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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.