Intelligence aside, I see a difference between actively depleting a population and farming animals as a resource.

I'd have been ok with the parent post if it was about that, or if it was just stating an opinion and fairly treated the moral dilemma of eating intelligent meat. Instead it was like "I'm clearly not Japanese but I fancy its culture and its good good people don't want to eat whale meat" yeah, no.

I'm not sure why you reacted so strongly to what is a statement of hard truth. Whale meat was used for sustenance for a few decades following WW2, because that's all there was. With the availability of other meat, demand has fallen radically. It's not a hugely integral part of their culture, nobody is surviving off of it anymore, and it is in fact the case that most people, including Japanese, don't find it especially palatable.

Whale products are no longer used as sustenance, they are a delicacy. Stopping the hunting of whales would not cause anyone (except those who sell whale meat) to suffer or go hungry.