From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2009:

TAIJI, Japan–The Cove has not stopped the annual Taiji
dolphin massacres– not yet, anyhow. But the award-winning film did
appear to slow down the killing at the start of the 2009 “drive
fishery” season, and–even before release in Japan–is bringing the
massacres to the attention of the often shocked Japanese public as
nothing before ever has.
“Moviegoers who have seen The Cove, directed by Louie
Psihoyos, said they were stunned by the cruelty of the killings,
captured by concealed cameras. Many newspapers have blasted the
traditional coastal whaling practice in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture,
which is not subject to the International Whaling Commission’s ban on
commercial whaling,” summarized Toshihiro Yamanaka for Asahi
Shimbun. The second largest newspaper in Japan, Asahi Shimbun
reaches about 8.2 million readers daily.
“When I found out, I cried,” Osaka resident Keiko Hirao
told John M. Glionna of the Los Angeles Times.
Director Louis Psihoyos, a former National Geographic
photographer, has pledged to keep the spotlight on Taiji by making
The Cove available in Japan as a free download, if he fails to
secure a commercial distributor. The Cove has won more than a dozen
awards, including the audience award at the 25th annual Sundance
Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and has aired widely in other
parts of the world, but despite much media notice in Japan, has not
yet been screened there.

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