Japan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Koji Tsuruoka is accusing Australia of trying to impose its “western” mores and values on Japan by opposing so-called “scientific whaling”.

“We do not criticize other cultures,” Tsuruoka told the International Court of Justice in the Hague, where Australia and Japan are battling over Japan’s whaling activity in the South.  “Were it necessary to establish the superiority of one culture over another the world would never be at peace.”

Despite the 1985 international moratorium on whaling, Japan continues to catch whales in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean under a treaty that allows unlimited whaling for scientific research, although that haul has been severely curtailed in recent years thanks to efforts by the Sea Shepherd activist group. 

Japan also disputes the court's jurisdiction to even hear the matter.

Canberra last week argued that Japan's whale research program is concealing was what is the bloody business of commercial whaling in false innocence of a pristine white laboratory coat.  The meat is being sold as a luxury item to well-to-do buyers, usually at the expense of the Japanese taxpayer whose money is being used to fund whaling.