Japan 'will never stop whaling', Japanese fisheries minister says Japanese whalers released new video which they said show anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd's ramming vessel their harpoon ship. JAPAN'S fisheries minister said his country will never stop hunting whales, despite fierce criticism from other nations and violent clashes at sea with militant conservationists. "I don't think there will be any kind of an end for whaling by Japan," Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told AFP in an exclusive interview. Mr Hayashi, who took the ministerial post overseeing the country's whaling programs in December, said the criticism of the practice is "a cultural attack, a kind of prejudice against Japanese culture." There is "a long historical tradition about whaling," he said in his large central Tokyo office, over which portraits of Japan's revered Emperor and Empress gazed down. We have this culture and you don't have that culture," said the 52-year-old, who views the whaling port of Shimonoseki in Japan's southwest as home. Sea Shepherd ship the Bob Barker is sandwiched between Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru (L) and whaling fleets fuel tanker, the San Laurel (R) as Japanese whalers and militant conservationists clashed dangerously in icy waters off Antarctica. Picture: AFP/Sea Shepherd Australia Tim Watters Mr Hayashi, a graduate of the prestigious Kennedy School at Harvard University who first entered parliament in 1995, said Japan was tired of being lectured by nations whose own culinary cultures can seem a little off-colour. We don't eat those animals, but we don't stop them from doing that because we understand that's their culture," Mr Hayashi said in fluent English. Japan's fisheries minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said Japan will never stop whaling, and compared the practice to Australians eating kangaroos. "It was five hours of intense confrontation," Mr Watson told AFP from on board the Sea Shepherd vessel the Steve Irwin. Mr Watson said the Japanese threw stun grenades and fired a water cannon at his boat and damaged another Sea Shepherd vessel, the Sam Simon, but there were no injuries to Sea Shepherd crew. During the attack, the Nisshin Maru used her water pump as a preventive measure to make Sea Shepherd vessels refrain from further approaching, and repeatedly broadcasted a warning message to stop them. A handout photo taken on February 25, 2013 and received on February 26 shows the Sea Shepherd ship Bob Barker (R) colliding with the Japanese whaling fleet fuel tanker the San Laurel in a five-hour confrontation. Picture: AFP/Institute of Cetacean Research