Environmentalists pursue Japan's whalers

[kurogane]

I completely disagree about the need for or desirability of educational reform as you seem to mean it, but I will take that as a well written Yes to my question. I also thought of the Joshiki ploy as I was writing my bit; that's always been a personal favourite.

Great read, YokoH.

[Mike Oxlong]

It's interesting, eh. Companies here sometimes talk to staff about their own specific internal joshiki, which I can see in a way, but a double-edged sword to be sure.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Iceland brewery makes beer using smoked whale testicles

[Takechanpoo]

SS guys to troll and harass non-related residents in taiji

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http://www.buzznews.jp/?p=3052

[Coligny]

looking at the locals, i think it's spy shots from the next Romero movie..."Rise of the inbred redneck whale eating zombies"...
straight to DVD...

[Yokohammer]

SS guys to troll and harass non-related residents in taiji

Takechan, I agree with you. The Sea Shepherd guys are assholes with an overblown sense of entitlement and authority. This kind of overt harassment won't solve anything.

I'm still anti-whaling (for the right reasons), but this SS nonsense is just wrong.

[matsuki]

SS guys to troll and harass non-related residents in taiji

Takechan, I agree with you. The Sea Shepherd guys are assholes with an overblown sense of entitlement and authority. This kind of overt harassment won't solve anything.

I'm still anti-whaling (for the right reasons), but this SS nonsense is just wrong.

Pretty much THIS...this kind of assery tends to lead the average J-robot into entrenched Japanese culture/heritage vs. gaijin mode. They'd be more effective running campaigns that cite all the gov subsidy bullshit and health risks.

[Takechanpoo]

SS versus zaitokukai's kansai branch

[matsuki]

LOL, I was hoping to see and all out brawl. Instead, a bunch of rolled R's and a comedy routine?

[Samurai_Jerk]

LOL, I was hoping to see and all out brawl. Instead, a bunch of rolled R's and a comedy routine?

Seriously. What a bunch of pussies. I wish both side would kill each other off.

[matsuki]

LOL, I was hoping to see and all out brawl. Instead, a bunch of rolled R's and a comedy routine?

Seriously. What a bunch of pussies. I wish both side would kill each other off.

Exactly...it's the opposite of AVP...whoever loses, we win.

[legion]

Do these Sea Shithead people come here on an "Environmental Activist" visa?

[Russell]

Japan dumps Norwegian whale meat after finding pesticide

Whale meat imported into Japan from Norway has been dumped after tests found it contained up to twice the permitted level of harmful pesticide, the government said Wednesday.

The announcement came after Western environmentalists first exposed the issue, in the latest salvo of a battle that pits Japan against many of its usual allies, such as Australia and New Zealand.

An official at Japan’s health ministry said whale meat was subject to extensive routine tests before and after import.

“We conduct strict checking because whales tend to collect contaminants in the environment such as pesticides and heavy metals,” he said.

He added that tests on Norwegian whale meat imported in April showed 0.2 parts per million of aldrin and dieldrin combined, in addition to 0.07 ppm of chlordane. Meat that arrived in June was found to have 0.2 ppm of dieldrin.

Japan’s safety limits for the pesticides are 0.1 ppm for aldrin and dieldrin combined, and 0.05 ppm for chlordane, the official said.

In both cases, the order was given for the contaminated meat to be abandoned, ministry data showed.

More

That contamination should be no problem if the meat is used for scientific purposes...

[Coligny]

So cutely selective in their testing...

[matsuki]

So cutely selective in their testing...

Not that I support the anti-whaling nutjobs but they did uncover enough nasties in the local whale/dolphin meat (that was being served to school children) that the program was shut down. It's like McDee's chicken nuggets, what't in there is better left unknown...except I don't know anyone that actually like eating more than the occasional whale bacon at an izakaya.

[Russell]

Japanese activists fight against the tide to save whales and dolphins

It’s tough being a Japanese activist — especially if you are campaigning against whaling or dolphin hunting.

Just ask Takayo Yamaguchi, subjected to online abuse, death threats and hacking attacks since she pioneered “tweetstorm” dolphin defense campaigns on social media in Japan six months ago. Or veteran conservationist Sakae Hemmi, cofounder of ELSA Nature Conservancy in 1976, who has been questioned several times by police since she first became involved in activism against the dolphin hunts in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture. Or Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, two Greenpeace Japan activists convicted of trespass and theft in 2010 after seizing a parcel of whale meat illicitly posted by a Japan scientific whaling employee, which they presented as evidence to prove allegations of embezzlement within the scientific whaling program.

Often unaware of these activists’ work, foreign opponents of Japan’s whaling and dolphin hunting wonder why there are so few Japanese critics. Something needs to be said about the obstacles Japanese activists face.

First of all, it’s difficult to resist the nationalism surrounding cetacean hunting, upheld by a mixed crowd of Fisheries Agency bureaucrats, politicians, journalists, academics and Net uyo (social media-based rightists). Even Japan Communist Party politicians have called for the protection of Japan’s whaling traditions and culinary culture. As Hemmi emphasized to me, in Japan whaling and dolphin hunting are “legal fisheries.” And the fishery business has existential and cultural importance; it’s considered essential to Japan’s food security and culinary identity, defined in part as a gyoshokubunka (marine food culture).

Accumulated resentment against decades of foreign criticism; a conviction that foreign activists and governments are threatening a key, if largely symbolic stronghold in Japanese fisheries (“once whaling falls, tuna fisheries will be next!”); and the politics of Japan’s scientific whaling boondoggle are all behind a deep “them and us” mentality promoted by Fisheries bureaucrats, politicians and pundits. It’s characterized by strident assertions of cultural difference, complaints of cultural imperialism and liberal helpings of the “eco-terrorism” slur.

The sometimes extreme tactics of foreign activist organizations and the racism of some foreign critics feed this defensive self-definition. Most Japanese rarely eat whale or dolphin meat, but they are sympathetic to complaints about arrogant foreigners trying to impose their values upon Japan.

These confrontations make life difficult for Japanese activists. Hemmi told me they “have to be very careful not to be mistaken for having a connection with Sea Shepherd,” the militant anti-whaling group founded by activist Paul Watson that hounds Japanese whaling vessels in the Southern Seas. Yamaguchi says other Japanese ask her why she doesn’t “protect Japanese from attacks by foreign activists.” She adds that “insulting the entire Japanese public (over the dolphin drive hunt in the cove in Taiji) is creating sympathy for Taiji fishermen.”

Another veteran conservationist expressed dismay at how the behavior of foreign activists has provided excuses “for the government to shut us out of talks with officials,” undermining years of patient lobbying in coalition with other conservation organizations.

Japanese activists are hardly alone in facing home-crowd animosity. Even in an anti-whaling stronghold like Australia, environmentalist and animal rights organizations are often accused of being “un-Australian” and “extremist” by powerful mining and livestock farming interests. Yet they can push back against critics in the court of public opinion, because — unlike many of their Japanese counterparts — they are often big, well-financed, well-connected NPOs.

Large donation-paying memberships and big budgets permit the hiring of numerous professional staff specializing in recruiting, lobbying and advocacy; and through these activities, such organizations can acquire credibility and leverage with politicians, industry groups, celebrities and the mass media. Expensive media-savvy campaigns allow them to influence public opinion directly.

Greenpeace Australia had 45,000 paying members in 2013, 70 full- and part-time employees and a budget of 17 million Australian dollars (¥1.5 trillion). Animals Australia, a top animal-welfare umbrella organization, claims 20,000 members, 22 full- and part-time staff and an annual budget of AU$3 million (¥278 million) in 2013.

Japan’s environmentalist and animal welfare organizations are proportionately smaller. Greenpeace Japan in 2013 had 5,000 members, 31 full- and part-time staff and a budget of ¥195 million. In the same year, the Nature Conservation Society of Japan had 25 full-time staff, 15,000 members and a budget of ¥254 million. Organizations working on campaigns against cetacean hunting are often far smaller, with one or two full-time staffers, or just a few volunteers. Then there are individuals like Yamaguchi, who works with the international Save the Blood Dolphins campaign to raise awareness of captive dolphins’ plight.

Why the disparity in scale and influence? Political scientists studying Japan’s NPO sector often invoke the Edo Period Confucian slogan “Kanson minpi” — “Revere officials and look down on the masses” — to explain the statist ideology of modern Japanese governance, which limited NPO growth until recent times.

Originating in the late 19th century and adopted from European models, this ideology put the state firmly in charge of Japan’s catch-up modernization: An elite educated bureaucracy decided economic and social goals, while industry and especially the public were expected to remain in the passenger seats. There — to paraphrase philosopher Masao Maruyama — people could easily “doze off over their rights”. Japanese statism achieved its complete form in the post-1945 era.

This statism traditionally admitted limited space for civil society groups, as political scientists like Keiko Hirata and Robert Pekannen have explained; they are ideally small, localized and cooperative with government. Activist groups don’t fit that formula easily. Though environmental movements developed in the 1960s and ’70s, they focused on “single-issue” causes and their appeal faded as most Japanese accepted government priorities on economic growth and increasing affluence.

After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, however, there was an upsurge in public support for volunteerism, just when faith in bureaucratic competence was also falling. Public pressure led to passage of an NPO law in 1998 that substantially lowered the financial requirements for NPO registration, established wide criteria for organizations to register under and streamlined their bureaucratic supervision.

Since the March 11, 2011, Tohoku disasters, registered volunteer NPOs have really come into their own (including one that this author co-directs). However, activist organizations still face statist prejudices and bureaucratic bias, especially when they are involved with push-button nationalist issues such as whaling and dolphin hunting — as Greenpeace Japan found, to its cost.

Many such organizations avoid NPO registration, in spite of the fund-raising status, enhanced prestige and (sometimes) tax deductibility it confers. Since 2010 Greenpeace Japan has been registered as a “general incorporated association.” This, Junichi Sato told me, is a “legal status with much more flexibility,” which also satisfies Greenpeace’s desire “to be independent from influences of authority.”

Hemmi said that ELSA didn’t apply for NPO registration because it didn’t want to be subjected to bureaucratic regulation. Other activists said that registration was too much trouble, or that Japanese groups campaigning against cetacean hunts are often too small and divided by factional rivalry to qualify for NPO registration anyway.

Skeptical readers might think that there is nothing wrong with this state of affairs. Large, cashed-up advocacy NPOs can have a distorting influence on government policy out of all proportion to their membership bases. After all, America’s National Rifle Association is also an NPO! And if Japanese anti-whaling and anti-dolphin hunting activists can’t change the minds of their fellow Japanese, then so be it.

There is another view, however, which sees activist organizations as a potentially powerful but loyal opposition, countering the outsize influence of the Japan Fisheries Agency and whaling nationalism in shaping policy, diplomacy and public opinion about whaling, dolphin hunting and fisheries.

In such a role, these groups could bring to the Japanese public’s notice problems with transparency, waste and scientific credibility in the “research whaling” program, air questions about mercury contamination in cetacean meat and promote economic alternatives for the declining fishing towns involved in whaling and dolphin hunting.

Most of all, they could mobilize the public to push the Japan Fisheries Agency and its political allies away from whaling nationalism and toward pro-active commitment to fisheries conservation, at home and on the high seas, in collaboration with other governments and NPOs.

“To me, protecting dolphins means protecting the ocean, and protecting the ocean means protecting us,” says Yamaguchi, summing up her holistic vision. “It’s not only because dolphins are pretty”.

To achieve those goals, and to get themselves heard above the confrontations between the Japanese government and foreign activist organizations, Japanese activist groups will need to pull together and acquire more finances, size and domestic and international influence. For their part, foreign activists should ease off the confrontation tactics and provide more resources, advice and moral support to Japanese activists instead.

Link

[matsuki]

Pretty much the same for business PR...use effective locals to get the message across the right way instead of a gaijin headbut to the masses with demands.

Political scientists studying Japan’s NPO sector often invoke the Edo Period Confucian slogan “Kanson minpi” — “Revere officials and look down on the masses” — to explain the statist ideology of modern Japanese governance, which limited NPO growth until recent times.

Originating in the late 19th century and adopted from European models, this ideology put the state firmly in charge of Japan’s catch-up modernization: An elite educated bureaucracy decided economic and social goals, while industry and especially the public were expected to remain in the passenger seats. There — to paraphrase philosopher Masao Maruyama — people could easily “doze off over their rights”. Japanese statism achieved its complete form in the post-1945 era.

Drink up!! It's J-Gov Kool-Aid happoshu!!

[Samurai_Jerk]

Japan Dolphin Hunt Dealt Big Blow

The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums Council this week suspended the membership of the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums because the organization has refused to stop the annual killing of dolphins at the cove in Taiji, Japan.

For years, animal rights activists have pressured WAZA to sanction Japanese zoos and aquariums because the Taiji hunt not only kills hundreds of dolphins each year but also fuels the captive dolphin industry. The animals captured at the cove are often sold at a premium to aquariums around the world.

“WAZA requires all members to adhere to policies that prohibit participating in cruel and non-selective methods of taking animals from the wild,” WAZA said in statement. “JAZA has violated the WAZA Code of Ethics and Animal Welfare. “

Not sure if that's really much of a blow.

[matsuki]

LOL, Japan lost it's WAZA

It's probably a decent monetary blow if they are unable to sell the dolphins they capture.

[Salty]

Indeed - the Wa has gone for the Ja... Unfortunately, I predict that Japan will now bunker down and find some way of killing more while justifying it is a cultural thingy that Japan would sink beneath the waves if discontinued.

[matsuki]

Indeed - the Wa has gone for the Ja... Unfortunately, I predict that Japan will now bunker down and find some way of killing more while justifying it is a cultural thingy that Japan would sink beneath the waves if discontinued.

I still don't understand the average J-people that buy into that bullshit. While I understand not liking the pressure to conform to international values....the response I've heard from most that defend it is "dolphins eat too many fish!"

[kurogane]

Edited for breaking the Don't Post Drunk Rule...........................

Still, fancy fish, whoopdeedoo to everyone but cat ladies.

[Samurai_Jerk]

It's probably a decent monetary blow if they are unable to sell the dolphins they capture.

Selling dolphins to aquariums and the like is worse then using them for food.

[Mike Oxlong]

Japan zoo group puzzled over dolphin hunt exclusion

The group representing Japan's zoos and aquariums said Thursday it was baffled by its exclusion from a global body over the way its members catch dolphins.

The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) last week voted to suspend the Japanese chapter (JAZA) saying it had refused to stop taking dolphins caught in the controversial drive fishery in Taiji.

The town in southwestern Japan came to worldwide attention after the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove" showed pods of the animals forced into a bay and then butchered with knives, in a mass-killing that turned the water red with blood.

Townsfolk say the hunt is for dolphin meat, which they say is a traditional part of their diet.

But critics of the practice say there is insufficient demand to justify the slaughter of hundreds of animals a year and say the hunt is only profitable because of the high prices live dolphins can fetch when sold to aquariums and dolphin shows.

WAZA "requires all members to adhere to policies that prohibit participating in cruel and non-selective methods of taking animals from the wild," the organisation said last week, adding JAZA refused a proposed two-year moratorium on using the Taiji hunt.

Kensho Nagai, JAZA executive director, said: "We are puzzled at the WAZA announcement, because we've been discussing the issues and we've taken WAZA's advice" on improving the manner of capture.

"We annually take about 20 dolphins from Taiji, but we have improved how we hunt, separating our hunt from the everything else at Taiji that is for dolphin meat," he told AFP.

"But we don't have control over the rest of dolphin catch, part of which is said to be sold by local brokers to aquariums in China and the Middle East," he added.

Nagai said WAZA had not so far been able to provide an internationally accepted scientific definition of cruelty—a key charge for opponents of the Taiji hunt.

European members of WAZA do not keep dolphins, Nagai said, while US law bans the capture of wild cetaceans.

"We will discuss whether to stop receiving dolphins from Taiji at our general assembly next month," he said.

http://phys.org/news/2015-04-japan-zoo- ... lphin.html

[kurogane]

Seems reasonable.................

OTOH, this might actually get some results that the Sea Shitbirds at ground zero could only dream about. Not that this will change their childish tactics. I am going to go ahead and assume that no more income for the prize ones will sound the death knell of uneconomic meat hunt. Isn't there 12 years of frozen meat in a locker somewhere anyways? Let them eat that.

[matsuki]

LOL, what's with the feigned "bafflement" here?

"But we don't have control over the rest of dolphin catch, part of which is said to be sold by local brokers to aquariums in China and the Middle East," he added.

It's not us! It's those other guys over there!

I wonder what other bridges go out of service for Japanese zoo's and aquariums as part of the exclusion?

[Samurai_Jerk]

Iceland whale meat shipment to Japan sparks protests

Environmentalists reacted angrily Tuesday to a controversial shipment of fin whale meat to Japan by an Icelandic whaling company, saying it flouted international conservation agreements.

The Icelandic whaling company Hvalur HF plans to ship 1,700 tonnes of whale meat via Luanda in Angola, repeating a similar controversial delivery of 2,000 tonnes last year which sparked protests along its route.

[Wage Slave]

Iceland whale meat shipment to Japan sparks protests

Environmentalists reacted angrily Tuesday to a controversial shipment of fin whale meat to Japan by an Icelandic whaling company, saying it flouted international conservation agreements.

The Icelandic whaling company Hvalur HF plans to ship 1,700 tonnes of whale meat via Luanda in Angola, repeating a similar controversial delivery of 2,000 tonnes last year which sparked protests along its route.

Via Luanda eh? As you do. Carry on.

I thought they had stockpiles they couldn't sell. Perhaps they're planning another force feeding of the stuff to elementary school children. Which is how I came to try it BTW.

[yanpa]

Perhaps they're planning another force feeding of the stuff to elementary school children. Which is how I came to try it BTW.

How well do you blend in with the rest of your classmates?

[Wage Slave]

Perhaps they're planning another force feeding of the stuff to elementary school children. Which is how I came to try it BTW.

How well do you blend in with the rest of your classmates?

Not very. They force feed it to children and wandering ALT's in places like Yokkaichi. I had only been here about two weeks at that stage so had eaten it long before I, or most of the kids, knew what it was.