CHICHI JIMA, Japan — Izumi Sato was an ordinary bank employee in a Tokyo suburb until whales, she says, changed her life.

She took a Hawaiian whale-watching tour while on vacation, and her heart was stolen by humpbacks diving majestically in the waves off Maui. Not satisfied, a year ago she visited Chichi Jima, the main island in Japan's subtropical Ogasawara chain, in search of more whales. On her first sighting there, she was so moved that she wept.

Sato, 25, quit her job at the bank and moved to this remote island, 600 miles and a 28-hour boat ride south of Tokyo.

"My only regret is that I didn't get into whale-watching sooner," said Sato, who found work here as a car rental clerk. "I wasted so many years."

The Japanese, long vilified abroad as heartless hunters of endangered sea mammals, are now tagging along with the global environmental boom. Partly out of sensitivity to their nation's image overseas, partly out of a conditioned response to commercially motivated trend-setters, people appear to be changing their attitudes about whales.

They've discovered that whales can be cute. Advertisers are suddenly using whale and dolphin images to harpoon consumers. Television documentaries and photo exhibitions are "raising consciousness" about conservation. A whale-watching industry has been born, not only here in the Ogasawaras but also in other former whaling ports.

But at the same time, the old values die hard. Many people still regard whales as large, air-breathing fish. Some vehemently defend Japan's right to defy an international moratorium and continue killing Antarctic minke whales in its disputed "scientific research whaling" program.

Even Sato's passion for whales has a qualification. She still likes to eat them.

"Whale meat is delicious," she said. "But that doesn't mean I want to see them hunted to extinction. I think there's an appropriate level where whaling can continue and not threaten the stocks."

A bizarre incident in early November underscored Japan's new ambivalence about conserving whales and dolphins.

Nearly 600 Risso's dolphins were beached, many reportedly driven ashore by fishermen with speedboats and clubs, at the town of Miiraku on Fukue Jima, an island off Nagasaki in southern Japan.

The dolphins were butchered and at least some of their meat was distributed to the local population, which has a long tradition of eating the animals. Fishermen in the area consider dolphins a nuisance because they eat commercially valuable yellowtail and squid.