IN THE 400 years that they have been hunting, the fishermen of Taiji have never found a clean way to slaughter a dolphin.

As guns are strictly controlled in Japan, hunters use sharp hooks to drag the trapped mammals from the sea and long knives to cut their arteries.

The dolphins thrash in pain as they bleed to death, emitting whistles and cries. The shallow waters of the lagoon in which they are trapped turn red with blood.

It has always been done this way in Taiji, and for four centuries the world paid little attention. Now, however, this obscure spot on the southernmost tip of central Japan has become the site of a remarkable confrontation.

Environmentalists from around the world have used press releases and websites to denounce the hunters. Some activists have descended on the town to obstruct the killing. The fishermen have been defiant. There have been scuffles and arrests.

To the people of Taiji, the foreigners are racist hypocrites, maliciously interfering with a legitimate business rooted in centuries of tradition.

To the activists, the annual dolphin hunt is a barbaric anachronism verging on murder. The atmosphere in Taiji, in a country in which face-to-face confrontation is almost taboo, is tense.

This is usually a real backwater in one of the most remote and least-visited parts of mainland Japan. A whaling museum serves as a reminder of the industry for which Taiji was once famous, abruptly curtailed by a ban in 1987 on commercial whaling. Between October and March, however, the dolphin boats go out at least every other day. And, for the past two weeks, Richard and Helene O’Barry, American dolphin activists representing One Voice, a French organisation, have been watching them. They describe how the boats converge on pods of dolphins and lower metal poles into the water, which are then beaten with sticks. The noise creates a wall of sound that drives the dolphins into the lagoon.

Its entrance is sealed off with nets and the dolphins are driven on to the shore at dawn the next day by the revving of outboard motors. There they are killed, butchered and sold for their meat.

When Mr O’Barry and members of the environmental group Sea Shepherd filmed the slaughter last October, the images of churning, bloody seas were published around the world. Since then the fishermen and environmentalists have been at war.

When The Times appeared at the lagoon, the sight of cameras and foreigners asking questions caused a frenzy. Young men blocked our lenses, waving placards banning photographs. Other bellowing fishermen blocked our path. After ten dolphins had been selected for aquariums, the fishermen released the rest rather than provide more images of killing.

The hunt is legal and dolphins are not endangered. Why, then, should they not be killed for food? To people such as Mr O’Barry, 61, a former US Navy diver and seal-trainer, the answer is simple. “Dolphins are not fish,” he said. “They are intelligent marine mammals with large brains, highly complex communication skills and a social structure. What is going on here is nothing short of genocide.”

That dolphins possess great intelligence is clear, but whether it approaches that of human beings is another question. “How many people in developed countries eat beef or pork, without knowing how it has been slaughtered?” Yoshihiro Kogai, of the Taiji fishing co-operative, asked.

“Which is more brutal: to kill wild animals, swimming freely through the sea, or to kill animals which have been fed and raised with the sole purpose of slaughter?” Whale and dolphin hunting are deeply engrained in the culture of the town. Even the locals’ names embody them: Seko, which means “whale boat”, and Tomi, “distant look out”.

The people of Taiji, living on a beautiful strip of land between rugged mountains and the sea, turned to the only resource available. “In this village, we have only been able to survive by hunting whales and dolphins,” Mr Kogai said. “We owe so much to them.”

The O’Barrys accuse the fishermen of menacing them with throat-cutting gestures. The fishermen are still furious about two other activists cutting their nets last October to free the dolphins, for which they were convicted and deported. “Japanese environmentalists do not rock the boat,” Mr O’Barry said. “So this is the only way we’re going to make progress.”

Asked if dolphin-hunting will survive in Taiji, Mr Seko said: “It depends on the Japanese Government. They’re not always very strong in resisting pressure from overseas.”

The hunters would not be destitute. They would switch to lobsters if dolphins were banned, although lobsters are already overfished. A magnificent creature would be saved from a bloody death, but in Taiji, at least, the sense of loss would be immeasurable.

Traditions that enrage

Mattanza: “A bloody performance for tourists” is how animal rights groups see the annual slaughter of tuna off the Sicilian coast that is said to have a 900-year history

Bull-flipping: This 200-year-old Venezuelan tradition pits two cowboys on horseback against each other, both trying to grab a bull’s tail and bring it to the ground

Bearskins: Bearskin hats worn by certain regiments in the Army have repeatedly come under attack from animal rights groups. One bear pelt makes two caps and 694 caps have been imported in the past five years

Seal-clubbing: Anti-sealing campaigners describe Canada’s annual seal hunt as “possibly the cruellest marine mammal hunt in the world”. Thousands of baby seals are clubbed to death each year

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