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Title Foreign Correspondent: Japan
Published Australia : ABC, 2010
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Description 1 online resource (streaming video file) (26 min. 46 sec.) ; 161339210 bytes
Summary They say they wanted to blow the lid on Japan's super-sensitive whaling program. They were sure they'd found the red-hot evidence. But when they took their find to the authorities they were arrested and charged with crimes that could put them away for 10 years. What was in the box?As the world prepares to argue once more about the future of whaling and Australia looks to take Japan to court over its so-called scientific whaling program, Foreign Correspondent has secured explosive insider accounts alleging corruption aboard Japan's flagship whaling vessel. We also talk exclusively to two Japanese campaigners who now face long jail terms for trying - they say - to blow that corruption wide open.The insiders - members of the crew on board the Nisshin Maru including one with more than 35 years experience in the whaling fleet - have provided details of a secret trade which could seriously undermine Japan's steadfast claims that its seasonal whale hunt is for research purposes only.Coinciding with these revelations, Foreign Correspondent has also secured candid access to two young men dubbed the Tokyo Two who set out to expose a corrupt trade from Japan's scientific whaling program only to find themselves the focus of a police investigation and now the subject of serious criminal charges.Both men give a detailed and chilling account of the sting they hoped would blow the lid on a rampant black trade connected to the scientific program. But while the men they allege are behind that trade go free, the Tokyo two have endured a long running court case with judgement looming very soon.North Asia Correspondent Mark Willacy also hears from Japanese outraged by the activities of the Tokyo Two, reflects on Japan's whaling past with an old salt who still yearns to pursue whales and can't understand the international ruckus and revisits a controversial contributor to a previous Foreign Correspondent probe of Japan's whaling intransigence. Masayuki Komatsu - for years the public face of Japan's whaling policy - who infamously declared to Foreign Correspondent in 2001:"I believe the minke whale is the cockroach of the ocean."Why do you call a minke whale a cockroach?"Because there are too many. The speed of swimming is so quick."As he tucks into tins of whale meat and beer with old buddies, the retired campaigner tells Willacy the Tokyo Two case is a storm in teacup and their efforts at odds with the views of mainstream Japanese.All this as the International Whaling Commission convenes in Morocco later this month to thrash out an accord on the future of whaling.It's a timely and very revealing program
Notes Closed captioning in English
Event Broadcast 2010-06-08 at 20:00:00
Notes Classification: NC
Subject Corruption investigation.
International Whaling Commission.
Meat industry and trade -- Corrupt practices.
Sentences (Criminal procedure)
Whaling -- Government policy.
Whaling -- Research.
Japan.
Form Streaming video
Author Corcoran, Mark, host
Komatsu, Masayuki, contributor
Nagaoka, Tomohisa, contributor
Nichmura, Shuhei, contributor
Sato, Junichi, contributor
Suzuki, Maiko, contributor
Suzuki, Toru, contributor
Willacy, Mark, reporter