TOKYO — In a move likely to bring renewed international criticism, Japan said Friday that it wants to resume its research whaling in the Southern Ocean next year under a redesigned program that would address objections raised by an international court.

In a statement, Minister of Agriculture Yoshimasa Hayashi said Japan would submit a new plan for research whaling this fall to the International Whaling Commission that would allow it to restart its annual hunts in waters off Antarctica in 2015. Earlier in April, Japan canceled this year’s hunt after the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the hunts were in violation of Japan’s legal obligations under an international treaty banning commercial whaling.

In its ruling, the court questioned whether the program was really for research, pointing out that it had yielded few scientific results. Japan says its 26-year-old research program is needed to monitor recovering whale populations in the Southern Ocean, but opponents call it a crude cover for continued commercial whaling.

The decision announced on Friday ran against the predictions of some political analysts, who had said Japan might use the international court ruling as a face-saving pretext for scrapping an outdated program that had become a diplomatic embarrassment. The program had only limited support among the Japanese, who no longer eat much whale meat. The plans for a redesign suggest that pro-whaling interests influenced the government’s decision, environmentalists said.