for scientific purposes. All findings in the judgement refer specifically to the JARPA II program in the Antarctic, so the JARPN program in the NW Pacific is not affected. In November 2014, Japan announced that it would resume hunting whales in the Southern Ocean, but that it would reduced its catch target by two-thirds. Japan's Fisheries Agency said that Japan intends to catch 333 minke whales each year between 2015 and 2027, down from 935 minke and 50 fin whales. It said the hunts were needed for collecting scientific data and were exempt from a 1986 international ban on commercial whaling, despite the ICJ ruling. Cultural aspects Japanese have a long history of whaling. Some towns can show their whaling history for hundreds of years. This history plays an important role to answer the question why the Japanese have kept hunting whales in recent years. Attempts to stop the nation's whaling are perceived as a threat to Japanese culture because eating whale meat is an aspect of Japanese tradition. "No one has the right to criticize the food culture of another people," said Matayuki Komatsu of Japan's Fisheries Agency. Proponents of Japanese whaling (including the government of Japan) often argue that it is a cultural practice which foreigners should not oppose on the basis of cultural differences. Joji Morishita of Japanese Fisheries Agency in 2001 noted that the Japanese public also feels that anti-whaling groups are covertly racist. With Norway and Iceland hunting whales on a commercial basis, according to Morishita, "Singling out [Japan's] whaling is cultural imperialism – some people would say it's racism. Norway and Iceland are also whalers, but the criticism of Japan is stronger." However, critics have forcibly attacked the "cultural defense", with for example Sea Shepherd Conservation Society representatives comparing it to forced female genital cutting in Sudan, saying that although it is a practice that may have cultural roots, it still should be opposed out of necessity. A professor of environmental studies in Japan wrote in his book that Japan's modern commercial whaling bears little resemblance to the small-scale subsistence whaling that, until the dawn of the 20th century, was limited to certain coastal regions, and Japan's whale-eating culture was also very limited in scope and an invented tradition, only lasting 20 years from the end of World War II to the early 1960s to augment Japanese school lunch programs during the U.S. occupation.