Whale meat on menu at Japan fest

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Shanghai Daily, October 10, 2015
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When tourists think of Japan, images of dramatic landscapes, futuristic cities and world-class sushi might spring to mind.

But one Tokyo district is hoping to reel in outsiders with one of the country's more controversial traditions — slaughtering whales. Ebisu, a chichi gastronomic hub close to Tokyo's frenetic Shibuya shopping district, is hosting an annual food festival aimed at introducing foreigners to the culinary delights of whale meat.

"With so many foreign tourists visiting Japan now, we would like to show how we really feel" about eating the animal, Takashi Furui, head of the event's executive committee, said at a press conference declaring the festival open last week.

Around 30 restaurants in Ebisu district are offering whale dishes throughout the festival, which closes on October 18.

But few tourists visiting the district this week seemed willing to tuck into the dark meat, which fans say has a gamy quality, similar to venison.

"I don't believe I would do that unless I was absolutely starving and there was nothing else to eat," Canadian visitor Betty Lidington said near the main Ebisu station.

Her husband Bill agreed: "I don't really want to, and I won't miss it if I don't taste a whale."

French tourist Agathe Lavielle said she was more open to the idea, though. "It doesn't shock me to eat different kinds of food and meat," she said. "I could try some, maybe, yeah," she added, provided that the animal did not suffer.

Japan's culinary relationship to cetaceans is both controversial and complex.

The seafaring nation has hunted whales for hundreds of years but the industry only really took off after World War II to help feed a hungry country.

In recent decades it has used a legal loophole in the international ban on whale hunting that allows it to continue catching the animals in order to gather scientific data. But it has never made a secret of the fact that the whale meat from these hunts often ends up on dining tables even though consumption has fallen sharply in recent years.

Festival organizers say Ebisu's name is deeply entwined with fishing, whales and foreigners.

Ebisu is a fishing god and one of the Seven Deities of Good Fortune — popularly venerated throughout Japan as the tutelary gods of one's occupation.

The word can also refer to a whale, in a deified form, and was once used as a term to describe foreigners, relating to the belief that the gods of fortune come from faraway places.

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