IMHO both Norway and Japan fully deserve the public outrage for still slaughtering highly intelligent creatures to satisfy decadent consumerism and bizarre traditions. Unlike in some indigenous whaling communities, no one in Norway or Japan really needs whale meat to survive, it's just a fashion and vanity... and Japan has a bad reputation for long time, not just for whaling (and they killed more whales in total than any other country by far), but also as in 2nd part of 20th century they were the main market for selling poaching items and exotic hunting trophies. True, now China and Vietnam took over as their newly rich want their bloody status symbols, but if you ask why the bad picture, that's why, for a good reason.

Also why would hunting matter as a per capita event, as you say? Absolute number of killed animals tells how much stress we put on their population, it's important metric to spot the danger hunting represents. Per capita kills statistics make sense only in areas where native people depend on whale meat for survival so more people translates in higher need for hunting - which is not case for Japan, nor Norway, nor any of the major whalers' countries. They all use whale meat as vanity delicacy, not as basic food source.