The diplomatic row came as hunt supporters and opponents held a rare meeting in Tokyo in a bid to ease the growing tension and break a logjam in the international body handling whales.

Mr Fukuda discussed the row during a meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, who is in Japan as part of his first foreign trip since his centre-left government took power in December.

'The whaling issue is a matter of each country's circumstances,' Mr Fukuda told reporters after the meeting.

'It should not negatively influence diplomatic relations,' he said. 'It's important to address the whaling issue in a calm manner.'

Japan aims to slaughter about 1,000 whales this year in Antarctic waters despite strong opposition from Western countries led by Australia and environmental groups who revere the giant mammals.

Tokyo argues that whaling is part of its culture and accuses Western nations of cultural insensitivity. It uses a loophole in a 1986 global whaling moratorium that allows lethal research.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government has taken a tough approach on the issue and sent a customs ship to track the Japanese fleet.

The ship took footage of the Japanese killing five whales, resuming the hunt some two weeks after it was halted by protesters, according to Australian media reports.

Activists from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in mid-January climbed aboard the Japanese harpoon ship to deliver a protest, setting off a two-day standoff.

Sea Shepherd and the more mainstream environmental movement Greenpeace ended their pursuit of the whalers in the past week after running low on fuel.

Japan's Fisheries Agency said it would not disclose the actions of its fleet out of security concerns.

The bitterness of the dispute has turned the annual meetings of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) into intense confrontations, with Japan repeatedly threatening to walk out.

In a bid to break the deadlock, the Pew Charitable Trusts, a US-based non-governmental group, arranged two days of closed-door talks this week in Tokyo involving nearly 100 people from both sides of the issue.

'We concluded that an internationally accepted solution is preferable, although we all question whether a political will exists,' said the symposium's chairman, Tuiloma Neroni Slade, a former judge on the International Criminal Court and Samoan ambassador to the United Nations.

Saying he was offering his personal view, Mr Slade recommended a compromise under which Western nations acknowledge Japanese coastal communities' right to whaling but Tokyo suspends 'research whaling' in the Southern Ocean.

Mr Joji Morishita, the director for international negotiations at Japan's Fisheries Agency, was tightlipped on any compromise.

'All I can say is that we are prepared to talk about options with an open mind so as we can have true negotiations and true dialogue,' Mr Morishita said.

But Greenpeace Japan's executive director, Mr Jun Hoshikawa, said the true battle lay in Japan, where few people eat whale despite the adamant position of the government.

'The whaling issue has had a sad history of being framed as a battle between Japanese people versus outsiders. That's not true,' he said. -- AFP