(from "Kujira to Inbou" (Whales and Plots), by Yoshito Umezaki, 1986)

Note:
The words of conversations or statements which were made in English are not the exact wording as the original, because they were translated from Japanese texts in the book.

In the beginning, the IWC was just a club of whaling nations. Catching whales got higher priority than conservation, and the so-called 'Olympic Whaling' was being done. However, in the 1960s, protection of whales started and then conservation was emphasized more than the catch.

When the USA proposed a moratorium for the first time at the IWC in 1972, five depleted species of large whales, such as humpback and blue, had already been protected. After adoption of the New Management Procedure in 1974, which classified whale species into three groups based on stock status, fin and sei whales in the Antarctic - the main targets of factory ship operations - were also protected.

It was in 1979 that a change occurred in the IWC with Seychelles becoming a new member. The Japanese people concerned with whaling racked their brains with some anxiety trying to figure out why a non-whaling island country in the Indian Ocean had joined the IWC.

However, on the first day of the IWC meeting that year, members of the Japanese delegation were surprised at who some members of the Seychelles delegation were. Lyall Watson was there.

In the fall of the previous year, 1978, Watson had visited Japan as the secretary-general of the Threshold Foundation and proposed ideas to solve the whaling issue. The Threshold Foundation is chaired by a brother of ex-Iranian Shah Pahlavi. Since Shah Pahlavi did not have any children by his previous wife, he designated his brother as prince. However, after having a son by his second wife, the brother resigned as prince. At this point he was given a huge fortune and established the Threshold Foundation. This foundation's goal is to fill the gap between different cultures and thus reduce friction among them. With that aim in mind, it started to deal with the whaling issue. Rather, precisely speaking, it started to deal with the whaling issue after Britisher Watson became the secretary-general.

Watson, who visited Japan with Pahlavi, the chairman of the board, wished to act as something of a Kissinger on the whaling issue, and proposed as follows to Akira Matsuura, the director general of the Fisheries Agency: "Japan temporarily halts the commercial whaling, and transfers ships and technology to FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN). FAO then studies the whale resources for five years, and resumes the commercial whaling with approval of all the world."

Superficially it seems to be a good idea, but both the Fisheries Agency and the industry rejected it for the following reasons.

1. Current commercial whaling is well-controlled, backed up by study of resource management.
2. There is no guarantee that commercial whaling would be publicly permitted by FAO's research.
3. Anti-whaling organizations are not opposing whaling solely based on concern about whale populations.

Now Watson is in the delegation of the new member nation Seychelles. Since the Pahlavi family owned a large villa in the Seychelles, they had a close relationship. Watson utilized this relationship to let Seychelles join the IWC and he himself joined the delegation.

Not so much is known about Watson. At that time, he was in his early forties, tall, handsome, and a single man. Although it is said he is British, the exact nationality is unknown. While a being physician, scientist, philosopher, and zoologist, he also writes science fiction and is well-known as the author of "Lifetide". It is said he once stayed in Japan for a year to study about Oomoto-kyou (one of the new religions in Japan). He also likes Sumo wrestling. With a quick uptake, eloquence, and charisma, he soon became the leader of anti-whaling power at IWC.

Of course, even if he is talented, it was not enough to become the leader of a large power in the IWC. Watson had one more important factor - money. The 1981 meeting of the IWC was held at Metropole Hotel, Brighton - a resort city in southern England. While checking out on the next day after the end of the meeting, Kunio Yonezawa, the chief delegate of Japan, happened to come across Watson. Watson was figuring up the bills for twenty to thirty people for their stay and their food and drink.

Yonezawa, surprised, said: "He had quite a thick bundle of banknotes. To my comment about the number of people he was paying for, he answered without concealing that he was the sponsor." Using the abundant funds of the Threshold Foundation, Watson took care of anti-whaling activists. Otherwise, he could not have become the leader of anti-whaling power so quickly.

Although it was his first year at the IWC, he worked most actively. He recruited Sidney J. Holt - one of the oldest scientists in the IWC - to the Seychelles delegation, and took a strong anti-whaling line with the scientific knowledge of Holt, as if settling old scores like his proposal rejection by Japan in the previous year.... To begin with, he proposed to introduce an Indian Ocean Sanctuary, and succeeded in having it adopted. As a result, it became impossible for Japanese and Soviet ships to operate in the vast Indian Ocean after the 1979/80 season. When proposing the sanctuary, Watson set a condition that scientific research should be done in the sanctuary and the status of whale resources would be reassessed five years later. However in 1984 - five years later - Seychelles reported nothing about the scientific research at the IWC meeting as I described earlier. In the case of the meeting on Cetacean Behavior and Intelligence and the Ethics of Killing Cetaceans, Watson, along with Jean Paul Fortom-Gouin of Panama, promoted holding it and the proposal was adopted at the 1979 meeting.

Watson especially loved sperm whales. Ever since he appeared at the IWC, he tried every possible means to ban the harvest of sperm whales. At the 1981 IWC meeting, opinions conflicted on the resource status of sperm whales in Japanese coastal waters, and the Scientific Committee could not reach consensus on the catch limit. Watson then invited Yonezawa to his hotel room and threatened, "If Japan abandons sperm whales, we will consider compromising on minke whales. Otherwise, we will ruin everything." Yonezawa, who never compromises on unreasonable matters, responded, "Do it if you want to."

This is an example of how the leader of anti-whaling power can manipulate the IWC and whales like private properties.

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