Few East Asian science-infused topics have been as globally controversial over the past decades as the Japanese whaling issue. In what has become a predicable political ritual, Anglo-Saxon environmentalists react to reports of Japanese whale hunting in the Antarctic Ocean—ostensibly for scientific purposes—with vocal mass media outcries. Meanwhile, public knowledge of the historical and contemporary conditions of Japanese whaling remains limited, both inside and outside of Japan. This book by sociologist Hiroyuki Watanabe, published in Japanese in 2006 and now available to English-reading audiences, promises to rectify this situation, providing a well-researched account of relations between whales and humans in modern Japan. Focusing on early-modern hunting technologies, global overfishing, and the sensitive politics of representing whaling as “Japanese culture”, this book brings a host of valuable insights to ongoing debates. Beyond whaling buffs (like this reviewer), the book should appeal to wider audiences in Science and Technology Studies (STS) interested in the social organization of industrial technology and the cultural and material underpinnings of human–animal relations.
