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Japanese whaling, in terms of active hunting of whales, is estimated by the Japan Whaling Association to have begun around the 12th century. [1] However, Japanese whaling on an industrial scale began around the 1890s when Japan started to participate in the modern whaling industry, at that time an industry in which many countries participated.
Whaling Scene on the Coast of Gotō, an ukiyo-e print by Hokusai, c. 1830. The oldest written mention of whaling in Japanese records is from Kojiki, the oldest Japanese historical book, which was written in the 7th century CE.
The whaling industry spread throughout the world and became very profitable in terms of trade and resources. Some regions of the world's oceans, along the animals' migration routes, had a particularly dense whale population and became targets for large concentrations of whaling ships, and the industry continued to grow well into the 20th century.
The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling is an international environmental agreement aimed at the "proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry". [2] It governs the commercial, scientific, and aboriginal subsistence whaling practices of 88 member states. [2]
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) is a specialised regional fishery management organisation, established under the terms of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) to "provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the whaling industry".
The term whaler is mostly historic. A handful of nations continue with industrial whaling, and one, Japan, still dedicates a single factory ship for the industry. The vessels used by aboriginal whaling communities are much smaller and are used for various purposes over the course of the year.
Jūrō Oka (岡 十郎 Oka Jūrō, 27 July 1870 – 8 January 1923) was a Japanese businessman considered the "father of Japanese whaling". [1]In the 1890s oka travelled to the West to acquire whaling techniques and equipment, and in 1899 established Nihon En'yō Gyogyō K.K., which caught its first whale the following year with Norwegian gunner.
The book "finds little evidence of Japan's supposed 9,000-year unbroken whaling tradition in modern factory-ship whaling," which would thus render Japan's twentieth century claims to qualify for exemptions from the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on commercial whaling based on a long indigenous cultural practice of whaling ...