AYUKAWAHAMA, Japan — This small harbor on Japan’s northern coast, where whaling boats sit docked with harpoon guns proudly displayed, and shops sell carvings made from the ivorylike teeth of sperm whales, might seem to be an unlikely place to find opponents of the nation’s contested Antarctic whaling. Yet, local residents are breaking long-held taboos to speak out against the government-run Antarctic hunts, which they say invite international criticism that threatens the much more limited coastal hunts by people in this traditional whaling town. ‘The research whaling in the Antarctic is not about protecting culture, said Ichio Ishimori, a city councilman in Ishinomaki, of which Ayukawahama is a part. The Japanese government is facing renewed pressures at home and abroad to drastically scale back its so-called research whaling. Yet, Tokyo seems paralyzed by the same combination of nationalist passions and entrenched bureaucratic interests that have previously blocked any action to limit the three-decade-old whaling program. ‘We’re entering a new period on the whaling issue, but we don’t know what it means yet, said Shohei Yonemoto, a professor of environmental policy at the University of Tokyo. Clearly, the pressures for change are stronger than ever. The […]