Sigh... I blame Greenpeace. Really. Japan was slowly moving away from whale meat. The only people who ate it were older people who nostalgically ate it because it used to be in their school lunches 50 years ago. Everyone I ever talked to said that they didn't like it the few times they ate it. "The Cove" was aired and it moved public perception of eating dolphin meat and whale meat into something embarrassing. It was almost certainly going to disappear.

And then Greenpeace decided it would be a good idea to confront Japanese whaling ships and throw rancid butter onto the decks. It hit all the big news outlets in Japan. From that point on, all I heard was, "What are these people children? Why are they doing such anti-social things to our fishermen?" It put everybody's backs up. In defiance, a few izakayas started featuring whale meat. It still wasn't popular but there was this idea of "This is our cultural identity and it's under attack". So people ate it.

Now whale and dolphin meat are in every supermarket I've been to in the last few months. It's so incredibly stupid. On top of that, I'm hearing people talk about tuna stocks and say, "All those foreigners are eating sushi now and the tuna is disappearing. It's not their culture. Why does Japan have to suffer from the selfishness of others?" Of course, the average Shunsuke in the street has no idea that Japan takes 80% of the tuna catch and that it's been unsustainable for decades.

It is so frustrating when I see people make such hamfisted efforts on such important issues. If you want to convince Japanese people, you can't use the tactics you used in other cultures. You need to understand Japanese culture and you need to be very careful because if you get it wrong it will backfire spectacularly.