Let's call the whale thing off

The Yushin Maru ship captures a whale
after harpooning it in 2006.
Photograph: Kate Davison/Greenpeace/AP
"The Death Star Returns to the Land of the Rising Sun" - that's environmental warrior-speak for the news today that Japanese whalers have abandoned this year's slaughter in the icy seas of the Antarctic.

The fleet's return merited only a few lines in today's online versions of the Yomiuri and Mainichi newspapers.

Which comes as little surprise. The controversy over Japan's annual "scientific research" hunts is woefully underreported here. Few Japanese are aware of the real purpose of the hunts - to maintain whalemeat supplies amid a global ban on commercial hunting, but even fewer actually eat the stuff.