A political brawl for meat they don't even want to eat

Six ships and dozens of men setting out to kill nearly 1,000 of the planet's biggest mammals is not an easy event to ignore, but Japan greeted the dispatch yesterday of its largest whaling hunt in two decades with a collective yawn. Local media considered the victory of Mizuki Noguchi in the Tokyo International Women's Marathon a more important story.

It has long been thus. While the rest of the world reacts with fury to these whaling expeditions, Japan shrugs its shoulders and says: "What's the fuss?" The government's $1bn campaign to overturn the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling has been waged largely out of sight. Most Japanese would rather eat hamburger than whale. Hundreds of tonness of whalemeat sits in freezers.

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So why does Tokyo relish its role as the maritime Darth Vader? The Fisheries Agency, a small government bureaucracy with control of whaling policy, sees itself as Japan's defender against Western "culinary imperialism" and its right to marine resources. The agency says Japan's low food self-sufficiency – less than 40 per cent – gives it the right to hunt all sustainable sea life, including whales.

The rest of the world, however, doesn't buy the Fisheries Agency arguments that whale stocks have recovered enough to allow managed whaling. The blue whale – the largest mammal on the planet – was hunted almost to extinction by commercial whalers: Just 2,000 remain from an estimated 360,000.

After two decades fighting for a return to commercial whaling, Japan seemed finally to have achieved momentum last year when it won by a single vote at the International Whaling Commission conference in St Kitts. But that was overturned this year in Alaska when Japan's "scientific" whaling programme was condemned in a 42-2 vote. Most frustratingly, a request to allow limited whaling around Japan's own coastline was also rejected.

That loss, and the hypocrisy of allowing Norway to hunt 1,000 whales, infuriated the Japanese delegates and sealed the fate of the 50 humpbacks, which had been a bargaining chip.

"There was nothing on the table except for the humpback hunt, which should be treated with the absolute contempt it deserves," fumed the UK commissioner Barry Gardiner. "It is not a concession to up the stakes dramatically then offer to take it away if we don't give them something."

The Fisheries Agency is well aware of how its hunt will play globally. One of the agency's negotiators, Joji Morishita said the humpback was a " politically difficult" animal. But it is reaction in America which he will be watching most closely. Activists say the whaling fleet delayed its trip until yesterday to avoid embarrassing the Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda, who is in America on a state visit.

Paul Watson, of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society had a simple message for the Japanese: "Bring it on. The humpback hunt will be the biggest recruiting tool we have ever had."

The irony, as Japan's dwindling band of whale-meat eaters will tell you, is that humpback doesn't even taste very good.