Japan and the whaling issue: A viewpoint based on a review of 'Whaling in Japan: Power, politics, and diplomacy' by Jun Morikawa

摘要

Surrounded by a mixed chorus of fear and hope for a compromise 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 represented 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.