Looking at the way the Japanese culture world operates makes me extra-glad to live in the U.S. It’s incredible that corporate pressure has actually succeeded in keeping the documentary “The Cove” out of commercial distribution in Japan. The documentary was an arthouse hit in the US last year thanks largely to its Mission Impossible-like climactic scene in which a bunch of dolphin lovers went undercover (even hiding cameras in rocks and so on) in a secluded and well-guarded cove in Japan where dolphins are routinely steered and slaughtered for meat. (The doc alleges that lots of dolphin meat winds up in kids’ school lunches but that this is not widely known in Japan). A Japanese news crew filmed me talking about the movie, which I gave 3.5 stars in a review, last year and I simply assumed that “The Cove” would be much talked-about in Japan just as a similarly controversial film in the US would excite much chatter. But it’s only been shown there in film festivals and lately a theater in Tokyo bowed to pressure and yanked it off its schedule.