Japan Tells the World to Stop Picking on Them. Defend "Cultural Practices" in their Whale Hunt. Now Bigger and Better than Ever With New Kill 50 Humpbacks Allowance

Calling all Shoguns!  Japan wants to live in the 19th century again!

Get your big swords out.  They want to wear kimonos and be cut off from the rest of the world living under the rule of warocrats who are allowed to fulfill all their selfish impulses while the rest of society slaves and dies to serve a few.

Japan's new talking points  for whaling make have them siding with the "little people" of the world against big bad US trying to say what they can and can't do of their historically cultural practices.

While standing up for their right to murder sentient beings in the waters of the world (very very none of the whates are caught in Japan regional waters, I'm guessing since they always make the effort to travel to near the Antarctic) Japan claims to be standing up for the little nations of the world  to do what they find culturally convenient.  Indeed 

While I'm all for letting poor Africans hunt some small amounts of bushmeat for badly needed protein even if the practice is hidden under the guise of a cultural practice, this is entirely different than allowing Japan to go out and kill whales in international waters.

I'd also like to point out that I haven't seen Japan do a thing about pushing for Africans' rights with bushmeat, but to use the issue as a smokescreen for bribery.  Japan paid the dues to get some landlocked African, and Asian nations into the IWC to vote with them by paying their entry fees and offering other aid.

In the article from the LA Times I'm refering to "Japan defends whale hunt", journalist Bruce Wallace  confronted Japan's spokesman for their fisheries agency, Joji Morishita, with the fact that the Japanese government has banned the Ainu, a salmon eating community in  on the north island of Hokkaido from eating wild salmon that return to their rivers every year.  (I wonder what big business has the concession for catching and selling the salmon to those poor people.)

...despite contending that tradition justifies the whale hunt, the Japanese government balks at accepting similar arguments from the Ainu people on the northern island of Hokkaido who want to fish for wild salmon. The Japanese government has long prevented the indigenous Ainu people from exercising their traditional hunting and fishing rights, including the right to catch salmon as they return to Hokkaido's rivers to spawn.

Salmon have always been a food staple for the Ainu, such a fundamental element of their culture that they annually perform ceremonies to give thanks for the fish. Only in recent years has the government bent to Ainu lobbying and agreed to permit a small salmon haul that allows a few fish to be caught for ceremonial purposes.

This year's allowance is 1,700 salmon, up from the 20 approved in previous years.

Morishita says that it just shows that the government is not "perfect".

If I were talking to Mr. M., I'd also want to know just what Japan had done to  help the African people with their bushmeat and for that matter their protein deprivation problems.

I guess one confrontation at a time is all a journalist can do.

But with Japan strutting about being the ally of the little people's' cultures they should spell out what they are doing to help other little people with their cultural needs.  Luckily they have mainstream journalists to be afraid to push all the issues available.

tags: japan  whaling  humpback whaes  

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