(from "Living Marxism", Sept, 1994)

Meetings of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) comes as an annual boost to environmentalists and journalists alike. For a while, world attention can be focused on 'the sacred cow of the sea', providing easy stories and emotive photographs. Look closer, however, and the debate is not about whales at all. Instead, there is a growing trend for Western governments and media to use the arguments about whaling as a way of reinforcing prejudice about Japan. And environmental groups like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) are becoming increasingly acquiescent in this anti-Japanese campaign.

The IWC did not start life as a whale conservation group. It was founded in 1946 to manage the whaling industry, and act as a lobbying group for its interests. However, as whaling became uneconomic, major whaling nations like Britain and Australia wound up their industries, and the IWC became a vehicle for international power politics. The IWC's growing interest in whale conservation was essentially a lever for other countries to extract diplomatic concessions from the remaining whaling nations (primarily Japan, Norway and Iceland). Backroom deals allowed for loopholes (such as the clause which permits 'scientific' whaling) to be created, in return for favours in other areas.

Most parties would like the IWC to continue as it is, as a favour-bank disguised as an environmentally concerned body. However, new pressures are coming to the fore today which make whaling a more contentious issue, the most important of which is the new wave of anti-Japanese sentiment in the West.

In the recent coverage of the whaling controversy, the Japanese come across as a carnivore mafia. There have been the usual 'disgusted-of-England' articles about the barbarity of eating whales. The Sunday Times ran an article headed 'High-priced blood on the chopsticks' (29 May 1994) which made Tokyo's only whale restaurant, Kujiraya, sound more like an opium den than an eating place. Hawaiian-based environmental group Earthtrust claimed to have discovered endangered whale meat on the top shelf of a Tokyo grocery store.

This was familiar 'aren't we nicer to animals than foreigners' staff, similar to a thousand British newspaper articles on bull-fighting or bear-baiting. However, more striking were the constant accusations that Japan is running an international dirty tricks campaign. Journalists, experts and environmental groups have competed to see who could depict Japan as the most unscrupulous.

Dr Sidney Holt of the IWC's scientific committee set the tone with his attack upon Japan's 'opulent wining, dining, and other entertainment of targeted individuals, and the flashing of corporate credit cards' which meant that 'Japan now has enough controlled votes to block any potentially binding conservation measure it doesn't like'. Indeed it is difficult to find a group which the Japanese are not accused of trying to buy of.

'In the pay'
Scientists releasing data unfavaourable to the anti-whaling argument are generally denounced as being in the pay of the Japanese. A letter to the Independent last year, signed by James Martin Jones of WWF and Andy Ottaway of Greenpeace, argued that it was 'Japanese pressure' that was causing scientists to 'hedge bets' (in other words, to disagree with the environmentalists' arguments about whales being an endangered species).

It is assumed that any country which considers voting against anti-whaling measures must be in the pay of the Japanese. When St Lucia, Grenada and Dominica considered voting against the Antarctic whale sanctuary proposed at this year's IWC meeting in Mexico, environmentalists everywhere saw the hand of Japan. Cassandra Phillips of WWF pointed to the 'massive Japanese aid' these islands had received. Particular attention was paid to Grenada, where Japanese aid to a construction site was 'revealed' as a pay off. Even untalented rock star Bryan Adams accused the Japanese of 'vote-buying' during his world tour this year.

Double standard
It is highly probable that the Japanese were trying to wrangle concessions out of the different countries: that, after all, is what the IWC has always been about. What's noticeable is the double standard. When Washington pressurises other governments through international organisations like the IWC, it's called diplomacy. When Tokyo does the same, it's 'dirty tricks'. More than that, when you consider America's own record in Grenada, a tiny island invaded by thousands of US marines in 1983, the intervention of the Japanese to help finance reconstruction hardly seems a major blow. This is an irony that escapes most environmentalists.

To anyone following Western discussions about Japan, all of this will sound familiar. There are stark parallels between the slating of scientists who are not overtly hostile to whaling and the dismissal of political commentators as 'chrysanthemum kissers' if they don't attack Japanese politics. Similarly, the 'dirty tricks' allegations over whaling are commonplace in rows about Japanese trade and economic policy. In the growing library of anti-Japanese literature, from pulp fiction like Michael Crichton's Rising Sun to the studies of Japan's economic practices, you are as likely to find killing whales listed as a feature of the twisted Japanese psyche as asset-stripping or market dominance.

Japan poses a considerable problem for the Western elites. The expansion of a non-white power is unsettling. Last time around, in the 1930s, it was possible to attack the Japanese in explicitly racist language, as the 'yellow peril' or 'monkey men'. In the 1990s, new prejudices must be appealed to.

Pick up anti-Japanese material today and the accusations will all be about Japanese racism, or their lack of environmental consciousness, or the position of women in Japanese society. Politically correct concerns about Japan are a less contentious form of attack. This explains the prominence given to the debate on whaling, and why so many conservative commentators, who have never picked up a veggie burger in their lives, are so keen to promote whale conservation. Stressing the moral authority of steak over sushi is another way of preserving the image of Western superiority.

Environmentalists have welcomed the new anti-whaling consensus in the West at a time when their own arguments for a moratorium on whaling are being exhausted. For most people, the arguments that Greens feel comfortable with (that whales are 'special', that whale song is beautiful) are unconvincing. Think of what you find most aesthetically pleasing in the world and I can guarantee that it won't weigh two tonnes and small of fish. The current population levels of certain whales (once predicted as terminally in decline) indicate there is room to exploit them. Minke whale population figures were up from original estimates of 140,000 to 941,240 in June 1991 and are now at a level where they threaten blue whale's food supply. Faced with strong evidence that undermines the environmentalist case, it is far easier to denounce the scientists responsible as being in the pay of the Japanese than it is to come up with a better argument.

It is becoming more apparent that a poisonous anti-Japanese climate is developing in every discussion of international affairs. The willingness of Greenpeace and the WWF to go along with the witch-hunt over whaling only provides the potential for racism with a radical gloss. Personally, I think a few whale burgers in the local McDonalds is infinitely preferable to that.

_