratorium in 1987, whaling has come to lose much of its importance to the economy and national diet. In 1960, for instance, Japan produced more whale meat--154,000 tons--than beef, chicken or pork, government figures show. But by 1991, the nation was producing just 2,000 tons of whale meat, compared to 1.5 million tons of pork and 1.3 million tons of chicken.

Whale meat, whose prices have more than doubled in the last decade, has changed from a ubiquitous fixture in school cafeterias and local fish markets to a pricey gourmet meal that runs $45 for lunch alone at one Taiji restauraunt. (The lunch offered six whale courses, ranging from sashimi to whale sukiyaki. The meat tasted like pork or beef, but had a milder flavor.)

Nationwide, the moratorium is said to have hit more than 10,000 people, from whalers to shippers to restaurateurs. Today, only 28 people in four boats nationwide still hunt commercially for pilot and bottlenose whales--two smaller species not included in the moratorium but which are restricted by Japan.

In Taiji, whaling constituted more than 60% of the town’s income three decades ago; that figure has dropped to 7%. Some whalers left town; others turned to other kinds of fishing.

Among a dozen fishermen who recently unloaded their morning catch of yellowtails, squid and other fish from their boat, more than half were former whalers.

“Whaling is a lot more profitable,” said Shoya Ryono, as he busily sorted fish. “You could make 10 million yen ($88,000) working just three or four months a year. With fishing, you work all year, six days a week and pull in just 5 million yen.”

In addition, the whaling industry is suffering from a lack of young people to carry on the traditions.

Toshiyuki Motohashi, head of the Taiji Fisheries Assn., represents his family’s eighth generation of whalers--but his son chose instead to work at a bank because of the industry’s uncertain future.

Motohashi can count on one hand the number of local whalers in their 30s; the average age, he says, is about 55 and most are surviving on pensions.

The local schools started a program of whale education in 1991 because children were growing up oblivious to their town’s history, despite a museum that sets it out, along with whale skeletons, hunting tools and other paraphernalia.

And as whale-watching catches on in Japan, more people now identify whales as a symbol of environmental protection rather than food--27% compared to 24%, with the figure rising to 35% for people in their 20s and 30s, according to a recent poll in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

To counteract that trend, nine whale restaurants throughout Japan have begun to sponsor a “Whale Day” on the ninth of each month, serving special promotional meals. On a recent day, the Kujira Restaurant in Tokyo offered an 88-cent special lunch of fried whale, rice and miso soup--and by 11:30 a.m., more than 100 people were lined up outside the door.

“We used to eat whale in the school cafeteria, so we miss the taste. Stores don’t sell it so I can’t make it at home,” said Hiromi Sato, 29, who waited in line with her husband, Tomohiko.

“As long as the whales are carefully controlled with due regard for the ecosystem, it seems a few more should be allowed to be caught,” she added.

That’s precisely what Japan will argue next month. Officials fear that if they don’t stop the whale ban, tuna and other more frequently eaten fish will be next.

In addition, said Nagasaki of the research institute, the nation will work to oppose the sanctuary proposal, attempt to fend off moves to include dolphins and porpoises in the IWC’s jurisdiction (Japan is catching hundreds each year as a partial substitute for whale meat) and will press for an annual quota of 50 minkes to be caught by local whalers off the coast of Japan, just as Alaska’s Inuits are still allowed to hunt.

For people such as Kiyoko Isoda, owner of the Oiso inn in Taiji, the fate of her hometown of 4,000 rests directly on the deliberations of the world whaling body.

“The young people have fled, and I feel that Taiji is becoming a town of old people. It’s so lonesome,” she said. “If they’ll just let us reopen whaling, catch a few more. . . . “ She turns to her visitors with a hopeful look. “Is it possible?”

Chiaki Kitada, researcher in The Times’ Tokyo Bureau, contributed to this article.