Whale meat on the menu as Japanese suppliers try to tempt tourists

A whale meat dish served at a recent tasting event for social media influencers at a restaurant in the Japanese city of Osaka. Photograph: Justin McCurry/the Guardian

The anticipation is building in the private, tatami-mat room at Murasaki, a restaurant in Osaka. At one end sit a handful of Japanese journalists; on the other, executives from the country’s biggest whaling company and officials from the travel industry.

In the middle, six hand-picked social influencers from Thailand, France, Russia and South Korea take their places around a hori-zataku table and wait for the first of several courses devoted to Japan’s most controversial cuisine: whale meat.