Former Japanese whaler Tomohisa Nagaoka on his whale-watching vessel. (Click to enlarge.) |
Posted by Page (in Amsterdam)
“[T]his town, Muroto, was thriving because of whaling and was known as a whale town since 400 years ago. I want to let young people know the culture cultivated by whales in this town should be valued. My dream is to return their favor. I would like to do something like that.”
So says Tomohisa Nagaoka at the end of a fascinating interview he gave to our Whale Love Wagon friends, Yuki and Ivan, back in March 2007. Nagaoka is a former whaler who became one of Japan’s first leader of tourist whale-watching expeditions about 20 years ago.
In the interview, he talks about how countries competed in a “Whaling Olympics”, to see who could kill the most whales. There weren’t quotas for individual countries; rather, the world quota set by the IWC in 1948 was 16,000 Blue Whale Units (which equals 2 fin whales, 6 sei whales, etc.), so blue whales were preferentially hunted over other whales, quickly driving them toward near-extinction.
The other day, the AFP published a longer interview with Nagaoka, where he talks more about whaling, both its past and its future, and what he thinks it means to the Japanese.