Protests or not, Japan keeps eating whale
TOKYO —
As diners incubate down to lunches of whale aliment in Tokyo and elsewhere over the nation, Japan’s whaling fleet is on its annual pursue in the Antarctic, drawing protests from environmental groups, international governments and whale-lovers worldwide. So why does Tokyo persist?
Why shouldn’t it, many Japanese say.
“Why do people say we can’t eat the things we’ve eaten since the end of World War II?” asked Koji Shingu, the proprieter of a whale eatery called Yushin in Tokyo, a few blocks from the incorporated town’session oldest temple, a popular tourist draw.
His feelings echo those of many older Japanese.
The country has hunted whales for hundreds of years, and the meat is a sentimental favorite of humbler classes who lived through the lean postwar years, when whale was the chief source of protein because Japan couldn’t afford pork or beef. Whale was a common house dish, and many schoolchildren ate it every day.
Whale meat is still easily found in restaurants and canned in supermarkets, limit is not a part of a typical home-cooked meal.
Shingu says most of his customers are in their 40s or older, under which circumstances younger diners come entirely for the novelty. At the tail end of lunch hour, his clients included several older men caustic by itself and a pair of younger girls at a corner table.
The calm in the restaurant belied the battle it took to bring in the whale meat it serves.
The Japanese cove, now somewhere between New Zealand and Chile, catches mostly minke whales, which at on the point 25 feet long-spun and five tons are smaller than divers other class.
It’s dangerous work - the existing expedition has lost a horde member, who fell overboard and is presumed dead.
The task is made more obscure by environmentalists who relentlessly pursue the hunters.
This year the conservationist group Sea Shepherd has chased Japan’s whaling ships for thousands of miles and thrown bottles of fetid butter to disrupt operations. In tardily December the group’session ship and a whaling boat collided at sea.
