Dear Mr. Abbott,

Protest Letter

We, Zainichi Tokken o Yurusanai Shimin no Kai, and voluntary citizens of Japan hereby express our firm opposition to your country’s interfering with Japan’s research whaling and having brought the case to the International Court of Justice. If you sincerely intend to enhance the future relationship between Japan and Australia, we demand that your country and your people abstain from discriminatory behaviours against our food culture and tradition based on your narrow-minded ethics.

Japan has been conducting scientific research as approved by the International Whaling Commission (“IWC”), and we think that it is needless to repeat how much contribution has been made by Japan’s academic investigation to the world’s cetacean studies.

A view that the research whaling is used as a front for commercial whale hunting has been proposed from your country. However, as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan stated, the responsible domestic processing by Japan of the whale meat generated in the course of the lethal-methods research is by no means in conflict with the rules of IWC. Although we commiserate you on the “bulky garbage” you took over from your predecessor who was reduced to a lackey of China, we hope you will realize that it is completely useless for both Japan and Australia to continue groundless Japan bashing.

In the meantime, whales are one of precious marine resources in Japan. We are only searching a way to avoid the crisis of extinction of the species from reckless and excessive hunting as seen in western countries in former times and to continuously exploit the whale resources. Please understand that what we are doing is totally different from what you did in supporting the indiscriminate hunting by providing whaling bases.

Furthermore, eating whales is a culture deeply rooted in Japan, and we demand to know if you are denying the diversity of foods arising from the variety of ethnicities. We believe that what you should truly criticize is not a food culture beyond your understanding but cruel slaughtering of animals for pleasure. In Australia, some people run down to kill kangaroos and even injure baby kangaroos with guns and terminate them by repeatedly flinging their bodies to the ground. Shouldn’t these barbarous acts really be condemned? We want you to show the reason why you passionately call for the protection of lives of whales while being silent about the slaughter of the precious marsupials which only live in Australia. In your country, is the value of the life of an animal species higher or lower than that of another?

If you seriously desire better relations with Japan, we want you, first of all, to learn to understand that Japan, a country with a history dozens of times longer than that of your country, has a faith that respects all the lives because a human being receives the lives of other creatures to foster his or her own life.

Yours sincerely,