Yoko Ono in plea for end to Japanese dolphin hunt
Print Edition
The Japanese widow of John Lennon yesterday added her voice to pleas to dolphin fishermen that they stop their hunt, days after the US ambassador to Tokyo waded into the row.
Yoko Ono published an open letter to the men of Taiji, the small town made infamous by the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove” which depicts the annual bloodbath, in which she urged them to halt the cull for the “future of Japan.”
Ono said the hunt, in which scores of the animals are corralled into a cove, with the prettiest selected for sale to aquariums and the rest butchered for meat, was damaging the reputation of Japan.
It “will give an excuse for big countries and their children in China, India and Russia to speak ill of Japan,” she wrote.
“I am sure that it is not easy, but please consider the safety of the future of Japan, surrounded by many powerful countries which are always looking for the chance to weaken the power of our country.
“At this very politically sensitive time, (the hunt) will make the children of the world hate the Japanese.
“For many, many years... we have worked hard to receive true understanding of the Japanese from the world,” she said.
“But what we enjoy now, can be destroyed literally in one day. I beg of you to consider our precarious situation after the nuclear disaster (which could very well affect the rest of the world, as well.)”
The reference was to the 2011 meltdowns at Fukushima, after a tsunami swamped reactors.
The letter, posted on her “Imagine Peace” website and addressed to “Japanese fishermen of Taiji,” bore Ono’s signature and was dated 20 January, 2014. At the foot, it said: “cc Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe.”
Ono’s intervention came just days after US ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy tweeted her disapproval.
“Deeply concerned by inhumaneness of drive hunt dolphin killing. USG (US Government) opposes drive hunt fisheries,” wrote Kennedy.
Her comments were welcomed yesterday by fugitive eco-activist Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
“Hopefully this would put additional pressure to convince the Japanese government that this really has no place in the 21st century,” he said.
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