Japanese See Whales as Majestic and Tasty

Tomohisa Nagaoka spent more than two decades sailing from the North Pole to the South, hunting whales. By the time he stopped in 1975, Nagaoka had harpooned nearly 4,000 of them.

The 70-year-old still goes whale hunting. But these days, his business depends on the mammals’ being very much alive: He operates whale-watching tours.

About 1,200 Japanese tourists cruise with him each year in search of the whales that frolic here in the warm, very deep waters off Japan’s southwestern island of Shikoku. Nagaoka is still awed each time he comes across one.

“I know why whales are special,” he says. “The big ones are just so impressive. . . . A huge, beautiful blue whale is just so spectacular.”

And yet, Nagaoka is no eco-tourist. He is campaigning to end the international ban on most whale hunting. And like many Japanese, he still loves eating whale meat, the ultimate delicacy in Muroto, once one of the nation’s premier whaling villages.

Westerners might see it as a paradox that Nagaoka recognizes the singular beauty of whales yet has no problem with killing them and devouring them, be it raw, cooked in soy sauce and ginger, deep fried or sauteed with miso.

Whale meat has an especially honored place in Japanese cuisine. Many middle-aged and elderly people have particular nostalgia for it, because whale was among the few sources of protein available in the devastation after World War II. But where it was once abundant and routinely served for school lunches, with 200,000 tons sold in the nation annually in its heyday in the 1960s, it is now an extravagance. Each year, just 2,000 tons are allowed to be caught and marketed in Japan.

Residents of this fishing town of 29,000 share Nagaoka’s feelings for the whales, as do many of his customers. Take Tomoko Matsushita, 49, a waitress at a local restaurant. Her breath seems to stop as she excitedly recalls the first time she spotted a whale on a ferry trip to Osaka. “I felt so happy,” she says.

But without missing a beat, she says: “When I see it in the store, I see it as food. When it’s in the ocean, it’s in the ocean. I don’t see any gap between whales as food and whales as an object of sightseeing.”

Japanese have drawn worldwide condemnation for continuing to hunt whales. The U.S., New Zealand and many other critics contend that a “research program” that allows Japan to capture--and consume--about 500 minke whales annually is little more than a front for the whaling industry.

Japanese ships recently returned from the northwestern Pacific with a haul of 158 whales, 70 more than last year’s hunt. Though they were mainly the minke species, the breed allowed to be caught, the quarry also included Bryde’s and sperm whales.

Although the 500 limit may not seem like a lot, each minke whale yields at least 4 tons of meat, which, in the whalers’ view, makes whaling a lot easier than coming up with an equivalent amount of fish. A blue whale would yield up to 13 tons of meat.

Japan argues that the population of whales--the minke in particular--has exploded, making them the “cockroaches of the sea.” As a result, the food chain is top-heavy and the whales are consuming vast quantities of fish such as sardines, the Japanese contend.

To understand the complex emotions the Japanese have about kujira (whales), there may be no better place to explore than Muroto, whose fortunes have been intertwined with whaling for four centuries.

Many Japanese have an almost mystical awe of the whale, town historian Taikichi Shimamura explains.

“We felt so close to the whale because it was so huge and we took that life,” Shimamura says. “We appreciated this resource from the sea and lived on it.”

Shimamura remembers seeing a bullfight in Spain in which the matador taunted the bull and killed it slowly, cruelly.

“They stick the bull with knives, and it’s so crazed,” he says. “They get excited when the bull dies, and these same people complain about whaling. But Japanese people are praying for the whale when it actually dies.”

Muroto still has many celebrations in praise of the whales that were its lifeblood. Residents erect shrines on the beach and pray for the spirits of the whales they’ve harpooned.

In the latter decades of whaling’s heyday, when a pregnant whale was caught inadvertently, the whalers would wrap the fetus in red cloth, bring it back to shore and bury it on a mountain--an apology, of sorts, to the soul of the baby whale for killing it before it was born. Whalers stood guard by the grave to make sure the carcass wasn’t dug up and eaten by other animals.

Today, Muroto still hasn’t found anything to supplant the income from the whale meat that once stoked its economy.

“We sent our children to university on that income,” says Shinsaku Ueta, who works for a steel company and once made harpoon blades. But since commercial whaling was outlawed in 1987, he says, the “flame of whaling has been disappearing.”

Traditions Are Honored

This town is doing all it can to keep that flame alive along a small peninsula that juts into the Pacific. Several dozen men have banded together in the Whaling Network--a long-shot campaign for the return of commercial whaling. They also preserve whaling lore, such as the old chanteys sung when a whale was captured.

There could be little doubt even today about the heritage of the town, whose densely forested mountains hug the shoreline so tightly that scant arable land exists. Restaurants specialize in whale dishes. Whale pins, clocks, key chains, chopstick rests, even Whaling brand soy sauce are for sale everywhere.

A huge iron replica of a sperm whale draped in a net stands on the bluff outside the charming Whaling Museum. On display are quilted robes worn by whale hunters of yesteryear and tattered linen flags that were hoisted from ships in triumph after a whale was caught.

Exhibits show how no part of the whale went to waste: the 6-foot chin bone cut to make a sword; the 5-foot feathery mustache used for toys, buggy whips and fishing rod tips; the fist-size sperm whale teeth made into tobacco pipes and buttons; the blubber used to light lamps; the glycerin to make dynamite, crayons and lipsticks; the blood dumped on gardens as fertilizer.

The “Meal Culture of Whale” section includes canned kujira curry and kujira sukiyaki. On a map, colorful markers designate the holiday whale-consumption habits of towns on Shikoku: pink for those that eat special whale meat for good luck on New Year’s Day, blue for those that eat it on New Year’s Eve, and yellow for those that eat it throughout the year.

Former whaler Nagaoka is trying to capitalize on a new appreciation in Japan for seeing whales--and other wildlife--in their native habitats. At 8 on a rainy morning, about a dozen passengers--from infants to grandparents--climb aboard the 50-foot boat he named Suehiro-Maru after his son, a prominent sumo wrestler who goes by the name Asashio.

The gauzy clouds hanging like smoke over mountain peaks become more distant, and in just 10 minutes, the boat is speeding in 400-foot-deep water. The Suehiro-Maru whizzes by yellow buoys that mark where fishermen have left nets to catch mackerel, sardines and yellowtail. Nagaoka notes that there’s little to catch these days, because the dolphins that also frolic here eat so much of the fish.

Occasionally, Nagaoka gazes from the top deck with a pair of old binoculars mounted on a post. More than two hours pass, and it begins to rain hard. Still no whales, still no dolphins. By now, the boat is cruising in waters 2,500 feet deep. Two women are violently seasick, sprawled in the middle of the main deck.

Suddenly, Nagaoka spots a fin in the water far ahead: a Risso’s dolphin, recognizable by its rounded nose and a fin that resembles a killer whale’s. “Sugoi!” (“Great!”) scream the children. A few more fins appear. Suddenly, the boat is surrounded by dozens, maybe hundreds of the fins. These are bottlenose dolphins, Nagaoka says.

As the engine idles, the dolphins swim so close to the boat that a passenger could almost reach out and touch them.

“I used to spear them” in the days before he joined the whaling crews, Nagaoka says.

He opens the throttle, and the dolphins begin to race along, almost as if in competition. Groups of four arc their bodies out of the water and jump in a high-speed ballet.

Though no whales have been spotted today, Tamami Fujioka, 10, is thrilled.

“We saw the same type of dolphins at the aquarium, but these were in the wild and so close, it was just amazing.”

Does the experience, by extension, change the spectators’ attitude toward eating whale?

Tamami’s schoolmate Fumiko Okuno feels a twinge. “When I see it as food, it’s tasty and beautiful,” she says. “But when I see them in the sea, I think they’re even more beautiful, and then I don’t feel like eating them anymore, because it’s kind of cruel.”

Not so for most others on board. Sachiko Fujioka, 41, who took her daughter and Fumiko on the trip, says she remembers the standard fried-whale school lunches before whaling was banned.

“I would buy it [now] if it was available,” she says.

Back on shore, the members of the Whaling Network get together to describe their group and tell why Japan should be able to hunt whales again.

Memories of Golden Age

Yoshinobu Chiyooka, 72, the master harpooner who taught Nagaoka most of his skills, reminisces about the tearful goodbyes whalers paid to their families before shoving off for five-month sojourns at sea. About seeing the miraculous aurora borealis moving across the sky “like a living creature.” About the continuous daylight at the North Pole. And about his scariest encounter--not with a whale but with a Greenpeace ship in Canada that got between his boat and the mammal he’d just harpooned.

As many as 16 whaling boats would travel in a caravan that included an oil tanker, a few harpooning ships, ships where the meat was chopped, one for freezing it and another for sailing back frequently to shore with the haul. A mail boat would arrive every few months, bringing letters and goodies from home.

Chiyooka killed 7,000 whales in his day--and is disappointed he fell short of the 8,000 career record. Like that of most harpooners, Chiyooka’s hearing is shot: too much noise from exploding gunpowder when the harpoons were shot and too little ear protection in the arctic cold.

After an invitation from a visitor, the men discuss where to go for a whale meat dinner.

“Don’t go there--they only serve minke,” Chiyooka says of one possibility. The minke--which weren’t even caught before the 1987 ban because they were so small--have little of the fat that the Japanese prize. The government recently began allowing other whale species ensnared in fishermen’s nets to be eaten, as compensation for the damage done to nets and equipment.

“We have our own Japanese food culture,” says Ueta. “We’ve been eating it for a long time, and it’s very important to us.”

At Hatsune, a typical Japanese restaurant where guests sit on tatami-matted floors at low tables, first comes the boiled minke tongue. It resembles bacon.

Then a plate of sashimi that includes dark red whale meat arrives along with various kinds of fish, all piled high on a bed of shredded daikon, a white radish. Some whale is chewy, some softer, some more pink, some bright red. To a die-hard sashimi fan, the whale meat is palatable but leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.

From the taste standpoint, the men explain over beer and sake, whales are not created equal. Most delicious: blue, fin and sei. A sperm whale’s meat isn’t very tasty, but its high-grade oil is quite valuable, used in rocket and satellite technology and prized by the Russians. Humpbacks aren’t eaten much, either: They used to be hunted because they tend to be slow and their organs were palatable.

Foes Seen as Hypocrites

The discussion turns to the hypocritical West, where beef is eaten with abandon.

“Slaughtering cattle is much crueler, because they’re keeping them and raising them before they kill them,” Chiyooka says. “It’s more cruel to kill something you raise on your own. We’re just hunting in the ocean.”

Special consideration, they insist, should be accorded Japan, which as an island nation has a fish-eating culture--and whales are considered fish here.

“In the U.S., the government allows native Eskimos to capture a certain number of whales, as does New Zealand,” Chiyooka says. “Why are they so opposed to Japanese whaling? They’re trying to interfere with the Japanese way.”

The men allow that certain species--such as the biggest one, the blue--shouldn’t be hunted until the populations recover. And they agree that quotas are needed.

After dinner, they gather on the tatami mats of another restaurant, the Kagetsu, where whaling company owners used to throw parties for days after the boats returned from the sea, with fawning geishas pouring sake.

Several younger members of the Whaling Network, in their 20s and 30s, join them. The mission of the younger men, some the sons of older members, is to teach the old whaling songs to schoolchildren and sing at festivals in other whaling towns.

Out comes the taiko drum, and Kazuhiko Sugimura, 32, begins the rhythmic thud of 2-inch-thick wooden sticks. The voices rise, as do hands, as the men close their eyes in concentration and sing. It is a haunting, almost tribal, chant.

Nagaoka, meanwhile, is searching for ways he could collaborate with those who hunt whales under the research program in nearby Taiji. He wants to create an exchange in which the hunters would let him know by radio when they spotted whales they aren’t allowed to catch, and he would let them know when he saw minkes.

“I’ve been thinking for a long time,” Nagaoka says, “that whaling and whale watching can share the whales.”

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Hisako Ueno of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.