I found article on CNN about Dolphin hunting in Japan. The following is article from CNN web site.(http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/20/world/asia/japan-dolphin-hunt/)

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Tokyo, Japan (CNN) – The slaughter of bottlenose dolphins in an infamous Japanese cove took place on Tuesday.

About 500 dolphins were driven into the cove this year, a larger number than usual, according to the local Taiji fishermen’s union. A fisherman who is a union board member, and who did not want to be named, told CNN that the total number of dolphins to be captured or slaughtered was less than 100, and that the rest would be released.

The yearly event is a focal point of the Taiji community’s dolphin hunting season, which many in the community in southwest Japan view as a long-held tradition. The annual hunting season begins in September and runs through March, according to animal rights activists.

But the hunt is heavily scrutinized by environmental activists, who have been monitoring activities and livestreaming and tweeting about the latest developments.

In recent days, environmentalist group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has provided livestreams showing bottlenose dolphins splashing frantically as they tried to escape their human captors. Dolphins separated by nets into smaller partitions bobbed up and down, trying to reach other members of their pod. The group said that the dolphins appeared bloodied, and had had nothing to eat since their capture in Taiji Cove four days ago.

The union representative said that the fishermen had introduced what they considered a “more humane” method of slaughtering the dolphins, cutting their spines on the beach to kill the animals more swiftly and cause them less pain.

Defending tradition

Although the hunting of dolphins is widely condemned in the West, many in Japan defend the practice as a local custom — and say it is no different to the slaughter of other animals for meat.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters at a news conference Monday that marine mammals including dolphins were “very important water resources.”

“Dolphin fishing is one of traditional fishing forms of our country and is carried out appropriately in accordance with the law. Dolphin is not covered by the International Whaling Commission control and it’s controlled under responsibility of each country.”

Taiji mayor Kazutaka Sangen echoed the sentiments.

“We have fishermen in our community and they are exercising their fishing rights,” he said. “We feel that we need to protect our residents against the criticisms.”

He accused the Sea Shepherd of using the issue of dolphin hunting to raise funds and attract attention. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been live-streaming video of events in the cove and posting frequent updates on Twitter.

The Wakayama Prefectural Government, where Taiji is located, gives an annual “catching quota.” This year, the government allows for the hunting of 2,026 small porpoises and dolphins (557 are for bottlenose dolphins).

The dolphin hunt has seen some changes, Sangen said. The town wants to create a whale/porpoise study with the aim of bringing a marine park to the city. And the method of hunting has been changing, becoming less crude, he added.

On Monday, the fishermen focused on selecting dolphins to be sold into captivity at marine parks and aquariums in Japan and overseas, the conservation group said. Trainers marked the dolphins deemed unsuitable for captivity, which would be either killed or driven back out to the ocean, according to the Sea Shepherd group.

Kennedy’s tweet met with criticism in Japan

Caroline Kennedy, the recently installed U.S. ambassador to Japan, tweet that she is “deeply concerned by inhumaneness of drive hunt dolphin killing.”

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Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe responded to online comments posted by U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy.

“The dolphin hunting that takes place in Taiji town is an ancient practice rooted in their culture and supports their livelihoods,” Abe said in the interview, part of which is on CNN’s website. “We hope you will understand this.”

While acknowledging criticism of the dolphin hunt, Abe said, “In every country and region, there are practices and ways of living and culture that have been handed down from ancestors. Naturally, I feel that they should be respected.”

Just In my opinion, I don’t understand why people focus on dolphins. How about pigs, chickens, fish, horses, cows….? I’m just saying though.

I researched about “HIMYM” which is an American TV show. In this show, the actors made fun of Asian people. They were making themselves look like stereotypical Asian people, even though they are not Asian. However, I found the same news from Japan. In the airplane company commercial on TV, they made of fun as foreign people by stereotyping them. In the class, we talked about these news such as airline’s, American TV show’s, and Katy Perry’s and discussed about how today’s pop culture is either a playground or a battleground. I think these news are not racism. This is because these things that were said racism are just showing the characteristics of people, and there is nothing to discriminate against other cultures. Talking about this in our class, I remembered that we used to have an interesting TV show in Japan. This is the TV show’s picture. (I looked for the movie, but this show already finished, so I couldn’t.)

In this TV show, everyone made up some foreigners. From the left side starting with the person who is sitting, we can associate them with American, Indian, Chinese, and Mexican. I think if Japan airline’s was a racist issue, then this TV show would also be a big issue, yet it wasn’t. Far from it, this series was really famous in Japan.

I think that people who sue these things might be racist. This is because people who are not racist didn’t care about these news. I believe that these racist acts are formed by those who are jealous of people with different backgrounds and looks. The reason why I think is easy to explain. This is because when people making of look like foreign, they put some characteristics that they don’t have with themselves. Today, it is easy to immigrant to other countries and we can see a lot of different people anywhere. Then, we also can find many things which we don’t have. For example, some Asian people have mono eyelids. I know some of these people don’t like their own eyes and want to change to double eyelid. However, one of my American friend said she wanted the single eyelid because it looks younger. “The grass is always greener on the other side” As we know from this word, we want to get something we don’t have. So, I think these news is made just from jalousies, and I don’t think these ones are not racism.

When we were talking on Thursday morning about the racialicious. This made me think of all of us. We are all of different races and are learning and probably have our own perspectives of popular culture. We all come a different background, we may come from different places and have different interests, but we are all learning about popular culture and what it means to us and our obsessions. I think its great that we all have different and similar obsessions and to share them with everyone is awesome to me. I liked that we have learn so much over a little bit of time and can’t wait for what’s next.

Walking by the rental films while in my local Safeway the other day, I came across a film entitled Cloud Atlas. I hadn’t heard much on the film so when I got home I decided to look up some reviews to see if it was worth watching. What I found was astonishing because of its correlation to the yellowface issue we had been learning about in our program, as well as through our post on the show “How I Met Your Mother.”

I discovered that this film blatantly used yellowface when it casted Jim Sturgess and Keith David in roles depicting Korean characters in a futuristic setting of Seoul Korea. The actors were given slanted eyes to give them the appearance of being Korean. These were the only notable changes made to the actors appearances, making it seem that slanted eyes are the only feature and characteristics that make-up a Korean persons appearance. Which is completely offensive to all Koreans and realistically anyone who has a conscious.

Hollywood has had a long history of using white actors to appear as characters of different races. However it is very disturbing to find that in today’s movies, with so many talented Asian Actors, the film could not utilize there talents and still proceed to cast white males in these roles.

Due to these findings I’m still debating if I want to even bother watching the film, and would highly appreciate anyone else’s thoughts on the film if they have seen it. Below I will give a link to a site with an article on the film.

http://http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/alden-habacon/cloud-atlas-yellowface-diversity-racism-hollywood_b_2050368.html