The Lower House committee on agriculture and fisheries unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday to demand that the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continue to allow the country to hunt whales.
Doing so would be in defiance of the International Court of Justice, which ruled at the end of March that Japan's whale hunt off Antarctica is not scientific, and therefore in violation of an international moratorium.
The resolution reflects deep dissatisfaction among lawmakers across parties with the verdict by the highest U.N. court in The Hague. The court ruled Japan was in violation of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling by engaging in commercial, and not scientific, hunts, as prohibited by international law.