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 article info Article history: Available online 5 January 2011 1. “Business as usual” Surrounded by a mixed chorus of fear and hope for a compro- mise 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 repre- sented 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 Japa- nese 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 Dol sak, 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 is no explanation of the basics of the Japanese society and policy- making, 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 pro- whaling 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 * Tel.: þ81 227956076. E-mail address: ishii@cneas.tohoku.ac.jp. 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. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ocean & Coastal Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman 0964-5691/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2010.11.002 Ocean & Coastal Management 54 (2011) 274e276