Japan’s so weird about whale meat. Supposedly, Japanese people don’t even like whale meat. It’s considered low class fare, and unpleasant. And yet they catch plenty. Anyone have an explanation beyond “cultural heritage of eating food they hate”?
this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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My grandfather (Japanese) asked over and over again for our family to take him to one of the few restaurants that still serve whale meat. He just wanted to eat it once more before he died (about 10 years ago). He grew up eating it all the time as he was part of a blue collar family and it was a cheap meat that everyone ate. He loved it and hadn’t had it in decades.
The family always refused and he never got to eat it again. I always felt bad for him; what Japan did in limiting whale meat consumption would be something like the US eliminating 99% of pork consumption in the matter of a few decades. Is it for the best? Absolutely. Still wish he was able to eat it one last time, though.
Black market whale oil, for medicine or whatever. I think whale hunting traditions is far outdated imo. But don't touch local traditions of whale killing or else you'll get a bottle at your head. Fishers are sometimes lowkey pirates.
There are traditional cultures that hunt whales, like Inuit people. But they take one whale, not 25.
Japan is not hunting in a traditional way nor holding to what their ancestors did.
In fairness some of the traditional methods are pretty inhumane. In the Faroes for example they herd them onto the beach which is not great, whereas in Norway they shoot it in the head with an exploding harpoon which is much quicker.
That's fair. But Japan is harvesting fin whales that are second in size to the blue whale. Those whales are facing a huge proplem with overhunting.
The Faroes hunt is for pilot whales and dolphins which are not facing as an extreme population degradation.
True