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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.