Japan’s Prime Minister has told parliament he will boost efforts towards restarting commercial whaling, despite a UN court order that Tokyo must halt killing whales in the Antarctic.

Shinzo Abe’s comments on Monday were likely to cause dismay for those who had hoped the ruling by the international court of justice (ICJ) would herald the beginning of the end of the whale hunt.

“I want to aim for the resumption of commercial whaling by conducting whaling research in order to obtain scientific data indispensable for the management of whale resources,” he told a parliamentary commission.

“To that end, I will step up efforts further to get understanding from the international community.”

Abe said that in contrast to the foreign perception that whaling communities mercilessly exploit the marine mammals, whaling towns show respect to the animals, with religious services at the end of every hunting season. “It is regrettable that this part of Japanese culture is not understood,” he said.

Japan has continued to hunt whales by exploiting a loophole in a 1986 global moratorium that allows lethal research on the mammals. But the country has made no secret of the fact that the meat ends up in restaurants and at fish markets.

The annual hunt in the Southern Ocean has proved particularly contentious, with sometimes violent confrontations between whalers and protesters.

Australia, backed by New Zealand, took Japan before the ICJ in 2010 in an attempt to stop the yearly hunt. The court said the hunt was a commercial venture masquerading as research.

Tokyo called off its 2014-15 Antarctic season, and said it would redesign the mission in an effort to make it more scientific.

A separate hunt in the north-west Pacific continues, as do hunts in coastal waters, which are not covered by the moratorium.

Since the ICJ ruling, Japanese e-commerce marketplace Rakuten has told online retailers they cannot sell whale and dolphin meat through its site.

But dealing in whale meat “does not violate international or domestic laws in any way”, said the Japanese fisheries minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi.

Hayashi told the same parliamentary committee that Rakuten had made a commercial decision as a private firm and that the increasing number of companies refusing to sell whale meat was “regrettable”.

Inviting people to dine on whale in his ministry, he said a “whale week” campaign, which began on Monday, was part of efforts to let Japanese people know that whaling and eating whale meat are part of their culture.

At the opening event, Hayashi ate whale meat steak with other MPs who support whaling, before moving to a cafeteria in the farm ministry building, where he had a lunch set of whale meat tataki, a dish similar to carpaccio, seasoned with shredded green onions.

During the campaign week, visitors will be given a chance to taste a small portion of fried whale meat for free, according to the ministry.

Japan’s consumption of whale meat has diminished greatly in recent decades and it is no longer a regular part of most people’s diet. But powerful lobbying forces have ensured the continued subsidisation of the hunt with taxpayer money.

Tokyo has always maintained it was trying to prove whale populations were big enough to sustain commercial hunts.

Source: www.islandsbusiness.com