Japan has a unique concept of science that doesn't seem to be accepted in the Western world. Both the esteemed academic journal Nature and the International Court of Justice have essentially handed down rulings over the past year that question the standards of research in Japan.
As far as the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seems to be concerned, science requires that you kill the subject of your study and then sell the meat for consumption — especially when talking about whales. This doesn't bode well for any plans to measure the general fitness of the country's youth and, perhaps more worringly, one hopes the Institute of Cetacean Research doesn't start studying the country's aging population.
It's also worth noting that scientific truth seems to depend on how bad you want it to be true. The last two scientific papers that allegedly reported the discovery of an easy way to make stem cells were retracted by Nature, the academic journal that published them. The papers were found to be full of errors.