Warming waters and the whims of the Kuroshio Current bring new fish and whales to the fishermen at the heart of Japan’s centuries-old whaling culture, and sometimes they turn out to be quite popular.
Tomiji Saito is the Representative Director of the Ayukawa Town Planning Association, which operates Whale Town Oshika. He was born in Ayukawahama, where he still lives and works today. In July 2020, two momentous events converged to highlight the whaling history of the tiny coastal community of Ayukawa that sitsContinue Reading
Hiroshi Katsumata was born in 1962 in Kamogawa City in Chiba Prefecture. He began working at Kamogawa Sea World in 1987, and became Director of Zoological Operations in 2016. He is a former rugby player. Kamogawa Sea World is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. The venue located in Kamogawa inContinue Reading
Jay Alabaster is a Ph.D. student at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona State University. He currently lives in Taiji, Japan, where he is working on a book and his dissertation. You can find him on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/alabasterjay. His email is jay.alabaster(at)asu.edu. It’s September again! Perched onContinue Reading
This is the second of a two-part series on the history of Japanese whaling. Part 1: The Birth of Traditional Whaling in Japan Shigeo Nakazono is a scholar and author engaged in the research of cultural assets and sociology, and curator of the Ikitsuki Island Museum (Shima no Yakata) inContinue Reading
This is the first of a two-part series on the history of Japanese whaling. Part 2: Transition to a Modern Whaling Nation Shigeo Nakazono is a scholar and author engaged in the research of cultural assets and sociology, and curator of the Ikitsuki Island Museum (Shima no Yakata) in Hirado,Continue Reading
Bunta Iwaya is a conservative blogger who has lived in the U.S. for 15 years. He has investigated issues such as the plastination of human bodies in China, the direct action movement on Free Tibet in Europe and the U.S., issues surrounding the movie ‘The Cove,’ and the arrest andContinue Reading
I have sided with China and North Korea in the past. I was staying at the Friendship Hotel when I taught in Beijing, then suffering from the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre. I heard that their restaurant was going to serve dog meat. As I went to look atContinue Reading
I still remember the taste of hard-to-swallow fried whale meat served in Japanese school lunches. I have no nostalgia for it, but when I come across news that “Japan is doing it again” — committing supposed whale-hunting atrocities — the taste comes back.
The movie Behind ‘THE COVE’ presents the audience with facts about how the Japanese have lived alongside whales since the ancient times as well as the historical context of the whaling culture.
