Today, Japan defends its controversial whaling expeditions by invoking tradition�but what was the historical reality? In examining the techniques and impacts of whaling during the Tokugawa period (1603�1868), Jakobina Arch shows that the organized, shore-based whaling that first developed during these years bore little resemblance to modern Japanese whaling. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from whaling ledgers to recipe books and gravestones for fetal whales, she traces...
