Why whale should remain on the menu in Japan
Sir: Your front page "Battle to save the whale" (2 January) is full of environmental rage and I imagine that thousands of Britons felt really good reading it, imagining themselves members of a righteous nation that will save not just the whales but eventually the entire planet.
This time the Japanese are the scapegoats but, through depicting others as perpetrators, you British forget to look in the mirror to confront your own true nature. In western Europe, wolves, bears and many other beasts have no more reality than the creatures in Harry Potter stories, while virgin forests exist only in history books.
I moved to Japan four years ago. It is a country of which 80 per cent is still covered with forests, and it is abundant in all kinds of beasts that Europeans drove to extinction hundreds of years ago. The bear and wild boar populations are flourishing, and clean rivers and coastal waters are full of fish.
Unlike much of the world, Japan has consumed its natural resources rationally. Apart from the respect for nature, which is religiously appreciated by all Japanese, there has been much scientific research into the maintenance of biodiversity. Such research has produced the first artificial breeding of blue tuna.
Moreover, your report ignores the fact that Japan is maybe the only country interested in safeguarding the whale population for reasons not linked with the hypocritical SUV whale-watching that is polluting the coastlines in whale-friendly countries. The commercial whaling practiced by the US and UK that led to an almost total extinction of whales was industrial. While eating beef, Americans and Britons killed whales to make dog food and such, which I find disgusting. Japan, on the other hand, whaled and is whaling only for food. Because Japan is only 50 per cent independent for food resources, a fact based on its geographic conditions and non-deforestation policies, it cannot ignore the valuable source of protein represented by whales. This is the prime reason why the Japanese are not planning to make whales extinct, but rather to rationally harvest them.
Thus I cannot support the efforts of your newspaper and Greenpeace to stop the Japanese taking their share from the surplus whale population. In fact, I will continue to order whale in restaurants and to fight for a whaling policy not influenced by western hypocrisy.
FLORIN GRANCEA
TOKYO UNIVERSITY JAPAN
Japan saves forests, but only its own
Sir: Your "Battle to save the whale" story elicited a critical letter from Florin Grancea in Tokyo, who claims that Japan has clean hands in the matter of conserving its ecosystem (3 January).
I spent six years working with wildlife programmes produced by Japan's national broadcaster, NHK. It may be that 80 per cent of Japan "is still covered with forests", as Grancea suggests, but that is because Japanese forest companies are clear-cutting Thailand and Indonesia.
Where does Grancea think that the wood comes from that supplies 128 million Japanese with disposable chopsticks three times each day? And does he not recall the furore when it was discovered that contractors were using virgin tropical hardwood to form concrete in the building of Tokyo's new City Hall; hardwood that was later burned?
One of my producers showed me the line that runs across Okinawa, clear-cut on one side, forested on the other. The forested half, he explained, was still occupied by the US military. The area under Japanese control was deforested, pock-marked with sand traps for golf courses. Okinawa, together with the Ryuku Island chain, supports a unique fauna within the forested habitat still left to it. My colleague, a Japanese environmentalist, hoped, for the sake of the island, that the Americans would resist diplomatic pressure, and stay.
ROBERT FRIPP
TORONTO
