Hiroto Kawabata is one of the few people who bring a measure of equanimity to the whaling debate, where knee-jerk reactions are often the rule and reasoned debate the exception.
A former television reporter and now a writer, Kawabata spent nearly six months traveling to the Antarctic and back aboard a Japanese whaling vessel during the 1992-1993 research whaling season.
Kawabata has watched whales. And he has eaten them.