It happened during an annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) about 20 years ago. A lady of the Swedish delegation, who happened to be sitting in front of us, turned back and threw a keen look of reproach at me as if she was saying "What nerve does this Japanese have to speak so bluntly? Does he deserve to be called a diplomat, this barbarian eating whales?" I was not daunted at all by this challenge. Rather, her blaming look incited me to think that we have to crash this kind of unreasonable assertion of anti-whaling people. However, the fight itself was not our goal. The task before the Japanese delegation was to resist hard against the pressures from anti-whaling forces and make Japan's whaling survive.

  Upon coming back to Japan after my lengthy duty in scorching Saudi Arabia, I was told to serve as Director of the Fishery Division of the Foreign Ministry. I resisted, saying "Why should fishes come out from the desert?" But I had to give in because it was the Ministry's order. Probably not only myself but other people as well had thought how a person like me--an outsider to the studies of whales or without knowledge of the whaling industry--could carry out this assignment. Experts at the Fisheries Agency, researchers at the Institute of Cetacean Research and people in the whaling industry must have thought the same way. Yet I had to be up on the stage--with a heavy heart.

  Top runners in the anti-whaling bloc were the United States, Britain and Australia--in other words, Anglo-Saxon countries. Not only non-governmental organizations, such as Greenpeace, but also the governments of those countries used every possible tactics to impose pressure on the whaling nations. In the end, they managed to have countries that had nothing to do with whaling join the IWC in an apparent bid to push their assertion through by the strength of numbers. Some delegations had their expenses for travel and accommodations paid by anti-whaling groups and showed up only at the time of voting to raise their hands to say "No" to whaling. I then wondered if this was the ideal of "liberty and democracy" which Western nations have advocated so ardently. This kind of process can be observed in many other instances in the present international scene. This means that the majority groups having superiority in numbers try to make things go as they wish. That is to say, the imposition of values is infesting the world.

  It is surprising that this self-centered way of thinking is exercised with impunity, that anything would be possible with power even when a sufficient number is not mustered. A sense of resignation seems to be spreading in the world that such a development cannot be stopped because it is the reality of international society or there is no gain in resisting the powerful. I am one who harbors a grave concern over such an atmosphere.

  In recent years, there is a tendency in Japan to literally adore the cultures of Anglo-Saxon countries in many ways, such as the United States and Britain. This is understood to be an extension of Japan's policy "to separate itself from Asia and join the Western nations" and following in the footsteps of Western countries in every area--a policy that the Japanese government promoted during the Meiji Period (1868-1912). Some Japanese obviously think that we need not eat whales in this age of affluence or that we should not resist the U.S. that presses Japan to abandon whaling by saying "no fishery if continue whaling. " It is a sad fact indeed that there are people in Japan who deny their own food culture. What worries me is that the tendency of going along almost blindly with Western nations at the sacrifice of Japan's national pride and following every path after America and Britain for the sake of looking-good and profit does not seem to cease even today.

  In the essays I wrote more than 20 years ago, when I was in the Foreign Ministry's Fishery Division, I find such subtitles: "Are whales not saddened by complacent debate by humans?," "Abnormality (in and out of the IWC)," "Can denial of lives and cultures of other people be condoned?," and "Diligent scientific arguments are made, but decisions are taken far apart from such arguments." In an article I contributed to the Economics and Diplomacy Journal in December 1984, under the title "Before the impending whaling moratorium," I pointed out the irrationality of the IWC's decision and asked myself why this had happened?: (1) Who promoted the whaling moratorium?, (2) For what? and (3) "With what perception?" My answer to question (1) was "the United States;�Eto (2) was the belief that "killing whales having a higher intelligence is unethical and should not be recognized;�Eand to (3) was "an awareness among Western countries that other traditions or cultures that are not theirs cannot be legitimate--in another word, "arrogance..."

  It was only three years that I was related to the whaling issue. For the rest of my 40 years�Ecareer at the Foreign Ministry, I had been principally involved in Middle Eastern affairs. But I now feel deeply that those three years might have had a significant influence on my judgment of the international situation thereafter in coping with various issues shaking the Middle East.

  In my diary when I was in charge of fisheries in the Foreign Ministry, I wrote down the following short Japanese poem--I don't remember where I came across it.

      Whalers have more serene eyes
      than those who cry "No killing of whales!"

  As I am not quite certain who wrote this poem, I humbly ask here for his or her permission to quote it here.

  To close this essay, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to those who were kind enough to help me during my mission those past days.