Festival to screen Taiji dolphin-slaughter film

After much deliberation, the organisers of next month's Tokyo International Film Festival have belatedly agreed to to screen "The Cove", a film about the Taiji dolphin slaughter.

Apparently it's going to be shown in a sealed-off area, hidden from public view by tarpaulins:


No, I jest. The real solution is much more Japanese. The film is being shown, but no-one is going to be told when or where (the decision was "too late" to include it in the printed program and press information, there is currently no mention of it on the official web site), and you have to apply three months in advance for tickets:

PROSSER: But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months!

ARTHUR: Yes, well, as soon as I heard, I went straight round to see them. You hadn’t gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody.

PROSSER: The plans were on display—

ARTHUR: On display? I had to go down to the cellar to find them!

PROSSER: That’s the display department!

ARTHUR: With a flashlight.

PROSSER: The lights had probably gone out.

ARTHUR: So had the stairs.

PROSSER: But you found the notice, didn’t you?

ARTHUR: Yes, I did. It was "on display" in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying, "Beware of the Leopard."

Even Japanese officials admit that the dolphin meat is so contaminated by mercury that it should be classified as "toxic waste", but of course in the country that invented Minamata disease it's part of longstanding tradition to force-feed such stuff to schoolchildren.