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So I actually just went and looked at the EIA report (it's online and easy to find) and then actually looked up the hankos they point out are the cause of concerns about illegal ivory poaching. On the Japanese site. And learned a few things.
1. Hankos are traditionally made out of ivory, as one of their normal materials, so there's a demand for ivory ones in Japan.
2. The report admits it cannot tell which are illegally poached, and which are legally poached, but they assume each hanko is probably not legal, or at least a large number of them, but they don't explain how they get to this assumption.
3. The closely correlate the number of hanko on sale on Rakuten.jp.co last year with the same number of illegally poached elephants in Africa, never mind the fact you can make a lot of hanko from the tusks of one elephant -- a hanko or name seal is about the size of a finger. At its largest.
4. Most of the hankos? All? Seem to be sold through third-party sellers, just like Amazon -- it's not Rakuten harvesting and selling them. It's other buyers who are listing them on a large e-marketplace, i.e. Rakuten.
I'm actually a big environmental advocate -- but I do get tired of half-truths being passed off as righteous indignation in the internet. And this seems like it could be more refined into a stronger argument than the actual report makes.
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