Whaling experts and environmentalists were also encouraged when the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama took charge last year determined to eradicate exactly the sort of outdated, bureaucratic programs that whaling represents.

Tokyo seemed to hint at a compromise in March when the agriculture minister, Hirotaka Akamatsu, whose ministry oversees research whaling, said that Japan was willing to kill fewer whales. But whaling’s opponents and supporters alike in Japan say that it remains politically difficult for Tokyo to accept large reductions in its whale hunts.

While few Japanese these days actually eat whale, criticism of the whale hunts has long been resented here as a form of Western cultural imperialism. During the long tenure of the Liberal Democratic Party, whaling was one of the sacred cows of Japanese politics, embraced by a group of nationalist lawmakers within the party who saw it as a rare issue where Tokyo could appeal to conservatives by waving the flag and saying no to Washington.

The question now is whether Mr. Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan, which swept aside the Liberal Democratic Party in last summer’s elections, will include whaling in its promised housecleaning of Japan’s postwar order. While there is also a group of pro-whaling lawmakers in the new governing party, it is much smaller, with just a few active members.

It's too easy to say, "Save the Whales"—trying to say no would be like asking that someone choose to kill a baby. But it serves to ask the question, is the impulse to save the environment a Western cultural imperialism?

But still, it must be asked, is this truly a problem of culture or is more a conundrum of capitalism?