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TOKYO—Most Japanese people oppose whaling expeditions to
the Southern Ocean and are unaware the government
provides a subsidy of about ¥500 million ($4.6 million)
for its research program, a Greenpeace survey found.
Seventy-one percent of 1,051 Japanese surveyed disagreed
with whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary,
while 87 percent said they didn’t know the government
subsidizes the expeditions, according to the survey, an
e-mailed statement from Greenpeace said.
Australia’s
government has said Japan’s scientific whaling is a
“charade” and is commercial hunting in disguise. The US,
European Union and New Zealand have also called on Japan
to end hunts in favor of nonlethal research methods.
Japan says killing whales is necessary to prove
populations have recovered sufficiently to support a
return to commercial whaling.
“It is
time for Japanese taxpayers, businesses and politicians
to ask why they are paying ¥500 million every year to
fund a research program that produces science nobody
needs, and whale meat that very few eat,” Greenpeace
Japan’s Junichi Sato said in a statement.
Japan
spends as much as $60 million a year on whale research,
which includes annual expeditions to kill about 1,000 in
the Southern Ocean near
Antarctica, Joji Morishita, director for international negotiations at
Japan’s
Fisheries Agency, said on February 1.
About 85
percent of the costs are recouped through sales of whale
meat from the Antarctic expeditions, as well as the
summer expedition to hunt sei, bride and sperm whales in
the
Okhotsk
Sea and northern Pacific, Morishita said.
An Asahi
newspaper poll published on February 8 found that 65
percent of 2,082 surveyed registered voters supported
Japan’s whale hunts, with 21 percent opposing the
practice.
The
newspaper didn’t publish the questions posed to
respondents. Greenpeace’s web site outlines the
questions asked in its survey. Neither survey provides a
margin of error.
Greenpeace found 31 percent of respondents favored a
resumption of commercial whaling, with 25 percent
against and 44 percent noncommittal on the issue.
Japanese men in their 50s were the strongest support
group.
The
environment group commissioned Nippon Research Center
Ltd., a member of the Gallup International Association,
to poll Japanese aged between 15 and 60 over the
Internet last month.
The
respondents came from Internet users registered with the
pollster.
Australia’s
government is gathering evidence in Antarctica on
whether Japan is breaching a global moratorium on
commercial whaling, in preparation for possible
international legal action.
Research
whaling is allowed under the terms of the moratorium,
imposed by the International Whaling Commission in 1986.
(Bloomberg) |
