The road into Wadaura is dotted with seafood restaurants, but the stench that hangs heavily over the quayside in this tiny fishing village on Japan's Pacific coast belongs not to the fishmonger, but to the abattoir.
A small crowd of locals has gathered near the waterfront, mesmerized as men in overalls, armed with long, sharp knives, move in on the main attraction, a 9m Baird's beaked whale, one of two that were unlucky enough to have ventured into the range of the harpoonist less than 24 hours earlier.
The men go about their task with speed and precision. Within minutes the bull whale's blubber has been cut away and hewn into thick white chunks.
Theirs is a quiet slaughter, the peace broken only by the sound of chains tightening as they haul another slab of flesh along the landing platform to be cut up and placed in vats.
So begins the whaling season in Japan. Between last Wednesday and the end of August, whalers in Wadaura and three other villages will be permitted to catch 66 Baird's beaked whales that, because of their relatively small size, are not covered by the 1986 International Whaling Commission's (IWC) ban on commercial hunting.
A typical Baird's beaked whale can earn its captors up to about ?5 million (US$40,000), and sells for between ?1,600 to ?2,600 a kilo, depending on the cut. Wadaura's whalers will contribute 26 whales to the total, but they would like to be able to hunt many more.
Some in the village, which has been hunting the mammals for 400 years, resent what they see as outside interference.
"Foreigners make a fuss," said Nagi Yuzawa, whose job as a flenser is to strip down the whales. "That is why the meat is so expensive."
Yuzawa speaks bitterly of seeing other types of whale during his trips out to sea, knowing that international opinion means he and his fellow hunters can't touch them.
"We would like to take them but we can't -- the government has said no. We don't want to start a war," he said.
It was the IWC's refusal to allow Japan to expand coastal whaling at this year's meeting that prompted Tokyo's officials to repeat their threat to walk out of the group and hunt commercially along with Iceland and Norway.
"We should quit the IWC," said Yoshinori Shoji, vice chairman of the Japan Small-Type Whaling Association. "It is no use discussing [the issue] with those countries that are determined not to let us hunt whales.
"As for whether people will eat it or not, that depends on the price. It is expensive now because of the moratorium. If we hunt more, the price will drop," he said.
Shoji, who also runs a whaling company in Wadaura, employs just seven people full-time but hires casual flensers during busy periods. He would like to hire more, but that would mean catching more whales.
"We used to hunt minke whales and I cannot see any reason to stop," he said, referring to a species that Japan can now only kill in limited numbers for so-called scientific research.
"We have been whaling in this town for centuries, so why shouldn't we continue? It is not that we are dependent on whaling, but if natural resources are available why shouldn't we use them? Why would anyone be worried about us overfishing? We don't have that kind of ability any more ... if New Zealanders or Australians think that is wrong, I fail to understand them," he said.
While whale meat consumption in Japan has declined dramatically since the IWC ban went into effect, with reports of stockpiles of between 4,000 and 6,000 tonnes in recent years. Few young people appear interested in eating the meat, despite government efforts to remind them of their culinary heritage by serving it in school lunches.
A few minutes' walk along the shoreline from the slaughterhouse at Kanbei Shoten fishmongers, Nobuko Shoji struggles to carry a bowl containing a hunk of fresh whale meat that she will cut up and sell to local restaurants and households.
"It's still a popular dish around here," she said.
Out in the store's yard, slices of Baird's beaked whale meat dry out on racks, blackening in the heat of the early afternoon.
"If I leave it out there for a few more hours it should be perfect," she said. "It tastes a bit like beef jerky; it goes well with a cold beer."
Back on the quayside, the 20 or so flensers are making steady progress. The whale's intestine is sliced open to reveal the remnants of its last meal -- tiny fish and squid -- and its organs lie in a slippery, bloody heap. Just hours after it was dragged from the water, all that remains of the 10 tonne whale is its spine and beaked head.
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