Last month, I found myself in Taiji, and I took the opportunity to do a two-hour wander at dawn, to have a look around. I was staying at the brand-spanking new Hotel Holistic Resort (which for some reason is labelled the "Hollis Tick Space Japan Medical & Resort"), hidden away at the remote Kandorizaki. I walked out to that point just as the sun was rising, staining red the waters below.
Red waters are of course the very reason for Taiji's infamy. As the setting for the 2009 film "The Cove," the town is now firmly affixed upon the mental map of anti-whaling activists worldwide. Many of these descend on the town during its annual dolphin hunt, a time when the small peninsula on which it sets becomes fortified, and the townspeople find their energies divided into two simultaneous fighting fronts.
As I walked the cliffs above the rocky shoreline, it became apparent that even more powerful than the town's whaling lobby is its PR arm. A large amount of money had been sunk into the trail I was walking, not only in the well groomed course, but in the parks, the restrooms, and the ample informational signage along the way. The signs were erected in 2016, and offer a running description the town's whaling history, beneath the benign title, "Living with Whales." That year also saw the release of the rebuttal film “Behind ‘The Cove,’ ” not to mention an English pamphlet, "Taiji's Cultural Heritage," which I find beside the Bible in my hotel room.
In fact, the town itself has repackaged itself as a sort of Whale Theme Park, with a dolphinarium, two whaling museums, seven whaling-related memorials, a half-dozen large concrete statues, and countless murals and drawings. The town's annual festival has a whale dance that dates to 1970 (which is about the time that international anti-whaling legislation was first being penned), and naturally a large number of restaurants around town proudly offer the creature on their menus.
I decided to do this walk when I found the course in a collection of walking routes in a Japanese guidebook published in 2006. But recently, about one-third of the sections have been blocked by high fences, with the words "Do Not Enter" written in Japanese and English. These of course are the sections flanking the killing ground, although a small swimming beach is still accessible in the summer months. Directly across the road is a new police box.
My main take away from this morning's walk was how quick and efficient a Japanese PR machine can be, and how deft its spin. Large amounts of money have been poured into the town, probably exceeding the whaling budget itself. But another point stayed with me, one that my more liberal friends will probably take issue with (despite my sharing their politics). While I am of course anti-whaling, I also believe strongly in cultural relativism, within reason. The Japanese defend their position by stating that whaling is an inherent cultural tradition, and as such, the practice should be continued. Were this to be say, the taking of a few animals a year for food, I might agree. But there is no logical reason for the government quota of 1820 dolphins last year. Even less for the larger numbers taken by the factory whaling fleet in the Antarctic whale sanctuary, in the name of research.
Where I might also be taken to task is my feelings that those against whaling are also culpable in the deaths of the dolphins. Twenty years ago, whaling was not an economically viable practice, and like any unsustainable business, would have eventually died out. But the sheer volume of the protests pushed the Japanese to the water's edge, and they decided to turn and push back. Cultural justification was found to defend the practice, which is in itself pretty hypocritical, since this is a culture that has an unsentimental view of its own history, and over my near 25 years here I've seen a fair number of beautiful things destroyed or abandoned in the name of modernization. And so it was that a dying practice was given new economic life in the form of whale meat in school lunches. While the fishermen and national government agencies that support them deftly spin the protests as an attack not on an outdated industry, but on Japaneseness itself. This is a country that has an (unhealthy?) obsession with how it is perceived worldwide. Foreign interest in its culture has helped rejuvenate a number of traditions that were facing extinction. Maybe the opposite can also hold true, replacing the strong-arm tactics with a calmer discourse that is kept fixed on economic issues rather than environmental. Of the latter, this culture "living in close harmony with nature," has little apparent interest.
A week after my walk I was encouraged to see that Taiji announce that it will no longer capture dolphins to sell to aquariums, and will instead begin a breeding program for those already in captivity. Not the ultimate solution, but it does show that the "industry" is suffering from the ban on Taiji dolphins imposed by aquariums worldwide, which proves that the film did indeed have an effect.
But the hunts, and the fights, are sure to go on.
On the turntable: Grateful Dead, "Dick's Picks Vol. 19"
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