Opposition to Japan's whaling program is a kind of "eco-imperialism" that imposes one value system on another and is based on emotion, not science — much the way killing elephants is now opposed, Japan's top whaling official said on Wednesday.

Tokyo last week unveiled plans to resume whale hunting in the Southern Ocean in 2015 despite an international court ruling that previous hunts were illegal, although it also slashed the quota for the so-called scientific whaling program.

Joji Morishita, Japan's commissioner to the International Whaling Commission, said the new proposal, which calls for taking 333 minke whales instead of 900, is Tokyo's latest attempt to pursue sustainable whaling according to scientific principles.