Japan is determined to keep hunting whales. And now it has a brand new ‘mothership’

Hong Kong/Tokyo CNN —

Wearing a toy whale hat, whale tie and a whale motif shirt, Hideki Tokoro spends much of his days thinking about the world’s largest mammals. But he doesn’t want to protect them. He wants to hunt them.

To do that his company Kyodo Senpaku has built and launched a brand-new whaling $48 million “mothership” – the Kangei Maru.

“We are proud of catching whales and are very proud of this ship which will allow us to begin offshore mothership-style whaling this year,” Tokoro told reporters as he escorted them around the 370-foot, 9,300-ton vessel that set sail last Saturday for an eight-month tour of the country’s northern waters.

Kyodo Senpaku’s president Hideko Tokoro, wearing a toy whale hat, speaks to the media on board the Kangei Maru vessel in Tokyo harbor on 23 May, 2024.

The new ship replaces the Nisshin Maru, the infamous whaling factory vessel dubbed by activists as a “floating slaughterhouse” that was decommissioned in 2020 after more than 30 years of service, during which it frequently clashed with anti-whaling activists.

The Kangei Maru is bigger and faster than its predecessor, the company says, and is equipped with state-of-the-art drones able to travel a reported 100 kilometers (62 miles) to allow crews of smaller boats to quickly locate and kill whales.

But activists say the ship’s high-powered features, including a cruising range of 13,000 kilometers (more than 8,000 miles) and its ability to sail for up to 60 days, suggests that Japan is setting its sights on whales far beyond its northern waters.

“Japan has never given up on its whaling ambitions,” veteran anti-whaling activist Paul Watson told CNN. “The only purpose of a vessel like that is so it can travel long distances to the