Today, Japan officially announced its withdrawal from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to manage cetacean resources, aiming to restart commercial whaling after about 30 years. This news has aroused the attention of the international community.
Since commercial whaling was banned, Japan has continued to hunt whaling in Antarctic waters and the northwest Pacific Ocean under the guise of "scientific research whaling" and despite international opposition.
Now that Japan has chosen to "withdraw from the group", does this mean that the scene of bloody whaling will be repeated on a large scale?
Earlier, a bloody video of a Japanese whaling ship torturing whales in the southern waters of Australia disclosed by the Australian media made Japanese whaling into a whirlpool of public opinion and received strong condemnation.
However, in the face of accusations from various countries and animal protection organizations, Japan is determined to be a "nail household" and turns a deaf ear to calls to stop whaling.
Japan's commercial whaling is currently the world's largest whaling and whale-eating country. Bordering the Pacific Ocean, Choshi City, Chiba Prefecture, southern Tokyo, is Japan's oldest whaling fishing village and is currently one of Japan's four largest whaling bases.
The locals are skilled at whaling and slaughtering whales, and whale meat is one of the staple foods of the locals. The southern mallet whales feed in the waters off the Bunsho Peninsula in Wada-cho every June, and the local fishermen's whaling season runs until September.
There is now a quota for whaling, and the fishermen of Wada town only have a quota of 26 mallet whales a year, which is higher than before.
Before 1987, there were three types of whaling in Japan, namely large-scale pelagic whaling, large coastal whaling, and small coastal whaling.
Japanese whaling began in 1934, when the first ocean-going whaling fleet sailed to the Antarctic Ocean. Since then, the whaling industry has continued to develop, grow and adopt new foreign whaling technologies.
From 1938 to 1939, six ocean-going whaling ships sailed to the Antarctic Ocean, killing 2,665 blue whales, 3,344 fin whales, 883 humpback whales and 647 sperm whales that year.
In 1944, the North Pacific Ocean Whaling Corps was developed, mainly hunting gray whales and sperm whales.
The development of the ocean-going whaling industry has solved the employment problem for fishermen in southern regions such as Kyushu and Shikoku.
During World War II, ocean-going whaling was suspended. At the end of 1945, in order to improve the food supply of Japanese nationals, the U.S. Occupation Command encouraged the resumption of ocean-going whaling.
On February 7, 2008, the Australian government released photographs of Japanese ships whaling in waters off antarctica. Administration officials warned that the photos would be used as evidence in a lawsuit against whaling activities in Japan.
The ocean-going whaling industry peaked in the mid-2960s, with seven whaling fleets killing 20,000 whales a year.
In 1962, the Antarctic Ocean whale catch reached 309 500 tonnes, accounting for 78% of the total whale catch.
In 1967, the total whale catch of three ocean-going whaling vessels in the North Pacific reached 91,400 tons, accounting for 34% of the total whale production.
In 1982, the International Whaling Commission passed the "Decision on a Total Moratorium on Commercial Whaling", and Japan's ocean-going whaling began to decline. The ban was loosened in 1987 to allow limited whaling "for research purposes".
Despite widespread opposition, Japan still hunts whales in large numbers every year in the name of scientific research. It is understood that at present, more than 100,000 people in Japan are engaged in whaling-related work, including fishermen, food processing industry workers, catering practitioners and scientific researchers who have been engaged in whaling for generations, and once whaling activities are banned, it is bound to cause local crises such as unemployment, company closure, and fiscal revenue reduction. Now, Japan's choice to "withdraw from the group" has raised concerns in the international community about the tragic scene of Japanese fishery whalers once again killing countless dolphins and staining the bay with blood.