Simon Denyer

TOKYO — As Tokyo Aquatics Centre emptied Saturday after its last event of the Olympic Games, the strains of Abba’s “Dancing Queen” played over the sound system. It was a fitting tribute to the greatest underwater dancing queen, Russian artistic…

CHICHIJIMA, Japan — Six hundred miles from Tokyo, on a Pacific island that takes 24 hours to reach by ship, live the remnants of a unique culture descended from American, European and Polynesian settlers who sought a new life almost 200 years ago. On…

With climate change, they face survival risks as the ice melts but also enjoy new hunting grounds in warmer waters. A seal swims in a pool at Seals Land in Mombetsu, a city in Hokkaido, Japan. The facility is the nation’s only shelter for these…

Mitsuhiko Maeda spent 40 years hunting whales off northern Japan, as a navigator and spotter. Today, at 73, he still spends his days with binoculars — on a lookout post on a vessel, scanning the Sea of Okhotsk for telltale spouts. But his boat has no…

A line of eight boats came into view just below the horizon. A pod of about a dozen dolphins broke the glassy surface off Taiji, the center of Japan’s annual dolphin hunt, which continues despite international outrage. Fishermen banged on…

TOKYO — It’s grossly unfair for rich countries to send their plastic waste to poor countries that are already struggling to cope with their own waste problems, and the practice needs to stop, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said…

TOKYO — The best ivory for carving a hanko, or a personal seal, comes from the center of the tusk. That is where the ivory is firm and flawless, says Hideki Arami, a third-generation hanko carver who has a small shop in Tokyo’s busy Shibuya…

Six-year-old Reto Aisaka was jumping up and down on the windswept dock. For five months, he’d been counting the days until his dad, Toru, returned from a whale hunt. The boy was up at dawn to meet him. Shimonoseki, on the westernmost tip of Japan’s…

TOKYO — Japan announced Wednesday that it is withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission and will resume commercial whale hunting next year, sparking swift condemnation from other governments and conservation groups. Tokyo argues that the…

Sei whales are the ninth-largest living animal on the planet, usually growing to between 45 and 60 feet in length and weighing 20 tons. They also are among the fastest whales, possessing the ability to swim up to 35 mph. They are found in almost…

TOKYO — Japan will open a new bid to resume commercial whaling operations, as well as demand major reforms to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), at a global conference in Brazil next week. Tokyo claims that the IWC has become dysfunctional…

TOKYO — Megumi Sasaki has lived in New York for 30 years. Of all the issues she heard debated in that time, one issue stood out — an issue on which she says she only ever heard one side of the argument, never the other side. “On all the issues in the…

BEIJING — The latest was Kenya. Before that: Lesotho, Vanuatu and Afghanistan. The list of countries backing Beijing’s stance in the South China Sea just keeps growing — China’s Foreign Ministry boasted last week that nearly 60 had swung behind the…

Whale meat is still considered a delicacy in Japan and Norway and among indigenous communities in North America. Some industrial farms in the West treat cows, pigs and chickens with almost unbelievable cruelty before killing them for food. Dolphins,…

Two white bears — billed as polar bears but more likely polar bear–brown bear hybrids — five walrus calves, six young beluga whales and two Arctic wolves are among the animals on display in the Grandview Mall Ocean World in the southern city of…

ZHUHAI, China — The polar bears pace back and forth in their enclosure, heads lolling as they turn, their distress apparent. Chinese tourists crowd around display windows to snap quick close-ups on their phones. Beluga whales nod in time to loud…

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Brandon Yaeger sees something in the distance, glistening on the surface of the Indian Ocean. He can’t tell what it is. It could be nothing significant. Or it could be what’s left of Flight 370. Yaeger is a 21-year-old U.S.…

CHILIKA LAGOON, India (Reuters) - Hope is rising the endangered Irrawaddy dolphin can be saved in India after a survey showed more of the animals than before in a vast, brackish lagoon in the east of the country. Environmentalists say much more needs…