- Convenors:
-
Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt
(Nagoya University)
Kristín Ingvarsdóttir (University of Iceland)
Nathan Hopson (University of Bergen)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Interdisciplinary Section: Environmental Humanities
Short Abstract
We examine how sustainability discourse reorganizes human–whale relations across whale-watching practice, children’s pedagogy, and historical whale-farming imaginaries, allowing industries and institutions to adapt to ecological and political limits without fundamentally altering underlying logics.
Long Abstract
Since the 1980s, whaling and other forms of human-whale relations have been important topics in scholarship about Japan, including studies of the early modern period, or more recently, the Japanese government's complicated relations with the International Whaling Commission. This panel looks at less explored aspects of whale-human relations with three papers situated in modern and contemporary Japan, connected through their critical emphasis on the concept of “sustainability”. Our cases - focused on whale watching, education, and whale farming - show that rather than signaling a radical break from earlier extractivist logics, sustainability discourses repeatedly reorganize human-whale relations to authorize different modes of extractivist futures, circumventing ecological, political, and moral constraints.
The first paper explores the increasingly tense coexistence of whale watching and commercial whaling in contemporary Japan. Drawing on media discourse and industry self-representation, the paper analyzes how whale watching operators and their supporters use sustainability language to position themselves vis-à-vis commercial whaling in a shared maritime space, transforming competition over whales into a question of responsible use and legitimacy.
The second paper analyzes the pedagogical effects of pro-whaling educational materials for children employing sustainability discourse to transform extraction into care and intervention into moral necessity. Focusing on coloring books and related teaching guidelines, the paper shows how future-oriented virtue language not only replaces earlier fear-based logics that positioned whales as food competitors but also establishes whaling as ecological common sense rather than an object of debate or ethical conflict.
The final paper traces the history of modern American and Japanese whale-farming proposals, showing how advocates have framed cetacean domestication as, variously, a solution to crises of whaling, food security, and economic growth. It argues that post-1980 Japanese whale ranching discourse is novel in its apparently deliberate and instrumental framing within shared values of the international community such as cultural preservation, environmental sustainability, food justice, and animal welfare.
Together, the papers demonstrate that sustainability discourse serves as a protean mediating device for diverse interests, connecting fisheries logics, pedagogy, and futurist imagination. This allows human-whale industries to adapt to ecological and political limits without fundamentally altering their underlying logics.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
Focusing on pro-whaling educational materials for children, I show how whaling is framed as ecologically responsible. Positive, future-oriented sustainability language replaces earlier fear-based legitimation and establishes whaling as a moral default rather than an object of debate.
Paper long abstract
Public understandings of whales are shaped not only by scientific expertise and policy debates, but also by the early encounters through which children learn what whales are, how they live, and how they relate to humans. While whaling history, resource management regimes, and anti-whaling activism have been extensively studied, the representational and didactic foundations of these understandings have received far less attention. Children’s media, however, play a crucial role in forming intuitive ideas about whale behavior, marine ecologies, and the moral status of human-animal relations long before political positions are explicitly articulated.
This paper examines how whaling is framed as ecologically responsible through children’s educational materials in post-moratorium Japan. It focuses on a whale-themed coloring book for elementary school-aged children published in 2022 by the Fish Consumption Promotion Center, an industry-affiliated organization dedicated to promoting seafood consumption and fisheries education. Embedded within a network of teaching materials and teacher guidance, the coloring book combines (partially misleading) biological explanation, food education, and culturalist framing to present whales as marine resources waiting to be exploited. The paper relates this pro-whaling stance to an earlier legitimizing logic exemplified by a hybrid picture/science book published in 2006 by the pro-whaling advocacy group Women’s Forum for Fish, which follows a remarkably similar narrative structure. However, a close reading reveals a shift from a fear-based narrative of cultural loss and ecological scarcity—centered on food competition and human vulnerability—to a more future-oriented, virtue-based and overall optimistic framing of sustainability, in which scientized ecological claims and SDG language reframe whaling as responsible, if not urgently necessary to reinstate ecological balance. The conspicuous absence of similar language in coloring books on less contested species highlights the utilitarian nature of this framing, suggesting that institutional discourse is employed intensifies where legitimation is required. I argue that this form of ecopedagogy does not invite debate or critical reflection, but instead establishes whaling as a moral default through guided participation. By tracing how ecological common sense is produced across generations, the paper highlights the role of children’s media in the normalization of contested environmental practices.
Paper short abstract
Comparative history of US and Japanese whale-farming schemes, mid-19th century to present. Proposals sought to protect whaling and ensure food access, but also reflected techno-frontier growthism. Post-1982, whale ranching was reframed in Japan as cultural, just, and sustainable
Paper long abstract
This paper presents a comparative history of whale farming schemes in modern Japan and the United States. The unsustainability of commercial whaling was clear to many in the industry by the mid- to late nineteenth century. From around this time, we see sporadic proposals for whale “farming” or “ranching” to save both the whales and the industry. Some are pie-in-the-sky fantasy, some science fiction. Some are comedy, some serious experiments. Many share a millenarian utopianism. I identify three primary underlying principles. The first leverages cetacean domestication to sustain the whaling industry. No whales, no whalers. The second justifies whale farming in the name of national and global food security, often drawing on Malthusian anxieties about planetary carrying capacity and overpopulation with concerns about food justice for the developing world. No whales, no food. The third strain of whale farming advocacy combines a techno-optimist aspiration to rationally harness efficient, high-density energy sources to fuel economic growth with a retrofuturist recreation of American “Wild West” romance rooted in the post-World War II transformation of the world’s oceans into humankind’s new “frontier” for exploration and extraction. No whales, no growth. From the nineteenth century to the present, visions of whale farming in both the United States and Japan consistently reference at least two of these, some all three. Since the IWC’s commercial whaling moratorium was adopted in 1982 (implemented 1986), whale domestication has additionally become a potential end run around international sanction. In this new context, proponents of whale farming appropriate broadly accepted discourses on cultural preservation, environmental sustainability, food justice, animal welfare, etc., to promote the possibility of whale ranching. This paper will explore the historical and present meanings of efforts to domesticate whales for harvest, focusing on this most recent development, arguing that this instrumental cooptation of international community values is a novel development.
Paper short abstract
Japan is one of the few countries where whale watching coexists with commercial whaling. Since 2019, whaling shifted to Japan’s EEZ, giving rise to competing interests with whale-watching operators. This study explores how they frame sustainability and position themselves in relation to whaling.
Paper long abstract
Japan is one of the few countries where whale watching coexists with commercial whaling. While the Japanese government has long defended whaling within the International Whaling Commission (IWC), whale watching has developed into an established industry in many coastal towns since the 1980s. This coexistence became more complex in 2019, when all whaling operations by Japanese vessels shifted to the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). This study is guided by the hypothesis that the shift has intensified tensions between the older whaling sector and the growing whale-watching industry and that competition is not only economic—between hunting whales and maximizing viewing opportunities—but also increasingly framed through sustainability discourse. The paper addresses the following key questions: How does the whale-watching sector present itself in external communications? In what context is sustainability discussed? How does the industry position itself in relation to whaling and its advocates? And finally, how do company backgrounds—as former whalers, fisheries or tourism ventures—potentially shape their identity and stance towards the two industries, whale watching and whaling? The paper traces the historical development of whale watching in Japan and examines the evolution of sustainability practices within the sector. The analysis draws on content analysis of Japanese print media and the websites of individual operators and regional organizations. The focus is on operators in coastal towns where whale watching is economically significant. The Japanese case offers insights relevant to other coastal regions facing similar tensions between tourism, whaling, and sustainability. Further, it contributes to the broader discussion about how sustainability is understood and interpreted across contexts and cultures.