Photo Gallery: Japan Finds Its Feet
Tokyo's Fatalism Courage in the Face of Disaster
The Shinkansen looks like a glowing, wingless dragon on rails as it pulls away from platform 25 in the Osaka train station on this early morning just after sunrise. Train attendants in starched uniforms and white gloves offer the bullet train passengers refreshments.
But the train is far from full. It is headed north -- to Tokyo.
The previous day, the Japanese capital was shaken by yet more aftershocks. Reports of drinking water contaminated with radiation -- to the point that tap water can no longer be used to prepare infant formula -- also unsettled the population. More than two weeks after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the resulting tsunami struck the northeastern coast of the island of Honshu, more than 27,000 people have been reported dead or missing. The crippled reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant continue to spew steam and smoke.
Bad news, in other words, for the taciturn, dark-suited passengers as they rocket up the coast at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour (188 mph) to their jobs in Tokyo. Out the window, the last few houses on the outskirts of Osaka, population 2.7 million, slip by. These days, those who have a choice stay in the city.
Osaka, on Japan's Pacific coast, is in high demand these days -- not unlike a seat in a plane's emergency exit row. You're on board, but ready to bail out at any time. The city is some 600 kilometers (375 miles) from the ongoing nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima, and has an international airport and frequent high-speed trains on offer.
The First to Leave
Foreigners, heeding entreaties and warnings from home, were among the first to leave Tokyo. The embassies of Germany, Austria and Switzerland temporarily moved to Osaka, as did employees of several international companies. Since then, they have been watching Japanese television from a safe distance -- the images of stalwart earthquake victims surrounded by mountains of debris, or of smiling mothers using bottled water to prepare infant formula. From Osaka, they are scenes from a nightmare in a different world.
The passengers peruse the morning newspapers as the train shoots past the old imperial city of Kyoto. The news isn't good: radioactive contamination in the ocean; problems with the electricity supply resulting from 20 percent of Japan's nuclear electricity production being out of commission; and the troubles of Japanese companies. Toyota alone has reduced production by 10,000 cars a day.
There is, however, a message between the lines. Those who run away from such problems, those who seek to wait them out in Osaka, must be a gaijin -- a non-Japanese or outsider. Someone who doesn't understand that now, more than ever, every cog in the wheel counts. Someone who shirks his responsibility while a hero like fireman Nakamura Junichiro risks his life to cool down the reactors in Fukushima.
The Shinkansen reaches the Tokyo train station at 9:43 a.m. sharp. The pulse of the capital is beating regularly but more slowly than normal. The streets are not as crowded as usual, and ticket machines at some metro stations are out of service, as part of a general effort to conserve electricity. In the bars of the Shinjuku business district, office workers stare at television screens showing hourly updates from the disaster region. Normally, reports on the imminent cherry blossom season would dominate the airwaves at this time of year.
There is not a single person protesting on the streets in the entire city.
Little Evidence of Panic
This is striking given that the Japanese are fully aware that Fukushima could ultimately turn into another Chernobyl. But the warnings become louder the further one travels from the disaster zone: in far-away Europe or the United States. In Greater Tokyo, home to 35 million people, as in the rest of the country, there is little evidence of panic.
The possibility of nuclear disaster was never truly an issue in Japan. Memories of earthquakes and wars, tsunamis and typhoons, on the other hand, are passed down from generation to generation. It is almost as if the constant cycle of destruction and rebuilding were part of the national mythology. Much of Tokyo was destroyed in a 1923 earthquake and again during US air raids in 1945. In the same year, American atomic bombs destroyed most of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But after each tragedy, including the 1995 Kobe earthquake that claimed 6,400 lives, Japan has rebuilt anew.
The destructive forces of nature, writes Asia expert Ian Buruma, are "to a certain extent part of Japanese culture." This creates fertile ground for a Japanese fatalism that has developed throughout history and culminates in the expression "shikata ga nai," meaning "it can't be helped." A further product is the widespread belief that nothing beautiful on Earth is permanent and that the Japanese people must close ranks in times of national disaster.
Japan's political leaders serve as the physical embodiment of this disposition when they appear before the cameras in perfectly clean, always freshly pressed blue overalls, dressed up as the foremen of the nation -- even as they serve up only fragments of the truth to their people. They are the mirror images of a successful system that seems to have outlived itself long ago.
'Generation of Parasites'
The world's third-largest economic power now has the largest national debt of any industrialized nation, at 200 percent of the country's gross domestic product. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which ruled Japan for more than half a century before the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and current Prime Minister Naoto Kan came into power in 2009, left behind an aging society plagued by rural flight, youth unemployment and nepotism.
Nevertheless, the Japanese have been reluctant to express anger against the ruling class, which includes those in power and their allies in key positions in the economy, and managers in companies like TEPCO, the electric utility responsible for the damaged reactors in Fukushima.
It doesn't seem to be the young Japanese who see the current tragedy as a watershed -- certainly not those who stroll, neatly dressed, through Tokyo's hip shopping district of Harajuku; the boys looking androgynous with their manga haircuts and the girls carefully made up to look almost like dolls. Even with a northwest wind blowing rain in from Fukushima, they stroll past shop windows, about one in three wearing a face mask -- to protect against pollen, not radioactivity.
These children of hardworking parents, widely discredited as an apolitical "generation of parasites," are only a symptom of what Tokyo's controversial governor, Shintaro Ishihara, recently criticized as a rampant decline in values when he said that his fellow Japanese had succumbed to egoism. "The tsunami represents a good opportunity to cleanse this greed, and one we must avail ourselves of," he said. "Indeed, I think this is divine punishment."
Japan's 'Most Difficult Hour'
Even if he later apologized, it stands to reason that the 78-year-old Ishihara, who is running for reelection, is trying to attract votes with his tirades. Nevertheless, his voice pierces the leaden silence that has descended on the country. It was none other than Ishihara who lodged a protest with the prime minister last week over allegations that Tokyo firefighters had been forced to engage in perilous work at the Fukushima reactors and threatened with penalties if they did not cooperate.
The official accused of making the threat, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Banri Kaieda, reacted promptly. His carefully worded response sounded like a typically Japanese confession coupled with the simultaneous request that he be allowed to remain in office. "If my remarks offended firefighters," Kaieda said, "I would like to apologize."
If anything, it was not the minister's remarks that had injured Lieutenant Nakamura Junichiro but the radiation that is said to have leaked from the particularly dangerous Reactor 3 in Fukushima. Junichiro was standing 25 meters (82 feet) away.
He is an amiable, 45-year-old man, married with one daughter and, for the last six years, a proud member of "Hyper Rescue," an elite unit of the Tokyo fire department. Junichiro arrives at the Fukushima nuclear power plant nine days after the tsunami struck the coast with waves 14 meters (46 feet) high. He is wearing a helmet, a measuring device around his neck and a white radiation suit made of polyethylene.
'My Duty'
He and five other firefighters lay hoses down to the coast and bring the pumps into position until, finally, seawater rains down on the overheated reactors. The device around Junichiro's neck registers a radiation load of 16 millisievert after 80 minutes. Although this is six times as much radiation as the average person absorbs in an entire year under normal circumstances, it is still only a fraction of the recently-adjusted limits that apply to technicians and workers deployed at the reactor.
Junichiro says that he did not hesitate for a second before doing his part. "It was not my choice, but I wanted to go there. This is the most difficult hour for Japan. It was my duty."
The news last Friday that the containment vessel for Reactor 3, where Junichiro was working, could be damaged caused a stir. While the plant's operators struggled to respond, Prime Minister Kan decided, as a precaution, to address the people on television. He said that he wanted to thank all those who were "risking their lives" in Fukushima, including firefighters, soldiers and technicians.
It remains disconcerting, however, that in the land of software engineers and robot designers, no one knows exactly what the selfless men on the front lines in Fukushima are up against. Even Robert Gale, the American doctor whom the Soviet government under then-President Mikhail Gorbachev invited to examine Chernobyl victims, and who is now being treated in Tokyo as something of a living nuclear oracle, doesn't know.
Gale says that for now Japan is pursuing "prevention instead of treatment." Although the scope of the disaster is unknown, it is clear that "the spent fuel rods are the main problem." He adds that he would have to inspect the crippled plant to arrive at a more accurate assessment of the situation.
100 Times Higher than Normal
Professor Mikiso Iwasa, 82, isn't quite as concerned with seeing the disaster first hand. Sitting in his modest office in downtown Tokyo, Iwasa tells the story of how he, as a young man, survived the flaming inferno in his native Hiroshima by submerging himself in a water-filled reservoir. He is one of the Hibakusha, the Japanese term for the survivors of the American atomic bomb attacks. He devoted the rest of his life to the fight against nuclear weapons.
The obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the beginning of the atomic age, and not just for Iwasa. But what will Fukushima come to signify? "Mankind knows what radiation is, and we Hiroshima survivors know it particularly well," says the old professor, smiling as he pushes aside the rest of his sushi lunch. "I am convinced that the Japanese government knows more of the truth about Fukushima than it is willing to admit."
Explanations, for example, for the radioactivity measurements in the Pacific that found levels up to 100 times higher than normal in some spots have been lacking. So too has information about the workers who were exposed to radiation levels in standing water that were 10,000 times higher than normal last Thursday. Government circles in Tokyo are offering only the bare minimum of information. Even the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, who formerly led the Disarmament, Nonproliferation and Science Department at the Japanese foreign ministry, has been tight-lipped.
For the time being, Tokyo appears to have accepted its fate, no matter what happens. The vendors at the city's famous Tsukiji fish market staunchly refuse to reveal where their fresh seafood comes from, although chef Dobashi at the Sushi-Dai Restaurant around the corner seems unperturbed as he slices through bonito as soft as butter. The counter in front of him is full of diners. Restaurants are reacting flexibly, he says. "We are now taking more fish from the far north, from Hokkaido."
Unflappable Faith
The real changes that have taken place in the Japanese capital only become evident after nightfall, when the neon signs are shut off because of power shortages, when traditional shops in the downtown area close three hours earlier than normal, and when life comes to a standstill on the outskirts of the city.
It is there that the skeleton of a giant structure stands -- one which towers over every other building in this country: the Tokyo Sky Tree, being constructed at a cost of more than half a billion euros, a telling example of the unflappable faith of the Japanese in the greatness of their country and nation.
When the earth shook in Tokyo on March 11, the construction cranes swayed high up on the Sky Tree. Eight days and a few safety inspections later, the developers announced that they had reached the targeted height. At 634 meters (2,080 feet), the Sky Tree is now the second-tallest freestanding structure in the world.
It is an exclamation mark created by human hands in the middle of an earthquake zone.
