I’ve started a million and one articles on Caught*Red-handed with one, simple sentence: ‘I love Japan’. In fact, it would be easier to count the posts that haven’t begun with me slavering all over my most favourite, beautiful, beautiful archipelago of islands. That said however, I learnt pretty early on in life that books should not be judged solely by their covers and every rule, no matter what it is, has an exception. For that reason, C*R-h reports this time on something less than desirable about this highly coveted country. In fact, this time I ask just one, straightforward question: why?

Year after year, report after report is published from handful after handful of marine biologists, experts, conservationists, professors and government bodies. Each one states the same thing: the world’s fish stocks are decreasing. But not just decreasing; the extent to which the world’s reserves are now being overexploited is vast: in 40 years, yes, by 2050, there could be no fish left. None. Nothing. Gone.

This is not a new story. Maddeningly, it’s not even a shock anymore. It’s as if people are almost preparing themselves for it, resigned to the fact that actually, there is nothing we can do.

But it can’t all be doom and gloom, surely? I mean, there have to be people out there attempting anything and everything they can to either arrest, or reverse the situation? Absolutely. Of course, those people do exist. On top of that, the nations that depend most on fish as part of their diets, they are at the forefront of the campaign, aren’t they? Japan, the world’s biggest consumer of fish and seafood; it’s doing everything to ensure that these vital stocks are maintained, right?

Wrong.

And with that one simple word, the dichotomy that faces Japan is revealed. History, appetite, culture, society and national heritage sit on one side. This is an island nation that has eaten fish and seafood for longer than records have been in existence. Japan’s diet is 89% seafood-based. Japan now consumes so much fish that it actually imports two thirds more than it harvests itself in any one year. In 2005, Japan’s imports of fish and seafood accounted for the single biggest transaction of the entire nation. In 2006, $1 billion of shark fins were bought from Brazil and shipped to Japan. Throughout a lifetime, the average Japanese person eats 79,560 pieces of sushi. Tokyo houses the largest amount of Michelin starred restaurants in the world, 82% of which are seafood outlets. And though this is not scientifically based, I get the impression that an appetite so entrenched, so intrinsic to a nation, is not going to change anytime soon.

On the other side then is increasing pressure from all angles. Outsiders only have to cite latest reports that show that Japan’s insatiable dredging of its oceans has left them at less than 10% of their potential reserves, for an opening grenade in the fight against Japan’s ways. Should current numbers continue, in 25 years, there will be no fish swimming in the Sea of Japan. Governments and conservationists alike are beginning to make noises about what they see to be Japan’s seemingly grotesque dependency on fish. How, say Japan’s critics, can a nation so adept, so technologically and scientifically savvy, allow this to continue? Why would they maintain eating patterns that would completely and utterly wipe out said pattern forever?

And it doesn’t end there. Recent reports cited in British newspapers, and now across the world, have discovered that some of the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) top officials are being bribed by Japanese government members in an attempt to ensure that the long-discussed moratorium on whaling is not legalised.

Although it may be hard to believe after reading my previous ten paragraphs, I am not particularly gunning for the fish. I am not a conservationist, nor am I actively working towards reducing my intake of bluefin tuna, or other fish types that are seemingly on the brink of extinction. And unfortunately for the fish, it would appear that where Japan is concerned, there’s another 127,000,000 people that are of exactly the same mindset.

Where I draw the line however, is at whaling. Well, not even that really. If people want to eat whale, then fine. If people want to use its many body parts to shower in, cook with or dissolve in their coffee, then okay. What I do object to though is the surreptitious, underhand, almost conniving way in which Japan continues to whale, without any regard for the fact that it is pulling the wool over the eyes of absolutely nobody.

Scientific research is one thing. But after centuries of scientific research, really, what is there left to understand about whales? We are a world of knowledge. We know the answers now to things we didn’t even know existed, or were possible, just decades ago. Our advancement is proliferating without rhyme or reason, without any moments breath, and yet we are led to believe that the most technologically advanced country in the world is killing ton after ton after ton of whales, year in year out, for scientific purposes, and scientific purposes alone.

Japan is making a rod for its back, of that there is no doubt. But ironically, the IWC is not doing itself any favours either. By pushing for the illegalisation of wholesale whaling, what is now a critical issue will simply snowball into a pandemic. Like banning Class A drugs, such as cocaine, ecstasy and LSD; people will simply take the trade underground. What is now (though Japan likes to think otherwise) out in the open, would simply become a game of smoke and mirrors, whereby Japanese whalers would play a game of cat and mouse with the world’s maritime policing agents, and in fact at the end of it all, the amount of whales being stripped from their ocean’s would undeniably increase.

Although you won’t believe me, I don’t like getting on my soapbox. Although I’m about to say I don’t do it, I certainly don’t like affronting Japan. This is a place for which I have all the time in the world. And yet here I am, doing just those things. Sometimes it seems, the glossy shine that has me so enraptured for the most part, that veneer that encases a wonderful, enchanting place, needs just a tiny buffing up to make it perfect once again.

The truth is all it would take.

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