When Japan first entered the An-arctic whaling industry, rather suddenly in 1934 with the Tonan Maru, it created a furore in international whaling circles, specially in Britai and Norway. It was seen that this portended formidable competition from a country which, with its energetic and economical methods and prices, had invaded so many world markets, was now encroaching on another preserve hitherto held by the Western nations.
Since 1924 efforts had been made to get Japan into some sort of an international whaling conference, and though Japanese representatives attended a conference in 1930 at Berlin they refused to adhere to the agreement reached because the other countries rejected the Japanese proposal to exclude the North Pacific unless Soviet Russia also joined the agreement. At that time Japan was operating only in the North Pacific, mostly in waters adjacent to Japan.
When Japan entered the Antarctic industry, further efforts were made, specially by British interests to get her to enter into an agreement for restricting the industry for the purpose of protecting both the market and the whales themselves. Japan refused. however, up to and including the conference held in London in 1937, The Japanese, having come rather late into the field, feared that efforts would be made to restrict their operations on the basis of their then comparatively small fleet, so they wanted to wait until they had more vessels and would be able to negotiate on more equal terms. They wanted to make sure of getting their fair share in the race for exploiting a rich field by numerous countries.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.