Rethinking whale-human relations and rituals in Japan: multiple practices, multiple meanings

In the past decades, the story that Japan is and has always been a “whaling nation” has gained paradigmatic status. It has been successfully promoted by the whaling lobby and its domestic allies and endorsed by international news media and anti-whaling activists. This story is problematic as it downplays historical transformations and subsumes a variety of practices and beliefs under the label of a reified national “whaling culture.” As this lecture shows, whale-human relations in the Japanese archipelago have historically been characterised by significant diversity. These relations continue to acquire new meanings today, as whales play a central role in cultural practices such as festivals, performing arts, tourism, and Buddhist rituals.

Aike P. Rots is Professor in Asian Studies at the University of Oslo. He is the author of Shinto, Nature and Ideology in Contemporary Japan: Making Sacred Forests (Bloomsbury, 2017) and the co-editor of Water Powers: Sacred Aquatic Animals of the Asia-Pacific (University of Hawai‘i Press, forthcoming) and Sacred Heritage in Japan (Routledge, 2020).

The presentation will be followed by discussion.

If you cannot attend in person, you can join via Zoom here.