In early August, director Louis Psihoyos told The Toronto Star that his documentary, "The Cove," had been submitted to the Tokyo International Film Festival and rejected. In the article he quoted an unnamed TIFF "director" who said that the festival receives funding from the Japanese government, which "doesn't want this movie out there." However, in an Aug. 17 report in Variety, a TIFF representative told Japan Times correspondent Mark Schilling that a decision hadn't been reached yet. The festival lineup will be announced sometime in September.
"The Cove" depicts the annual mass killing of dolphins in the coastal town of Taiji in Wakayama Prefecture. The majority of the Japanese press has limited its reporting of the subject to the theatrical release of the movie overseas and passed on coverage of the dolphin slaughter itself. The Asahi Shimbun called the mayor of Taiji for a comment and he said he knew nothing of the movie. Most daily newspapers also reported that Taiji's sister city in Australia has announced it will sever its relationship to the town if the dolphin killings continue. As The Japan Times has reported extensively, once a year hundreds of dolphins are driven into a cove in Taiji where some are separated to be sold to aquariums and dolphin shows. The rest are killed, supposedly for food. Many Japanese fishermen consider dolphins pests.
In Japan, Taiji is famous as a whaling town, ground zero for the country's "whaling tradition." It was the subject of a four-part series on NHK's "History Doesn't Sleep" program that ended last week.