For we Japanese, living with earthquakes has been like a national game of ‘cat and mouse’ with the most powerful forces of nature. We try our best to run away from nature’s claws, but sometimes get caught. On March 11th, not just a cat but a “hydra-headed” monster hit Eastern Japan, with a magnitude 9.0 earthquake - a once-in-a-thousand-years tsunami, and a nuclear power plant accident. The combined toll of the dead and the missing is nearly 30,000.
Our resilience is being put to the severest test since the miserable years of World War II. Some refer to this triple disaster as “3-11”. Just as 9-11 changed the United States and the world, 3-11 can mark for Japan a historic turning point from its six-and-a-half-decade long “post-war” era to a new “post-disaster” era. We need not only to restore the status quo ante in the afflicted regions of Eastern Japan but to reshape the nation under new conditions.
For this, people demand a leader who is visibly in charge. The challenge is to cope simultaneously, under clear lines of command, with the multiple tasks of providing emergency relief to the victims, securing shelters for hundreds of thousands of people who have suddenly lost their homes, rehabilitating the utterly devastated areas and bringing the damaged Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Plant under control. The jury is still out on whether the Prime Minister Kan’s government can deliver on all these, but the enormity of the tasks is such that the ruling DJP (Democratic Party of Japan) government and the opposition parties have held their partisan bickering in abeyance.
There have been encouraging displays of Japanese resilience. The international media has noted the stoicism, calmness, and orderliness on the part of those affected. The oft-quoted Japanese word in this context is “gaman”, which may mean the “stiff upper lip” to the British, or may evoke Margaret Atwood’s “Survival” for Canadians. The crisis has galvanized the communitarian public spirit of the Japanese people. This has enabled the cities and towns in the unaffected areas to open their doors and welcome the internal refugees in their midst, and has prompted volunteers of all ages to help in efforts to reconstruct in the stricken areas.
As we go on from the stage of disaster relief and rehabilitation to reconstruction, we need to ensure that this upsurge of the communitarian public spirit is channeled toward the shared goal of reshaping the nation. Politicians should be judged in terms of their commitment to this supra-partisan, nation-wide undertaking instead of the pursuit of their self-interest. The possibility of a grand coalition government is being mooted, so far without conclusion.
Quiet praise has gone to first responders - firefighters, policemen and power company employees - who are valiantly defying high risks of radiation exposure to stabilize the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant. The Self Defense Force (SDF) has come to the fore, with the deployment to the worst affected areas of some 106,100 personnel - approximately 40% of their total active strength. Having saved nearly 20,000 lives, they have earned the appreciation of the people as the nation’s most relied upon “first responders”.
The U.S. armed forces have staged “Operation Tomodachi” – for which they have adopted a Japanese word meaning “friend”, , deploying ships, including the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan. The Reagan includes aircraft and 18,000 troops as well as search and rescue, medical services, food, shelter, command and control, and fuel assistance to efforts led by the JSDF. This vital support provided by the U.S. military assets and troops serve in no small measure to put back on track the U.S.-Japan alliance that has recently suffered from Japanese political turmoil.
Instead of turning inward, we need to collaborate closely with the international community. A global communitarian spirit has been demonstrated by the emergency relief teams dispatched from 20 countries/territories and the teams from the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination, IAEA and WFP.
To bring the incident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant to closure while avoiding a flare-up that would compromise the health of the people, we are tapping into the knowledge and expertise accumulated both in Japan and around the world, notably the U.S., France and Germany. At the same time, those outside Japan should not be swayed by sensational reports conjuring up apocalyptic images of an “unsafe Japan.” Unlike the Chernobyl disaster, where reactors were not shut down and actually exploded all the nuclear reactors, in Fukushima the reactors were completely shut down immediately after the March 11 earthquake thanks to automatic safety devices, Outside the immediate vicinities of the damaged nuclear reactors, radioactive materials in the atmosphere are at extremely low concentrations that do not appear to present health hazards.
In the discussion on international safety standards of nuclear reactors, Japan will have to examine the lessons learned from the accident and share them with the international community. The incident at Fukushima will probably lead Japan to reassess its commitment to nuclear power, which in turn will affect its stated goal of reducing its GHG emissions by 25% by 2020 compared to the 1990 level.
In terms of the economic impact, the disaster’s cost, namely the destruction of social infrastructure, housing and corporate facilities in the areas, not taking into account the negative effects of power shortages, was initially estimated to be between \ 16 trillion and \ 25 trillion, which could push the nation’s economic growth rate lower by 0.5%. Further, the disruption of the plants producing semi-conductors and other parts for automobiles, cell phones and other and electronic products in the affected areas will have repercussions on the global supply chains extending through Asia, Europe and North America.
When we consider all these domestic and international factors, we have every reason to try our best to turn this hydra-headed disaster into a new beginning not only for Japan but also for our partners across the world.