JAPANESE WHALING INDUSTRY: SHIPS, COASTAL VERSUS ANTARCTIC HUNTING

JAPANESE WHALING INDUSTRY

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Japanese whaling ship Japan and Norway have the world's largest whaling industries. Shimonoseki in southern Honshu has been the home of major whaling operation since 1899 when Japan adopted the “Norway method” of hunting whales with steam-fired harpoons. The city once was home to a shipbuilding industry that produced steel-hulled whale ships and a fleet of 40 whaling ships that ventured as far away as the Antarctic Ocean and returned with frozen carcasses. Now only two ships remain. The Whale Museum in Shimonoseki is closed. It is a large concrete blue whale. When it was open visitors entered through the tail, walked past exhibits and exited out the mouth.

To give the local whaling industry a boost junior high school students are given tours of the last remaining whaling ships and a whale cooking festival, with tips on making whale burgers and whale carpaccio, is held. Slabs of bright red whale are still seen in stores and markets. Whale restaurants offer fried whale tail, grilled whale tongue wafers, boiled blubber and whale sashimi.

Japan wants to import whale products from Norway. Norwegians like whale meat but they don't like blubber, which makes up more than half the animal. They want to ship the blubber to Japan, where people like to eat it fried and served as sashimi. Whale meat from Norway has been shipped to Japan disguised as mackerel.

Studies of whale meat showed not all of the whale meat in Japan comes from legally-harvested minke whales. Some comes from endangered species and dolphins and porpoise. Also much of it has high levels of mercury, dioxin and PCBs.

According to one survey, 3.3 percent of whale meat sold at markets was illegally harvested. In Japan you can find meat for blue whales and humpback whales. It is not clear where the meat comes from. Meat from endangered humpback whales is sold at Hiroshima supermarkets. In May 1994, police broke up a whale smuggling operation, arresting three and seizing a Korean fishing boat with 11 tons of whale meat on board.

Japanese Whale Hunting

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There are four main whaling ports: Abashiri in Hokkaido, Ayukawa in Miyagi Prefecture, Wadamachi in Chiba Prefecture and Taijicho in Wakayama Prefecture. Kushiro in Hokkaido and Shimonoseki in western Japan also have traditions of whale hunting and continue the practice today.

Most of the "research whaling" was done in the Antarctic region. Some was done near the North Pacific. The Japanese whaling fleet operating in the Antarctic consisted of the 8,044-ton Nisshin Maru mother ship and three or four other boats that weigh around 700 tons each. A single minke whale can produce around $100,000 in meat.Whalers who work on these ships make about $75,000 a year, three times the average for regular fishermen. After the commercial whaling ban was put in effect in 2019, the Nisshin Maru hunted for whales in waters off Japan.

Whaling can be dangerous work. In February 2007, a Japanese whaling ship caught fire in seas off of Antarctica, killing one crew member. Environmentalist raised concerns about an oil spill from the ship threatening a large penguin colony on an island 175 kilometers from where the ship had trouble. In January 2009, a 30-year-old whaling ship crew man disappear and is thought to have fallen overboard and died in the frigid Antarctic water.

Japanese Whale Hunting in the Old Days

In the old days, whalers set off for six-months at a time, roaming the Antarctic in search of blue and sperm whales. It was not uncommon for them to kill 20 whales in a single day. The whalers endured their share of tragedy. A storm in 1879, capsized 30 boats, killing 111 men in a single town.

Describing a fin back whale hunt in his 1916 book “Whale Hunting With Gun and Camera”, Roy Chapman Andrews wrote, “Again and again Sorenson lances him, each time remaining a little longer and jabbing the lance deeper into his body. At last the gallant animal threw his fin into the air, rolled on his side, and sank.”

Describing the scene at a Japanese whaling station, Andrews wrote in a 1911 edition of National Geographic, “The entire posterior part of the whale was then drawn upward and lowered on the wharf to be stripped of blubber and flesh...Section by section the carcass was cut apart and drawn upward to fall into the hands of men on the wharf and be sliced into great blocks two or three feet square.”

Coastal Whaling in Japan

Japan’ carried out coastal whaling even during the ban on commericial whaling. Coastal whaling is based in four small ports where whale has long been a traditional food item, unlike much of the rest of Japan, where it was added to the menu only after World War II. Ayukawahama in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture is Japan’s main whaling port. In 2009 and 2010, a fleet of five vessels caught 60 minke whales in Japanese waters off the northeastern coast of Japan within an 80-kilometer radius of Ayukawahama. So central is whaling to the local identity that many here see the fate of the town and the industry as inextricably linked. “There is no Ayukawahama without whaling,” a 27-year-old fisherman and an occasional crewman on the whaling boats, told the New York Times. Another whaling town is Taiji, made infamous by the movie “The Cove.” [Source: Martin Fackler, New York Times, May 15, 2010]

Japanese whalers operating near Japan use boats armed with harpoons to go after single whales in the May-to-October whaling season. In October teams of 15 boats use nets to trap whales and drag them into a bay, where they are killed off with harpoons. This method is extremely bloody. It is usually done at night on a date that is kept secret.

Whaling is carried on a small scale off of Japan’s coast. In the autumn it is done off Kushiro, Hokkaido. In the spring between late April and June it has been done off the coast of northeast Honshu. Coastal whaling is usually carried out within 90 kilometers of the shore. The maximum quota is 60 minke whales.

Boats operating of the whaling station on Boso Peninsula of Wadamachi, Chiba prefecture have permission from the International Whaling Commission to catch 26 Baird's beaked whales. The 10-meter whales are butchered in about three hours with large knives at a port station. The slabs of meat are weighed and sold to processing companies. Wadamachi has a long history of consuming Baird's beaked whales. Local people who show up with buckets and other containers to collect blubber, which they take home and cut into pieces and dry under the eaves of their houses. The Japanese also legally hunt pilots whales in waters near Japan.

Coastal Whaling and Ayukawahama, Japan’s Main Whaling Port

Martin Fackler wrote in the New York Times, “Ayukawahama is a small harbor town of some 4,600 mostly graying residents on Japan’s northern coast, where whaling boats sit docked with harpoon guns proudly displayed, and shops sell carvings made from the ivorylike teeth of sperm whales. On a recent morning, crews prepared the two identical blue-and-white whaling ships for an annual monthlong hunt in nearby waters.” Source: Martin Fackler, New York Times, May 15, 2010]

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April is the whale hunting season, with much of the hunting done by coastal whalers like Ayukawa Whaling. April has traditionally been the town’s most festive month, especially when large whales were brought ashore. Ayukawahama was at its peak in the years after World War II, when Japan’s whaling industry boomed as a provider of scarce protein and whaling boats from Ayukawahama ranged from Alaska to the Antarctic. “Those were the glory days of Ayukawahama,” Fackler wrote, “when the population swelled to more than 10,000 and whaling crews swaggered down streets that bustled with crowds drawn by cabarets and movie theaters. Today, Ayukawahama plays up its whaling history for tourists. Smiling cartoon whales adorn shop fronts and even manhole covers. The town also built its own whaling museum, which was gutted by the tsunami.

Residents of Ayukawahama have said Tokyo should negotiate with the International Whaling Commission to allow them to double the size of the coastal hunt, even if it meant giving up the Antarctic program. They have broken long-held taboos to speak out against the government-run Antarctic hunts, which they say invite international criticism that threatens the much more limited coastal hunts by people in this traditional whaling town.

One Ayukawahama resident told the New York Times, “Antarctic whaling does nothing to help this town.” Other local residents said that with fewer people eating whale, the days were numbered for all kinds of whaling and that the government should just let it naturally disappear. “Japan doesn’t like being told what to do,” another resident, a former manager at the now-defunct Japan Whaling Company, said. “But like it or not, whaling is dying.”

Coastal Whale Hunting is Japan in the Early 2020s

The whale meat sold in Japan today comes mainly from whales caught off Japan's northeastern coast. According to Associated Press: Japan resumed commercial whaling in July 2019 after withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission, ending 30 years of what it called research whaling, which had been criticized by conservationists as a cover for commercial hunts banned by the IWC in 1988. While conservation groups condemned the resumption of commercial whaling, some see it as a way to let the government’s embattled and expensive whaling program adapt to changing times and tastes.[Source: Mari Yamaguchi and Kwiyeon Ha, Associated Press, January 28, 2023]

Under its commercial whaling in the Japanese exclusive economic zone, Japan last year caught 270 whales, less than 80 percent of the quota and fewer than the number it once hunted in the Antarctic and the northwestern Pacific in its research program.The decline occurred because fewer minke whales were found along the coast.

Researchers say the reason for the smaller catch should be examined to see if it is linked to overhunting or climate change. Whales may also be moving away from the Japanese coasts due to a scarcity of saury, a staple of their diet, and other fish possibly due to the impact of climate change, Kubo said.

minke whale

Japanese Whaling in the Southern Ocean Around Antarctica

In the 2000s and 2010s, Japanese whalers did much of their whaling in the Southern Ocean and Antarctic. That is where they caught most of their whales at that time and had their battles with Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activists. According to CNN: Located in deep waters surrounding the entire continent of Antarctica, the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary hosts dozens of whale species including humpbacks, blue whales and fin whales. It was established by the IWC in 1994 to protect whale species after centuries of hunting, but until 2019 Japan took regular trips to the region to hunt for self-stated “scientific research” purposes. [Source: Heather Chen, Hanako Montgomery and Moeri Karasawa, CNN, June 3, 2024]

Japanese whalers killed 333 minke whales in the Southern Ocean in 2018/2019, according to the IWC, before abandoning the region after it left the international body. Takaaki Sakamoto, director of the Whaling Affairs Office in Japan’s Fisheries Agency, told CNN that Japan sent ships to the Antarctic in 2023 to collect numbers and skin surface samples, but those expeditions did not involve killing whales. He said they planned to return this year to do the same.

Tokoro told CNN that the Kangei Maru is not planning on killing whales beyond Japanese waters because it doesn’t make economic sense. Commercial whaling is not profitable,” he said. “It will take 50 days to get to the Antarctic and back and we are not confident we can make a profit by paying the wages of employees and fuel for 50 days. However, I will go only when the government orders me to go … Until then, I will not go commercial whaling at all.”

“Given the ship’s long-range capabilities and drones, and recent announcements from Japan’s fisheries ministry that it is keen to start hunting fin whales, we believe there is a high likelihood that Japanese whalers will return to the Southern Ocean,” said James Anderson, activist and founder of the Whale Defense Agency (WDA). The Southern Ocean is a critical habitat for many whale species that provides a safe haven for breeding and feeding … protecting it is more important than ever due to the increasing threats posed by climate change and illegal whaling.”

Rothwell, from ANU, said that if Japan looks to kill whales beyond its territorial waters, it can expect an international response. It would immediately trigger global interest and action about the conservation and protection of whales, especially in waters sanctioned by the IWC as a whale sanctuary,” Rothwell said.

Yushin Maru whaling ship

Paul Watson, a veteran anti-whaling activist, told CNN he’s prepared to mount a physical response — with a former Japanese fisheries patrol vessel he’s acquired in anticipation of Japanese whalers returning to the Antarctic by the end of the year. “It’s called the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary for a reason — you don’t kill whales there,” Watson said. We want to be able to track them down and intercept them like we’ve done before — and we are more than prepared to do it again.”

Yushin Maru and the Nisshin Maru Whaling Ships

The Yushin Maru and the Nisshin Maru, managed by Tokyo-based Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd., are Japan’s largest whaling ships. The Nisshin Maru is the mother ship, and the smaller Yushi Maru does the actual hunting and harpooning. Japan’s whaling fleet, which usually plans to catch about 110 whales, comprises four vessels, including the Nisshin Maru and the Yushin Maru. The crew spends eight months a year at sea.

As the ships were preparing to ship out from Shimonoseki, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported: “The crew of the 754-ton Yushin Maru said an experienced whale spotter can spot a whale’s spout from 6 miles away, while dealing with Antarctic Ocean temperatures as low as -10 Celsius. “It’s cold out there, but the research begins with finding a whale. We have to maintain concentration,” said Kenji Tsuda, a 34-year-old second wireless operator who also assumes the role of visually spotting whales. [Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, May 16, 2014]

“The 8,145-ton mother ship, the Nisshin Maru, was anchored at Innoshima island. Equipped with conveyor belts below decks, the ship is tasked with receiving whales from the Yushin Maru and dissecting them. Under international law, it is allowed to sell the whale meat it catches. The whale meat is cut into certain sizes, sterilized, frozen and boxed in an about 700-square-meter workplace on the ship. The workplace, developed at the end of 2013 at the cost of 600 million yen (about $5.9 million), is an incredibly advanced facility, according to the company official.

Onboard a Japanese “Scientific” Whaling Ship in the Open Sea

The Yushi Maru has a blue discovery button that is pushed when a whale is spotted to alert the crew. A harpoon cannon located at the bow of the ship is used to capture the whales. A ramp is employed to reel whales onto the Nisshin Maru. Each whale is weighed and dissected on the rear deck. Researchers work in a lab aboard this ship.[Source: Haruka Teragaki, Yomiuri Shimbun, May 2014]

Haruka Teragaki wrote in the Yomiuri Shimbun: “On the side of the 724-ton Yushin Maru’s rear hull, “RESEARCH” is painted in large white letters. The vessel set sail from Shimonoseki for the northwest Pacific Ocean on May 16....Gondolas used to spot whales are attached to the mast of the Yushin Maru in three layers. When the ship arrives at its destination, most of the 20 crew members will be perched up in the gondolas on whale-watching duty...Each crew member has a discovery button at hand, and reports must be made as quickly as possible.

“The ship’s gunner, Shinatao Takeda, 44, said water expelled through the whales’ blowholes “looks like smoke from a factory” in the vast oceans. A whale is harpooned from a cannon located at the Yushin Maru’s bow. “I use the cannon with the utmost care, so I don’t miss my mark and cause them to suffer,” Takeda said,

“The 8,145-ton Nisshin Maru, mother ship of the Yushin Maru, pulls up a captured whale with ropes. The deck of the Nisshin Maru is as large as two tennis courts and is made of the same material as some kitchen cutting boards. Whales are weighed using a scale embedded under the deck floor. It is then dissected with 1.5-meter-long knives and parts are removed for biological sampling. In an Institute of Cetacean laboratory, there are a number of containers used to store and preserve samples in formalin.

“Inside crew cabins are a bunk and a simple desk. In one cabin, Yoshihisa Ina, a 45-year-old production team leader was reading an e-mail from his wife...Crew members are looking forward to reunions with their families when the fleet returns to Japan at the end of July. Until then, however, they will scour the ocean for whales.”

Japan Launches New $48 Million Whaling “Mothership” in 2024

In May 2024, Japan unveiled its first domestically produced whaling mothership in 70 years as it arrived in Tokyo ahead of its maiden eight-month hunting expedition off the country’s northeastern coast. The new ship — the 370-foot, 9,300-ton Kangei Maru — is able to process and store the whales caught by a fleet of smaller vessels and capable of reaching the Antarctic Ocean. . [Source: Reuters Videos, May 24, 2024]

Simon Sturdee of AFP wrote: The 9,300-tonne vessel set off this week from western Japan, bigger, better and more modern than its recently retired predecessor, with individual cabins for crew members, WiFi and drones to spot its quarry. The whales will be harpooned by a smaller vessel and then brought, dead, to the Kangei Maru where a powerful winch can haul carcasses weighing up to 70 tonnes up a ramp and onto a lower deck around 40 meters (130 feet) long. Once inside workers will butcher the whales using 30-centi meter (foot-long) blades attached to wooden staffs, discarding around half the animals' total weight as waste. [Source: Simon Sturdee, AFP, May 23, 2024]

"Be careful, they are very sharp," Hideko Tokoro, president of the Japanese whaling company Kyodo Senpaku, which operates the ship told reporters. as a crew member unwrapped one such steel blade to show off. The rest of the whale is processed, packaged and stored in 40 freezer containers, each with a capacity of 15 tonnes, ready to be transported around Japan once the ship returns to port. “We are proud of catching whales and are very proud of this ship which will allow us to begin offshore mothership-style whaling,” Tokoro said. “We need to cull whales to keep the balance of the ecosystem — it’s our job and mission to protect oceans for the future.” He also told CNN that most of the ship’s catch would be killed “almost instantly” by cannons at sea. “We aim for perfection, but some of them may suffer. In such cases, we will use a rifle to finish the job.” [Source: Heather Chen, Hanako Montgomery and Moeri Karasawa, CNN, June 3, 2024]

According to CNN: The new ship replaces the Nisshin Maru, the infamous whaling factory vessel dubbed by activists as a “floating slaughterhouse” that was decommissioned in 2020 after more than 30 years of service, during which it frequently clashed with anti-whaling activists. [Source: The Kangei Maru is bigger and faster than its predecessor, the company says, and is equipped with state-of-the-art drones able to travel a reported 100 kilometers (62 miles) to allow crews of smaller boats to quickly locate and kill whales. But activists say the ship’s high-powered features, including a cruising range of 13,000 kilometers (more than 8,000 miles) and its ability to sail for up to 60 days, suggests that Japan is setting its sights on whales far beyond its northern waters. “Japan has never given up on its whaling ambitions,” veteran anti-whaling activist Paul Watson told CNN. “The only purpose of a vessel like that is so it can travel long distances to the Southern Ocean to hunt whales, (and) what the whalers are doing right now is really just a test run. They are testing out the new ship in their waters.”

The Kangei Maru boasts a slipway large enough to haul 85-foot whales from the sea that leads to an indoor flensing deck the size of two basketball courts. There, workers will strip away the blubber before cutting up the whale flesh on enormous cutting boards, before vacuum-packing and storing the meat in 40 industrial freezers, ready for sale.

Image Sources: Japan Whaling Association, Institute of Cetacean Research

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Daily Yomiuri, Times of London, Japan National Tourist Organization (JNTO), National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated March 2025