ENVIRONMENT-JAPAN: There’s a Tiger in My Soup

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Feb 7 1998 (IPS) - This may be the Year of the Tiger in the lunar calendar, but things have not been looking up lately for the real jungle cat.

Already on the list of endangered species, the tiger is disappearing fast, partly because of the continued use of its body parts in Asian traditional medicine.

The Japanese, for example, are among the biggest consumer of products that use tiger parts, ranging from wine and pills with tiger bone to soup containing tiger penis.

Japan is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which prohibits the trade of tigers and tiger parts unless under a special CITES permit. But loopholes in local laws have made Japan the most lucrative market for traders of tiger parts.

“After years of trying to stop the sale of tiger parts in Japan, we have not been successful,” confesses Hisako Kiyono of the watchdog group Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (TRAFFIC).

Just last fall, for instance, a survey conducted by the Tora Hogo Kikin (Tiger Protection Fund) in Yokohama revealed at least four grocery stores selling an alcoholic drink containing tiger bone for 80 U.S. dollars a can.

In Tokyo’s famous Ginza district, meanwhile, tiger penises are being sold for 400 dollars each. Considered excellent for relieving rheumatism, the penises are served in soups.

Tora Hogo Kikin says it found regular customers in Ginza shops selling tiger parts products. But the storeowners interviewed by the group said the ingredients had been imported before the international convention became effective.

CITES, also known as the Washington Convention, has banned the trade in tiger and its parts since 1973. Japan became a convention signatory in 1980, but has yet to get into any other international conservation effort focusing on tigers.

Estimates put the number of tigers worldwide at 100,000 during the turn of the century. But this has dwindled down to between 5,000 and 7,500 today because of the destruction of natural tiger habitats as well as the continued slaughter of the jungle cat for its parts.

India has some 3,000 tigers, but conservationists say illegal hunting of the animal is still practised there.

Like activists elsewhere in Asia, conservation groups in Japan are taking advantage of 1998 being a ‘Tiger Year’ to raise awareness regarding the plight of the big cat.

The Japanese branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has joined in the nationwide campaign, which has attracted donations from at least three companies that have the word ‘tiger’ in their respective corporate names.

Lawyer Masayuki Sakamoto, who specialises in the protection of endangered species, has been lobbying the Japanese government to pass new laws that would prohibit the sale of products containing parts of endangered animals, including tigers.

In 1994, the Health and Welfare Ministry banned the import of tiger products. But, Sakamoto points out, there is still no prohibition on the sale of products with parts of protected species such as tigers.

There will always be a way of wriggling out of regulations so long as the present system remains, he adds. As one activist lamented to a local journalist: “If things remain as they are, there will be no wild tigers by the next year of the tiger (12 years from now).”

Conservationists say it is ironic that it is China, which is the main source of tiger parts products, that bans the sale of such merchandise.

The Health and Welfare Ministry has argued that products that use parts of tigers and other endangered species will eventually disappear from the market because of the import ban. Government guidelines also urge traditional medicine retailers and manufacturers not to import products that have tiger parts.

But TRAFFIC’s Kiyono says: “The discovery of so many tiger parts in Japan indicates that nothing has changed here. In addition, the increasing use of Chinese herbal medicines has made our work more difficult.”

In 1996, TRAFFIC visited 26 traditional medicine shops and discovered that 20 of them were selling tiger bone. The group also reported that 14 were selling medicine containing tiger bone without the seal required by the voluntary registration system set up by the Health and Welfare Ministry.

The year before that, TRAFFIC uncovered the rampant smuggling and sale of tiger parts in Japan. In 1995, said the group, Japan imported 68,747 items identified as tiger-based medicine.

Recently, a tiger wine seller told a local daily that it is easy to import tiger parts products from Hong Kong. Another shop owner said a special distribution route for tiger liquor will always be available, so long as there is demand for it.

Said the owner: “Wholesalers have plenty of it left, enough to last a person’s lifetime.”