During WWII and postwar rationing the brits had to eat plenty of whalemeat, and from what my grandparents and great aunts/uncles told me I wouldnt ever want to even try it.
Personally I look at whales like any other animal - if theres a genuine need, and the animal is killed quickly and with respect, and the harvesting doesnt have a lasting impact on the sustainable population of the species I dont have a problem with it.
The closer a species is to our own, the more instinctively repulsed I become by the idea, but if I was starving and there was no other food source I would have no hesitation eating primates. If I had to I'd eat the other, other white meat too.
As for the Japanese whaling industry, I understand that there is hardly any domestic demand and large amounts of the harvest are ultimately dumped. They appear to be fishing up to their quotas on some traditional/nationalistic principle that I cant work out, rather than fulfilling demand.
edit: one more point - whales are wild animals, so have a considerably higher quality of life than almost every farmed animal.
