The Land of the Rising Sun

Two and a half years since my last visit and two years today since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, I am conscious of a renewed love for my birthplace and a respect and admiration for the spirit of the Japanese people.  

Granted, Tokyo is booming even though Japan is in a recession and struggling with 15 years of deflation.  However, the spirit of possibility is palpable even though the country has suffered a major disaster that has literally left many towns barren and stripped of life.  

As the two year anniversary approaches, NHK, the national television station, has been broadcasting for days now, programs portraying both the hope and despair of people struggling to rebuild a life in northern Japan.  One grandmother has been running an ‘ekiben’ (boxed lunches sold at train stations) business and has been well known for a delicious meal of sea urchin on rice, a local delicacy in the seas off northern Japan.  After the disaster, she lost contact with the fishermen who supplied her with the urchin, and was unable to continue her business.  

She was being interviewed on television saying that it was letters from her supporters who had tasted her lunch boxes that encouraged her to rebuild her business.  Japan has a tradition of rural train stations selling boxed lunches made of local produce and tourists travel from one end of the country specifically to enjoy a train trip and a delicious lunch.  

One might wonder why a story of an old woman makes it onto national TV but there are countless stories like these both uplifting and sad that appear to be creating a fabric of resilience and a sense of community.  A police officer who used to be the chief at one of the police stations near Fukushima regularly makes trips into the contaminated areas which are now off limits to the public and only accessible by police to take photographs of the townscape.  He said it started when he was talking to people who two years on, were still living in evacuation centres who wanted to see what their homes looked like.  He told them he would go and take a photograph and bring it back to show them.  Now he invites requests and visits areas that garner the most interest and takes photos of schools, cherry blossom lined avenues, houses, town squares so that people can stay in touch with their home towns.  

After the disaster, American political philosopher and Harvard professor, Michael Sandel, held a forum inviting 5000 people who had directly experienced the impact of the disaster.  He presented in English which was simultaneously translated so that the audience who had ear pieces could listen to his presentation in Japanese.  The audience commentary was also translated likewise so that he could understand what they were saying.  He facilitated a seamless discussion with these 1000 participants on the ethics and moral dilemmas that residents, emergency services, local services and others had been faced at the time of the disaster in negotiating survival as well as the challenges they currently faced in rebuilding their communities and what learnings they could take from their experiences.  The people in the audience were everyday people, and many of them young - not those in authority or positions of expertise or influence.  Yet, they approached this discussion with the utmost earnestness and seriousness.  They bravely put forth their opinions and feelings, respecting opposing views and ideas from other participants.  Japan has been traditionally known to be a consensus based society where decisions are slow because a consensus needs to be reached before action can be taken.  This has been one of the factors that have hampered the rebuild process of many of these communities affected by the disaster.  Professor Sandel noted in his closing comments how touched he had been by the audience who had come to a point where they posited that perhaps consensus was not what was needed, and was in fact impossible, but what was needed was for decisions to be made after opportunities had been created for people’s voices to be heard and where divergent opinions could be safely expressed and held by the community.  

Incidentally, it is written in Japan’s constitution that she never wage war against another country.  Now what other nation in the world has peace as a mandate?