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 There will be a demonstration outside the Japanese Embassy in London on Wednesday 20th September from 12 noon until 3.00pm. The Embassy is at 101-104 Piccadilly, London. (Click here for a map)
In the Japanese fishing village of Taiji, fishermen will be rounding up and slaughtering hundreds and even thousands of dolphins from the start of October.
After driving pods of dolphins into shallow coves, (see image right) the fishermen kill the dolphins, slashing their throats with knives or stabbing them with spears. Thrashing about, the dolphins take as long as six minutes to die. The water turns red with their blood and the air fills with their screams.
This brutal massacre - the largest scale dolphin kill in the world - goes on for six months of every year. Even more shocking, the captive dolphin industry is an accomplice to the kill.
Japanese fishermen kill the largest number of dolphins anywhere in the world and dolphins and porpoises face grave danger in Japan’s coastal waters when the annual hunt begins.
In Taiji the annual dolphin hunt starts October 1st and continues through March 30th. Here, the massacre of dolphins is strongly encouraged by three local dolphinariums that purchase show-quality dolphins at a high cost and ship some of them off to other facilities in Japan and abroad.
They used to carry out the massacres in a large lagoon by a public road, but the mounting exposure has forced them into one last hiding place; a small cove hidden between two mountains. The cove is part of a public park and tourists from all of Japan come here to walk the picturesque trails along one of the most spectacular coastlines in the world.
During the drive fishery season, which lasts six months out of the year, the fishermen take the area into their possession, employing exceptionally hostile tactics to keep westerners and Japanese tourists away from the cove while dolphins are being killed. In doing so they have created a threatening and sinister atmosphere in an otherwise beautiful and friendly village.
 After the massacre the water remains red with blood for hours (see image right) and the ludicrous signs warning people of non-existent dangers such as "Falling rocks!" and "Mud-slides!" are not removed until after the sea has washed the blood away and all evidence of the butchery has vanished.
The extreme cover-up is undermining one of the fishermen’s principal justifications for killing dolphins: That it’s a tradition they are proud of. If they are truly proud of killing dolphins, then why are they so frantic about hiding it? The fact that they hide the bloodbath behind blue tarp, chains, barbed wire and walls of fabric reveals that they are well aware that the dolphin massacres, once fully exposed, will be viewed as deplorable by the rest of the world, including the Japanese people.
Click here to read a report about the demo held in 2005 |
