Translator: Shiho Nakamura Reviewer: Abram Leon
40 years ago I picked up one of these,
and I was fascinated.
It's been my life, really;
the camera has been my life since then.
It's a 16mm Bolex camera.
It's clockwork, so -
(Ticking noise)
Can you hear that?
And if you need to wind it, you don't need a battery,
you just wind it,
and then it'll go again.
This is a magic box; when I started, it was a magic box of light.
So, "light catching" ... and light is a challenge.
Sometimes it's a problem, sometimes it's an asset.
It's like what we have heard about taking an energy
and turning it around and using it.
That's what I can do with this.
Now in this case, I've got a bit of glare here from this light,
so I'm going to put a hat on so I can see you.
I've been a cinematographer since the mid 70's,
and my role has always been here, behind the camera.
But as time went on, I realized the job of telling a story -
the one I was seeing with the camera -
was not always being done very well.
There's often a big difference between what we're seeing -
I mean, I can see all of you -
and what we're looking at.
Too often, this is the case in journalism.
In visual communication classes, I tell my students,
I try to teach them to see rather than to just look.
It's a very different process.
When you see something worth sharing and no one's talking about it,
perhaps it's time to step in front of the camera
and tell the story yourself.
This happened to me a couple of times before I realized, or really knew,
that I needed to hybridize my practice -
to slightly change my practice.
And this influenced my current PhD research,
which I began to consider in 2009.
I started to focus on the conflict of international whaling, really;
Japan's whaling, but it was central to the conflict,
an international conflict.
The first time that I realized I should step in front
was on the Trans Mara, in Africa.
I was standing there in Kenya,
in 2006, on the top of a cliff, a thousand feet above the plain,
and I was looking at a mass - a massive black shape.
I thought it was trees, but as I zoomed in with the camera,
I realized that the trees were moving.
The black shape wasn't trees, it was tens of thousands of wildebeest.
I was alone in nature, with the camera,
and I had to tell this; I had to translate this experience I'd just had.
I found the experience of seeing this moving shape,
this moving mass of life,
incredibly moving myself, and I had to tell the story.
The second time this really hit me was in 2011 in Tohoku.
We went with students from Wakayama University
to volunteer to help people
affected by the earthquake and tsunami.
After all the television and media coverage,
nothing can compare to actually being there;
for the first time you start to process what happened.
As we descended into the tsunami zone -
you go from a certain level above sea level
down into the tsunami zone,
the affected area -
we parked at a roadside parking stop,
and I took myself aside with the camera,
I put it on a table, and with spontaneity and intensity,
I sat there and spoke to the camera.
That was the best way I could think of to relay and relate
what I was experiencing at that moment.
In 2008, after shooting "Whale Wars 1" for Animal Planet,
I really discovered for the first time the whaling issue,
and for five weeks in Antarctica, I saw for myself what was going on
at the center of activity at that time of international whaling.
On one hand I was delighted to receive an Emmy nomination
for the work we were doing, for the cinematography.
But on the other hand,
I was not comfortable with the way Animal Planet was telling this story.
This was the highest rating, most profitable television
that they'd ever made to that point,
and it turned Sea Shepherd -
who were the subject of the documentary series,
the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society -
it turned them into a multi million-dollar operation,
and it has been ever since, every year since then.
I believe Animal Planet and Sea Shepherd became intoxicated
with the success and the ratings and the profits.
Animal Planet was criticized for selling out on the animals;
they used to do just stories and issues on animals.
At that point, I believe they became political,
and they got criticized - I didn't at the time,
but I happily concur with the criticism that took place at that time.
I know you, the viewers out there, didn't get the full story.
It was one-sided and I began to realize, as the experience went on,
that truth was actually better than the story you were getting.
The true story is actually better.
And by the way, the melting ice was really the big problem.
The whales were not the problem.
Killing a few whales - a few hundred whales, okay -
that may be a problem to some people,
but in a broader context, what I was seeing down there -
pieces of ice floating past that look like Mount Everest -
to me that was very unsettling.
I want to share an example of how the truth is better than the fiction.
This goes to the heart
of what Sea Shepherd and Animal Planet are complicit in.
This actually happened, and they didn't want you to know about this.
In Whale Wars 1, two activists jumped on the Yushin Maru ship,
the Japanese hunting ship,
an Englishman and an Australian called Ben Potts.
A transaction took place between two very impressive young guys.
Two guys, both 28, both passionate about what they do,
and Ben from Sea Shepherd and Tsuda Kenji from Kyodo Senpaku had an interaction,
and I've interviewed them both since then.
To explain and share the Japanese respect for nature,
Kenji-san offered Ben-san a VHS copy
of Miyazaki Hayao's "Princess Mononoke," "Mononoke Hime."
He thought this was the best thing he could do at the time.
The Japanese crewman,
the "whale murderer" in the story, said, "I think you might like this,"
and sure enough, later, the "eco-terrorist" in the story agreed -
he did like it.
Ben told me about this on camera, and when he was returned
from the Yushin Maru back to the Sea Shepherd ship
by the Australian Government Customs vessel, the Oceanic Viking,
and he was brought back to our ship,
and that's when we had a chance to talk about this.
So this is where I find myself;
not using the camera, not now, and not in Taiji.
Some of you may know about "The Cove" documentary,
which came in 2009, a year after we started this little journey.
Instead, I'm writing about this process
which I call an "alternative activism."
Let's just look at where we are now,
and with the whaling issue, where we could go and why.
People don't really know much detail in Japan,
and outside Japan, about this issue.
Why bother with this tradition thing?
Because I believe, and I think I can present to you the supporting evidence,
that this is the greatest sustainability story in Japan,
never fully explained.
We know about Edo sustainability principles perhaps,
some of us, but we know little of this.
As communities, both here in Japan and in the West,
we know little of how Tokugawa rules applied to whaling.
History tells us how in 1670,
net whaling was invented in Taiji.
Along with that developed the first complex system of manufacture in Japan.
I think that's pretty special.
I argue that this was the only sustainable industrial whaling anywhere in the world.
Industrial whailing.
It was interrupted by Western greed and wastefulness in the 1820s,
when the British, the Americans, the Australians came to Japan grounds -
the area around Japan - and started taking whales.
No permission was sought from Japan, because Japan was a closed country,
and 20 years of intense whaling followed.
Places like Taiji depended on the whales.
In 1851, the Black Ships arrive.
Perry basically holds a gun to Japan's head -
the biggest floating amount of firepower
ever taken from one country to another, at the time -
and he says, "Open up! We want to do business."
He was under pressure to open Japan for oil -
whale oil.
OK? Gasoline hadn't been invented.
So whale oil and gold was driving this.
That's another story, it sounds familiar doesn't it?
That "oil" and "gold." It's what drives the economy right now.
That's another story.
I say Sea Shepherd
is the second coming of the Black Ships.
This time the same countries want to close the whaling down.
It's the same people, the same group.
And this time, they hold a media gun to Japan's head,
and they demand it to stop.
Sea Shepherd and, sadly, leaders like Caroline Kennedy
dismiss tradition in Taiji,
and reject the tradition of dolphin drive hunting.
It's a tradition.
Obviously, they've never been to Noto,
or here, this place ...
even to Himi.
Karatsu in Kyushu - it's a dolphin drive hunt.
This work is dated 1773.
In my mind that qualifies as tradition.
Dolphin hunting and whale hunting has a rich history in the Kii peninsula
as well as in other parts of Japan.
Taiji was and still is the perfect place to catch whales and dolphins,
and really, you know, it's said that this started in the 1980s.
It didn't start in the 1980s, it's clear;
it's been going on for a long time.
It's been going on since Jomon times,
and as we know, if you visit the Noto peninsula,
you'll see the evidence.
The key piece of equipment is the whale hunting boat.
This is the Sekobune.
It's arguably the fastest human-powered wooden boat in the world.
Who's ever seen one of these?
Nobody?
This is very typical, I've asked heaps of people this question,
and they've all responded the same way.
This is not unremarkable to me, but it's crazy.
You guys need to know about this.
So much of this history has never been explained
in the context of where we find ourselves today.
To understand this is to understand cultural difference.
Not what Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull described
on the 18th of December, 2015, when he came to meet Prime Minister Abe
He said, "On this issue we have a difference of opinion."
It's not a difference of opinion, Mr. Turnbull,
it's a difference of culture,
and for that reason, it should be respected.
Now he can say, he respects the difference of opinion.
But, you know, we're talking about something quite different to opinion here
and much deeper.
For that reason I'm calling for Taiji and its history, to be respected
as Significant Industrial Heritage under the UNESCO World Heritage Convention.
Something else Australia and the U.S. don't understand
in the relatively short few hundred years of our history,
we don't know what it is to be hungry.
We've never been truly hungry.
Japan, this country has known that more than once.
Story is everything.
Story, truth ... Truth and story.
I want to leave you with this,
from an indigenous Australian scholar Christine Black,
who wrote a book, and I recommend it to you,
"The Land is the Source of the Law."
There's a quote in this book from a person called Johnson,
an American Indigenous man who, like the Australian Aborigines,
understands the power of the land
in shaping the past, the present, and the future.
When I say the land, I mean the land and the sea - it's all connected.
"I want you to remember only one thing," said the Badger,
"the stories people tell have a way of taking care of them.
If stories come to you,
care for them, and learn to give them anywhere they are needed.
Sometimes, a person needs story more than food to stay alive."
Thank you very much.
(Applause)