60 percent of Japanese support whale hunt

[n2doc]

Sixty percent of Japanese people support the country's whaling program, but only 14 percent eat whale meat, a new poll shows.

The survey comes less than a month after the United Nations' top court ruled the annual mission to the Southern Ocean by Japanese whaling vessels was a commercial hunt masquerading as science in a bid to skirt an international ban.

A weekend opinion poll conducted by the liberal Asahi Shimbun newspaper showed that 60 percent of 1756 voters supported the "research" whaling program, against 23 percent who opposed it.

Asked how often they ate whale meat, however, only 4 percent said they eat "sometimes" and another 10 percent said they eat it "fairly infrequently".


Read more: http://www.3news.co.nz/60-percent-of-Japanese-support-whale-hunt/tabid/1160/articleID/341092/Default.aspx

[pipoman]

1. It would only matter if they hunted

Only Japanese waters, but that isn't the case. They steal from the rest of the world in their hunts.

[JaneyVee]

2. Hunting whales is a deeply ingrained part of

Japanese culture and folklore. I'm surprised that approval is only at 60%. Hopefully this practice will end soon.

[Larkspur]

3. The Japanese didn't hunt whales until after World War II

The USA introduce that practice to them.

For the Japanese to continue a modern, not ancient, practice, there must be some economic reason for it.
Whale meat isn't selling. They currently have a glut of it, so I wonder what else they are getting from the whales that could be making the Yakusa lots of money? Must be something particular to whales that they can't duplicate via a synthetic process.

[JaneyVee]

4. Japanese have been whale hunting since

12th century. The only reason they still do it is basically because of traditional folklore.