Over a sushi lunch with Scott Latham, I mention "whaling," and Scott, my trade-consultant friend, doesn't miss a beat: "The Whaling Wall."
I brought up the topic because the first secretary of the Embassy of Japan, in Washington, had come to New York a few days earlier to discuss whaling, and he had done so because the U.S. government was preparing to put into effect sanctions against Japan. As he explained, one of the enabling laws is the Pelly Amendment, which is part of the Fishermen's Protective Act of 1967. It authorizes penalizing "nationals of a foreign country" for actions that "diminish the effectiveness of an international fishery conservation program" and "any international program for endangered or threatened species."
I was curious to learn what the first secretary had to say. Like most of my generation of Japanese, I grew up when whale meat was an important source of protein. Also, by some fluke, my college graduation thesis was on "Moby Dick."