Fishermen in Ito, a traditional dolphin-hunting town in Shizuoka Prefecture, are seeking to counter charges of animal cruelty by offering to kill the mammals up to 20 times faster.
According to the Ito municipal fishing cooperative, a dolphin usually takes 5 to 10 minutes to die after being offloaded at a dockside processing plant and cut open with huge knives.
The alternative method, which involves lifting the dolphins partway out of the water and severing their spinal chords, would slash that time to within 30 seconds, the fishermen said.
The fishermen claim the alternative slaughtering method, to be carried out from September, is more humane.
But their critics remain unconvinced.
Officials at Dolphin and Whale Action Network, a Tokyo-based animal conservation group, dismissed the proposal as meaningless and urged hunters in Ito, better known as a spa resort, to stop hunting coastal dolphins.
"Dolphin catching is not a key industry to the local people," a network official said, adding that the mammals have largely disappeared from Izu's waters.
Dolphin hunting is controlled by the government, which gave fishermen in Izu and elsewhere in Shizuoka permission to catch up to 600 dolphins in fiscal 2002.
However, the local fishermen claim they haven't caught any dolphins since 75 were captured in 1999.