Why Japan wants whales

Masako Fukui: Pro-whalers' stand hard to swallow | Opinion | The Australian

The above article appears to answer the puzzling question about why the Japanese government insists on having commercial whaling when all the evidence suggests that the Japanese public just doesn't care:

The problem is that although whales are mammals, Japan defines whaling as a fisheries issue. The kanji character for whale is a combination of two parts, the first being the sign for fish. Nearly all kanji characters for fish names, from snapper to kingfish, are of the same two-part design. So it's no surprise that Japan's diplomatic charge at the IWC is led by the Fisheries Agency, a rather stuffy and conservative government department compared with the more elitist and outward-looking Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Fisheries Agency officials fear that if Japan backs down on whaling, it will also have to back down on other fisheries issues, such as tuna and salmon. That may sound like rampant paranoia, but history tells another story.

In 1982, when the IWC voted for the moratorium on commercial whaling, the US pressured Japan not to lodge a formal objection to the ban. Under article 5 (3) of the convention, any member state can opt out of binding resolutions simply by lodging a formal objection within 90 days. In return for compliance, the US granted Japan continued access to fish in US waters. But that was later revoked, mainly as a result of domestic pressures within the US, teaching the boys at the Fisheries Agency a valuable lesson: compromising is a bad idea.

Sounds a plausibe explanation to me.