Japan announced yesterday it is leaving the International Whaling Commission to resume hunting the animals for commercial use, but said it will no longer go to the Antarctic for its much-criticized annual killings of hundreds of whales. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the hunts will be limited to Japan’s territorial waters and its 200-mile exclusive economic zone along the country’s coasts, and that Japan will stop its annual whaling expeditions to the Antarctic and northwest Pacific oceans. Japan will resume commercial whaling in July 2019 after a 30-year absence “in line with Japan’s basic policy of promoting sustainable use of aquatic living resources based on scientific evidence,” he said.

Japan to resume commercial whaling, but not in Antarctic. (2018, December 27). The Philippine Star, p. 15.