Regarding the June 19 Jiji article "Nation's whaling program up against the wall": I wonder about the paragraph that begins with "While the country is eager to resume commercial whaling ..." What do the writers mean by "the country"?
They can't mean "the Japanese people" whose taxes have subsidized whaling for years. I don't guess it's "the citizens" yearning to eat whale meat, since there are tons of whale meat from years past sitting frozen, unsold, in taxpayer-paid-for warehouses. They can't even give it away to schools.
I don't believe that "the country" is "eager to resume commercial whaling," but rather it's a handful of bureaucrats, aging politicians, rightist nationalists afraid of losing face, and mainly a handful of schemers who have found a way to empty the pockets of us taxpayers for their own gain.
Meanwhile, the sales tax is rising, Fukushima relief donations have been diverted, and money that should be used to help the people of Japan has been appropriated to pay for a dead industry that few if any normal Japanese support.
Personally I'm tired of the government taking my money to support this nonsense.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.