As much as I like Japan, this one is really wrong. I've read for years that Japan was buying it's way into control of the IWC which means that international whaling limits that have existing for the past twenty years could be going away. Whale populations are hardly secure and an increase in whaling is not going to be helpful to the recovery of their populations. Poorer nations are going along with Japan (and Norway - where the hell is the EU on this one?) in order to receive money which I can understand. Japan also wants to introduce secret voting so that no single country can be identified for their vote and avoid criticism and boycotts.
While the world has been looking the other way, the Japanese have spent nearly a decade and many millions of dollars building up a voting majority in the IWC, by buying the votes of small member states with substantial foreign aid packages.
It will also allow them to get resolutions passed approving Japan's so-called "scientific" whaling - the commercial whaling in disguise the Japanese have continued since the ban. (This year they are hunting nearly 1,000 minke whales in the Southern Ocean). Although their pretence of killing the animals for research fools no one - the meat is sold commercially - the Japanese are anxious for it to be given international legitimacy, in the face of continuing worldwide criticism.
