A survey of undergraduate students born in and after 1982 on their experience of eating whale-meat and their impressions of the whale

Eating whale-meat is part of Japanese culture, but the opportunities for doing so have become rare since a moratorium on commercial whaling was adopted at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1982. A survey of 274 undergraduate students (105 male and 169 female) born in or after 1982, was conducted in order to investigate their experience of eating whale-meat and their impressions of it. About 60 percent of those questioned had eaten whale-meat, and the males showed a higher preference for it than the females. The most popular whale-dishes were whale- meat marinated in soy sauce, deep-fried (tatsuta-age), boiled whale breast meat (kujira be-kon), raw (sashimi) and whale-cutlets (also deep-fried). Among the students who had eaten whale-meat, about 70 percent had done so at home, and 30 percent in school lunches. Among the impressions expressed were: “Whales are enormous mammals that live in the sea”