I want to aim for the resumption of commercial whaling by conducting whaling research in order to obtain scientific data indispensable for the management of whale resources," Abe told the committee, according to the Guardian.
A March ruling by the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) halted Japan's whaling activities in the waters around Antarctica. The ICJ ruled that Japan's scientific whaling program in the region—which took whales in order to gather data and then sold the meat to markets in Japan—wasn't scientific at all and could be considered a commercial operation. (See "Japan Halts Whaling Program in Response to International Court Ruling.")
Critics of Japan's scientific whaling program have long argued that the lethal take of whales is no longer necessary to gather the scientific data the country wants to collect, such as information on pregnancy rates and age at first reproduction.
Concerns about the unscientific nature of Japan's Antarctic whaling program prompted Australia, supported by New Zealand, to bring a case against Japan to the ICJ in 2010. New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully described Abe's comments as "worrying" in a statement.
"While it is not clear precisely what Prime Minister Abe is proposing in the short term, the fact that he has told a Parliamentary Committee that he wants to aim towards the resumption of commercial whaling is both unfortunate and unhelpful," McCully continued.