Commercial whaling in Japan is often framed not as a controversial practice requiring justification, but as a positive ethical and ecological good. This two-part presentation explores how contemporary pro-whaling discourse constructs and normalizes that legitimacy across different sites of public communication. In the first part, we examine how advocates mobilize the nebulous but powerful notion of “health” to frame whaling as beneficial at multiple levels: for marine ecosystems, national food security and cultural sovereignty, individual well-being, and even the whales themselves. Drawing on sustainability rhetoric and the virtue language of the United Nations’ Sustainability and Development Goals (SDGs), whaling is presented as rational, ethical, and environmentally responsible rather than destructive or outdated. In the second part, we investigate how such framings are reproduced through children’s educational media in recent decades. Focusing on whale-themed coloring books and picture books produced by pro-whaling advocates, we trace a shift from earlier fear-based narratives of scarcity and cultural loss toward optimistic, future-oriented forms of ecopedagogy that present whaling as responsible environmental stewardship. Together, the talks examine how contested environmental practices are transformed into ecological common sense.

Nathan Hopson is a professor of Japanese history and language at the University of Bergen, Norway. In addition to an “unhealthy” interest in the narratives shaping discourse on whaling in Japan and Norway, his current research focuses―or rather, is scattered across―the social history of nutrition science in modern Japan as a technology of nation building, focusing on government-led nutritional activism via school lunches (gakkō kyūshoku) and “food and nutrition education” (shokuiku), national food security, and conspiracy theories. 

Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt is a professor of Japanese modern literature at Nagoya University, Japan. Her research explores how literature and other cultural media shape understandings of memory and contested pasts in modern and contemporary Japan. Her current work follows whales as they migrate through contemporary Japanese culture, examining how narratives, educational materials, and museum exhibitions contribute to public memory and the production of environmental common sense.