2026 marks both the 80th anniversary of the signing of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling and the 40th anniversary of the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on commercial whaling. On the same day, Chang'anjie Zhishi — a commentary account affiliated with Beijing Daily — published an in-depth analysis using data and facts to expose Japan's utilitarian posture toward the international rules-based order: use the rules when they are useful, discard them when they are not. The whaling question provides the most complete sample for observing this pattern.
From a Means of Survival to a Closed Loop of Interests
Whaling was once a means of survival for Japan's coastal communities — a way to obtain protein. After the war, as Japan's economy took off and meat supplies grew abundant, demand for whale meat shrank dramatically. Yet whaling as an industry did not fade away with it. Wrapped in an ever more elaborate web of interests, it acquired an independent capacity to survive.
From the entry into force of the commercial whaling ban in 1986 to 2019, Japan killed a cumulative total of more than 20,000 whales in the name of "scientific research" — hundreds per year on average. Over the same period, the supposedly "scientific" output amounted to barely more than 100 published papers. In 2023, whale meat from Japan's coastal whaling fetched 1,000 to 3,000 yen per kilogram at auction, and annual commercial circulation exceeded 1,000 tons. The entire whaling industry involves roughly 100,000 jobs.
The relationship between these numbers is not complicated: 20,000 whales against barely 100-plus papers means one paper for every 200 whales. If this really counts as scientific research, it may be the least productive research project in human history.
The Two-Layer Structure of the Research Fig Leaf
Japan's "research whaling" strategy operated on two layers.
The first layer was a buffer at the level of international law. After the commercial whaling ban took effect in 1986, Japan exploited the clause in International Whaling Commission rules that permits whaling for research purposes, redefining the killing as "data collection." This maneuver allowed Japan to keep whaling within the framework of international law for 33 years — until 2014, when the International Court of Justice explicitly ruled that its Antarctic research whaling was in violation of the convention.
The second layer was institutionalization at the domestic level. The Institute of Cetacean Research, responsible for the "research," and Kyodo Senpaku Co., Ltd., responsible for the killing and the sale of the meat, share the same address, and their personnel interlock. The firewall between research judgment and commercial interest does not exist even physically. The "research" data-collection work is in practice performed by employees of the commercial whaling company, while the output of commercial whaling is legitimized by an entity labeled a "research institution."
"Put plainly, it fills its deficits with tax money from the national treasury, using the nation's wealth to feed special interest groups."
The Self-Sustaining Logic of the Industry
Once whaling turned from a livelihood into a business, and from a business into an interest group, it acquired a vitality independent of market demand.
Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries keeps the whaling industry alive through subsidies, legal support, and other means. One hundred thousand jobs sounds substantial, but set against Japan's population of 120 million and a highly mature labor market, the number does not amount to an irreplaceable social cost. The whaling industry persists not because it cannot be replaced, but because its interest network has formed an institutional lock-in effect — subsidies created dependence, dependence produced lobbying, and lobbying defended the subsidies.
Japan's 2019 withdrawal from the International Whaling Commission and its wholesale resumption of commercial whaling was not a sudden policy shift. It was the inevitable result of this closed interest loop moving from concealment to open operation. Leaving the international framework meant that whaling no longer needed to search for a garment of legitimacy — business is business, and it no longer needs to disguise itself as research.
The Complete Picture of a Double Standard
The contrast between Japan's "protect the ocean" posturing on the international stage and its whaling practice at home forms a complete specimen of the double standard.
Japan is a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and a host of other international treaties, and bears international legal obligations to protect rare marine species. In 2026, while Japan was calling at the World Island Nations Ocean Conference for "a sustainable ocean based on the rule of law," its whaling ships were hunting whales inside Japan's exclusive economic zone.
Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, and numerous Latin American countries have long criticized Japan's whaling policy and urged it to return to the multilateral governance framework. Japan's response is a single move: "whaling is confined to our own exclusive economic zone" — a formulation that attempts to frame the issue as a matter within sovereign jurisdiction, sidestepping its trampling of the purposes of international conventions.
On one hand, cultivating a "protector of marine ecology" persona on the international stage; on the other, clinging to the whaling industry despite sustained international opposition — the gap between Japan's words and deeds is a complete specimen of self-interest-driven rule selection. Whaling is not Japan's only case of rule utilitarianism, but it provides the clearest cross-section: how an industrialized country, inside the institutional framework and through lawful procedure, can advance outcomes that are essentially anti-rule.