What they said at the IWC annual meeting in 2002 is that whaling has a history of 1,000 years in Japan. Banning whaling is an offense to Japan’s traditional culture. It is not allowed to allow Japanese people to eat whale meat. Just like Australians are not allowed to eat meat pies and steaks, they also believe that since whales are aquatic resources, they cannot just be protected. Catching too many whales will help the ocean. hehe.
The whaling industry was part of the diplomatic background of Japan's opening to the outside world in 1853-1854. Because at that time, one of the motivations for the United States' interactions with Japan was to provide protection to American whalers anchored on the Japanese coast from punishment by the authorities. For more than two hundred years, this country has implemented a strict policy of isolation. Commodore Perry's task is to provide American fishermen with the minimum legal protection here and ensure the supply of coal for ships. Without the rapid expansion of the whaling industry, Japan's opening up would likely have been delayed. Japan was the first country to adopt the unethical bombardment method invented by Svend Foin to hunt whales. However, it was not the Americans or the Norwegians themselves who taught the Japanese this "Norwegian" technology, but the Russians. The whale relations between Japan and Russia are also based on diplomatic considerations. It was not until Japan won the war with Russia in 1905 that it drove its most important competitor out of Japanese waters and brought the whaling areas from Taiwan in the south to Sakhalin in the north under its own monopoly.
Therefore, this is one of the reasons why Japan is full of national obsession with whaling...
Japan is not the only one who has opinions about this ban. In 1992, Norway opposed the ban. Expressed dissatisfaction with the extension and declared that it was not subject to the ban, it soon joined forces with Iceland, the Faroe Islands (an autonomous Danish overseas territory with a tradition of hunting pilot whales), and Greenland (an autonomous Danish territory with indigenous peoples) that also opposed the ban. whaling exemptions) came together to form the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO), a regional resource management organization independent of the IWC. Two years later, in 1994, Norway restarted commercial whaling, and in 2006, Iceland restarted commercial whaling.
Japan, on the other hand, seems to be somewhat powerless. It resisted forcefully and was suppressed by the United States. It changed its thinking and exempted indigenous people but was rejected. Japan can only use loopholes in the policy to carry out "scientific whaling".