New retail spaces have recently appeared in Japan, equipped with vending machines. There is exclusively whale meat, rare in supermarkets or markets. Despite a high price, they are emptying at full speed.
Small, all-white, all-clean, brand-new retail spaces with no vendors have sprung up on Japanese streets. There are distributors of whale meat exclusively, offered in various packaging, frozen or canned. “The big supermarkets don’t sell whalejustifies Hideki Tokoro, the boss of the fishing company Kyodo Senpaku at the origin of this concept. It’s because of organizations opposed to whaling.”
“NGOs lobbied so hard in the past that they hindered trade.”
Hideki Tokoro, the boss of the Kyodo Senpaku whaling companyat franceinfo
“Few small fishmongers offer it. They are afraid that their shop will be ransacked, continues Hideki Tokoro. Among the shareholders of the large supermarket chains are foreigners who could cause trouble at general meetings, although, in my opinion, this would not happen. The memories are there and the fears exist.”
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It is true that apart from the Toyosu fish market or in luxury department stores, one rarely sees whale meat for sale, even if, since July 2019, Japan has officially resumed commercial fishing after more 30 year break. But it only hunts in its exclusive economic waters.
“It is difficult to supply the machines”
If the stores don’t sell whale, isn’t it simply because the Japanese don’t want to eat it for precisely ecological reasons? The conclusion seems to impose itself logically when we look at the consumption statistics. The Japanese eat 13 kilos of chicken a year per person and zero kilos of whale meat. But the producers put forward another explanation: the Japanese simply do not eat it because they cannot find it in the shops and the fishing quotas set by the government are far too limited. The proof, according to Hideki Tokoro, is the success of its vending machines. “I was really surprised: in vending machines, it sells a lot, rejoices Hideki Tokoro. It is however expensive. It is difficult to supply the machines”.
“Parents tell their children that they ate whale meat when they were young and they make them taste it. So to my amazement the customers are families.”
Hideki Tokoroat franceinfo
“If all goes well, I would like to go up to 100 automatic shops, in three to five years”, projects Hideki Tokoro. Unlike environmentalists but like all those who defend the tradition of whaling, he assures us that cetaceans are far too numerous around Japan. They devour a large part of the fish usually caught for human consumption. According to him, the quantities of whales taken are anyway far too low to threaten the species.