Last year Japan, Iceland and Norway killed 2,500 whales — more than at any time since the 1986 international moratorium banning the harvesting of whales (except a limited number for “scientific research”). But despite an early victory yesterday for environmentalists, the protection that most whales have enjoyed remains in danger: thanks to assiduous courting by Japan, new members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) have steadily added their votes to those of the pro-whaling lobby, eroding support for the moratorium. At this year’s meeting of the commission in St Kitts, the ban has hung in the balance.

There will not be an immediate resumption of hunts that almost led to the extinction of the world’s largest mammals: Japan and its allies need a 75 per cent majority in the 70-member IWC before the whalers can again be launched and trading resumed in whale products. But a simple majority would be enough to allow the commission to issue statements supporting whaling, eject Greenpeace as an observer and increase the limits on the catch of minke and other species no longer considered endangered. It would also, as the anti-whaling activists fear, significantly weaken what has been seen as one of the most effective international conservation efforts.

Japan’s zealous attempts to overturn the ban have brought it widespread opprobrium, especially in Europe and America. They seem also not to further its national interest: a survey by Greenpeace — hardly disinterested — found that 70 per cent of Japanese oppose whaling. That may be an exaggeration, like most Greenpeace surveys, but it is true that support for whaling is in decline. Whale meat, a staple in the years of postwar austerity, is now so hard to sell to a generation raised on beef that it has to to be subsidised. Japan has been accused of bribing small nations, including those landlocked, to join the IWC. It denies tying aid to whaling votes: but six Caribbean IWC states have received more than $100 million since 1998. Most have voted to overturn the ban.

But whaling still retains a strong hold on Japan’s body politic. The calling evokes romantic traditional memories, especially among older generations. Relatively poor coastal towns, which were once dependent on a fishing industry in decline, have links to a whaling industry that has disproportionate political clout. The Japanese bureaucracy, dogged in pursuit of whatever goal it is set, has directed efforts to subsidising whaling communities and undermining the ban.

Research aside, at least Japan still observes the prohibition. Norway, where politics is similarly influenced by barely viable fishing villages, simply flouts the ban. Oslo argues, like Japan, that stocks are large enough to be sustainable. This is a circular logic: it is only because of the ban that the stocks are increasing. The economics of hunting no longer makes sense, and more money can be made from whale watching. Japan has been unwise to push for the revival of an industry that belongs to the past.