NHK Radio Japan Interview on International Whaling Commission

Radio program started from 14:00JST on June 18, 2010

Q1: Why do you believe that Japan should accept this proposal?

A1: The chair's proposal would allow Japan to resume coastal whaling and catch 120 whales a year. This is why Japan should accept it. Even the IWC's scientific committee agreed that the whale populations had reached sustainable levels in Japan's coastal waters in 1991. Until now, though, resumption of coastal whaling has not been agreed at the annual meeting because of the pressure from anti-whaling nations.
The chair's proposal recognises indigenous subsistence whaling to protect the culture and nutritional requirements of a region and I believe that regional coastal whaling should also be recognised to protect the diversity of cultures and values, as long as the resource in question is not in danger of extinction. I think this is even more important than biological diversity.
If Japan, though, were unilaterally to resume coastal whaling, that would be likely to produce a highly critical international backlash. The urgent priority, therefore, should be to resume coastal whaling on the small scale described in the chair's proposal and demonstrate that this kind of whaling can be conducted in a sustainable and responsible manner.

Q2: The proposal is that Japan should accept big cuts in its research whaling catch in the Antarctic Ocean in exchange for the resumption of coastal whaling. How do you view that condition?

A2: The chair's proposal is that an annual catch of four hundred whales should be allowed in the Antarctic Ocean for the first five years. Japan has been catching four or five hundred whales yearly in its research whaling for the past ten years or so, so this could not be called a very big reduction. After that, it would be halved to two hundred over the next five years but I don't think that this temporary reduction for five years only is an impossible number to accept. Further, this proposal is not a rejection of the concept of research whaling.
The minke whales in Japan's coastal waters are, however, a different species from those in the Antarctic Ocean and the people who would catch whales in Japan's coastal waters are not the same as those who catch whales for research purposes in the Antarctic Ocean. Just because both would be done by Japan, it would not be fair to recognise one and clamp down on the other. I think we can say that, in this point, the IWC is not recognising coastal whaling as a right of the people of a given region to exploit a regional resource.
The whale resources are also rich in the Antarctic Ocean and I do think that commercial whaling should be resumed there, too, but the resumption of coastal whaling is what is being advanced in this current proposal, so we should start with that by accepting it and placing our priority on resuming coastal whaling.
This would send the message to the world that, in the midst of this whole stalemate between pro- and anti-whaling nations, Japan is trying to move forward.

(end of interview, some part was omitted)