The politics of whaling

A VISIT to Kujiraya, the only restaurant in Tokyo that specialises in the cuisine of whales, has become a rite of passage for foreign journalists in Japan. There, for the benefit of their readers, they bravely get stuck into the dishes on offer: sizzling whale steaks, delicate sashimi (sliced raw meat) and rich, marbled ono-mi, the prized, fatty meat from the tail. Japan's whaling programme, their articles claim, flouts the will of the world; its scientific research on these wise and noble creatures is a camouflage for a scheme to keep its whaling industry going until a moratorium on commercial whaling is lifted.