JAPANESE Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has embarked on a high-profile business trip to Southeast Asian countries and Australia to strengthen trade, security, and other regional cooperation.
But while he held talks with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Sydney, ocean activists say there is something amiss in the meeting as whale hunting in the Southern Ocean was not included in the agenda.
Whaling in the Antarctic has strained diplomatic ties between Australia and Japan. The International Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that Japan’s whaling program is unlawful and therefore it must cease once and for all. The Federal Court of Australia also told Japan to stop its massive whaling in the region.
Despite the rulings, however, Japan ignored them and practically turned deaf ears to global condemnation.
For one thing, whaling is uniquely Japanese, a tradition that dates back since time immemorial – a cultural tradition that only Japanese can understand.
Chris Burgess wrote in The Asia-Pacific Journal an analogy comparing between Japan and whales.
He said to deny Japan from whaling is tantamount to denying Japan’s existence, an insult to its national pride and identity.
Speaking of Japanese-ness, whaling is not an isolated case that Japan has blatantly misunderstood.
Take for instance the demand for apologies for its wartime past. Japan withheld apologies and if it did, the form and content are rather ambiguous.
Japanese prime ministers have acknowledged the pains and sorrows wars have inflicted to hundreds or thousands of victims, but the nation’s officials continue to visit the Yasukuni Shrine to pay respect to war criminals.
SEE ALSO: Japan, S. Korea ‘comfort women’ feud flares amid Pyongyang missile fears
The comfort women’s issue is another thing.
Survivors have demanded apologies and compensation, but Japan strongly denied forcing women into sex slavery — besides hasn’t Germany or America done it too?
Japan has been condemned by its Asian neighbours for glossing over wartime crimes yet it continues to rewrite schools history textbooks extolling its military past. Japan claims innocence to fingers pointed at him as if Japan is simply maligned with impunity.
Simply put, Japan and whales are inseparable. Whale is a delicacy bringing back nostalgia of home and childhood, as Rupert Wingfield-Hayes wrote in BBC News, Tokyo.
To the Japanese, ethics and morality on meat-eating are practically relative and arbitrary the same way Australians slaughter kangaroo for its meat or how British cook adorable rabbits for a hearty meal, or how Americans make a burger out of a holy cow.
For the Japanese, meat means whale. Could there be a deep chasm between eastern and western thought in regard to being a carnivore?
What Japan might have overlooked is the scale and magnitude of its whale hunting. Japan hunts for 333 mink whales each year traversing and trespassing international waters and marine sanctuaries.
