Janet Kenny's Nov. 22 letter, "The sadness in knowing their fate," made it clear why the whaling issue hasn't seen much progress in recent years. There is a fundamental difference in perception. The Japanese don't revere whales as "beautiful giants"; whales are viewed traditionally as another seafood. It's pretty much the same attitude that Korean people have had, or used to have, toward dogs -- a possible source of food -- while the rest of the world had concluded that dogs were adorable and loyal creatures that nobody should consider edible.
We all have a tendency to develop an implicit love toward whatever species is facing extinction. We also need to acknowledge a people's natural tendency to resist aggressive demands to stop something that has been a part of their culture for the past few hundred years.
But we also can reason. First, we need to correct a common misconception that Kenny and many others possess: that "the majority of Japanese people support the brutal and outdated practice of whaling." Japan is not systemically mass-murdering whales. The majority of Japanese are, at worst, simply apathetic. And it seems that this sheer indifference is what's keeping the situation so stagnant.
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