Its like flora said, its part of Japans culture and history, but not all Japanese eat whale or even respect it.
some of the Japanese I know have never tried the stuff, I went over last Sep and could not even see it for sale, so I think things are slowly changing, but we still have no right to say that is wrong.
how would you feel if a group of them came to our country and said stop all this farming, just because there are more cows than wales it does not give us the right to say we need to stop them, that is there choice.