Living as I do with a dyed-in-the-wool vegetarian, to whom the culling of any living creature for food is anathema, I love these arguments.

We humans have always been ambivalent about murdering innocent creatures (Buddhists fully excepted), but mostly seem to embrace the "fluffy creature" philosophy. If we witness the killing of an aesthetically appealing creature (remember all those pictures of sloe-eyed baby seals in Canada?), we react with horror. Yet there is a vast range of less appealing animals, birds and insects that any of us would top at the slightest provocation. Even my vegetarian mate.

So where do the whales fit into this? Smack in the middle, it seems to me. It appears that we can have perfectly sensible policies on other marine life - fisheries policy is under constant review in almost every jurisdiction - but we get all emotional when it comes to the whales, those fluffy little things. Unless and until we can come to terms with what is (hey, understandable) emotional reaction and what is food supply economics, most of the arguments will be of the hands-over-ears "I can't hear you, I can't hear you" variety.

When more than half the world is starving, one of the G8 nations is arguing for the right to eat what they consider to be a historical and customary cullinary delight.

Thousands of Japense tourists who go whale wathcing in this country every year - just to admire the beauty of these animals. None of them appear to be asking if its hunting expedition or if whale will be on their lunch menus.

Only when whales can be farmed should we be able to harvest and eat them.

Why do we assume because it's edible we have to eat it.

As a species we are incredibly arrogant.Top and bottom of the food chain at the same time. Why not reduce the human load on the planet by more birth control such as by better television programmes at night, legalise gay marriage and making sure more women do university degrees until they have passed child-baring age by the time they start thinking of babies. This will take Japanese and Norwegians' minds off whale sushi and whale fin soup. Without the whale we would not have the Book of Jonah, the Constellation Cetus,Moby Dick, and hour-glass figures. We owe it to the species to give them a fair go.

The Japanese were good at butchering people such as in Nankin and even doing bayonet practice on live prisoners (I have seen the film footage). Let the Iron Chefs practice on live tuna or giant squid. By the way, are there any species of wild animals in Japan or are they all extinct.
Odysseus-san.

There's an important difference between "harvesting" whales, a wild population, and breeding animals in controlled circumstances. Whales are killed in a pretty gruesome way (with little control over the age, sex, or motherhood status of the victim) while domestic animals are killed in a reasonably quick and painless manner.

Saucey, your wiki reference did not really tell us whether the Japanese ate whales on a widespread basis, or whether coastal villages ate the occasional stranded beast just as coastal Japanese deliberately strand dolphins today. I strongly suspect the former. Even today whale isn't a huge item in the diet of the average Japanese (and anyincrease is coming about because of marketing). Primitive people around the world have utilised stranded whales, to many they would be "manna from heaven", but few actively hunted live whales, including, most likely, the Japanese.

The few societies which specialised in hunting whales, like the Inuit of the Bering Strait and elsewhere, did so because there were very few alternatives, and they relied on the sea almost exclusively.

Odysseus, check your facts my friend.
Japan is currently expereincing a severe demographic crisis with a plummetting birth rate which will result in a falling population some time in the next year or so. Growing population is not a problem.
Secondly, your claims regarding the Nanking incident are ill-founded. The claims of a massacre there are not proven and are highly questionable. There is no evidence of any large scale massacre - although civilian casualties were higher than normal, this can easily be attributed to the Chinese military forces engaging in combat dressed [intentionally] as civilians.

When a cow or pig goes through the grinder nearly every part is used as food. The taking of whales is for only a small part of the animal and is served as a delicacy - priced accordingly it is out of the reach of the average Japanese. We no longer need/use whale oil for lighting or heating; a valuable byproduct from earlier whaling times, so that a large proportion of the whale by weight is scrap.

That is akin to taking the dorsal fins from sharks - not as a protein source but simply to "feed" the ego of a rich customer.

It seems to me that destruction of any animal for the sake of "gourmet" tastes is immoral - if the whale was farmed as a total food source and killed quickly it would be a "reasonable" practice.