Pirate With A Cause

I’ve been trying to decide whether to renew my Sun subscription. (My boyfriend calls it “Death Magazine,” and he does have a point.) Then this month I read the interview with Paul Watson. What an inspiring story! All the letter writing and marching in the streets that people (myself included) do has its place, but I’ve always felt, as Watson does, that those activities accomplish little. Better to do something, if you can only figure out what. He has managed to figure it out, and to do it, and I applaud him. My renewal check is on its way, and Sea Shepherd has a new supporter.

In her interview with Sea Shepherd skipper Paul Watson [“Pirate with a Cause,” October 2011], Gillian Kendall asks whether, in his efforts to prevent illegal whaling, he might find justice in Japanese courts.

Impossible. I live in Japan, and no issue fires up the Japanese more than Sea Shepherd. Apolitical youth in my English classes are wont to write essays about how Sea Shepherd are “terrorists.” (None bother to use the “eco-” prefix.) When I ask for details of the “violent attacks” they mention, they cite the bottles of rotten butter thrown on board.

I attribute the pervasiveness of their hatred for Sea Shepherd to the Japanese media. For example, after the whaling vessel Shōnan Maru 2 rammed the Ady Gil, the press here claimed the opposite: that a Sea Shepherd craft had rammed a Japanese ship. I’m sure most Japanese never bothered to watch the video online.

I imagine Watson would agree that the issue is not really about laws, which can change, but values. To the Japanese the antiwhaling laws themselves are merely another example of the West dictating morality. Few Japanese care about eating whale meat, and whaling is a tradition only among scattered coastal communities, but the press here demonize Sea Shepherd out of nationalism. The conflict over whaling has sadly become a matter of national pride. To me, the only hope is for humans to understand the fallacy of speciesism.