- Email: [email protected]
Japan and the whaling issue: A viewpoint based on a review of “Whaling in Japan: Power, politics, and diplomacy” by Jun Morikawa
Ocean & Coastal Management 54 (2011) 274e276
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Ocean & Coastal Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman
Commentary
Japan and the whaling issue: A viewpoint based on a review of “Whaling in Japan: Power, politics, and diplomacy” by Jun Morikawa Atsushi Ishii* Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, 41 Kawauchi, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8576, Japan
a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Available online 5 January 2011
1. “Business as usual” Surrounded by a mixed chorus of fear and hope for a compromise in the most recent 62nd annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC62) in Agadir, Morocco, the negotiators ended up postponing a decision on the compromise, which, in other words, means “business as usual” in the IWC. Another aspect of business as usual was the anti-whaling groups’ (not all of them) campaign of taunting and criticizing Japan, which is best represented by the cartoon of a whale harpooned by the Japanese flag (no such cartoon was drawn of other whaling nations) in Eco, their flagship publication. What was not business as usual was that every day during the meeting, Eco featured a book titled Whaling in Japan (Columbia University Press, New York) written by a Japanese professor, Jun Morikawa (Morikawa, 2009). In this writing, I will review the book and comment on some implications of this review on the current state of affairs regarding Japan and the whaling issue. 2. Reviewing Whaling in Japan To begin with, it is very difficult to understand the objective and the intended audience of this book. The author states that the objective is “to look beyond the rhetoric and critically explore the [whaling] issue from an academic perspective that provides an analytical framework for examining Japan’s whaling policy and politics” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 4; parenthesis added). However, he fails to cite important academic literature (e.g., Blok, 2008; Ishii and Okubo, 2007; Miller and Dolsak, 2007) and does not make any attempt to establish an analytical framework. Regarding the target audience, Japanese readers are clearly not the target. Non-Japanese readers who can read English are also not the target because there * Tel.: þ81 227956076. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0964-5691/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2010.11.002
is no explanation of the basics of the Japanese society and policymaking, which is a prerequisite to make the issue understandable to non-Japanese readers, and it refers largely to Japanese materials that are mostly unavailable to the non-Japanese. Furthermore, it neither explains the whaling regime in general nor the so-called “scientific”1 whaling by Japan, which is considered as the most important whaling activity in this book. Therefore, this book is conceivable only as an informative book targeted at non-Japanese but Japanese-fluent experts knowledgeable both of the whaling regime and Japanese politics, who are very few. Having said that, the book adopts a healthy critical stance, which is essential for those investigating the whaling issue, to distinguish qualified information from the myths and propaganda that could be found almost everywhere in the whaling controversy. From that stance, it assesses all the arguments that are used by the prowhaling circle of Japan and elaborates on the relevant actors and politics of Japanese whaling activities, with intensive focus on Japan’s so-called “vote consolidation operation” (Third Millennium Foundation, 2006) in which Japan is using its Official Development Assistance (ODA) to obtain support and favorable votes in the IWC. In particular, he makes an extremely important and accurate point that should be sobering to the anti-whaling groups and their supporters: “While Sea Shepherd’s actions [aiming at disrupting Japanese whaling in Antarctica, commonly known as “JARPA” or “JARPA II”] might be designed to work towards a decisive change in Japan’s whaling policy, and have called attention to the matter on an international level, their actions have had the opposite effect on public opinion inside Japan. And, ironically, they have been used by the pro-whaling forces to help strengthen domestic support for whaling instead” (Morikawa, 2009, pp. 2e3). While he does not cite any evidence of this observation, this is in agreement with academic 1 I put the word “scientific” in quotation marks because it is highly controversial as to whether Japan’s whaling program, which began in 1987, under Article 8 of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, is actually scientific.
A. Ishii / Ocean & Coastal Management 54 (2011) 274e276
research. Based on an opinion poll conducted by The Asahi Shimbun, one of the biggest Japanese newspaper companies, in which supporters of the Japanese pro-whaling policy significantly outnumbered those willing to eat whale meat, Ishii and Okubo argue that a considerable number of Japanese people are basically “anti anti-whaling” (Ishii and Okubo, 2007, p. 79). Furthermore, Australian researchers investigated Japanese university students and noticed that the comments of the respondents exhibited “anti antiwhaling sentiment., seeing Japan as a ‘victim’ of western cultural imperialism, precisely the view generated by the GOJ [Government of Japan] and Japanese media” (Bowett and Hay, 2009). Moreover, the Sea Shepherd boasts of having saved 528 whales from being killed by Japan’s Antarctic whaling program (Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Webpage), but this is unlikely. The then Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, Hirotaka Akamatsu, stated in the Diet that, in the 2009/10 whaling season, the actual planned catch of Japanese Antarctic whaling is confidential (this indicates that the official target of 765e935 is a nominal one) but had almost been accomplished.2 Therefore, it is likely that the Sea Shepherd’s activities in the Antarctic not only increased the number of supporters of Japan’s pro-whaling policy but also failed to save any whales. However, many parts of the book lack essential references, and therefore, the book is largely speculative and sometimes internally contradictory. As an example of the former, Chapter 5 on Japan’s vote consolidation campaign refers almost only to anecdotal evidence to argue that Japan is actually doing so. It failed to strengthen its argument by referring to existing literature (Miller and Dolsak, 2007) that tested the hypothesis of Japan’s campaign by analyzing the correlation between ODA expenditure and voting patterns and arrived generally at the same argument as the book. As an example of internal contradiction, after the author rightly points out that “[i]n Japan, the whaling issue is not regarded as a global environmental issue of wildlife conservation, but rather as, predominantly, a food supply issue that can be solved through the ‘sustainable use’ of marine resources” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 11), he further argues that “[t]he lack of a desire to eat whale [on the part of the Japanese younger generation] comes from a broader, diversified, and deepening awareness of global environmental issues.” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 121) and that “[t]he Japanese government’s pro-whaling policy is now confronted with the epochal tide of opinion in favour of protecting the environment” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 128). How can an issue that is not conceived as an environmental one by the Japanese public be confronted by a tide of opinion favoring environmental protection?
3. The real objective of Japan’s whaling policy In the end, the reader of this book would be disappointed because it does not clearly explain why Japan is pursuing its prowhaling policy. The reason for this lack of clear explanation is partly revealed in the book itself. After stating simply that “[t]he Japanese government’s political will to maintain and re-expand commercial whaling is clear” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 5), Morikawa demystifies the arguments in support of such political will and argues that most of them are groundless and hardly believable, which I mostly agree with. In other words, given that the arguments provided as reasons for Japan’s pro-whaling political will are groundless and hardly believable, this indicates that the
2 Minutes of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Committee, the House of Representatives of Japan, the 174th Diet, April 7, 2010. Available at http://kokkai.ndl. go.jp/SENTAKU/syugiin/174/0009/17404070009006a.html(accessed 06.09.10).
275
political will in itself is a myth and the real objective of Japan’s whaling policy is something else. Moreover, the author argues that “[t]he doubling in the [Antarctic] annual research whaling catch [from 400 to 850 in the 2004/2005 whaling season] is designed to increase the amount of whale meat distributed and sold in Japan while also making it possible for the Japanese government and the Japanese ICR [Institute for Cetacean Research] to lower the market price” and thereby “contributes to promoting the sale of whale meat products in the general marketplace.” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 36). However, this argument cannot be supported by data regarding the whale meat stockpile and its price set by the sales committee under the guidance of the Japanese Fisheries Agency. For example, despite the fact that the nationwide retail price of red meat of Minke whale, which is one of the most popular types of whale meat in Japan and therefore regarded as a sort of standard price of whale meat, was lowered from 2400 Yen/kg to 1900 Yen/kg in mid2005 and has been stabilized at that level,3 the whale meat stockpile at the end of February 2010 has more than doubled since March 2004 from 1614 t to 3981 t,4 the highest amount at the end of February since JARPA was established in 1987. This means that the price of whale meat is not the primary driver of the consumption of whale meat. One of the most important factors would be the competition among all the types of meat available to the Japanese public. The two most popular types of meat in the Japanese market (not including fish meat) are pork and chicken and their retail prices are roughly about below 1000 Yen/kg (equal to about US$ 10/kg; the same currency ratio is used throughout this writing), which clearly means that it is extremely difficult for whale meat to compete with them. There is further evidence that it will be extremely difficult to revitalize the whaling industry. In 1994, the then Director General of the ICR admitted that no private company would engage in commercial whaling (The Mainichi Daily News, May 28, 1994). In May 2006, Japan’s three big marine products companies (Maruha Nichiro Holdings, Inc.; Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd.; Kyokuyo Co., Ltd.) transferred their stocks of the Kyodo Sempaku to public entities free of charge (The Asahi Shimbun, June 14, 2008). This is an indication that the three companies saw no future in the whaling industry and wanted to sever any connection with it. Given these evidence, it is very difficult to maintain the argument that the real objective of Japanese pro-whaling policy is “to maintain and re-expand commercial whaling” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 5). Moreover, Ishii and Okubo found that the Japanese government has never actually implemented the necessary strategies to achieve such an objective (Ishii and Okubo, 2007). What, then, is the real objective of the Japanese pro-whaling policy? A counterfactual thought experiment would be helpful to solve this puzzle. Suppose that the moratorium on commercial whaling is suddenly lifted. What would happen to Japan’s prowhaling circle in such a situation? First, the “scientific” whaling activities would become increasingly difficult to justify because it is the moratorium that provides the justification of “scientific” whaling as an essential activity to obtain scientific information and thereby persuade the anti-whaling countries to lift the moratorium. Second, the subsidy (500 million Yen (US$5 million) per year) and interest-free loan (about 3.6 billion Yen (US$36 million) per year) (These figures are for the year 2006; The Asahi Shimbun,
3 These price data are from Institute for Cetacean Research (2004, 2005) and the subsequent press releases from the ICR. 4 The stockpile data are from the Fisheries Products Distribution Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forests. Those data recorded at the end of February or March is regularly the lowest yearly amount of stockpile because it is just before the whale meat taken by JARPA (and JARPA II) is supplied to the Japanese markets. The reason for using the lowest yearly amount is to avoid exaggerated interpretation of the amount of the whale meat stockpile.
276
A. Ishii / Ocean & Coastal Management 54 (2011) 274e276
February 2, 2008) given to the “scientific” whaling activities would also become increasingly difficult to justify for the same reasons just mentioned and it is likely that they would be reduced and ultimately discontinued. This means that “scientific” whaling would also be scaled down and ultimately abandoned. Third, if “scientific” whaling is scaled down, the ICR would also scale down its activities and dismiss its employees. At the same time, the Kyodo Sempaku would have to compensate for losing the subsidy by increasing profit through new commercial activities and for the interest-free loan by borrowing money from commercial banks, which are not willing to invest in a whaling business with very limited demand for whale meat. Fourth, if “scientific” whaling is ultimately abandoned, then the ICR and the Kyodo Senpaku would face enormous difficulty in surviving, and the Japanese Fisheries Agency would lose its jurisdiction related to “scientific” whaling (Ishii, 2008). The point of this thought experiment is that this “lifting the moratorium” scenario is the worst one for Japan’s pro-whaling circle, and it is the moratorium that enables Japan’s “scientific” whaling to continue. In addition, Ishii and Okubo found not only that the Japanese government never pursued the necessary strategies to lift the moratorium but also that its behavior in the whaling negotiations had clearly been intended to intensify the conflict between the pro-whaling countries and the anti-whaling countries (Ishii and Okubo, 2007). For example, Japan asked Australia, one of the leading anti-whaling nations, to leave the IWC in 1991, which is an exceptional demand in international negotiations (Ishii and Okubo, 2007, p. 79). Combining this evidence with application of conceptual models of Japan’s domestic political system to its whaling policy led Ishii and Okubo to conclude that the real objective of Japan’s pro-whaling circle is “the continuation of socalled ‘scientific’ whaling. and not the resumption of commercial whaling” and further that it “even does not want to lift the moratorium and is only pretending that it is devoted to resuming commercial whaling because it prefers the status quo” (Ishii and Okubo, 2007, p. 56). 4. “Which of the four scenarios will Japan choose?” The section title above is the last sentence of Whaling in Japan after presenting four scenarios for the future of Japanese whaling policy. Two scenarios are rather extreme: the demise of whaling and unilateral resumption of commercial whaling. Following the line of thinking presented in the previous section, these scenarios could be concluded as very unlikely to be chosen by the Japanese Government in the near future. Moreover, Morikawa overlooks the fact that, if Japan wants to withdraw and unilaterally resume commercial whaling, Article 65 of the United Nations Convention of
the Law of the Sea requires it to establish a universally recognized international organization competent for the conservation of whales and to co-operate through that organization. This makes the unilateral resumption scenario further difficult, if not impossible. A middle-range scenario, named “a realistic transition” scenario, is to limit Japanese whaling activities to those targeting whale species that are currently not regulated by the ICRW. I don’t understand why this is a “realistic” scenario because this requires Japan to drastically demise all whaling activities related to the ICRW, which is very unlikely to be chosen judging from the same argument presented in the previous section. The only scenario that is realistic is the status quo scenario which is merely briefly addressed in the book. Morikawa fails to mention the most important enabling condition for Japan to continue the status quo: the anti-whaling countries’ blocking of lifting the moratorium, which I witnessed at the IWC62. It cannot be overemphasized that the current continuation of the Japanese “scientific” whaling is possible by maintaining the moratorium. This conversely means that lifting the moratorium could be an effective diplomatic option to stop it. However, no one can ever foresee this would happen unless the anti-whaling countries give up their principle and trying to seize their moral high grounds.
References Blok, A., 2008. Contesting global norms: politics of identity in Japanese pro-whaling countermobilization. Glob. Environ. Polit. 8, 39e66. Bowett, J., Hay, P., 2009. Whaling and its controversies: examining the attitudes of Japan’s youth. Mar. Policy 33, 775e783. Institute for Cetacean Research, 2004. Dai-juichi-ji Hokusei-Taiheiyo-GeiruiHokaku-Chosa de erareta Chosa-Fukusanbutsu no Hambai ni tsuite [Press release on the sale of by-products from the 11th lethal research cruise of the Japanese Whale Research Program under special permit in the Western North Pacific e Phase II]. Press release, Institute for Cetacean Research, Tokyo, November 19th, 2004. Institute for Cetacean Research, 2005. Dai-juni-ji Hokusei-Taiheiyo-Geirui-HokakuChosa de erareta Chosa-Fukusanbutsu no Hambai ni tsuite [Press release on the sale of by-products from the 12th lethal research cruise of the Japanese Whale Research Program under special permit in the Western North Pacific e Phase II]. Press release, Institute for Cetacean Research, Tokyo, November 25th, 2005. Ishii, A., March 2008. Naze Chosa-Hogei Ronso wa kurikaesareru noka. [Why does the scientific whaling controversy continue?]. Sekai, pp. 194e203. Ishii, A., Okubo, A., 2007. An alternative explanation of Japan’s whaling diplomacy in the post-moratorium era. J. Int. Wild. Law Policy 10, 55e87. Miller, A.R., Dolsak, N., 2007. Issue linkages in international environmental policy: the International Whaling Commission and Japanese development aid. Glob. Environ. Polit. 7, 69e96. Morikawa, J., 2009. Whaling in Japan: Power, politics, and diplomacy. Columbia University Press, New York. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Webpage. Operation Waltzing Matilda. http:// www.seashepherd.org/matilda/ (accessed 06.09.10). Third Millennium Foundation, 2006. Japan’s “vote consolidation operation” at the International Whaling Commission: Winning a majority in St. Kitts and Nevis, Paciano, Italy, June 2006.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Ocean & Coastal Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman
Commentary
Japan and the whaling issue: A viewpoint based on a review of “Whaling in Japan: Power, politics, and diplomacy” by Jun Morikawa Atsushi Ishii* Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, 41 Kawauchi, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8576, Japan
a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Available online 5 January 2011
1. “Business as usual” Surrounded by a mixed chorus of fear and hope for a compromise in the most recent 62nd annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC62) in Agadir, Morocco, the negotiators ended up postponing a decision on the compromise, which, in other words, means “business as usual” in the IWC. Another aspect of business as usual was the anti-whaling groups’ (not all of them) campaign of taunting and criticizing Japan, which is best represented by the cartoon of a whale harpooned by the Japanese flag (no such cartoon was drawn of other whaling nations) in Eco, their flagship publication. What was not business as usual was that every day during the meeting, Eco featured a book titled Whaling in Japan (Columbia University Press, New York) written by a Japanese professor, Jun Morikawa (Morikawa, 2009). In this writing, I will review the book and comment on some implications of this review on the current state of affairs regarding Japan and the whaling issue. 2. Reviewing Whaling in Japan To begin with, it is very difficult to understand the objective and the intended audience of this book. The author states that the objective is “to look beyond the rhetoric and critically explore the [whaling] issue from an academic perspective that provides an analytical framework for examining Japan’s whaling policy and politics” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 4; parenthesis added). However, he fails to cite important academic literature (e.g., Blok, 2008; Ishii and Okubo, 2007; Miller and Dolsak, 2007) and does not make any attempt to establish an analytical framework. Regarding the target audience, Japanese readers are clearly not the target. Non-Japanese readers who can read English are also not the target because there * Tel.: þ81 227956076. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0964-5691/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2010.11.002
is no explanation of the basics of the Japanese society and policymaking, which is a prerequisite to make the issue understandable to non-Japanese readers, and it refers largely to Japanese materials that are mostly unavailable to the non-Japanese. Furthermore, it neither explains the whaling regime in general nor the so-called “scientific”1 whaling by Japan, which is considered as the most important whaling activity in this book. Therefore, this book is conceivable only as an informative book targeted at non-Japanese but Japanese-fluent experts knowledgeable both of the whaling regime and Japanese politics, who are very few. Having said that, the book adopts a healthy critical stance, which is essential for those investigating the whaling issue, to distinguish qualified information from the myths and propaganda that could be found almost everywhere in the whaling controversy. From that stance, it assesses all the arguments that are used by the prowhaling circle of Japan and elaborates on the relevant actors and politics of Japanese whaling activities, with intensive focus on Japan’s so-called “vote consolidation operation” (Third Millennium Foundation, 2006) in which Japan is using its Official Development Assistance (ODA) to obtain support and favorable votes in the IWC. In particular, he makes an extremely important and accurate point that should be sobering to the anti-whaling groups and their supporters: “While Sea Shepherd’s actions [aiming at disrupting Japanese whaling in Antarctica, commonly known as “JARPA” or “JARPA II”] might be designed to work towards a decisive change in Japan’s whaling policy, and have called attention to the matter on an international level, their actions have had the opposite effect on public opinion inside Japan. And, ironically, they have been used by the pro-whaling forces to help strengthen domestic support for whaling instead” (Morikawa, 2009, pp. 2e3). While he does not cite any evidence of this observation, this is in agreement with academic 1 I put the word “scientific” in quotation marks because it is highly controversial as to whether Japan’s whaling program, which began in 1987, under Article 8 of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, is actually scientific.
A. Ishii / Ocean & Coastal Management 54 (2011) 274e276
research. Based on an opinion poll conducted by The Asahi Shimbun, one of the biggest Japanese newspaper companies, in which supporters of the Japanese pro-whaling policy significantly outnumbered those willing to eat whale meat, Ishii and Okubo argue that a considerable number of Japanese people are basically “anti anti-whaling” (Ishii and Okubo, 2007, p. 79). Furthermore, Australian researchers investigated Japanese university students and noticed that the comments of the respondents exhibited “anti antiwhaling sentiment., seeing Japan as a ‘victim’ of western cultural imperialism, precisely the view generated by the GOJ [Government of Japan] and Japanese media” (Bowett and Hay, 2009). Moreover, the Sea Shepherd boasts of having saved 528 whales from being killed by Japan’s Antarctic whaling program (Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Webpage), but this is unlikely. The then Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, Hirotaka Akamatsu, stated in the Diet that, in the 2009/10 whaling season, the actual planned catch of Japanese Antarctic whaling is confidential (this indicates that the official target of 765e935 is a nominal one) but had almost been accomplished.2 Therefore, it is likely that the Sea Shepherd’s activities in the Antarctic not only increased the number of supporters of Japan’s pro-whaling policy but also failed to save any whales. However, many parts of the book lack essential references, and therefore, the book is largely speculative and sometimes internally contradictory. As an example of the former, Chapter 5 on Japan’s vote consolidation campaign refers almost only to anecdotal evidence to argue that Japan is actually doing so. It failed to strengthen its argument by referring to existing literature (Miller and Dolsak, 2007) that tested the hypothesis of Japan’s campaign by analyzing the correlation between ODA expenditure and voting patterns and arrived generally at the same argument as the book. As an example of internal contradiction, after the author rightly points out that “[i]n Japan, the whaling issue is not regarded as a global environmental issue of wildlife conservation, but rather as, predominantly, a food supply issue that can be solved through the ‘sustainable use’ of marine resources” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 11), he further argues that “[t]he lack of a desire to eat whale [on the part of the Japanese younger generation] comes from a broader, diversified, and deepening awareness of global environmental issues.” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 121) and that “[t]he Japanese government’s pro-whaling policy is now confronted with the epochal tide of opinion in favour of protecting the environment” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 128). How can an issue that is not conceived as an environmental one by the Japanese public be confronted by a tide of opinion favoring environmental protection?
3. The real objective of Japan’s whaling policy In the end, the reader of this book would be disappointed because it does not clearly explain why Japan is pursuing its prowhaling policy. The reason for this lack of clear explanation is partly revealed in the book itself. After stating simply that “[t]he Japanese government’s political will to maintain and re-expand commercial whaling is clear” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 5), Morikawa demystifies the arguments in support of such political will and argues that most of them are groundless and hardly believable, which I mostly agree with. In other words, given that the arguments provided as reasons for Japan’s pro-whaling political will are groundless and hardly believable, this indicates that the
2 Minutes of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Committee, the House of Representatives of Japan, the 174th Diet, April 7, 2010. Available at http://kokkai.ndl. go.jp/SENTAKU/syugiin/174/0009/17404070009006a.html(accessed 06.09.10).
275
political will in itself is a myth and the real objective of Japan’s whaling policy is something else. Moreover, the author argues that “[t]he doubling in the [Antarctic] annual research whaling catch [from 400 to 850 in the 2004/2005 whaling season] is designed to increase the amount of whale meat distributed and sold in Japan while also making it possible for the Japanese government and the Japanese ICR [Institute for Cetacean Research] to lower the market price” and thereby “contributes to promoting the sale of whale meat products in the general marketplace.” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 36). However, this argument cannot be supported by data regarding the whale meat stockpile and its price set by the sales committee under the guidance of the Japanese Fisheries Agency. For example, despite the fact that the nationwide retail price of red meat of Minke whale, which is one of the most popular types of whale meat in Japan and therefore regarded as a sort of standard price of whale meat, was lowered from 2400 Yen/kg to 1900 Yen/kg in mid2005 and has been stabilized at that level,3 the whale meat stockpile at the end of February 2010 has more than doubled since March 2004 from 1614 t to 3981 t,4 the highest amount at the end of February since JARPA was established in 1987. This means that the price of whale meat is not the primary driver of the consumption of whale meat. One of the most important factors would be the competition among all the types of meat available to the Japanese public. The two most popular types of meat in the Japanese market (not including fish meat) are pork and chicken and their retail prices are roughly about below 1000 Yen/kg (equal to about US$ 10/kg; the same currency ratio is used throughout this writing), which clearly means that it is extremely difficult for whale meat to compete with them. There is further evidence that it will be extremely difficult to revitalize the whaling industry. In 1994, the then Director General of the ICR admitted that no private company would engage in commercial whaling (The Mainichi Daily News, May 28, 1994). In May 2006, Japan’s three big marine products companies (Maruha Nichiro Holdings, Inc.; Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd.; Kyokuyo Co., Ltd.) transferred their stocks of the Kyodo Sempaku to public entities free of charge (The Asahi Shimbun, June 14, 2008). This is an indication that the three companies saw no future in the whaling industry and wanted to sever any connection with it. Given these evidence, it is very difficult to maintain the argument that the real objective of Japanese pro-whaling policy is “to maintain and re-expand commercial whaling” (Morikawa, 2009, p. 5). Moreover, Ishii and Okubo found that the Japanese government has never actually implemented the necessary strategies to achieve such an objective (Ishii and Okubo, 2007). What, then, is the real objective of the Japanese pro-whaling policy? A counterfactual thought experiment would be helpful to solve this puzzle. Suppose that the moratorium on commercial whaling is suddenly lifted. What would happen to Japan’s prowhaling circle in such a situation? First, the “scientific” whaling activities would become increasingly difficult to justify because it is the moratorium that provides the justification of “scientific” whaling as an essential activity to obtain scientific information and thereby persuade the anti-whaling countries to lift the moratorium. Second, the subsidy (500 million Yen (US$5 million) per year) and interest-free loan (about 3.6 billion Yen (US$36 million) per year) (These figures are for the year 2006; The Asahi Shimbun,
3 These price data are from Institute for Cetacean Research (2004, 2005) and the subsequent press releases from the ICR. 4 The stockpile data are from the Fisheries Products Distribution Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forests. Those data recorded at the end of February or March is regularly the lowest yearly amount of stockpile because it is just before the whale meat taken by JARPA (and JARPA II) is supplied to the Japanese markets. The reason for using the lowest yearly amount is to avoid exaggerated interpretation of the amount of the whale meat stockpile.
276
A. Ishii / Ocean & Coastal Management 54 (2011) 274e276
February 2, 2008) given to the “scientific” whaling activities would also become increasingly difficult to justify for the same reasons just mentioned and it is likely that they would be reduced and ultimately discontinued. This means that “scientific” whaling would also be scaled down and ultimately abandoned. Third, if “scientific” whaling is scaled down, the ICR would also scale down its activities and dismiss its employees. At the same time, the Kyodo Sempaku would have to compensate for losing the subsidy by increasing profit through new commercial activities and for the interest-free loan by borrowing money from commercial banks, which are not willing to invest in a whaling business with very limited demand for whale meat. Fourth, if “scientific” whaling is ultimately abandoned, then the ICR and the Kyodo Senpaku would face enormous difficulty in surviving, and the Japanese Fisheries Agency would lose its jurisdiction related to “scientific” whaling (Ishii, 2008). The point of this thought experiment is that this “lifting the moratorium” scenario is the worst one for Japan’s pro-whaling circle, and it is the moratorium that enables Japan’s “scientific” whaling to continue. In addition, Ishii and Okubo found not only that the Japanese government never pursued the necessary strategies to lift the moratorium but also that its behavior in the whaling negotiations had clearly been intended to intensify the conflict between the pro-whaling countries and the anti-whaling countries (Ishii and Okubo, 2007). For example, Japan asked Australia, one of the leading anti-whaling nations, to leave the IWC in 1991, which is an exceptional demand in international negotiations (Ishii and Okubo, 2007, p. 79). Combining this evidence with application of conceptual models of Japan’s domestic political system to its whaling policy led Ishii and Okubo to conclude that the real objective of Japan’s pro-whaling circle is “the continuation of socalled ‘scientific’ whaling. and not the resumption of commercial whaling” and further that it “even does not want to lift the moratorium and is only pretending that it is devoted to resuming commercial whaling because it prefers the status quo” (Ishii and Okubo, 2007, p. 56). 4. “Which of the four scenarios will Japan choose?” The section title above is the last sentence of Whaling in Japan after presenting four scenarios for the future of Japanese whaling policy. Two scenarios are rather extreme: the demise of whaling and unilateral resumption of commercial whaling. Following the line of thinking presented in the previous section, these scenarios could be concluded as very unlikely to be chosen by the Japanese Government in the near future. Moreover, Morikawa overlooks the fact that, if Japan wants to withdraw and unilaterally resume commercial whaling, Article 65 of the United Nations Convention of
the Law of the Sea requires it to establish a universally recognized international organization competent for the conservation of whales and to co-operate through that organization. This makes the unilateral resumption scenario further difficult, if not impossible. A middle-range scenario, named “a realistic transition” scenario, is to limit Japanese whaling activities to those targeting whale species that are currently not regulated by the ICRW. I don’t understand why this is a “realistic” scenario because this requires Japan to drastically demise all whaling activities related to the ICRW, which is very unlikely to be chosen judging from the same argument presented in the previous section. The only scenario that is realistic is the status quo scenario which is merely briefly addressed in the book. Morikawa fails to mention the most important enabling condition for Japan to continue the status quo: the anti-whaling countries’ blocking of lifting the moratorium, which I witnessed at the IWC62. It cannot be overemphasized that the current continuation of the Japanese “scientific” whaling is possible by maintaining the moratorium. This conversely means that lifting the moratorium could be an effective diplomatic option to stop it. However, no one can ever foresee this would happen unless the anti-whaling countries give up their principle and trying to seize their moral high grounds.
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