5/2/2018 Who can criticize whaling?
Japan has been criticized for her
whaling. This problem has several interesting points. When discussing it, we
must recognize first that no animal can live without killing living things. Many animals including most of us need to kill other animals.
Whaling is undertaken not only by
Japan but also by Norway, Denmark, Russia, and so on. However, only Japan has
been criticized. I wonder why the movie The
Cove does not criticize Norway which kills more whales than Japan does. There
is a similarity between this case and that of comfort women.
Anti-whaling groups receive money for
their activities from large corporations which compete with Japanese
corporations. The former corporations expect the groups to create bad images
for Japanese products or to organize boycotts against them. Thus anti-whaling
is means for the anti-whaling people to earn a living and for those
corporations to meet competition successfully. What is important to them is not
whales but money. This suggests one reason why only Japan has been criticized.
Another reason is that the
anti-whaling groups together with a few supporting countries want to create bad
images for Japan. They want to claim that Japan deserves the A-bomb attacks by
the USA because her people are cruel enough to kill whales.
A reason often cited for anti-whaling
is that the whale is a higher animal close to human beings. Such an animal is
considered to experience greater pain before death. The anti-whaling people
assert that the Japanese are cruel since they kill higher animals. If the
Japanese are cruel enough to kill higher animals, so are Americans and
Australians because the latter also killed many whales in the past. When they
assert that the Japanese are cruel, they are admitting that they themselves are
cruel.
Americans killed so many whales that
large whales once went almost extinct in the Northern Hemisphere. However, they
never thought whaling was cruel. This can be seen in Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Thus, cruelty is a reason contrived
to condemn the Japanese.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
visited Japan recently and told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to stop
whaling. However, Australia is a country which was once deeply involved in
whaling. Moby-Dick says that whaling ships
gave birth to and saved Australia. Though Australians blame Japan for whaling
in the Antarctic Ocean, their ships used to whale near Japan. Their commercial
whaling continued until 1970s. Why are they so eager to stop Japan’s whaling
after they stopped theirs?
I think that Australians want to be
considered uncruel enough to protect whales. This desire springs from the fact
that they killed millions of aborigines for sadistic pleasure. They want to
distract attention from this sinful fact by condemning Japan's ‘cruelty.’ Australians
killed not only many whales near Japan but also much more humans in their
country. Why is Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull qualified to tell Japan to stop
whaling? It is very childish to employ such blatantly hypocritical diplomacy. Aren’t
there any Australians who point this out?
You can see pictures of the Canadian
seal slaughter on the internet. I do not think it is less cruel than whaling. I
wonder why those who made The Cove had not documented the seal slaughter by their neighbor before documenting
whaling by people very far away.
You can see videos of cow slaughter on
the internet. I think it is much crueler than whaling. The cow’s face is more
similar to ours than the whale’s is. I wonder why those who made The Cove had not documented cow slaughter
in their home country.
How many cows are slaughtered in pain
in the USA and Australia every day? I wonder if this question is ever asked by
those who made The Cove and those who
praise the movie. Some people say that their religion allows them to kill cows,
but religion is devised so as to justify doing some things that make human beings feel
painful. It is worth mentioning that military chaplains had given some words to
those who dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki before they started
flying.
It is extremely childish to see what
is wrong with other people but not what is wrong with oneself. We cannot avoid
doing things that are not so desirable or beautiful, including killing animals.
We need to realize it and minimize the undesirable effects. Aspersions are
often cast shamelessly on particular people through movies under the disguise
of justice. The Cove is an example.
Other examples are Planet of the Apes,
The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and James Bond films.
Comments and questions are welcome.
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