Whaling In Japanese Culture

Whaling has been an aspect of Japanese culture since the 16th century (Takahashi et al. 1989). Japanese have had a hard time dealing with the International Whaling Commission, which has banned commercial whale hunting since 1986. Japanese use the whales they hunt for numerous purposes in their culture. Japanese have used whales to make food, oil, handicrafts, and meats. The teeth of whales and their baleen are used to make crafts and traditional bunraku puppets. Whale jaw bones are used to make shamisen plectrums, a Japanese instrument. (Takahashi et al. 1989) Oil that is extracted from the livers of whale contains a lot of Vitamin A and D and is used as drugs (Matsuda, 2011). Whale meets are considered a delicacy and are given as gifts to neighbors, uniting whaling and non-whaling families within a
That statement made me start looking at this topic different than I normally would have. I think that without this comment I would have probably had similar reactions to that of my group. The others in my group said it was different from cattle because we raised cows for slaughter while whales are animals in the wild. They mentioned how whales were endangered and that we did not eat any animals that were threatened or endangered. After talking about it briefly in class and writing down our initial reactions I had a lot of questions: What kind of whales are endangered and are Japanese hunting these kinds? Are whales a main food source for Japanese? Whale meat was helpful during the war, but how about now? Why did the International Whaling Commission ban hunting? After doing research I was able to answer these questions and better understand that whaling is a part of Japanese culture, like many things are a part of my culture that other cultures may not