Whales Get Honor Treatment from Contrite Japanese

Leo Burnett made this pretty little GreenPeace video for Japan, which is currently undergoing some drama having to do with whaling and such.

Because whale meat was the main source of protein for the island after WWII, Japan feels it has the right to go on whaling, even if there's no demand for the meat (according to the Greenpeace pressie, considering we don't ourselves know how much or how little the island folk need whale meat today).

So Greenpeace goes, okay, let's restructure this historical conversation and turn the notion of man-to-whale relationships into one of reciprocal respect, instead of a Giving Tree situation (we hated that book, by the way) - where one side keeps giving until there's just nothing left.

So here we have an elderly man who reminisces about eating whale meat in school, then rushes out to save a whale from beaching on the shore. The logic is that once upon a time the whales helped them; now it is time to return the favor.

While this scenario is pretty unlikely in real life, it's touching in the same way, oh, Pokemon can be touching once you've developed a really strong sense for Ash's relationship with Pikachu.

Rarely do we get sentimental about our seafood. Then again, we've never eaten anything that was going extinct. Unless crabs count, because if The Deadliest Catch remains as addictive as it is, they're going to be gone pretty damn quickly.

Written by Angela Natividad    Comments (4)     File: Campaigns, Cause, Commercials, Good, Television, Trends and Culture     Jun- 4-07