Uchii Tatsuo's "Mountain Whale" wasn't referring to a legendary creature said to float in the Andes Mountains of South America; he was Japanese, and "Mountain Whale" is a more euphemistic Japanese term for wild boar.
Kiyomi Liuli was clear on this point, as her mother sometimes referred to pork as "Mountain Whale meat," probably a habit she developed since childhood.
There were many off-and-on "meat-eating prohibitions" in Japan, with a mishmash of regulations. For example, those who ate lamb or rabbit meat were confined for five days, those who ate pork or sheep meat had to reflect for two months, severe legal penalties awaited anyone caught eating dog meat, to the point of being suspended and beaten, and eating beef was a grave sin, only reluctantly indulged in by the nobility.
Well, at that time beef was considered a form of medicine, and when nobility ate beef, they were treating an illness, like an ancient Japanese version of working around policies with countermeasures.
