Japan’s Spin on Slaughter
Posted on July 26th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »
Japanese whalers killed some 500 minke whales in the last whaling “season.” About 286 of those were mature females, and out those 286, 262 were pregnant.
But if you’re trying to justify whaling, that’s a good thing!
According to a spokesman for a Japanese-backed pro-whaling group, the statistic shows that the whale population is doing so well, it can afford to be slaughtered by the Japanese.
(All right, those weren’t his exact words, but it’s a pretty accurate paraphrase.)
“Almost all of the whales are becoming pregnant each year. This is good news. This is great. It shows that the Antarctic minke population is increasing rapidly,” the ICR’s Glenn Inwood said today.
“The consistent population must provide strong reassurance that the population will easily sustain a commercial quota.“
[Shades of Orwell: ICR stands for Institute of Cetacean Research, the “scientific” group Japan established to justify its claim that it practices whaling only for research purposes. Inwood is its mouthpiece.]
And here I would have thought that killing about 750 whales, if you include the young, is bad for the whale population. Silly me…..
By the way, does anyone doubt that the attitudes in Japan that support whaling are connected to the attitudes behind that country’s growing militarism? Or that it’s only a matter of time till those who promote Japanese historical revisionism say that whaling is part of a glorious culture that needs to be defended against Western cultural imperialism?
13 Responses
7/26/2007 11:03 am
Here you go again with the dicey cross-cultural interpretation. Would you care to put a little flesh on the bones of your assertion that the Japanese attitudes that support whaling can be linked to the country’s supposed growing militarism? The historical revisionism you mention is not new. Further, of all the countries in Asia, Japan is the least likely to complain of “Western cultural imperialism”. Eating fish is close to a religious experience in Japan and, yes, the Japanese are defensive and insular in their thinking, attitudes that would of course be at play in the debate about Japanese militarism, historical and current. But I think the linkage you’re trying to make is tenuous and indeed misbegotten. It is a way of demonizing the activity, when I would think a better approach is to highlight the environmental issue and push Japan to comply with global standards, since it is in fact a responsible global citizen and ally. I think you have an occasional tendency to indulge in cultural stereotyping in service of your environmental causes, a reflection, it seems to me, of unfamiliarity with the cultures in question. I think cultural questions, even when the environment is involved, require rigorous attention and sensitivity.
7/26/2007 11:14 am
Fair points, but for what it’s worth, I don’t limit this to Asiaâthat just happens to be a part of the world where environmental practices affect creatures that are particularly close to my heart.
I would suggest, for example, that the same kind of aggression that leads Dick Cheney to shoot a friend in the face (i.e., hunt caged animals) is a contributing factor in his push to go to war in Iraq….
7/26/2007 11:22 am
Actually that’s an interesting and perhaps good analogy, albeit perhaps equally questionable. At this point, everybody hates Cheney, everybody acknowledges that he’s an angry hawk, and everybody acknowledges that the “hunting” he engages in fits in with the overall character. But can that be linked to shooting his friend in the face? This is the sort of assertion that gives the internet a bad name. On the other hand, its fun…and who knows, it might be right. There’s kind of a new way of thinking and of arguing about things that is developing in the digital universe. Not sure if its good or bad, but one thing is clear: its spreading like a virus — or like . . . obesity.
7/26/2007 12:54 pm
Hey, I often write things here that I can’t prove, but are just intended to provoke (in a good way) some thinking and conversation…I leave it to the anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, and so forth to come up with the deeper answers.
7/26/2007 1:33 pm
This really is the worst kind of cultural narcissism, and stooping to cultural sterotypes. Not to sound like a cultural relativst, but I’d find this post (and site) a lot more convincing if RB showed equal concern about the how this culture treats the animals it kills for food. This site need to be Michael Pollan-ized in other words. And imagine what an Indian must think about the way we treat cattle in our factory farms.
Isn’t it true that the population of minke whales is pretty good right now? (Yes. At least a million according to the IWC.) Why is killing a couple hundred out of a population of a million unacceptable? Because whales are smart? So are pigs, yet pigs are treated worse than cows (and yet are smarter than cows.) Because they are beautiful, spritual creatures? That’s what the Indians think about cows. Is it not possible that some cultures can take an animal’s life in a way that shows humility, spirituality and gratitude for the interconnectedness of all things? Yes, except in this culture.
RB is correct that you can draw conclusions about a culture from the way it treats animals and nature. But what he fails to see is that we are abject failures on that point ourselves. And we are in no position to lecture others about it.
7/26/2007 4:20 pm
Pssst. I’ve seen RB in a fur coat.
7/26/2007 4:23 pm
I’ve been an occasional reader, never contributor, anonymous or otherwise, for a couple years, and often much enlightened, other times have a good laugh, other time infuriated.
Here finally is a topic I can say something not in my local capacity not as Harvard faculty member, but more generally as a Japan historian, on the point of “cultural” grounding of the Japanese eating of whale meat.
A grad student’s paper in my course this past spring drawing on US govt and other documents convinces me that eating of whales and seeing whaling as an important part of Japanese commercial and thence cultural practice only dates back to the early WWII era. Before that, whaling and eating whale meat seem to have been quite limited. The food shortage, protein shortage, poverty of immediate postwar are, plus the relative cheapness of whale meat, seem to have greatly increased its place (including in school lunches).
And, most fascinating, the US occupation authorities apparently encouraged this quite enthusiastically.
So, maybe the Western/American imperialism sword cuts two ways, in one direction leading/pushing Japan to make whaling part of its tradition.
Its a complicated story I believe, and room for more study. But its hard to make a simplistic case linking the practice to rising militarism, although certainly there is nationalistic tone to much defense of whaling in Japan.
7/26/2007 4:23 pm
Me too. I think it was a chihuahua.
7/26/2007 5:04 pm
Andrew,
I’d love to read that paperâit sounds fascinating. (And certainly more informed than I am on the subject.) Is it publicly available?
Many thanks,
Richard
7/26/2007 5:53 pm
Speaking of things the Americans did to Japan during and shortly after the war, lets don’t forget they dropped two atomic bombs, both of which were militarily unnecessary — one of the great moral crimes of the 20th century; and (b) put in place the Yakuza (Japanese mafia) as a social control mechanism, thus leading in part to a system of corruption so rampant it almost brought the banking system to its knees a mere few years ago. Culture does indeed cut both ways.
7/26/2007 5:56 pm
I hope that no one will infer from my posts about China, Japan and the environment an uncritical perspective towards American culture and its relation to the environment….
7/27/2007 11:56 am
No, we don’t, but we do believe you have an uncritical perspective towards certain 80s pop bands….
7/27/2007 12:30 pm
It seems when you write about the environment in the U.S., you underscore the greed and perniciousness of Bush, big business, etc. You do not tend to draw connections to the culture at large; our disconnect from nature, for example. Yet you are all too willing to draw a connection between Asian cultures in particular and their environmental actions.