TOKYO—Japan announced on Dec. 26 that it is leaving the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to resume hunting the animals for commercial use but said it will no longer go to the Antarctic for its much-criticized annual killings of hundreds of whales.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the hunts will be limited to Japan’s territorial waters and its 200-mile exclusive economic zone along the country’s coasts and that Japan will stop its annual whaling expeditions to the Antarctic and northwest Pacific oceans.
