Japanese Double Standards

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Details of a japanese waterpark where you can not only swim with the dolphins you can also eat dolphin meat while swimming with the dolphins. Hypocrisy at its best.
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Masaki Wada is a Japanese official from Taiji—the dolphin-meat-happy town from the 2009 documentary The Cove. This Week, he announced a plan to build a park where anyone can swim and play with dolphins, “while tasting various marine products, including whale and dolphin meat.”

They’re apparently trying to capitalize on their existing notoriety for rounding up and stabbing thousands of dolphins every year, and they’re not pretending otherwise. According to Wada:

“We already use dolphins and small whales as a source of tourism in the cove where dolphin-hunting takes place. In summer swimmers can enjoy watching the mammals that are released from a partitioned-off space. But we plan to do it on a larger scale.”

It seems to be a publicity grab, intended to gain back some much-needed business from a nation that has lost interest in snacking on the chewy, fatty, mercury-laden meat. It’s also a massive trolling attempt, aimed to milk the rage of thousands of activists for worldwide attention.

The sexy superimposition of eating charming sea mammals while also laughing at their antics has always existed: according to The Cove and some compelling photos obtained by the Sea Shepherds, trainers from marine parks show up annually to tell Taiji’s fishermen which dolphins to spare, because they’ve got the goods to make it in showbiz.

Besides eating them and putting them in shows, why else would dolphins exist in Japan? There are already ocean-themed parks there with trained dolphins on display, including Kamogawa Sea World. Parks of this nature, it should be noted, also draw the ire of the Sea Shepherds, not just for buying dolphins from Taiji, but also for being generally shitty places to be a dolphin. America’s Sea World parks aren’t exempt either, and they’ve been like bad publicity factories lately.

Taiji has long been one of the focal points for the world’s rage at whalers, ever since they modernized the whaling industry long after whaling was no longer stylish.

In another time in Japanese history, perhaps the decline of old-fashioned dolphin filets as a reliable source of income might have silenced Taiji’s resolve about the issue. However, their brazen pushback right now against liberals, foreigners, and liberal foreigners is consistent with the career resurgence of nationalist politician Shinzo Abe, who has recently recovered his seat as prime minister on a platform of fiscal reform, or “Abe-nomics," and nationalist pride. Antiforeigner rhetoric is on the rise.

In a 2010 interview, Taiji’s mayor, Kazutaka Sangen, didn’t sound sympathetic to the opinions of outsiders. “We will pass down the history of our ancestors to the next generation, preserve it. We have a strong sense of pride about this. So we are not going to change our plans for the town based on the criticism of foreigners,” he said.

The “it’s our tradition" logic has won too many arguments. Wasn’t it the reason the world stopped interfering with the practice of time-honored customs like honor killing and female genital mutilation?

The contrasting point of view, the one Mayor Sangen is probably reacting against, is most often articulated by Ric O’Barry, a dolphin trainer and advocate who was featured in The Cove:

"There is no other animal, on sea or land, like the dolphin. We have spent decades and millions of dollars trying to communicate with them, but they are always trying to communicate directly with us. They are the only wild animal I know who have saved human lives—not a few times, but repeatedly through history. They are superbly adapted to the ocean, and make even the best human swimmer look clumsy."

But O’Barry’s appeal gets at the inescapable fact that whenever people defend dolphins, they always seem to do so by comparing them to humans (myself included, a couple paragraphs ago), particularly referencing their intelligence.

Increasingly that appears to be a pretty flawed argument. One biologist named Justin Gregg was going around last week saying dolphins are as dumb as chickens. Much of his argument seems to stem from how mean dolphins are. Last I checked, though, chimps eat faces and dicks for breakfast, and they’re pretty smart. On the other hand, it’s worth noting that during hunts in Taiji, dolphins get corralled in by surface-level nets, and no one has been able to explain why they don’t... umm... jump.

Yeah, pigs might be smarter than dolphins, and more of them might get eaten, plus the seafood conservation pamphlet from Monterey Bay Aquarium says you should avoid all forms of shark and eat plenty of catfish, while not mentioning dolphin meat. Those arguments aside, a tourist destination that displays a particular animal for show while also serves it in the cafeteria is repulsive.

http://www.vice.com/read/a-water-park-in-japan-lets-you-play-with-dolphins-while-you-eat-dolphins

[kelpdiver 2]

seems like a great idea, until the dolphins notice what the swimmers are eating and then start attacking. Given their IQ, figure that should take 20 or 30 minutes into lunchtime?

[regulator 0]

I love taking my boat out the jetties to watch the porpoises swim in front and on the sides. They are truly amazing animals.

[Andy9o8 2]

Honor killing and female genital mutilation? Seriously?

Sigh. Please allow me to mention Pearl Harbor and Nanking.

[regulator 0]

I'm not quite sure where you are going with this. So you like dining on dolphin vagina? What gives?

[shropshire 0]

BBQs on cattle farms (and hog roasts) etc... etc...

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[rhaig 0]

I love buffalo. Tastes better than beef too!

--
Rob

[BikerBabe 0]

did you SEE The Cove? It's *highly* disturbing.

perhaps disturbing isn't the right word. Let's go with "horrifying".

It's not that they are being farmed for meat. it's the manner...

Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

[Andy9o8 2]

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you like dining on dolphin vagina?

Are you and I in the same thread?

[kelpdiver 2]

Andy9o8

Are you and I in the same thread?

his confusion seem warranted - your first response made no sense.

[kelpdiver 2]

Iago

Nobody wants to eat buffalo for some reason even though their meat is healthier and better for you than cows.

Must be because people like buffalo.

very unlikely that people are avoiding buffalo for cuteness reasons. Aside from visitors to Golden Gate Park in SF, how many people ever even see bison? It's just not readily available, so people don't know what they're missing.

[muff528 3]

Listen, we want to eat! We don't want to make a meal of the issues. ...Four rare steaks, please.

[Andy9o8 2]

kelpdiver

***
Are you and I in the same thread?

his confusion seem warranted - your first response made no sense.


Of course it did:

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The “it’s our tradition" logic has won too many arguments. Wasn’t it the reason the world stopped interfering with the practice of time-honored customs like honor killing and female genital mutilation?

[devildog 0]

I'm not sure what the hypocrisy is?

You stop breathing for a few minutes and everyone jumps to conclusions.

[billvon 2,991]

Here in the US you can go to a petting zoo and pet cute calves and piglets. Then stop by the snack bar for a hot dog or a burger.

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I wont speak for anyone else but for me personally I think its because porpoises and dolphins are highly intelligent creatures. Cows...not so much.

[grue 1]

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I wont speak for anyone else but for me personally I think its because porpoises and dolphins are highly intelligent creatures. Cows...not so much.

If they're so intelligent why haven't they learned how to fight back?

cavete terrae.

[Stumpy 284]

That funnily enough has also been called into question recently (Dolphin intelligence). Nothing conclusive but it was interesting nonetheless.
Ethically, I don't see this as any worse than the hot dog example, or having a tuna sandwich at an aquarium, or something like that IF (and it's a big if) the population of any of those animals is sustainable, and processing is humane. The Japanese don't have the same trait of identifying with animals as much as we do.

Never try to eat more than you can lift

[shropshire 0]

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So long..... and thanks for all the fish

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Stumpy 284]

The fifth book in the increasingly innaccurately named trilogy

Never try to eat more than you can lift

[Darius11 12]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvgfOi9itoc

This sums it up

South Park Whale Whores Funny Scenes

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." - Kurt Cobain

[shropshire 0]

Stumpy

The fifth book in the increasingly innaccurately named trilogy

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[billvon 2,991]

>I wont speak for anyone else but for me personally I think its because porpoises and
>dolphins are highly intelligent creatures. Cows...not so much.

I agree. But both Japan and the US use the same standards - sure you can pet them, and later you can eat them. That's not a double standard, that's the same standard in both cases.

Now you could claim that eating dolphins is inhuman and I'd also agree. But that's a different issue.

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Fuuuuck you whale! And fuck you Dolpheeeen!

Hilarious. At the end the government tells them it was a chicken and a cow that dropped the bomb instead of a dolphin and a whale.

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The same standards? How many seafood restraunts have you been to that serve dolphin meat in the US?