Meet the Japanese Fleet Fleet - the Nisshin Maru and its friends | Home | Heading North with the Nisshin Maru

Funny, the media tangles remind of the "Rashomon Effect" - "a byword for any situation in which the truth of an event is difficult to verify due to the conflicting accounts of different witnesses."

It's named after the movie Rashomon by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_effect

About public discussion; I agree, Karli.
You named: "Likewise the collision between the Robert Hunter and the Kaiko Maru..."

Dave on the Esperanza: Roeland: let's take this discussion to the forums

You offer some GOOD news, Karli, about more enlightened perspectives coming around the bend in Japan! Yes, I recall many months ago seeing an article from Kyodo News agency referring to their 'research' vessel Nisshin Maru, and I found it shocking that a news organization would use this, ah, extremely inexact term, to say the least. I hope the truth about what drives whaling, and its awful realities, get a more critical examination by the Japanese press.
Also, you would think the ICR would have a memorial section or webpage on their site devoted to the poor deceased Makita. Is there one? Also, you would think the ICR would have made more hasty arrangements to transport his body back home, possibly by ship to NZ and then a flight, out of respect for HIS GRIEVING FAMILY. But it seems ICR only thinks of their logistical whaling agenda, and face-saving maneuvers. How shocking to think the family learned of his death via media reports, I hope that is an error...and yet I would not be surprised one whit if it was not. (Inwood and Company strike me as having black-holes where hearts should be.)

:-) Great blog Karli. Your side of the story and your unlikely rapport with the whalers has a ring of genuineness to it that you can't ever make up...unlike some other people we know. Fantastic that the expedition leader was reading Sakyo's blog!

In the Nordic office, I sit opposite the press officer Jan. He said the other day that the thing that shocked him most when becoming a press officer after working as a journalist for years was how hard it was to keep a story straight. We were laughing about the journalist who called the Esperanza "the Ezmerelda" (although I dare say my mum also calls it that). I can just imagine it, some guy desperately downing coffee trying to meet a deadline and yelling at his mate "What's that Greenpeace ship called again?" and someone who'd been watching a bit too much Wizard of Oz yelling back "I don't know, Ezmerelda or something!" Priceless.

Thanks for the updates, without your presence in the Ross Sea we would have had no way of knowing what was actually going on. You have provided factual evidence while Japan and its ICR spokesman tried to "spin" stories left and right. Your helicopter photos were terrific!

NHK World, broadcasting in 22 languages, finally had the story on Sunday evening, mentioning Greenpeace:

"The environmental group Greenpeace, a staunch opponent of whaling, says its ship in the area is helping to secure the Nisshin Maru's safety by providing it with information about ice floes in the area."

http://www.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/index.html

Well done!

Dave,
I did not change the subject. We are talking about "Media in a tangle" and the "Rashomon Effect"
By leaving the sentence "the full story is:"
out of my comment and taken it to the forum, as off-topic, you answered all questions about your issue.
There is full documentation and video available,you know that.

But, please remember : we are on the same side!!

Point taken Roeland - it's just when people start claiming who-did-what during that collision - I don't want that debate breaking out here, exactly because of the Rashomon Effect. Sea Shepherd and the ICR are both claiming that the collision footage proves their respective cases. I've seen the videos myself, and I think the jury is "out" - the footage is too ambiguous. I know you're on our side - let's just continue the debate about the footage on the forum!

unfortunately the Nisshin Maru IS a research vessel, in the modern meaning of the word RESEARCH.

All over the world animals are killed according to the self-regulated rules of scientific research. But, of course, the data obtained from such research is next to useless. This is because the data come from animals torn from their natural environment.

This means that any theory concocted on the basis of this data is based on a myriad of "all else being equal clauses", these clauses severely limit the generality of the theory, render it non-predictive and without application.

Do not imagine that there is a valid and universally agreed upon notion of scientific research and that japanese whaling is at odds with that notion - it isn't.

You can kill anything and obtain data and statistics...but the whole point of Japan being down there firing harpoons into the largest mammals on earth is to obtain a consumptive, saleable product. Does anyone think that had the 'research' exemption not existed in the IWC's charter (a regrettable, flawed idea abused by Japan for TWENTY YEARS now) that they would be down there for months, with the prohibitive expensive of running 7 ships thousands of miles from the territorial fishing waters of Japan, to conduct 'research' WITHOUT the ability to take their product back to Japan to sell? What a farcical notion! Their push for the lifting of the commercial moratorium is an admission of that. Had the IWC written that the only basis for killing whales outside of the moratorium would be if Japanese crewmembers had to, say, prance about on the deck wearing bright pink tutus while singing the theme to "Hair", then that is what the crew would be doing these last 20 years, and the ICR would be dutifully showing this, reminding the world that they were meeting their obligations and conditions in order to perpetuate the killing and obtain the meat for sale. Everyone knows this now, and plastering the words 'Research' on the ships, and providing a few pics of crewmen measuring dead whales (ah, see the crewman precisely measuring the thickness of the dead minke whale's blubber.. is it 9.37 cm or 9.38?), and publishing some sets of arcane numbers is not going to con anyone, the psuedo-factoid recitations and protestations of David At Tokyo notwithstanding. See the big picture, people, the big picture.