David @ Tokyo

Those of you who follow the shambles that is Japanese politics will be aware that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is looking likely to take power in this weekend's national elections here. The incumbent Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been in office for decades, and looks to be on the way out.

So, will there be any change in whaling policy?

The DPJ's whaling policy from their election manifesto is included here, and below is my translation:

Whaling measures

Regarding whale species that are recognised to have sufficient abundance, promote the resumption of commercial whaling conditional on appropriate management being undertaken.

Also, research whaling is a legitimate right under the 8th Article of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) convention.

There you have it.

Labels: Democratic Party of Japan

Hi all,

Well just after my previous update for the May inventory statistics, I loaded up some prehistoric email software on my 7 year old Fujitsu laptop (upon which the anti-virus software expired 6 years ago) and I suspect I downloaded a virus infected email, as the poor thing would no longer boot up, afterwards. I reckon it's fixable (just need time and the right gears), but I needed a working computer pretty much immediately for working from home (as well as wanting a new computer anyway), and so buy a new one I did.

So this update for June is coming to you from my brand spanking new laptop with brilliant high definition display... although you don't get to enjoy it like I do... but due to having a newer version of Micro$oft Excel available my graphs might look a little different from this month, as I play around with things. (Incidentally, thanks to the wonders of Linux and the Internet I was able to retrieve my old Excel from the now dysfunctional Fujitsu laptop, so not too much stress was involved in bring this to you)

But anyway, enough computer talk - here we go - the June inventory statistics. Just a rough outline for starters; may come back and provide extra detail later if time presents itself next week (and very likely it may)

June 2009 outgoing stock: 267 tons

Back down to subdued levels again in June, after the jump in May. Mind you, from July 7 sales of the latest by-product were to commence at lower prices than last year. Buyers therefore may have been holding off until July. We'll see next month.

June 2009 incoming stock: 493 tons

A bit of a jump here on the incoming side. Most of this inventory apparently came into Hakodate storage facilities - see below.

June 2009 end-of-month inventories: 4,518 tons

I'm expecting a reasonable drop in this figure in July - with the JARPA II by-product sales ongoing throughout most of the month. As was the case with May, approximately half of this figure was not for sale as of June.

June 2009 top inventory regions

The table below shows whale inventory movements in the leading inventory regions.

Region	Stockpile size at month end	Stockpile size at previous month end	Movement
Tokyo city wards	2,865	2,942	-77
Shimonoseki	447	458	-11
Hakodate	395	44	+351
Funabashi	281	292	-11
Ishinomaki	185	196	-11
Nagasaki	107	104	+3
Sasebo	53	43	+10

There you go - Hakodate the big mover knocking Funabashi out of 3rd place. Not sure what this meat could be though - need to look into that.

Perhaps completely unrelated, but of interest was news out of Iceland that more than 60 fin whales had been caught as of a few days ago. Not sure whether related products from the initially caught and processed fin whales could have been shipped to Japan or not already, but I suppose it's a possibility.

Graph: Inventory ratio


Just when I thought the spike had ended last month, again this month turns out to be rather weak indeed. July and August will likely turn around though, with the JARPA II by-product sales noted above taking place across these next two months of summer.

Graph: Annual volumes



Graph: Monthly volumes



Graph: Outgoing stock (cumulative)



Graph: Incoming stock (cumulative)



Graph: Regional whale meat inventories



That's it for now - see you with more details next week maybe.

Labels: whale meat inventory statistics