Death of Honor.......What ever happened to Bushido?

The vessel seen here is the Nisshin Maru, an 8000 ton Japanese whaling factory ship.  In view of the immediately preceeding post, I have to stop and wonder how it ever came to be.  In a country that supposedly places a premium on maintaining a strict code of honor, Bushido, the core of the Samurai way of being, here you have a ship that represents the most disgusting and massive hypocrisy that one can imagine.

You see, the "RESEARCH" painted on her side in large white letters is a bold-faced LIE.  It is a cynical dodge that supposedly allows them to kill thousands of whales each year. Due to a loop-hole in the regulations put forward by the International Whaling Commission, any country can take whales for the purpose of scientific research.  Well, the Japanese interpret this to mean that they can kill thousands upon thousands each year, and the meat ends-up, you guessed it, on Japanese sushi plates, even in school lunches and in DOG FOOD.  In all the years that they have been perpetrating this monstrous lie, and are supported by the Japanese government in doing so, only one brief research paper has been written, and it said, basically, that some whales eat fish......ya think?

In the moment pictured above, the Nisshin Maru was churning towards the Sea Shepherd ship, the Farley Mowat, threatening to ram her and turning away only at the last moment. Paul Watson and his merry band of volunteers and shipmates have become a constant thorn in the side of the Japanese whalers as they attempt to go about their bloody harvest. In fact, they have succeeded in preventing the whale pirates from filling their quotas each year, since about 2005.

If you want to see a film documenting the struggle to protect the whales, I highly recommend "A Pirate for the Sea", which came out in 2008.  I must warn you once again, however, that it will infuriate you.  The idea that a country can simply ignore international laws and do what they want in their pursuit of greed is simply one more example of how far we have gone down the road to a society completely bereft of honor.

BTW: www.seasheperd.org  They could use your help if you care to give it.  The whales would appreciate it.