Mrs. Ohnishi on Tokuya, Japan's Whale Cuisine, and the Whaling Issue

In 1967, I decided to revive the restaurant my mother had run. I began a small restaurant specializing in fugu [blowfish] cuisine. Although I worked hard, patrons were scarce, and I had to find a special edge to succeed. That was when my mother suggested I specialize in whale cuisine.

Osaka had very few restaurants that specialized in whale cuisine. One well-known oden
[stew] restaurant served koro [blubber] and saezuri [whale tongue], but whale was mainly prepared and served at home. Following my mother's wise advice that I should "never skimp on tail meat," I created my own recipe for Hari-Hari Nabe, which uses plenty of tail meat. Fortunately, this turned out to be a great hit. My unique way of preparing for broth for Hari-Hari Nabe and the mizuna [a kind of mustard leaf] I served with it proved quite popular among my customers, so the number of patrons continued to increase over time.

For ten years, my customers' word-of-mouth advertising kept the restaurant going. However, the price for a single portion of stew, which I was able to offer initially for 400 yen, eventually increased to 800 yen, then 1,000 yen. It was certainly true that the costs of labour were rising substantially, but more critically, it was becoming more and more difficult to purchase whale meat. This was the result of restrictions on whaling which the International Whaling Commission increased in the early 1980s.

With all these restrictions, whale meat became extremely scarce. Not only did it virtually disappear from the family table, but also quantities were so limited that it was becoming difficult even for specialty stores and restaurants to get it. With these increasing regulations (among them, the moratorium and the adoption of the Southern Ocean Sanctuary in 1994), I was becoming concerned that it would be impossible to preserve our traditional whale cuisine. Supplies of fin whale tail meat, which had already become extremely difficult to find, had become completely impossible to get. We were indeed on the brink of losing forever a cuisine that our ancestors had handed down to us.

At Tokuya, we now serve whale meat and blubber from whales Japanese scientists take for their research on Southern Ocean whale stocks. We are able to do this because the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) mandates that as much as possible all whales taken for research under the ICRW be processed and used [Article VIII(2)]. Therefore, after the scientists have studied the whales, the meat and blubber are sold to help defray the high research costs. Among other data, scientists are finding that the number of minkes is increasing and that whales consume an estimated three to six times the amount of fish which humans catch.

Will a time come when housewives in Japan will again be able to prepare whale meat in their own kitchens? With the hope that this time will return, I wanted to preserve and to pass on the taste and wide variety of delicious whale recipes. In 1995, I published Mrs. Ohnishi's Whale Cuisine. The book has English translations so that people around the world can learn about the wonderful taste of whale cuisine and how to prepare it.

It is important to me to participate in the effort to preserve this aspect of our traditional dietary culture by continuing to appeal for the resumption of whaling. I think it is also my mission, shared with so many others, to continue to pass on the taste and cooking methods of Japan's unique and original whale cuisine.

MUTSUKO OHNISHI, Owner of Tokuya