Is whaling an important part of Japan's economy?

I wondered how much whaling helps Japan's economy. I've heard that Denmark might start commercial whaling again. Most of the rest of the world seems to be against it.

www.petitiononline.com/golfinho

Over 500,000 signatures to stop whaling and dolphin hunts!

Geeee, another whaling thread!

Type "whaling" in the search function and you will find enough to read for the next month. I'll be honest, not sure how much is there on the economic factor, but with all the threads and posts, must be something there.

Uncle Frank

Thank you, Uncle Frank!

Japanese love eating fish,especially caught from the deep ocean....
Many think it's cruel and evil...
But,it is a problem that asians are fond of foods that is strange to other peoples.
For example, Koreans love eating dogs ,which makes whites angry....Chinese love tortoises,because they think tortoises contain lots of nutrition... and Japanese love eating almost all kinds of fish.....
This problem is caused by history and culture,and won't be settled very easily.

Evnetually they'll be nothing left to catch. The fishstocks of the world's oceans are already dangerously low. Aside from whales and dolphins, the Japanese do not appear to be self-policing and/or self-limiting in what they catch. I've seen red-snappers and other fish in the supermarkets that were babies, barely any meat on them and they probably never had a chance to reproduce. Any culture has to weigh its traditions against, at the very least, its own survival. If its an intelligent and benvolent culture, it also has to weigh its traditions against the survivial of the rest of the world. This latter situation is only becoming an issue in this day and age, where countries can actually have a global impact.

We in the west, if you can call it a tradition, love our energy guzzling cars and appliances - we need to change that. Japan and Denmark need to re-evaluate the long term pros and cons of continuing their fishing practices both for the purpose of food and also preventing the extinction of a species we still have much to learn from.

I'm wondering if whaling is part of Japan's livelihood or if it can be easily replaced and they just do it out of convenience.

German love drink beer. Japanese love eating fish. That is history and culture and not easy to replace. I think so!

The problem is a general callousness concerning the health of the environment and the sustainability of our actions. This is not a cultural issue.