A number of years ago, Ayukawa, a port town near Ishinomaki, throve as a whaling base.

  In former years, there was coexistence between whales and the Japanese people. But the days with whales have now become a past memory. Will the scene of a port town coexisting with whales no longer come back?

  My father works on a whale research mothership. He has been doing this job since I was in the sixth grade of elementary school. He spends many days on the whaling ship--at times two months at home and at other times at least two weeks. He goes to Hiroshima to board the whaling mothership bound for the Antarctic. He engages in the research on the ecology of whales living in the oceans.

  In the past, whales were exposed to the risk of extinction because of over-exploitation by humans. What we did not know about whale ecology before and how they are recovering has now been made clearer. It seems that research has advanced to the point of showing the state of whale stocks for which catches by humans will present no problem.

  But my father’s research vessel was attacked by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an organization claiming to protect whales. Frankly, I was shocked when I heard about this news from my mother. Luckily, my father was not injured but his fellow crew members were wounded on their faces by the attack. I also heard that this was not the first time they assaulted the research vessels. Previously, they scratched the sides of the research ships or threw some objects at them.

  Why do they engage in such activities? I felt this question arising in my heart, almost a feeling of anger.

  Organizations such as Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace are opposed to catching whales. They are trying to save whales which had been subjected to over-exploitation and driven to the risk of extinction in the past. And they believe that whales should not be killed because they are the same living creatures as human beings. This is what anti-whaling people have in mind. I think it is good for them to think that they want to save whales. But, at the same time, I have a question whether it is right to kill animals other than whales. Whales are not the only animals living on this earth. We humans and other creatures on this earth take the lives of other living things in order to live. If this should be stopped, then no living creature can survive on this earth.

  All living things, including humans, have to take other lives in order to survive. This is a condition that no one can avoid. I think that accepting this assumption and avoiding taking the lives of other creatures more than is necessary means coexistence in respect for the lives of each other.

  Thinking this way, I cannot understand what anti-whaling groups are really trying to protect. I wonder what they actually want to do because the issue of whales cannot be solved by violence.

  We, living things, are supporting each other--sometimes by using other lives. If we really understand this, we may not have confrontation over whales, and whaling in a good sense can be started again.

  My father is researching whale ecology somewhere in the Antarctic today.

  His research is to build up a new relationship between whales and humans, by respecting each other's lives. It is my hope that, as in former days in Japan, boats carrying whales will return to the port and bring back vitality to the port town of Ishinomaki through whales.

   (This essay won the President Prize of the Ishinomaki Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the Painting and Essay Contests to mark the Whale Forum 2007.)