Since Stereolab has deserted the thread, I won't be seen as labouring a point if I take it a little further.
Yes, humans do kill other humans from time to time, and possibly in greater numbers in SL's home country than others. As he noted, in a recent case, one even consumed his victim, but he contends at his victim's request. That may, or may not, be the case, but regardless, it is an isolated case.
There would be hundreds of thousands of fish filleted alive every day in Japan, and I will not be convinced that those who perpetrate such actions are other than uncivilized, even barbaric, particularly since they do it for no reason other than they suggest that if either the fish is permitted to die naturally, i.e., from lack of water through its gills, it releases toxins into the flesh and doesn't taste so good.
So that I won't be seen as making a personal attack on SL, or it even be suggested it may be because he's married to a Japanese girl, let me say that I've seen snakes have their bile ducts removed whilst still alive at the snake market in Hong Kong (used in rice wine as an aphrodisiac), eels skinned alive in China (convenient and fast), pigs clubbed to death in the Pacific (island tradition), cows' throats cut and the animal bled to death in the streets of Istanbul (Islamic ritual), etc., etc., and I find those practices barbaric and uncivilized also.
I say again that as creatures at the top of the food chain, the most intelligent animals on the earth, we have an obligation to ensure that whatever other species we kill for food are killed in the most humane way possible. I appreciate that animals in the wild don't extend the same courtesy to their prey, but they are not intelligent creatures as we are, or at least some of us are.
My opinion is that those who don't do so are uncivilized and barbaric, and if that includes the Japanese, among others, and it offends some for me to say so, then that is most unfortunate.