英米　１年
I can’t understand why capturing whales is a bad thing. Until the 1990s, they were captured a lot and the number of whales decreased. However, they have been increasing since then. I think whales are the same as other living things such as beef and pork, and other fish. It’s important to eat Japanese traditional food with whale meat. I think the balance is important.

英米　１年
Thank you for your presentation. I once saw a television show where an organization called the Sea Shepherd goes to save whales. They use their ship to push the Japanese whale-catching ships away and this made me feel a little bit embarrassed to be Japanese. The reason for this feeling is because the U.S. has a television show where they try to stop the “bad Japanese” from killing whales. I think that these whale killers are giving a bad representation of Japan as a whole and I believe they should think about what bad effects are coming out of their actions.

英米　１年
I have never heard about whaling, so today’s topic was very interesting for me. I think that Japanese people should not continue whaling because Japan joined the ICRW which protects the resources regarding whale. We should not capture whales too much. However, I don’t know why Japanese people are doing whaling even if people all over the world warn us not to do whaling. Also, I don’t know why whales are so important for us. I would like to research about this by myself.

英米　２年
Thank you for your presentation. I have an opinion about whale hunting. I think all nationalities should stop whale hunting because in the world there are lots of kinds food and meat. Therefore, people raise some of them to eat. We can survive without eating whale meat, so it is very terrible that whales that are decreasing in number are hunted. So, I think we should stop whale hunting immediately. After your presentation, I have come to think about international law deeply.

フランス　３年
I don’t think whaling is a bad thing or should be prohibited. Of course, we Japanese don’t have to catch whales, but Japan does research on whaling for the sustainable use of whales. It is the fact that other countries are against whaling and have bad impressions of Japan because of it. Japan used to catch and eat whales during WWⅡ, which is regarded as part of our culture. Some other countries, especially, European countries, they regard whales as “cute animals” and that’s why we have conflicts about whaling.

スペイン　２年
It is difficult for me to understand this presentation, because it is academic a little and the words in this presentation were difficult. But I did my best. From this presentation, I thought that “Why is whaling prohibited by international law?” because other creatures in the sea for example seals, penguins, are not animals which we are prohibited from capturing. I will think about answer to this question: I think that “because they are mammals, they are so expensive in markets around the world, and they are so big.” They are mammals and it is rare in sea animals (to be mammals). So, I believe that many people want to know about them, maybe. Thank you for your nice presentation!

国際関係　２年
Thank you for your presentation. I knew the problem of whaling because I had researched about that for a presentation. In my opinion, I disagree with whale hunting. In daily life, we don’t often have any opportunities to see whale meat in supermarkets. I’ve eaten whale meat in school lunches, but I’ve never seen it in my home. So, I don’t think there is demand for the meat in Japan. In addition, we don’t have to spend much money to research whales. We should use this money for more profitable things like education. On the other hand, I know people who rely on the whale meat industry. If hunting whales is prohibited, their lives will be difficult. Therefore, that problem is so complicated. However, today was a good time to understand an international problem.

看護　１年
Thank you for your lecture today. I didn’t know about the Antarctic whaling case, so it was little difficult to understand this topic completely in English. But I’m really interested in issues about creatures. As for whales, I’ve heard that the meat of whales was served in school lunches before. I was really surprised when I heard this. Now, the meat of whales is eaten less. I think for fear of the extinction of whales is one of the reasons. So, it’s not good to hunt whales, I think. I want to learn about this topic more.

留学生
Professor Takeshima’s presentation was very important to listen to because he talked about the whaling case. This certainly is a serious topic and it is important that more and more people discuss it, so we can raise more awareness about the cause of whales’ protection. For me, what Japan was doing with JARPA and JARPAⅡ was only a pretext to cover the commercial business concerning whale meat as it was only to hide all the profit they were making whilst selling whale meat. Because, if it were really for scientific research, why would they need to kill so many whales? I do not think we really need all this killing and I am totally against it. Whales do not deserve all this suffering and there might be serious environmental consequences.

留学生
Well, whale hunting is a complicated subject. First of all, I feel by being a consumer of meat myself. It’s hard to give an opinion without sounding hypocritical. Animals are animals and I don’t think there’s a difference between whales, cattle or chickens, so there’s no point being selective and killing some species but being against the killing of other ones. Then comes the matter of environmental impact and the preservation of species, which I think might be the main concern when it comes to whaling. However, the meat industry itself, even though it doesn’t represent a danger to a specific species, it’s a big villain of the planet; being responsible for the emission of polluting gases by cattle, a lot of water consumption and also deforestation in order to create pasture. (In Brazil this is the situation in a lot of places.) Finally, I think we cannot get rid of all the animal usage in a society but it would be good to reduce what we can in order to, little by little, protect species, the environment, and also the well-being of those animals.

留学生
This was a difficult topic for me not only the knowledge of whale hunting but English terms related to whale hunting. But I think that I can talk about whale hunting in Taiwan. When Taiwan was a colony of Japan, the Japanese government started whale hunting in the 1920s. And now, even though Taiwan is not one of the members of IWC, the Taiwanese government started to establish some regulations to protect whales, and ended whale hunting in 1986.