Hydrangeas and Revolution!

Japanese anti-nuclear protesters in Tokyo (AFP photo/Toru Yamanaka).

While I’ve been busy teaching children to wrestle with nouns, verbs and adjectives (if you can recognize them, you’ve won the fight),  history has been in the making in Tokyo.  For weeks, I’ve been following friends’ accounts of the Friday evening anti-nuke demonstrations outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Kasumigaseki, and wishing desperately that I could join them. Kasumigaseki is a full two hours away from my station, Shibusawa; making the commitment to go would mean canceling classes for the entire day at my English cram school, necessitating apologies, explanations, and full refunds for the day’s lost lesson.  In addition, I’d face the disapproval of  my in-laws, my staff, and a large roomful of irate mothers.  Although the demonstrations in Tokyo have now been officially labelled “Revolution” by the Japanese media, mothers of my students would be unimpressed by my throwing responsibility to the wind and charging off to Kasumigaseki.  In a matter of time, I would be out of work.  Many of my students, however, would think my actions were “kakko ii” (cool! awesome! whatever young people in the US say now. da bomb??).  I do not know if this would be enough consolation for the loss of income.  I guess you can tell by now that this will be an unusually personal blog post.

So, let me continue.  In desperation (as I said), I stooped so low as to beg my husband to attend the demo in my stead.  Knowing exactly what his answer would be even as I began my plea bargaining, I swallowed hard and used  my persuasive powers. “Your field is

Here’s the hubbub that my husband hates (AFP photo by Rie Ishii).

International Political Science! ” (this is true), and  “How can you not go?? All your colleagues will be there!” (not true, and we both know it), and  “You’re really going to get on the train and leave Tokyo just when all the action’s starting??” (he works in the heart of the city and  hates all the hubbub. Of course he’s going to get out of town before a demo) .  So, as I knew from the onset, it was all in vain.  There is no budging a very stubborn academic, although I was bound to give it a shot.  I am not one to bribe or blackmail, so when persuasion fails, I let things be.

It pains me to admit that I was not present at this past Friday’s massive demonstration (attendance estimated at between 40 to 50, ooo people).  Indeed, I have not been to a single one of the Friday protests.  I have been sending telepathic messages in the vague direction of Tokyo for months on end: “PLEEEASE HOLD YOUR PROTESTS ON DAYS THAT ARE CONVENIENT FOR ME.  ALSO, NO EARLY MORNING MARCHES. (respectfully yours, etc.) ”  This method has actually been partly successful, and I have been able to attend several good-sized demonstrations without sacrificing a work day.  The Friday demos, however, did not change to Saturday no matter how hard I willed them to.  And so, in lieu of my actual attendance, I will write about the build-up to the demo, the demo itself,  and a bit about my own family’s response.

Friday night protests had been going on for months although,  as one commentator on EX-SKF’s blog admitted, at first the action seemed more symbolic than influential.  Slowly but surely, however, attendance began growing, though there was no advertisement other than Twitter, Facebook posts, and group emails.  I believe the steady increase in popularity of the demos stemmed from the recent (and continuing) string of disappointments and betrayals felt by citizens across the country.  Particularly painful was the recent rejection–no, the refusal to even consider–of a literal truckload of papers containing the signatures of Tokyo citizens demanding a

The governor of Tokyo, behaving badly. I hope his mother is no longer around to see this. (photo by Sumio Kanematsu)

referendum on nuclear power.  Volunteers had collected 320,000 signatures ( “It was easy,” one of the signature-gathering volunteers told me during a visit to the anti-nuclear tents in Kasumigaseki. “I had no trouble getting people to sign. ” ) and presented them to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on June 20th.  The citizen representatives were met with rudeness and  rejection.  The rejection for their referendum request was by a 2-1 margin, and the rudeness was from Tokyo’s Mayor, Shintaro Ishihara, who made the thumbs-down sign to spectators gathered to witness the event.  Having taught English in this country for thirteen years, I know that this means more than “no”.  My students informed me straight off the bat in those first few months that it’s the equivalent of “Shinei!” or “You die!”  Seeing the shock on students’ faces whenever I used this simple gesture, I very quickly learned to strike it from my repertoire.  Ishihara-san, knowing full-well the implications of the gesture, did not hesitate to use it in public. Shame on you, cantankerous old man!

There was bad feeling all around, as the citizen representatives complained of being dismissed too easily, and of presenting their case to a group of officials who had already made up their minds to reject the proposal long beforehand. Which is probably true.

Rowdy citizens? ( AFP photo by Toru Yamanaka)

Tokyo officials, on the other hand, complained of “rowdy” spectators preventing them from doing business properly.  No comment there from me; I have yet to witness even a speck of “rowdiness” as I define it (unruliness, destruction of public property, deliberate acts of violence, etc.) at any of the rallies or protests I have attended in the past year.  On the contrary, folks seem almost unnaturally well-behaved and peaceful.  Someone inside the assembly building must’ve shouted an anti-nuclear slogan or something?

The attempt to hold a citizen’s referendum on nuclear power in Tokyo clearly failed. Several months earlier, a similar attempt had been made in Osaka; that attempt also ended in failure. But the biggest setback of all was the central government’s decision to re-start two reactors at the Oi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture.  The decision came suddenly, and was met with shock and disbelief by a majority of citizens who were ready to battle the summer heat without relying on nuclear power.  As William Pesek states in a Bloomberg news article, “When more than two-thirds of the people in a democracy of 126 million are against something, a leader might bother to listen. That’s how many Japanese want the reactors to remain offline. Noda ignored that increasingly vocal majority and cleared two reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Ohi nuclear plant to reopen.”

This Mainichi Shinbun article also details the fuss that ensued, and readers can easily imagine the feelings of anger and betrayal felt by not just ordinary Japanese citizens, but by officials of nearby cities whose future would be at stake in case of an accident.  Local officials in Oi City, however, agreed to the re-start.  Hear what correspondant Justin McCurry has to say about their entanglement in the “Nuclear Power Money Tree” in this Christian Science Monitor article.

Buddhist monks engaging in prayer and fasting outside the entrance to Oi Nuclear Power Plant (photo from Kiyoshi Inoue’s album).

The Japan Times directly opposed the re-start in a an editorial piece entitled  Regrettable “go” on Reactors, making the point that the Prime Minister and his team would have done better to come up with a plan of action well beforehand to ensure that the energy supply would be sufficient during the summer months , with or without nuclear power. Businesses and individuals have been more than willing to cooperate since last year’s disaster, and not taking advantage of the chance to implement lifestyle changes and seriously reduce energy use is “mottanai” (a wasted opportunity).  As an example of the kind of changes hoped for by the Japan Times editor, my father-in-law recently attended a neighborhood meeting about reducing energy consumption in the summer months. This prompted him to call the electric company and arrange to reduce the maximum amount of electricity we can actually use (from 50 amps to 40) without experiencing a power failure. This basically means we cannot run five air conditioners at one time in the house….as if this frugal family would ever dream of such a thing!  We will be saving money each month, and the country will save resources as well. “If everyone did this, there’d be plenty of electricity to go around all year long,” said the wise Grampa Iida.   The JT editors also mention the enormity of the risk involved in this decision, as no-one truly believes the Oi reactors are completely disaster-proof, and the nuclear safety watchdog committee proposed by the government is not yet a reality.

Mainichi Shinbun photo of the June 22 demo outside the Prime Minister’s residence. That’s a lot of people in a very small space!

In the end, the hasty announcement of the re-starting of reactors at the Oi plant was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back.  This past Friday, June 22nd, saw the Kasumigaseki district overwhelmed with protestors.  And this time, the major Japanese mainstream media were there, from Asahi Shinbun to the Mainichi Daily News.  There were interviews with individuals and live footage from the street;  one reporter even ventured into the government building where officials were attempting to work. The noisy din from outside had penetrated through to interior (EX-SKF describes it as “deafening”), and the Prime Minister could not have been a happy camper. The reporter attempted to get a reaction from both the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of  Economy, Trade and Industry, both of whom were at a loss for words.  There are many official and non-official versions of the event, but I always enjoy EX-SKF, so here’s his report.

The demo made the NHK news at 10:00 on Friday night–a rather long segment devoted to the demo and the anti-nuclear movement–and I grinned in astonishment as I whacked my unsuspecting husband.  “Look!  There you are!  I told you so: you missed history! You could’ve BEEN there!”  And, for the first time, he did not huff in dismissal or make light of the situation.  My friend Kimiko said it was the same with her husband.  And my guess is that the mainstream media coverage probably tipped the scales in our favor for other dubious husbands as well.  It’s hard not to let out a satisfying cry of, “Woo-hooo!” , and so I will allow myself to do so, once (there–it’s over and done with) .  For over a full year now, I have attempted to refrain from the use of slang expressions, curse words (that’s an easy one, actually), or excessive !!!!  (that one’s not so easy) in the interest of being taken seriously, so I feel a certain reward is long overdue. !!!!

Thank you for indulging me, and now back to business.

I did not hear the term “Hydrangea Revolution” until this morning, when I opened up facebook to find a post from Jacinta, along with her own beautiful photographs of hydrangeas taken in her neighborhood. After reading that one post, the phrase seemed to pop up repeatedly, all day long.  The Friday demonstrations have been compared to the big, bold, brazen blooms ( are they not? nothing wimpy about hydrangeas) that are made up of myriads of tiny blossoms pressed together. What began as a series of small symbolic gatherings has become a huge, spirited protest that the media can no longer ignore. Make no mistake: there is much work yet to be done, and on the surface, nothing has changed. Still, people who were once thought of as embarrassments to society have now gained a measure of respect. With that respect will come increased power and influence. So I must remember that the revolution is not about me, and swallow my disappointment at not being part of the Friday demonstrations that led to the big event.  And I must also send out a heartfelt thanks to those friends that did participate (Jacinta! Angela! Izumi! Scott! Sumiko?).  Nice work!  I haven’t made it to Tokyo on a Friday yet, but I’m proud to be on the same side as such good people.  I’m part of the big, brazen bloom….Woo-hooooo!

How’s this for big and brazen?? (taken here in Hadano, by yours truly)

Can Hole Diggers and Acorn Gatherers Save the Earth?

It takes patience to save the earth.  It’s not glamorous, and most times its downright dull.

Japan’s Tree Guru, Akira Miyawaki.

Back in 1958, a young Japanese researcher working on a German nature preserve complained to his mentor about the tedium. His words fell on unsympathetic ears, and he was firmly instructed to dig more holes. The researcher, Akira Miyawaki, is now referred to as Japan’s “tree guru”; well into his 80’s, he is currently heading the project to redesign the coastline of the city of Sendai (Miyagi Prefecture), creating a forest-covered embankment to protect the heart of the city from future tsunamis. He’s developed a new theory of forestry that bears his name, travelled the globe (visited 17,000 places, according to one estimate), and single-handedly planted 40 million trees. Yet he got his start studying the humble weed (majored in “Weed Ecology” at Hiroshima University), and digging holes in Germany….for two long years.

So what was all the hole digging about?  Basically, it was about studying the soil of the nature preserve, which was actually a non-productive wasteland at the time, searching for

Luneburg Heath Wildlife Park in Germany, where Miyawaki got his start digging holes (photo by Micheal Gabler, 2012).

clues. What was the forest like in its original state, hundreds of years ago?  What traces remained of the flourishing ecosystem that had once existed?  Miyawaki slogged on digging his holes, testing the soil, recording his findings, and beginning to understand nature in a new way.  He learned that, with patience, what man has destroyed can be rediscovered and reconstructed.  To be more specific: careful study of damaged environments reveals much about the ecosystem as it once was.  It is possible to then “re-generate” the area’s natural vegetation by planting a mixture of the same species that existed in the past, which are perfectly suited to the soil and climate of the area.  No longer absorbed by weeds, the young researcher became obsessed with re-creating entire forests.

Armed with his new ideas, Miyawaki returned to Japan from Germany.  To his dismay, he was promptly ignored.  This was Japan in the 1960’s, and business was booming.  No-one was interested in saving the environment, the forest, or even a single tree.  With no audience for his research, the Weed-Man-turned-Tree-Guru went back to slogging away on his own.  He began walking across the country compiling data, making vegetation maps,

Example of what Miyawaki-san considers a “fake” forest: all trees same height, same species, carefully pruned, and ramrod straight (taken here in Hadano City).

and maps of potential new forests based on former species that had once flourished.  Very few remnants of Japan’s ancient forests existed, as most had either burned, or been converted to arable land or real estate.  What remained were manmade forests (“fakes” as he referred to them) , often consisting of only one or two species and thus lacking in biodiversity.  Methodically, he studied the forests as he had in Germany, testing the soil and searching for clues as to what trees had once flourished in these areas.  He kept at it for ten years.

At last, in the early 70’s, the realization that Japan’s natural environment was in dire straits began to set in.  Suddenly, Miyawaki was “popular”, and his idea for creating “authentic” forests of densely planted species indigenous to their environment was given a name: the Miyawaki Method.  Miyawaki advocated planting a mixture of appropriate species at random, which would ultimately result in forests with trees of tall, medium, and low height, serving as barriers to both fire and flood, and supporting a diversity of plant and animal life.  These native trees would be rooted deeply and firmly in the soil, thus preventing erosion.  Weeding and management would be required for the first three years, but thereafter the forests would fend for themselves and

Remnant of one of Japan’s fast-disappearing ancient forests, the “authentic” kind. Miyawaki estimated that only .06 % of Japan’s sacred groves are still in existence (photo of forest on Yakushima).

continue to flourish.  These forests would be known as multi-layer “community forests”, and serve as havens of biodiversity.  The first such forest in Japan was created in 1971, through the joint efforts of local residents who gathered acorns, grew trees from seedlings, and held a ceremony to mark the planting of the seedlings.  Their efforts  eventually resulted in a spacious forest boasting a canopy of over twenty meters in height.

Miyawaki went on to organize and oversee the planting of many more “authentic” forests, both in Japan and abroad.  He became a noted scholar and director of the Japan Center for International Studies in Ecology, and is currently Professor Emeritus at Yokohama University, as well as a recipient of the Blue Planet Prize for environmental conservation.  A quick Google search reveals photos of a small man with a twinkle in his eye and a good-humored grin, planting seedlings in China, Malaysia, Borneo, Kenya and other countries desperate to restore health to land damaged by industrialization.  He was, in fact, abroad in Indonesia when the Great East Japan Quake struck. Deeply disturbed by the tsunami coverage of coastal destruction, he rushed back to his own country to put his expertise to work in Northern Japan.

Miyawaki arrived in Tohoku shortly after the quake, and was dismayed to realize that

A full year after the tsunami, uprooted pine trees still littered the shores of Rikuzentakata.

entire forests had been swept away by the tsunami.  These forests bordering the shoreline were largely made up of pine trees, whose roots had not penetrated deep into the sandy shore; they were uprooted in their entirety, not only having failed to serve as tsunami barriers, but having caused secondary damage as they were washed inland.  Of course, the most famous of these coastal forests was in Rikuzentakata, where only a single pine remained standing in what was a grove of 70,000 trees which had been planted over two centuries before.

Wasting no time, Miyawaki and  Doryu Hioki, a Buddhist priest from Sendai’s Rinno Temple, began surveying the ravaged coastline of Miyagi.

The Tabunoki, or Machilus, flourishes throughout Japan. Its resilience was proven in last year’s tsunami

Their purpose?  A thorough assessment of the remaining trees along the shore, to discover which species had stood firm and provided protection from the force of the tsunami, and which species were unable to withstand the raging waters. After touring several of the most severely damaged areas,  Miyawaki and Doryu were encouraged to note “green walls” of Tabunoki (Machilus) which remained standing.  Houses directly behind the thick-bodied, pliant, firmly-rooted trees were also standing.  In one case, a Tabunoki remained standing, its roots partly exposed, although most of the surrounding soil had been washed away.  Clearly, the Tabunoki would be central in the reconstruction of Sendai’s coastline, and Miyawaki’s plan for a Green Tide Embankment began to take shape.

Miyawaki’s project, an “authentic forest of life”, will serve as a memorial to lives lost and as a symbol of new beginnings.  The forest will be planted over a mound, in which processed debris from the quake and tsunami will be buried.  The mound will form an embankment stretching along the coastline, protecting human lives and property and weakening the force of future tsunamis.  Tabunoki will be the main species, supported by other native species of varying heights.  After the first three years, the forest will not need tending, and will continue to flourish for…..9,000 years!  Now that’s smart long-term planning.  The forest will come to fruition through the efforts of ordinary citizens, who have been gathering seeds from the Tabunoki, planting them, and tending to the seedlings.  Private enterprises and NPOs will fund the project.  Miyawaki’s goal?  To transform the coast of Sendai into an authentic forest of 40 million trees within 20 years.

Long ago, Japan’s forests were sacred places, dedicated to the gods and protected from

Shinto ropes mark this tree as part of a “sacred grove”. (photo by Ray Kinnane)

destruction by unspoken taboos.  Spirits dwelled in the rocks, plants, and trees, and men were forbidden to intrude.  Even today, my friend Misao only cuts trees from the forest on a certain day of the year (in February), when it is said that the spirits will not be angered.  These days, sacred groves such as those made famous in Miyazaki Hayao’s  “Mononoke Hime” are nearly extinct.  Forests are man-made rather than “authentic”; they are vulnerable to disaster, and are no longer sacred.  One could  say that the image of the sacred grove has been further profaned since last March, when the forests of Tohoku were poisoned by cesium.  Men dare not enter these forests, children are forbidden to play in them, and their bounty goes unharvested.  Miyawaki Akira dreams of creating new sacred groves in Japan, and has dedicated his life to this end.  In his own words, “Forests are life itself. Humans have survived until today supported by forests. The life for surviving tomorrow begins with creating true ‘forests of life’ by planting trees today.”

Miyawaki Akira and other respected and knowledgable figures such as C.W. Nichol have made significant progress in repairing the damage done to the environment due to a combination of greed, thoughtlessness, and lack of vision.  They have also become popular and well-loved educators, spreading their message of conservation and care to Japanese

Japanese citizens protesting on June 15th, outside the Prime Minister’s headquarters in Kasumigaseki.

citizens and foreigners living in Asia as well.  As long as the Japanese government insists on following a nuclear agenda, their entire life’s work is at risk.  I am deeply saddened and disappointed at Prime Minister Noda’s announcement that the Oi Nuclear Power Plant will re-start two of its reactors this summer, in spite of citizen protests, lack of proper and timely safety precautions, continued delay in establishing a nuclear watchdog committee free from inside influence, and new and irrefutable evidence of large quakes yet to come. While the nuclear industry and the central government think ahead as far as September, risking everything on the fallacy that they have made adequate preparations to withstand anything that might befall from hereon in (my guess is that no-one believes this now) , Miyawaki and other unsung heros are thinking in terms of thousands of years.  They fight the good fight to preserve the earth, which is the true source of our life and nourishment.  As Rinno Temple priest Doryu Hioki states in the video below,

“Until now, it has been considered right to change and adapt nature for human convenience using power and technology.  The Great East Japan Earthquake taught us this lesson: Science and technology are not meant to control nature, but to be used as pieces of wisdom making it possible for us to coexist with nature…..Now is a turning point of history. We have to shift from the age when materialism was central to an age where every life and soul will be loved tenderly. The Green Tide Embankment that protects life is a wisdom for living with nature.”

It is my hope that my children and grandchildren will be able to visit, or even live near, one of the new authentic forests being created.  As their generation will be responsible for the decommissioning of Japan’s remaining nuclear power plants and finding a storage solution for decades of accumulated nuclear waste products, it does not seem too much to hope that they might also enjoy the benefits of the forest as well.  I hope against hope that the Green Tide Embankment and other similar projects come to fruition.  Take a look at the video, and see what comes of patiently digging holes and gathering acorns.

Forests in Japan: Under Attack, and Under Construction

One of Tokyo’s delightful green spaces. (photo by Jared Braiterman)

Although one can easily lose sight of reality living and working in an urban center such as Tokyo, Japan is actually 67% woodland.  Tokyo is chock-full of small green spaces (check out the blog of Jared Braiterman, a Design Anthropologist who posts almost daily from the city), and carefully tended showcase parks (like the beautiful and popular forested grounds of  Meiji Jingu Shrine in Shibuya), but what’s it like in the real countryside?

Well, first, a bit of history, taken from talks with my geologist friend Yukari, and from an excellent article by Winifred Bird, a graduate of Amherst College (Suma Cum Laude, Political Science) who now lives in Nagano. She writes free-lance for a wide variety of publications on topics including nature, science, and architecture, and was a Media Fellow at Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Program in 2011. See her full profile–it’s rather fascinating in itself.  In a recent article for Yale Environment 360, Bird writes of the large number of Japan’s forests that are actually “artificial plantations”:  government

Aaaa-choo! … it’s Japanese cedar. Not only Japan’s national tree,  but also the country’s worst allergy offender.

subsidized projects containing mostly Cedar and Cypress, rather than a healthy variety of trees. Having grown up in rural New England amidst well-tended forests boasting a mixture of species, I noticed this myself on first moving to Japan, often thinking, “Why doesn’t this look like a real forest?” The forests I saw looked carefully arranged, with no variations in height or color–in short, fake.

True Old Growth forests are extremely rare in Japan, and the newer single-species plantations designed to feed Japan’s growing construction industry do not provide an ideal haven for wildlife.  In her Environment 360 article, Winifred Bird speaks with Mariko Moriyama, a representative of the Japan Bear and Forest Association, about the limited diversity in Japanese forests.  According to Moriyama, she writes, the outcome has been, “…the creation of forests where few animals can survive. Vast single-species stands of timber lack the plant diversity found in natural forests, and plant diversity forms the foundation for animal diversity. Black bears, for example, are omnivorous but prefer to eat young leaves, insects, berries, and acorns–few of which can be found in timber plantations. ” Does this not make perfect sense?  Moriyama-san puts it bluntly: “The results of the experiments are in. Japan’s traditional culture preserved amazing forests up until World War II. Our post-war approach has failed.”

In other words, even before the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, many of Japan’s forests were suffering.  Next, consider the current state of Fukushima Prefecture, which is 70 percent forestland.  The Japanese government has chosen to decontaminate much of the

Okuma, Fukushima: 10,000 tons of bagged waste from the decontamination process, temporarily stored in a baseball stadium. (Photo by Takayuki Kihara)

farm and forest land within the evacuation zone (areas outside of the zone are the responsibility of local governments) in order to bring families back and revitalize deserted neighborhoods. The process is well underway, and involves cutting (of tree branches),  scraping (of topsoil),  power-washing (of houses and trees in fruit orchards),  shaving (of bark from trees!),  bagging (of leaf litter), and thorough plowing (the deeper the better, to turn over the soil and dilute the cesium contaminating the topmost layer).  Technically, the focus of decontamination is on residential areas rather than forestland, but since there are no clear barriers in many rural areas of Fukushima, parts of the hilly woods in close vicinity to houses are being “cleaned” as well. And what’s being done with the refuse? The cut branches, scraped-off topsoil, and mountains of cesium-laced leaves?  As the photo shows, there’s no long-term, safe, or aesthetically pleasing solution. Some towns deposit the bulging bags in shallow pits, and some keep them above ground.  Meanwhile plastic bag manufacturers, along with companies specializing in geiger counters and power hoses, are making a tidy profit, I’m sure.

Going back to the writing of Winifred Bird, this January, she wrote another article for the  Environment 360 publication that deals with the projected effects of decontamination in Fukushima. By her assessment, the process (due to be completed in 2014) is likely to cause “huge amounts of radioactive waste that no-one wants to store long-term; immediate investments of money, labor, and time; damage to wildlife habitat and soil fertility; increased erosion on scraped-bare hillsides; and intrusion by people and machinery into

A Japanese Wild boar; human health trumps his habitat. This particular guy is from Kyushuu, but there are plenty of boars in Fukushima as well.

every area scheduled for remediation.”  In her article, she quotes Kiyomi Yokota, a naturalist and secretary of the Fukushima Nature Conservation Association.  Although Yokota regrets the upsetting of the forest’s ecological balance, he sees it as a necessary evil.  As he states, “If people want to go home, I don’t think I could tell them, `No, stop the decontamination and save the fish.”  In other words, declares Bird,  human health trumps habitat.

Last Sunday, the Japan Times featured another article by Bird, entitled, “Chernobyl Expert Takes a Look at Tohoku’s Trees”.  The expert, Dr. Sergiy Aibtsev, a Ukranian forest ecologist who has been studying contamination in wooded areas for 19 years, flew to Japan to tour the Tohoku forests and confer with Japanese ecologist Dr. Tatsuhiro Ohkubo (who’s only been studying contamination since the time of the triple disaster).  In Chernobyl, 26 years have passed, and the exclusion zone is still off-limits. Its forests are untouched, save for experiments and minimal management, and forests outside the zone are carefully regulated and monitored. Aibtsev, concerned that the removal of leaf litter, undergrowth, and branches from Fukushima’s forests “could undermine forest health”, explained the Russian approach to contamination.  Bird writes,

A forest?  Or a “holding tank for contamination”?

“Zibtsev explains that as long as trees and leaf litter are healthy, forest ecosystems trap radionuclides and prevent them from seeping down into the groundwater, or being carried into streams by erosion-or blowing away as dust in the wind. Ukraine’s management policy has aimed to maximize the role of forests as holding tanks for contamination rather than attempt decontamination. “

Bird also directly quotes Zibtsev, who uses a graphic comparison to make his point:

“The approach has been to let the ecosystem work. Fungi is much more effective than millions of people (at containing contamination).  It’s like if your body is functioning, and you decide, why don’t I remove my liver to clean it? And then you realize you can’t live without it. People in Japan want the forest to be clean. They want to rewind (back to) before 3/11. (But) we’re living in a new reality.”

Even Shinichi Nakayama, a nuclear engineer at Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency who is overseeing 19 of the decontamination pilot projects admitted that over-cleaning could present new complications. “You take it all away (“all”, meaning the greenery) and the eco-system is destroyed,” he pronounced.

Back to Bird’s phrase: human health trumps habitat?  I always thought the two were not rivals, but inter-connected. That connection, it seems, has been broken for Fukushima residents.  The forests that once sustained are now being stripped of their own sustenance.

So that’s how things stand in Fukushima. Now let’s move to Tokyo, where forests are

Jared Braiterman, reveling in a green space!

not under siege, but being created.  Although many Tokyo residents are unaware, a fabulous architectural project is under construction. I learned of this through the aforementioned blog of Jared Braiterman, the Design Anthropologist and seeker of green spaces.  The title of the post caught my attention: “What if a Forest is Created and No-One Knows?” , and I began reading, learning of a project that’s been steadily progressing since 2007 to create a “Forest on the Sea” or “Umi no Mori”.

Designed by the renowned architect Tadao Ando, the forest is an attempt to restore beauty and function to a landfill in Tokyo Bay, an 88 hectare raised landmass built of…waste. Ugly, eh? On his introductory site,  Ando speaks plainly about the landfill site, stating,

“The modern practice of mass production and mass consumption has given rise to a negative legacy throughout the wold in the form of refuse. In Tokyo Bay as well, a consequence of our urban activities is seen in a landfill of refuse and surplus soil that reaches 30 meters in height and stretches over 88 hectares-about the size of one golf course.

Umi no Mori (Sea Forest) will become a symbol of our recycling-oriented society through which Japan, a country that has a tradition of living hand-in-hand with nature, can make an appeal to the world about the importance of living in harmony with the environment. In view of the fact that landfills exist in all corners of the world, I perceive this island as a forest that belongs not just to Tokyo, but to the world, and through this project, wish to communicate the message of `living in harmony with nature’.”

Chart showing the “Wind Passages” effected from Ando’s Forest on the Sea.

Ando’s plan, begun five years ago, is to create a forest of mixed species, not only to beautify a barren space, but to create a passageway for breezes to blow into the city, providing relief from the sweltering summer heat.  As another part of Ando’s plan, local children have been involved with the planting. Various planting events have been held since 2008, including one attended by U2’s Bono. Funding for the project is purely through personal donations-also the idea of Ando, who hopes for donations of 1,000 ¥  from 500,000 people to complete his project. Here’s the link to his Umi no Mori site if you wish to make a donation, or know someone who is interested in the project. Better yet, spread the word!  The blog post I stumbled on was from 2009, and the author was lamenting the fact that so few folks knew about its existence. Well, though the Tokyo Sky Tree has been so over-publicized that I see it in my dreams, looming over me, this forest project hasn’t made much of a splash at all. Braiterman berates the Tokyo municipal government for not making the project more public:

“I think this park will eventually be fantastic. However, it’s a missed opportunity not to make its creation more participatory, more transparent, more public, more connected to the rest of the city, more educational, and a catalyst for public and collective thinking of the urban environment and waste production.”

And Braiterman’s right. Instead of putting their energy into the promotion of a project that

“Forest on the Sea”, shown in photo from summer, 2010. How many forests will need to be planted to cover new landfills?

isn’t costing the city a cent and serves the purpose of rehabilitating a shameful eyesore, the municipal government is busy accepting debris from Tohoku and burning it along the Bay, creating yet more pollution and showing an appalling lack of judgement and concern for its citizens. It’s a sickening cycle in the end, as the remains of the incinerated rubble are being buried in yet another Tokyo Bay site, creating yet another landfill ripe for rehabilitating.  Are there enough creative minds to deal with the mountains of refuse that are plaguing this already overcrowded country?  Not by a long shot; the landfills are winning the battle.

Meanwhile, up in Tohoku, the city of Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture is planning to use part of its own tsunami debris to build “tide-prevention groves”.  Rather than concrete sea wall barriers, city planners envision a raised coastline built from landfill and lined with trees, which will serve to slow the speed and reduce the power of future tsunamis as well as preventing land erosion. I love the simplicity of the design.

And that’s where I’ll close for now. Growing up surrounded by forests, living in Japan has led me to re-think my definition of their purpose.  Thinking of the woodlands in Russia and Fukushima that will remain as repositories for cesium, lying untouched, unexplored, untended, and unused, fills me with terrible sadness.  Human health trumps habitat, and for the sake of man’s safety, they will remain off-limits. The animals residing there are on their own.

Thinking of the newly-conceived forests built as cosmetic covers for landfills gives me mixed feelings as well. In the case of Sendai, city planners are making the best of a terrible situation, planning responsibly and considering aesthetics and practicality as well. Hopefully the trees along the coast will help to save their lives in the future. Still, the trees are covering a waste dump, containing the remains of its past life, and parents should educate their children to know the city’s history and teach them to create as little waste as possible in their lives.

Tree planting at Ando’s “Forest on the Sea”. A sea of green to cover a multitude of sins?

In the case of Tokyo, I feel deep disappointment and a sense of hopelessness. A project reflecting a positive transformation for the city does not receive enough attention, and landfills continue to multiply, rather than diminish. I also learned, while writing this post, that another of my favorite green spaces in Tokyo, Yamashita Park,  is built over landfill.  Strange, that more people do not find this unnerving.  Those who see only the surface of things, I suppose, are able to carry on their daily lives without questioning why. Baseball stadiums filled with radioactive soil?  Stripping the  leaves and bark from trees?  And still the question of whether Japan should continue to use nuclear power remains an issue?  As far as I’m concerned, the more pressing issue is the de-commissioning of each and every nuclear power plant across Japan: a long-term challenge, complicated by the reality that college students are already steering clear of any nuclear-power related programs. They know that the future is somewhere else.

Thank you for reading, and good night.

Tsunami Rubble Shipped Abroad for Profit? ( and other Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Ideas )

Scanning my facebook feed this morning, my eyes lit on the latest post from Helen Caldicott, decrying a recent proposal to move more debris from Northern Japan.  This time, the plan is to ship rubble from Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures across the ocean to the Mariana Islands for recycling and disposal. Led by a group of Japanese investors who promise mutual benefits and profit, the scheme (perhaps I should not have legitimized it

Pagan Island: future dumping ground for Japan’s unsavory debris?

with the term “plan” in the first place) involves sending debris-laden ships to an uninhabited volcanic island north of Saipan, unloading the rubble and beginning the recycling process while simultaneously setting up a mining industry for pozzolan ( I flipped back and forth between Wikpedia and the American Heritage Dictionary at this point, learning that pozzolan is a vitreous, sileceous material found in volcanic ash that reacts with calcium hydroxide to unlock gradually-strengthening cement-like properties), with the aim of sending those same ships back to Japan full of rocks (the pozzolan) that will be used in the making of cement…….Sound complicated?  Time-consuming?  Well, for starters, there’s no harbor, airstrip, electricity or running water on the island.  And what about permits, licenses, official safeguards and regulations?  Project head Isamu Tokuichi, chairman of the board of the Kansai Oil Company and president of the New Energy Corporation, isn’t concerned with these minor details at present. He promises a mutually beneficial long-term arrangement, with profit involved for the place in question, Pagan Island, and relief for trash-laden Tohoku.

Well, never mind logistical complications. It’s clearly an ethical and moral issue, although neither the Japanese investors nor Froilan Tenorio, former governor of the Northern Mariana Islands, are presenting it as such. While the current governor of Saipan is dubious, and private citizens of the Marinara Islands are protesting the use of Pagan Island as a waste dump,

Pagan Island, seen from the ground. (Photo by David Sischo)

Tenorio assured local news reporters that the Japanese emissaries are, “…interested only in Pagan and they want to buy pozzolan, which will be loaded onto ships that will be empty after bringing debris to the island. ”  Hmmm.  Project leader Tokuichi assures Marinara Island officials and residents that all debris coming from Tohoku will be non-radioactive and non-toxic: safe for handling and exposure, and posing no threat to the welfare of the island and its ecosystem.

It’s all in what one wants to believe, isn’t it?  After continued betrayals and lies portrayed as truth, it’s hard to fathom that so many folks in this country still swallow official pronouncements whole, without bothering to chew. What exactly is the government “safety standard”, and how is it measured?  How is it compared with the standard held by other countries or by the standard set for previous generations in Japan?  Is the particular danger being measured the only potential danger involved, or are there others that are less-publicized? And most importantly, is accepting the “promise” of harmlessness worth the weight of the implied risk?

As of now, the development of Pagan Island for waste recycling, landfill (20 percent of Japan’s debris will actually be left on the island and buried), and mining is only an idea. But greed moves swiftly, and I still cannot believe that within a year after the triple

Hosono Goshi, making his plea to “share the burden” at a temporary storage site for debris in Ishinomaki. (photo by Kyodo News)

disaster, Hosono Goshi’s plan to spread tsunami rubble across the country for burning has come to fruition. When first announced that every prefecture across Japan would be encouraged to “share the burden” of Tohoku, I assumed that it would be quickly rejected as an obviously half-baked idea. But as the “encouragement” was further defined as financial rewards for those prefectures agreeing to receive rubble, the clear waters were muddied, and the transport of debris officially began.  You will note that I refrain from referring to it as “radioactive debris”, since the government claims that the rubble has been tested as safe for burning–no nasty radioactivity will linger in the air or on the ground.

Whether that’s an accurate assessment or not (the blogger EX-SKF, to name just one source, is convinced that rubble in the surrounding prefectures of Fukushima is definitely contaminated with radioactivity), people that I speak with at anti-nuclear events in Tokyo all tell me the same thing: it’s not that simple. They are afraid of and concerned about much more than radioactive particles.  Building standards were different decades ago, and rubble from the older houses destroyed in Tohoku is contaminated with asbestos, PCBs, and other potentially harmful toxins.  A quick peek into a blog for firefighters (who must be highly motivated to stay well-informed on the potential health effects of burning buildings) reveals a detailed list of hazardous building materials, along with the declaration that, “Any building in today’s world contains materials that are hazardous to our health. They range from materials that can be toxic with short-term or low-level exposure to those that can be toxic or carcinogenic years after exposure to those that are only irritants.”  As a citizen of Saipan wrote in a  letter to a Micronesian paper , “By the way, the definition of waste is precisely that, WASTE!”  ….and that’s the long and short of it: there’s no conceivable positive spin.  Whatever the exact degree of toxicity and danger, no-one in his right mind could argue that a big pile of waste is better broken up and spread about than kept contained in one place. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening, with the boundaries now being further extended to include other countries.

“Hey, don’t mess with my territory!” (Photo, by David Sischo, of just one of the species found on Pagan Island)

How can the removal and transport of waste from Japan be presented as a business deal, with no consideration of ethical issues (or at least ethical issues related to Pagan Island?)  And who will speak up to protect the ecosystem of an island devoid of inhabitants?  Citizens of neighboring islands in the Marinara chain are already raising their voices, as are bloggers from across the ocean. And because the Mariana Islands are legally a Commonwealth (defined by American Heritage Dictionary as a “self-governing, autonomous political unit voluntarily associated with the United States”), they fall under the legislation of the Environmental Protection Agency, which is already on the alert and monitoring the situation.  Some speculate that even if permission can be obtained on a federal level (which could take up to five years), potential lawsuits could cause even further setbacks.

It seems that Japanese legislation may also prevent the deal from going through; blogger EX-SKF reports that on Friday, May 11th, a Miyagi Prefecture official stated his “appreciation for the offer”,  adding that according to the law, shipping debris abroad would be “impossible” unless Japan has no other options within its own country.  Former  Governor Tenorio and the Japanese investors, apparently refusing to take no for an answer, are still moving ahead with plans; according to a March 16th article in the Saipan Times, Japan will be sending engineers and other technical experts to Pagan Island “as early as next week” to gather data and formulate a more detailed plan.

Let us hope that that the combined efforts of individuals and government regulations will be enough to nip a terrible idea in the bud.  Pagan Island may not be inhabited by humans (though it was, until 1981),  but it houses a fragile ecosystem including several endangered

Another Pagan Island critter, posing for his photo by David Sischo.

species which are already disappearing from the more popular tourist destinations of Guam and Saipan.  I’m excited to have discovered photographs of some of the wildlife on the island, taken by a biologist named David Sischo.  Do take a look–I guarantee you will catch your breath at least once, and possibly see snails in a new light from now on.  Airstrips, harbors, quarries, recycling and incineration facilities, as well as landfills, will threaten the habitat of the creatures you see in the photos.  Both the native peoples and the ecosystem of Pagan Island have already suffered at the hands of the Japanese government (read a bit about the island’s history here); at least the ecosystem remains, and deserves a chance to flourish.

I hope that the story of Pagan Island is picked up by  some of the mainstream Japanese media such as NHK or Asahi Daily News.  Japanese citizens need to stay informed, and to consider the veracity and the implications of what’s being reported (rather than swallowing those reports whole. It is actually a well-known and well-reported fact that people in this country die from swallowing their food without chewing properly, namely a solidified jelly called “Konnyaku” in the summer and sticky rice cakes called “Mochi” in the winter).  It is not the reporter’s or the announcer’s job to present stories in a moral light; their job is to present the stories, period, as accurately and impartially as possible.  On the receiving end, the listener or the reader should be engaged, rather than passive, and looking for meaning in every story–including and especially the moral implications– rather than accepting what is presented at face value.  In the case of Pagan Island,  a potentially profitable plan to ease the burden in Tohoku clearly means the exploitation of a less-wealthy country and the encroachment upon a fragile ecosystem that cannot possible emerge from the project unscathed.

Not just ingesting the news critically, but considering the implications of our own actions

Socks drying outside on a cute-as-well-as-practical Japanese clothes hanger.

and choices is also part of living responsibly in a country facing a potential energy crisis. I say “potential”, because I firmly believe that if individuals and corporations make responsible and creative choices this summer, there will be no crisis at all. Some hardship, yes, but that does not equal a crisis.  As individuals, we do not need (for instance) clothes dryers.  My own has been broken for….four years now.  At first, I was desperate to either fix or replace it, but after the first year, I realized that my world had not fallen apart and that, despite holding down a full-time job and coping with weeks of rain in both early summer and fall, hanging my family’s laundry either outside or in the house was quite doable. Great energy savings, and very little hardship involved.

In the first months after the triple disaster, Japanese citizens learned to look with new eyes, realizing that glaring lights in the daytime, multiple escalators in train stations, and air conditioning set to “cool” in convenience stores did not have to be the norm. Riding the trains in both heat and darkness was both uncomfortable and creepy, but we all lived through it.  Train stations and parking lots were dark as well, and there was no rise in crime.  A little over a year has gone by, and already folks have forgotten

Drink machines–six in a row! Like only five wouldn’t be enough??

how to look at the world.  The lights are back on, the escalators are running, and we’re surrounded by drink machines. What’s that all about? As far as I’m concerned, there’s no excuse for having them at all. They guzzle electricity, and exist to cater to our laziness and desire for immediate gratification.  We trip over convenience stores on every block, and do not need to run out to the roadside to get an energy drink at eleven at night. With Jr. High students addicted to smoking and businessmen addicted to drinking, there certainly do not need to be cigarette or alcohol vending machines, either. Worse yet, my friend in Tokyo tells me that her Jr. High age daughter walks by a condom vending machine every morning on the way to school, and is “terribly curious”.  I used to look on these ubiquitous and cheery (some machines talk to you!) staples of modern Japanese culture with amusement, but no longer.  I look at them and see waste. Want to know some vending machine statistics?  Check out this blog post.  And Pachinko parlors? Don’t get me started there!  And I feel even Grinchier about illumination at Christmas!  In short, I felt good about simplifying my life and being less reliant on electricity last year, and it breaks my heart that life got “back to normal” so relatively soon.  The standard of “normal” itself needs to undergo a radical change if Japan is to not just weather the summer without nuclear power, but continue to re-invent itself and thrive.

Japan’s Fukushima has become a nightmare of a place, where the sea bed is being covered in concrete (to prevent further leakage of radioactive materials which have sunk to the bottom), the ground is a repository for bags and bags of radioactive soil and leaves, the forest is officially off-limits (contaminated with cesium), and yet those who speak out against nuclear power are considered strange or extreme. It is my hope that slowly but surely, the tables will turn, and those who were formerly considered odd birds and extremists will become Japan’s new heros. In certain circles, some already have, and perhaps their stories will be the focus of my next post. Thank you for your continued readership, and good night.

Oe Kenzaburou: undisputed literary genius, but is he also an odd bird? Hey, he’s my hero! Hang tough, Oe-san!

Stone Mountains, Oyster Shells, and Buried Treasure: Volunteering in Ishinomaki

“Look, Grandpa! All these nice young people have come to help us out! Aren’t we lucky?”  The farmer’s wife attempted to coax a smile

Now that’s a pile of stones. And more to come!

from her stolid husband as eleven young Peaceboat volunteers, armed with pickaxes, shovels, hoes and wheelbarrows, removed stone after stone from the old man’s garden….or what had been his garden before the 3-11 tsunami washed over the area, transforming the land into a literal bed of rocks.

In Miyagi Prefecture’s Ishinomaki City, rubble from buildings and cars was washed inland, while land closer to the seaside was inundated with stones. Removing the stones from a single farmer’s plot of land took the Peaceboat volunteers a day and a half.  My daughter Ellen (who has asked me to write about her week’s volunteer experience) and the rest of the crew were relieved that they were able to take a bath that evening at the local public bath house, or Sento. “No-one drank sake in the evenings or stayed up late partying,” she said. “It was lights out by ten, and we went right to sleep, exhausted.”  This is exactly what every mother wants to hear, and I approved heartily.

Mrs. Oyama gets to work planting potatoes.

Returning to the story of the farmer and his rocky plot, a truck arrived from Ishinomaki City on the  second day, laden with eight tons of fresh soil from the mountainside and fertilizer as well. The Peaceboat Rock Removal Team called it quits at that point, morphing into the Cultivation Team.  The farmer, assisted by the volunteers, tilled the soil that very afternoon, mixing the saline tsunami-ravaged soil, the fresh soil from the mountainside, and the fertilizer (provided by Ishinomaki City for a nominal fee). The result was a relatively-rock-free garden plot, ready for planting.  His wife could not wait to get the first crop of potatoes in the ground, and began the process straightaway.

The finishing touches of  the rock removal,  the soil cultivation, and  the planting were all accomplished in a single day, thanks to the communal efforts of volunteers, city officials, and the farmer himself.  While other Ishinomaki residents are still marking time in temporary housing, this man and his wife did indeed get lucky.  My daughter got a deep tan, some muscles in her slim arms, and an education.

Removing the debris from Ishinomaki has been a long and painful process. Thanks to the

Mountain of rubble, seen from the highway in Ishinomaki.

efforts of Japan’s self-defense forces and international as well as local volunteer efforts, the worst has been dealt with; for the most part, rubble has been cleared from residential areas. It is now piled in neat and tidy mountains, visible from the highway. The images are jaw-dropping, and the problem of disposal of the contents of these mountains is the hottest topic on the nightly news. It is also a separate blog entry altogether, and I do not intend to go there right now.  Instead, I will focus on what my daughter saw and learned during her week in Tohoku (this past April),  exactly as she reported the situation to me.  Though I am known to exaggerate (just a wee bit) in daily conversation, I vow not to stray from the story line or add my own embellishments.  In fact, if I do her stories justice, the embellishments will not be needed or missed.

Now that the worst of the rubble has been cleared, Peaceboat volunteers are focused on the families (mostly elderly couples) who have chosen to stay in the tsunami-ravaged towns, helping them rebuild their lives and regain a measure of independence. In short, helping to restore hope. The soil restoration projects began when a Peaceboat organizer sounded out some residents of a local temporary housing complex: “Any farmers here who want to get back to work?  Need some help getting started?”  “Absolutely!” was an elderly farmer’s response, and the Peaceboat volunteers began the process of recreating workable garden plots, one at a time.

Before reviving Oyama-san’s rocky garden plot, the Peaceboat volunteers also assisted a farmer living farther inland.  This man’s land was a veritable treasure-trove of rubble, and involved another full day of work by fifteen volunteers.  Again, using pickaxes and shovels, here’s a partial list of what the volunteers found buried in the soil: credit cards. Old tires. Remote controls. Washlet toilet knobs and parts. Batteries. Eyeshadow in case, still usable. Bra and panties. Plastic bag stuffed full of ¥100 coins (this is called “heso-kuri”, or money squirrelled away).  And much more, including the all-pervasive rocks.  While the workers dug and sorted, another farmer strolled by to watch the process. “Oi! Come over and do my yard, too!” he called.  After a sizable pile of rubble had been collected, the sorting began: burnable items, non-burnable items, and rocks. Toward the end, my daughter admits, everyone was so tired that they became adept at making split-second decisions, and tossing items swiftly into what they hoped was the appropriate pile.  The Peaceboat crew were not able to stay around to see the farmer and his wife turn their newly-cleared land into an actual garden, but the couple thanked the volunteers profusely before they left, and insisted that they keep the bag of ¥100 coins.

A trio of “Sui”, caught in Shark Bay.

After days of digging, the Peaceboat team relocated to an area known as “Same no Ura”, or Shark Bay. Here a city official in charge of working with volunteers gave a brief history of the area’s post-tsunami recovery efforts.  The tsunami, he told the group, had left fishermen bereft of family members, homes, boats, fishing equipment, and hope. Local officials had urged the remaining residents to persevere (“ganbaru”) and attempt to rebuild their lives, but their words met with little or no enthusiasm. Living amidst the wreckage, fishermen saw no way up and out of the abyss, and no longer cared whether the fishing industry revived or not.  Adding to this, they were bitter about the fact that volunteer efforts had begun inland, in residential areas, while those living in areas along the shoreline received less practical assistance in the first weeks after the disaster. And so, in late May and June of 2011 when Peaceboat volunteers approached the fishermen with offers of help, they were initially rejected. “What can you do to help us anyway? Our problems are too great, and your offer comes too late!” was the basic response.

Happily, the volunteers refused to take no for an answer, and began working, “katte ni”, or without being asked or welcomed. They began by sorting through a mountain of rubble near the ocean which appeared to contain many pieces of valuable fishing equipment, such as buoys and fish barrels. After the Peaceboat workers had recovered 100 barrels (with a monetary worth of approximately ¥15,000 or $150 apiece), they approached the fishermen again, appealing to their sense of economy and conservation. “Look what we found for you!  And think of how much money it represents!  If you’re not going to use these, we’re throwing them all out!  So, what will it be?” The fishermen grudgingly admitted that they’d hate to see such an awful waste, and began considering the possibility of working again. Sharing the few available boats they had, they returned to the sea and began fishing–on a much smaller scale, but with hope for the future and a return of perseverance and determination to carry on.

As a postscript: September of 2011 brought a nasty typhoon that rampaged across a good part of the country, hitting Tohoku as well. Fishermen from Shark Bay again lost boats, equipment, and even cars. After the typhoon, Peaceboat staff hurried to check on the men

A Sea Squirt ; It’s a delicacy, I promise (Hah! You wouldn’t catch me even considering this knobby little rascal as food).

and offer encouragement…..only to find them in good spirits, even jovial. “Whaaat?!  You think a little storm like that is going to keep us down after we’ve weathered the big one??  Hah!” They were still in good spirits last week, when my daughter and the rest of thevolunteers returned to help them construct underwater  shell “beds” for sea squirts. Oyster shells, it seems, are the perfect home for sea squirt eggs, which attach themselves to the rough surface of the shells, remaining there for a full four years until hatching into strange-looking but reportedly delicious sea creatures.  The Peaceboat team’s job was to finish up sorting the shells, drill holes in them and string them together in bunches, ready to

Peaceboat volunteers, awash in oyster shells.

be tossed into the ocean by the fishermen. “The shell sorting alone had been going on for two months,” said my daughter. “We just did the tail end of the work.”  To put this amount of work into perspective, the 20 or so volunteers sorted approximately 10 tons of shells per day, and the shell pile you see in the photo was more like “a pasture of shells”(said Ellen) to begin with.

With the shell beds finished and ready for use, the fishermen were in a fine mood, showing off their day’s catches for the volunteers, who took photos like crazy. To celebrate, sea urchins were served up as snacks, and eaten raw (“How?” I asked. “We cut them in half, and scooped out the inside with spoons,” said my daughter. “The sea urchin itself is a natural cup!” ) Most considered this a fine reward for the day’s work, and some even indulged in seconds.

Along with volunteer work, the Peaceboat team visited another region along the coast of Ishinomaki, known as Sakana Machi (or “Fish Town”). Here they viewed the surreal sight

The canned whale meat sauce memorial.

of a massive (the size of a small house) metal can with a label reading “Whale Meat Sauce”, upended and left as a memorial in the middle of the once-thriving neighborhood. The can is bordered by highways on either side, and flowers have been planted alongside it. Whatever you may think of whale meat, or of whaling as an industry, there are still tsunami recovery stories to be told, and this is one of them.

The story goes like this: Fish Town, as its name suggests, was built around the fishing industry, and the canned whale meat factory was just one of many fish processing plants (approximately 200 in all) that suffered irreparable damage from the tsunami.  The remains of the structure were covered in foul-smelling sludge, and millions of cans of whale meat–preserved in sauce–were buried in the muck and rubble. The factory shut down, workers were let go, and that seemed to be the end of things……until volunteers stepped in to literally pick up the pieces. The work of salvaging and washing undamaged cans took several months, but volunteers successfully recovered and sold enough cans to rebuild the factory and re-hire its former workers. The new factory is up and running, and the upended giant can remains, as a memorial to what was lost and what has been accomplished. Everything was accomplished bit by bit, with patience and perseverance, which seems to be the lesson to be learned here.

In short, my daughter’s week in Ishinomaki was about long days spent digging stones, sorting rubble into piles and boring holes in oyster shells. Hard work, nothing glamorous, and no beer in the evening as a reward. Volunteers were able to bathe twice that week, and slept on sleeping bags on the floor of an empty factory. Breakfast was a sandwich and coffee from the local convenience store, and fresh vegetables were a luxury.  This is, as Japanese say, “atari-mae” (reasonable to the point of being obvious), as volunteers should not be eating up the resources of the folks they are assisting.  Those who cannot live without daily comforts do not volunteer for Peaceboat, and the volunteers themselves are not all youngsters like my daughter (she’s 18, and a young-looking 18 at that).  At any rate, you’ve got to respect all the volunteers–regardless of age–for their determination and self-discipline.  I imagine that whiners are few and far between in the ranks, or work would not continue to progress and few would remain motivated enough to return after their first trial stint. “I have no idea why I did not do this earlier!” my daughter declared on her return home, a testimony to the satisfaction that comes from the combination of hard work and good camaraderie.

Would you eat these, raw,  fresh from the Pacific Ocean?

Readers of this blog may wonder about the “issues”: What about the level of radioactivity in the ocean? Were those raw sea urchins really safe to eat?  And should Sakana no Machi be rebuilt at all–shouldn’t the whole area be relocated to higher ground?  Why doesn’t the whaling industry take a big hint from the tsunami devastation and attempt to re-invent itself in a timely fashion (actually, one town is already considering this, in the form of a Whale Zoo, where tourists can swim with small whales and dolphins)?  Why don’t folks still living in those dangerous coastal areas run for their lives already? And what about those mountains of rubble seen along the highways that are scheduled to be distributed to various prefectures country-wide for incineration?  Aren’t families as far away as the US coastal state of Oregon concerned about the potential health effects of this already-done-deal??

Well, that’s exactly what I don’t want to plunge headlong into. Read the blog of EX- SKF, who makes it his business to stay on top of each and every issue, translating from Japanese to English with competence and coolness. Scrolling down the comments section of each post, you’ll get a sampling of the way his readers feel about the state of affairs in post-3-11 Japan. Let’s just say that it’s emotionally charged.

This post, on the other hand, is meant as something simpler. It’s a testimony from someone

Ishinomaki ladies, hard at work.

who went to Tohoku (with few preconceived notions or opinions ), worked hard, and listened intently to those around her.  What impressed her was the vastness of the area compared to the dearth of people, especially young people. “I didn’t see any residents under the age of forty all week!” my daughter proclaimed sadly on her return. However, the vigor and cheerfulness of the Ishinomaki ladies (hard at work making accessories from the stones and shells brought by the tsunami) and the determination of the older farmers and fishermen she met made an equally strong impression. It is much easier to be vigorous, cheerful, and determined when you’ve achieved a measure of independence and (therefore) dignity;  this is exactly what stable and well-organized NPOs like Peaceboat are able to provide for the remaining residents of this coastal city.

Long-term Peaceboat volunteers stay in touch with those who continue to live in their partially-damaged houses or in temporary housing, assessing their needs and concerns, and organizing projects to address specific challenges. Unlike government assistance, which often requires those in need to be proactive (come to the capital city of Sendai and fill out this 40 page claim form and we’ll consider your request), NPO assistance is based on the assessments of a mobile team, who go from place to place with eyes and ears open, ready to scope out the next potential project. Peaceboat is also bilingual, accepting volunteers from other cultures, and working with translators to make sure that work goes smoothly. (Technically, my daughter could have done this job, but she admitted to being greatly relieved that an older, more confident and outgoing woman took care of all translation jobs within her team. )

In short, Prime Minister Noda and his cohorts in Tokyo could learn a lot from the organization and spirit of Japan’s NPOs.  Fewer words, more action. Less waste, more conservation. Direct assessment of needs, smooth communication, and  healthy doses of self-denial, hard work, and sweat.  Nice going, Peaceboat.  A bunch of old folks in Ishinomaki know they’re not forgotten and have regained a measure of joy and dignity. And a mother in Hadano can feel good about sending her daughter off on the night bus to dig for stones along a desolate shoreline. It’s a given that her week’s work was just a drop in the bucket, but surely even the crankiest old geezer or the most cynical critic cannot doubt that every drop counts.  Find out more about the good work of Peaceboat here, and do consider a generous donation, or even joining their ranks.  Thank you again for reading, and for your continued interest in Japan.

Nice job, and thanks!

Tsunami damage: living with ghosts and spirits

I did not want to title this post “Thoughts on the One Year Anniversary of The Tohoku Triple Disaster”, but that’s essentially what it is.  Letting the March 11th date pass without forcing myself to pull my thoughts together would be “mottainai” (a wasted opportunity), says my new disciplined self, and I vow to wade into murky-looking, foul-smelling water, peering into the depths, waiting for the muck to settle a bit and things to become clearer.  Not transparent, but at least a bit clearer.  Stand back, then–I’m going in!

Okay, I’m in.

Lanterns welcome the spirits of the ancestors during the Obon festival

Once in the murky water, there’s no avoiding the images of those who died in the tsunami and have yet to be found; they’re floating just beneath the surface, in constant movement, anxious and restless. Buddhists believe that these souls are trapped, still bound to the physical world and unable to begin the journey to Paradise. They remain in this state until their bodies are discovered, their bones are cremated, and the ashes laid to rest in an urn in the family grave, which is the gateway into the spirit world. The gateway also allows them to return to their families during the month of August, for the Obon festival, when gravesites are cleaned and scrubbed and food and lanterns are set out to welcome the spirits of dead family members who have been watching over them throughout the year. The ancestors are called “Hotokesama”.

JIJI Press reports that the bodies of more than 3,000 tsunami victims have yet to be found, and around 500 bodies have yet to be identified.  Most of the bodies have been cremated, and their ashes stored in various repositories until claimed by family members. Read about a Buddhist monk, who made it his mission to watch over the ashes of these unknown men, women, and children, holding vigils and praying for them to be reunited with loving families.

And consider the story of Okawa Elementary School, in Ishinomaki.  It’s a story so painful that I cannot dwell on it for a long period of time. Here’s the gist of the story, which was recently highlighted in a BBC documentary film entitled “Japan’s Children of the Wave“.  The school was considered a safe haven for emergencies, both quakes and tsunamis, and after the quake teachers safely evacuated students onto the playground.  Some parents had sped to the school by car immediately after the quake, and were able to pick their children up on the school grounds and flee to safety. Those children whose parents did not arrive by car waited obediently outside as the tsunami, still unseen, began encroaching. While a teacher went in to make sure the school was empty of students, the wave hit, and students, teachers, and staff fled up an embankment behind the school.

Altar outside Okawa Elementary School

Seventy-five out of the one hundred and eight students perished, as did ten of the thirteen staff members, one of whom later committed suicide. Few adults were left to bear witness, and the one teacher who survived bore the brunt of the bereaved parents’ grief and anger.  The BBC documentary contains a film clip from a meeting called by parents , who demanded to know why the school staff had been unable to save their children. I forced myself to watch as the surviving teacher entered the room, head down, and attempted to reply to the barrage of questions and attacks from parents, some weeping audibly.

The film continues, following the attempts of one Okawa School mother to locate the remains of her daughter. The search for students’ bodies continued for months, but her daughter’s body did not turn up. When the official search was called off, she obtained a license to drive heavy machinery, rented a backhoe, and continued the search herself.  In the end, her daughter was found.  The mother faces the camera and reports, in an emotionless tone, how her daughter was discovered: afloat in the ocean, headless and limbless, a lump of flesh being pecked by gulls. Again, I could not watch that particular scene twice, and yet parents relive similar scenes night after night in their tortured dream-life. Those outside of Tohoku have the luxury of turning off the news or changing the channel, but the nightmare is continually replayed in the minds of those who lived through it and survived.  It’s no wonder that people see ghosts in Ishinomaki, and some taxi drivers refuse to even enter tsunami-devastated neighborhoods for fear that their passenger may be a spirit.

Other schools fared far differently than Okawa, and similar potential tragedies were averted by well-prepared staff and students, who began evacuating immediately and swiftly in the absence of official orders or organized direction. In June of 2011, I wrote about students from Kamaishi East Jr. High, whose school curriculum had included emergency preparation and drills. The quake immediately knocked out the school’s power system, so there were no PA announcements to follow; without hesitation, the students began evacuating themselves to higher ground, even before the teachers had time to step in and direct the exodus. The students fled in the lead, the teachers caught up and followed them, and 350 students from a neighboring elementary school also followed along.  All who joined in the evacuation were saved. The story was reported in the Japan Times last June, and today’s paper featured a follow-up story on the students and how their lives have changed in the past year.

After re-locating to a neighboring junior high school, most spent the year scrambling to

One year later: Kamaishi East teacher Shin Saito and three of his third-year students (photo by Setsuko Kamiya)

keep up with their studies in classrooms packed with between thirty-five to fifty students.  Many students live with their parents in cramped temporary housing units, adjusting themselves to a new way of life and the barren landscape that was their hometown. “As the debris is cleared away and the remaining houses are torn down, I’m starting to forget what our town used to look like,” said third-year student Aki Kawasaki, “And I hate that I’m starting to get used to the destroyed town.”  Still, she and her classmates are determined to move forward, and to share their experience with as many people as possible; Kawasaki herself has travelled to both Tokyo and Nagoya to speak out on behalf of tsunami victims and to share the hope and positivity inspired by her own story. How can fifteen-year olds outside of Tohoku relate to her story?  Can they even begin to imagine the fears and hardships she and her classmates have learned to deal with on a daily basis?  For this is how many survivors view the situation:  It’s not about “overcoming”, which implies a victory, but about dealing with hardship, which implies a refusal to accept defeat.

Multi-story container housing unit, November 2011 grand opening.

Families and individuals who lost their homes in the tsunami are now living in artificially-created communities known as “kasetsu jyutaku”, or temporary housing facilities.  Each apartment is small and tidy, and equipped with everyday basic appliances, right down to the rice cooker. No luxuries, but no-one expects things like dishwashers in the first place, so it seems almost miraculous to get the rice cooker, really.  The apartments are not well-insulated and many have been plagued by condensation build-up inside on freezing cold days.  One NHK news program that sticks in my memory featured an elderly woman, standing on a chair and vigorously mopping the ceiling of her tiny kitchen….”I do this every two hours!” she declared.  Volunteers have done their best to look out for the needs of those living in temporary housing, bringing fuel for kerosene heaters and fresh food and vegetables for the house-bound, shovelling snow and clearing paths, and arranging get-togethers for elderly people missing their daily routine of lessons and social gatherings. Some cities get more volunteers than others, and many residents in lesser-known temporary complexes remain anxious, afraid of behind left behind and forgotten in an alien landscape. They’ve lost the world as they knew it, and their place in that world as well.

……So what’s stopping them from forming new connections and beginning to create a new world for themselves??  Again, let me quote interviews with ordinary residents, broadcast on the NHK nightly news.  According to one resident who does not consider his temporary residence “home”,  a combination of grief and guilt gets in the way. In areas hit hardest by the tsunami, he said, many folks tread on pins and needles in an effort not to re-open freshly-healed and still painful wounds. He himself lives close to an old friend; the friend lost his son, while his own family survived intact. “I cannot look at my friend without feeling guilt that my own son survived while his did not. We used to talk about our children all the time, and now I have no idea what to say…”

Grief is a very private thing in this country.  I’ve only actually seen my own husband cry once, when a friend from college committed suicide.  Never seen my father-in-law tear up, either.  My mother-in-law will cry buckets over some ridiculous soap opera, but faces any sort of family crisis dry-eyed.  My co-worker hides in the bathroom to shed her tears. My next-door-neighbor shut herself away in a back room of the ceremonial hall during her father’s funeral so as not to face friends with a tear-stained face.  It breaks my heart that people cannot throw their arms around each other and speak about their loss, but having lived in this country as long as I have, I understand that many simply cannot.  Those who have lost family and friends still struggle to come to terms with their own pain, while those whose families survived feel overwhelmed by guilt and their own inability to communicate.

Even before the quake, there were relatively few trained counselors and psychiatrists in Japan, and those few qualified professionals are now stretched to their limits. Countless residents fall prey to depression and alcoholism, yet do not seek treatment. In Japan, any hint of psychological instability is considered a private and shameful matter, and families often choose to conceal the problem rather than seek a solution.

Friday’s Japan Times featured an editorial essay by Davinder Kumar, a global press officer for child rights and community development. After visiting the tsunami-stricken communities in Northern Japan, he writes of the downside of Japanese stoicism:

The perceived social duty to be resilient and the tendancy in Japan to confuse psycho-social care with mental illness means that those in real need may never seek help. Plan Japan [Kumar’s organization] had to adapt and evolve ways to reach very private people. Tea parties were used as an excuse to bring people together so they can talk and share their feelings. Psycho-social care had to be rebranded as child support.

Emotional support or psycho-social care is often neglected in disaster response, yet it is among the most basic needs of disaster survivors……expressing emotions and sharing feelings can prevent high-risk people from advancing to stages where they require specialized mental health care involving psychiatrists and clinical psychologists.

The events of 3/11…. have exposed a worrying neglect of emotional well-being in Japanese society, a sentiment echoed by mental health experts who fear that things could get worse. For prided stoicism and economic realities, the pressure on Japan is intense on Japan and its tsunami survivors to resume business as normal. As the world’s third largest economy races for rapid rebuilding and reconstruction, it must not lose sight of survivors’ emotional well-being. It is a challenge and a humanitarian need that must be met. For Japan’s recovery to be successful, it must be matched in mind.

Jeffrey Jousan, making the ladies of Tohoku very happy with his warm hugs. (Photo by Jacinta Hin)

So you see the fragility and some of the complexities associated with life in artificially- created communities in Japan, especially for the elderly and for children.  And how urgent the need is for listening ears, understanding hearts, kind words, and shared grief.  This is one reason that foreign volunteers have been wildly popular in Tohoku. They laugh, they cry, they have no trouble with big bear hugs (and speaking from experience, Japanese folks who would cringe at being touched by one of their own kind often find it a tolerable novelty to be hugged by a foreigner), and they bring the outside world into closed communities.

Much is being done, but the need is nearly overwhelming.  Take the time to click on the link to “Children of the Wave”, and steel yourself to see it through till the end.  It will bring home the depths of the tragedy experienced by families along the coast of Northern Japan, and the gravity of the challenges yet to be faced.  As the government bungles along attempting to reconstruct the country, we pray for the recovery of the minds and hearts of the tsunami victims and for the future of the children who lost homes, families, and emotional security at an early age. Pray that the remaining bodies of the tsunami victims will be found, their ashes be returned to loving families, and that their spirits will find the gateway to begin their journey to the next life.  And for those whose bodies will not be recovered, we must pray that their families can find some closure, and an outlet for their grief and pain.  Cities like Ishinomaki will continue to be haunted by ghosts and spirits for a long time to come. Thank you for reading, and continue to keep the people of Northern Japan in your thoughts and in your hearts. My next post will focus on the nuclear disaster; the water will be much murkier, but I’ll wade in and brave the stench. Good night.

Rubble: on the ground, and in our hearts

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  What the rubble was like last spring…

  Yesterday, a friend posted before and after photos of tsunami-affected areas in Tohoku on my facebook page. Picture after picture contrasted areas engulfed by water and rubble with the new rubble-free, grey, barren landscape. I viewed them with mixed emotions of marvel (at the transformation) and sometimes distress (at the dreariness of the vision. Some areas have been reduced to bare earth, devoid of houses, shops, trees, or any sign of life).  I recalled how enormous the task of clearing the rubble seemed last March and April, and also the spirit of humility and generosity that blew across the country as a whole. There was very little whining about the inconveniences of daily life last spring (and there are plenty such inconveniences in a country where even the rich do not live in large spacious houses), and people felt good about sacrifice.

  It was then that I wrote my first blog entries, trying desperately to record the changes in attitude of those around me, and to make sense of the complexities of the 3-11 disaster and the nation’s response.  My first entries were simply “Notes” on facebook, designed to keep family and friends in the US informed, and to assure them that I had not taken to my bed, wasting away with radiation sickness. Gradually, the writing became a necessary discipline for me, and I now blog for myself as well as others. Each post requires time, concentration, research, and a good deal of thought; by the time I’ve officially pressed the “Publish” button, I’ve stretched myself a bit further than before (hoping fervently that the elastic will continue to expand and not snap abruptly) and often convinced myself of something I had not believed at the onset of writing.

  This evening, I went scrolling back through old facebook posts looking for a particular entry I remembered writing about the rubble in Tohoku, and the spirit of sacrifice that impelled people to conserve energy and begin simplifying their lives in response to the suffering of their neighbors in the north. The post dates from April 16th, before the announcement that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had suffered a meltdown, and focuses on tsunami damage rather than radiation. Here’s the post, exactly as I recorded it at the time:

  ……When I left the house today, cherry blossom petals were blowing through the 

  

  Sakura blooming in Tohoku, 2011

  air, lining the dirt road and sometimes settling on the heads of pedestrians. Very pleasant, no clean-up involved, and completely biodegradable. In contrast, of course, to the challenge of Tohoku, where the clean-up will take years. The clearing of rubble and debris has officially begun, but it’s a slow and delicate process. The clean-up of Kobe after the Hanshin Quake took a full three years, and experts predict that  Northern Japan will take even longer. In addition to the clean-up, the restoration of the environment in the Fukushima area could take between ten (according to Toshiba Corp.)  and thirty (according to Hitachi) years. That’s at least one childhood, and potentially one-third of a lifetime.

  The work is delicate because of the bodies which still lay buried underneath the rubble of cities such as Minami Sanriku, where eighty percent of the buildings were either damaged or destroyed. Soldiers (both US and Japanese, working together) go on foot with picks and poles, prying and prodding. Any personal mementos such as albums or photographs are recovered and put aside.  If no bodies appear to be trapped underneath the remains of a house,  heavy machinery will move in to break down the structure, and eventually cart off the broken bits to……where???  That is often the problem. The city of Fukushima is using their  former  park as a dumping ground, but it is fast filling up, and the city lacks open flat land. Currently, it takes approximately one day to break down and dispose of a single house. Work proceeds at a frustratingly slow pace, but it is proceeding, and it’s being done carefully as well, with respect to the dead and to the survivors who once lived in the flattened residences.

  Cities such as Minami Sanriku, Ishinomaki, Kesennuma, and parts of Fukushima have literally been reduced to rubble, which is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as “a loose mass of angular fragments of rock or masonry crumbled by natural or human forces”. In addition to the rubble, the ground is littered with random fragments of family life. Look up “Kesennuma” on YouTube, and you will see videos of a strange landscape: a bizarre goulash of piano keyboards, tile roofs, baby strollers, planks, poles, concrete blocks, window glass and front doors, all torn from the houses which are no longer recognizable as houses….except for those

  

  Makeshift hot bath for shelter evacuees

  houses whose second stories survived intact, and stand proudly amid the disarray. The clean-up of the fragments of houses and buildings is known as “Gareki Sagyou”, or “Rubble-Clearing”,  and it is nasty business….yet today’s International Herald Tribune posted a photo of two middle-aged men enjoying a hot bath outside, amid the wreckage, and looking quite jolly. They had rigged a fire under a large tank full of water, and were lounging Japanese-style, with white bath towels on their heads. So  the nastiest of work does have its rewards, and a measure of normality is beginning to return to even the hardest-hit areas.

  “Gareki Sagyou” refers to actual wreckage–the clearing away of things that cannot be salvaged. But what about those things best defined as “obstacles”??  I refer now to large objects which are in themselves intact, but have come to rest in bizarre and problematic places. In the days following the tsunami, the world saw photos of ships of all shapes and sizes, wedged into store windows or resting on top of buildings!  And the cars!!  Cars everywhere: overturned, sideways, in houses, on houses, cars on cars!  Often, the ships and cars survived their journey quite well,

  

  Post-tsunami morning commute

  and were in excellent condition when they landed. Thursday evening’s news featured a grim-faced man, the owner of a humungous trawler: a tuna boat, which had  washed ashore and  been deposited smack in the middle of a major highway, effectively blocking traffic in both directions. Since the boat was completely intact (aside from being in the wrong place), his insurance refused to cover for “damages”, and he was at a loss at how on earth to remove the monstrous nuisance. “Of course, I have a guilty conscience,” he said sadly. “My ship is inconveniencing the entire city, and I don’t have the means to move it!”  Hopefully, since the sad-faced man was seen by the entire nation on NHK TV, some wealthy celebrity or individual will be moved to help out, and I wonder if there will be a follow-up.

  

  Getting cars off the runway: Sendai airport

  The airport in Sendai was also beset with a similar “obstacle”: five THOUSAND cars piled up on the runway!  If that’s not deserving of an exclamation point, I don’t know what is. Flights were immediately cancelled, and the airport authorities despaired of opening again any time in the near future. Enter the US military, who volunteered the services of a unit who specialized in turning ruined landing strips into forward supply bases for US aircraft. Within four weeks, this US unit, working together with the Japanese military forces, had not only cleared the runway, but left the cars stacked in neat rows along the airport edge. I especially like the detail about the “neat rows”, though the problem of disposing of the cars has not yet been solved. In Wednesday’s international paper, a Colonel Toth was quoted as saying, “We are using skills developed in combat operations for humanitarian purposes…..This is the most rewarding thing we’ve done.”  Any arguments with that line of thinking??  No, I didn’t think so. The newspaper article  praised the US team for their tact and low-key profile, and the Japanese government for throwing pride to the wind and graciously accepting the help. Both sides worked together admirably.

  Meanwhile, back in the Tokyo area……the trains are still running less

  

  Tokyo’s bright lights were dim last spring.

  frequently,and mostly in the dark. This does not seem to bother folks; today  I watched one older man cheerfully practicing his golf swing in the pitch dark of a tunnel on the Odakyu Line. After a few minutes of this, he began passing the time by practicing his kanji strokes, writing invisible and complicated Chinese characters in the air. It was quite warm in the train, but no air conditioning, so the passengers sweat silently. In the stations, drink machines are still up and running, but not for long. The Tokyo prefecture has vowed to shut down the drink machines for the summer months to save energy–good heavens!!  Japan without vending machines! Escalators are sometimes on and sometimes off now ( depending on the time of day) and stations are either dark, or dimly lighted, even at night. Outside the stations, high school students across the country are lined up with wooden boxes around their necks, crying, “Give to the people of Tohoku!!” …..and everyone is doing just that.

  Because of the continuing aftershocks, we think of our neighbors in the North every day,  checking our cell phones to see what the magnitude of the latest quake was in Fukushima or Sendai. Those of us who are not organizing, fundraising, or sending goods to the affected areas are at least donating money. Elementary school children across the country are writing letters to the children in Tohoku and dropping coins in the jars on the counter at the 7-11 stores. Kumiko Makihara, a writer and translator living in Tokyo believes that the severity of the March 11th disaster has been a cleansing experience for the rest of the country, “…making us more tolerant, and softening our rigid adherence to social norms.” Certainly, it has brought the pursuit of luxury  and rampant consumption to a screeching halt. Although Disneyland has re-opened this week (with great fanfare!), it is certain that the upcoming Golden Week holiday will be subdued this year, and folks will be sticking close to home. It feels good to be clearing away some of the rubble in and around our hearts; we are living a bit more simply, with fewer complaints and more generosity. Most of us still have a long way to go before all the rubble is gone, but at least we’ve made a start.

  …..and that’s how things stood last April. The one year anniversary is just around the corner, and my next few entries will be an attempt to assess some of the challenges that have emerged since then, particularly those associated with the spread of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi plant and the consequent evacuation of 62,610 residents of Fukushima Prefecture (the figure given by the prefectoral government as of this February).  It’s been a major upheaval.  Outside of Tohoku the changes are harder to discern,  yet change has arrived and the country is not the same.  More on that in my next post…..which may take a while, but I’ll be back. Until then,  goodnight and thank you for reading.

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Hello?? Any Young People Out There??

My daughter and I took ourselves to another good-sized anti-nuclear rally in Tokyo this past Sunday,

“Hey! Lower your banners! We can’t see the Nobel Prize speaker!”

spending all day on our feet, enjoying the crisp, cold winter air. The day began with craning our necks to see and hear the speakers in Yoyogi Park (Oe Kensaburou-san may very well have been inspirational, but we couldn’t hear a word of the speech or see a thing. What we heard was, “Put down your banners!!  We can’t see!  Heeeeeey! Put down your banners!” And by the time this message had reached the stage area and the colorful anti-nuke banners had been collapsed, the speech had finished. Sigh. ).  The day continued as we followed our new friend Helen from the BBC Radio on her quest to find “good sounds”, and ended as we joined in the anti-nuke parade

BBC’s Helen Grady gets some good sounds at the rally!

( Genpatsu Hantai! ), which meandered at a snail’s pace through the Harajuku shopping district. The time flew by as we picked up friends along the way, met up with old “demo tomo” (friends who you know from past demonstrations), admired the costumes of other participants, and engaged in fleeting conversations with random strangers marching alongside us. By the time we had seen Helen safely to the Tokyo train station and settled ourselves into a restaurant for some solid food ( ramen-burgers and octopus balls at Yoyogi Park hardly count as nourishiment ), we realized we were exhausted. Truly exhausted. The kind of exhaustion that leaves you doubting whether your legs will obey the command to stand up again once you’ve collapsed into an actual chair.  But it had been a splendid and satisfying day.

Splendid and satisfying, except for one thing. “Where were the kids my age?” pouted my daughter (she’s 18). “I kept looking for some of my classmates, but didn’t see a single one. So many old guys, but no teenagers at all!”  Actually, we did bump into exactly one college student, who had come to the rally by himself.  Perhaps feeling forlorn, he latched onto my Ellen during the parade and tested her patience by insisting on practicing English with her as

“You can take our picture, but no interviews in English, please!”

they marched. We also saw a very attractive young couple, but they (unlike the Waseda college student) fled in a panic when Helen from the BBC asked if they spoke English and would they do an interview?  And that was it really.  A rally of 15,000 people, with only a small scattering of high school and college age students.  Well, in all honesty, I didn’t see any high-schoolish looking kids at all.  Pretty pathetic, really, and I wondered how the retirees and middle-aged company workers were enjoying the very loud rock band that kicked off the rally in the park. Probably enduring it and waiting for the speeches to start. Don’t get me wrong: the energy and spirit of the older protesters is admirable and astonishing; it should be balanced, however, by an equal or greater number of young people. The future, after all, is theirs, right??  So where were they?  Where ARE they??

Old Nellie and Japanese students wear blinkers.

Any number of places, is my guess. Third year middle school students and third year high school students are in the final stages of “ojuken”, the testing process that decides their future (or so it seems at the time).  Their life is literally on hold –and their mother’s life as well, in some cases– until the tests have finished, the results are out, and their high school or college has been decided. Those shooting for high level public schools often have only one chance: a written test.  No essays, personal interview, or other method of appeal available.  It’s no wonder they are balls of anxiety, and their mothers go gray overnight. Those kids certainly aren’t going to be marching through Harajuku to protest nuclear power plants–their mothers would disown them!  Most students in this year of their life would see a rally as having no connection whatsoever to their future; they’re like horses with blinkers attached to keep them from bolting at extraneous distractions. Those blinkers are attached by their mothers, their cram school coaches, and the pressure of their peers, and most are unable to imagine life without them.  Nuclear power is a vague worry, but lies well outside the radius of the blinkers and is therefore easily ignored. Their own immediate future is what they’re chasing after, and how current events might relate to their future or to a broader vision of the nation as a whole is not their concern.

Well then, what about the rest of the young people?  Those not preparing for exams have weekends free, right? Why do we not see them at rallys?  Sadly enough, I believe that many Japanese young people are not emotionally strong enough to participate. Until this point, I’ve been rather tongue-in-cheek, but the subject of mental health in Japan is a serious one, and one that’s troubled me since I spent five years teaching English in the Hadano public schools.  Sunday’s Japan Times column “Counterpoint” featured an excellent and moving article by Roger Pulvers on just this subject, calling depression “….the big gorilla on the basketball court, the one that’s stealing the ball but isn’t seen because everyone is willfully looking the other way.”

Pulvers, citing statistics from the Japan Committee for Prevention and Treatment of Depression, writes about conditions in Japanese schools, where 1 out of every 12 elementary school students suffers from depression; at the middle school level, this jumps to 1 out of 4.  He believes the actual numbers may be higher, due to misdiagnosis and unrecognized cases. In my five year teaching stint in the Hadano City elementary schools, I witnessed many children struggling with both anxiety and depression, feeling within myself an uncomfortable mixture of dismay, helplessness, and relief (that my own children were fairly well-adjusted and happy with their lives).  Many, if not most of these students become “futoukou”, or unable to attend school.  “Futoukou” is spoken of as a sickness in Japan (children suffering from it display physical symptoms such as headaches, vomiting, and unsteadiness), and children who fall prey to it have very few options.  Home-schooling is not recognized by the National Board of Education, and “alternative schools” are few and far between.

What sort of Japanese children drop out of school at a young age?  Let’s start with… extremely intelligent children who are bored with school (skipping grades not allowed).  Next, there are returnee children from abroad who are unable to re-adjust. And public school children planning to take exams for private schools.  And shy girls who get their growth spurt early on and cannot handle their sudden conspicuous height.  Of course, there are overweight children (a distinct minority here and easy targets for bullying).  And children with tics,  stutterers, and late developers (repeating grades is not allowed either. Children progress to the next grade whether or not they’re ready intellectually).  And children of different nationalities.  I have not seen statistics, but I imagine that since the 3-11 disaster, both children living in Fukushima and those who have evacuated to other prefectures have experienced frequent absences from school due to stress, anxiety, and depression.

And what is done to help these children?  I saw many different approaches used, depending on the school, and on the severity of the child’s distress. One girl at a small rural school in Hadano was able to “attend school” ( avoiding the problem of missed days, which can prevent graduation), but was unable to attend a single class. She ran straight for the school nurse’s office the minute her mother dropped her off and stayed there, literally clinging to the skirt of the extremely patient young nurse, who served as a kindly babysitter. This girl did not want to miss my monthly English lesson, and would creep into the room  after her classmates were seated and the class had begun. I would see her sitting on the floor in the back of the room, trying to be invisible, with the ever-present school nurse at her side.

Another boy I knew was studying to enter a private middle school. His evenings were spent at cram school, where the academic level was much higher than that of the public school he attended during the day. Bored with his studies, he began using his class time to study for his middle school entrance exams. Although he kept up stellar grades, this didn’t sit well with either his teacher or his classmates. Rather than defending his position (which this very intelligent child was capable of doing), he simply dropped out, for the entire last half of his sixth grade year. His mother, in a frantic effort to make sure he graduated properly, was able to drag him to school (Literally. This was a boy who threw up at the front gate, got jelly-legged, and refused to move) the required number of times to obtain his graduation certificate.  He successfully passed the entrance exams for the private middle school, but was so acclimated to “futoukou” life that he then refused to attend the new school as well. His mother, in a last ditch effort, drove him to school each day, where he was met by two stout male teachers. The teachers physically removed him from the car, carried him into the school, and deposited him in his classroom every morning for a full semester until he overcame his fear. In the end, he was able to return to the system and adjust himself to the school’s expectations. Whatever you may think of it (and I attempted to remain neutral in the telling), that’s the bare bones of the story.

There are many more stories, of older children who take “futoukou” one step further and become “hikikoumori”.  This is a condition where young people (and some adults as well) literally lock themselves in their rooms, refusing contact with not only their peers at school, but with parents and siblings as well. The boy I knew who had to be carried into school also went through a period of hikikoumori.  His mother told me calmly (how she could retain her calm demeaner was beyond me) that she would leave food outside his bedroom door and pick up the empty tray each morning. He only showered when there was no-one else in the house, and she’d find his clothes in the hamper every other day. Other than that, no communication at all. Personally, I think I’d borrow an axe and start whacking away at the locked door.

Manga lovers abroad may know “Densha Otoko“, the inspiring story of a train geek who is

“Densha Otoko” feels secure in his own room. Note the anime figurines lining his bookshelves.

borderline “hikikoumori”. Though the hero of the manga is able to leave the house (he goes back and forth to Akihabara, the electronics district), he’s unable to communicate with anyone face-to-face, finding security and solace in the internet.  Through a chance encounter with a kind-hearted attractive girl, he’s able to overcome his fear and rejoin society.  Most of the kids I came in contact with at the local schools were already long-term sufferers as small children, and I do not know how their stories will end.

Many Japanese children, unable to “read the air” (discern how to fit in naturally, without disrupting the status quo),  begin to drop out of society at an early age.  The school system is not kind to those children, who are seen as “meiwaku” (causing a disturbance and inconveniencing others),  and good psychological help is not easily available. A friend in Tokyo whose child is troubled waits a month for an appointment with a professional counselor.  These young people are busy fighting the battle to get up every morning, to leave the house, and to find a place in society where they feel safe and loved. They live from day to day, and anti-nuclear protests are not on their radar screen.

Well, alright then….what about the remainder of the students not battling depression or some form of anxiety?  Why are they standing along the sidewalks of Harajuku (in droves) instead of  marching through the streets carrying placards?  My guess is that although these kids are successfully maneuvering their academic and social lives, they lack the courage and

Proud to be seen marching with the Lego-Headed lady. Who wouldn’t be??

initiative to step outside the boundaries of their familiar social patterns: school, club, part-time job, and shopping or drinking on weekends. I guess it must be rather embarrassing, after all, to be seen in the same company as Lego-headed women, men wearing frog masks (in support of amphibians suffering from the effects of radiation), and gender-neutral folks with flowers sprouting from the tops of their heads…….No, no, wait a minute!  I would have loved putting together my own demo costume at their age!  What’s wrong with them?  Living in Tokyo, they have both the opportunity to participate in rallys and the freedom to express themselves without the fear of potential stigmatization that Fukushima residents experience daily. Okay, so they might lose a friend or two, or be considered a weirdo in some circles, but isn’t it all worth it?

Time after time I take the train into the big city, fight my way through the crowds in Shinjuku, manage the transfer to the government building district of Kasumigaseki, where women from Fukushima still occupy a tent along the sidewalk….and find the cavernous train station deserted. Kasumigaseki boasts over 13 exits, all of them accessed by eerie-dreary quiet concrete tunnels and staircases. Taking exit 12A, I climb the stairs and emerge onto the street where the Fukushima Women’s tent is still standing; it’s been there since September, when the hunger strikers set up camp. Next to the Women’s Tent is the Datsu Genpatsu (Stop Nuclear Power Plants) Tent. When I

Saito Michiko-san, who’s been speaking out for forty years. Puts those youngsters to shame!

last visited three weeks ago, it was a cold, cheerless day, and both tents were closed and sealed for the sake of warmth . Outside, a frail but beautiful elderly woman (“forty years of anti-nuclear protesting”) was speaking into a microphone, urging the few passers-by to visit the tents and learn about the situation in Fukushima. Inside the Women’s Tent, a handful of women and one transvestite, with perfectly applied lipstick and a bejewelled cell phone, were huddled into a heated table, discussing recent events. Inside the Datsu Genpatsu Tent, a steady trickle of visitors engaged in debate with four older “Occupiers”, who have been holding down the fort and sleeping in the tent at night, despite the bitter cold.  I encountered only a single college student that day, whom I promptly friended on facebook and will stay in touch with from here on in.  Making my way home that day, I passed through Shinjuku again, feeling the contrast between the station teeming with young people, and the too-quiet atmosphere of the Occupiers’ tents at Kasumigaseki.

All I can say is that the non-involvement of young people in the Tokyo/Kanagawa area is truly a shame. It’s a loss for the anti-nuclear movement, and young people themselves are missing out on history. My daughter attended a global conference on alternative energy in Yokohama last month….and again, was surprised to find no-one her own age attending the workshops.  Literally, noone.  Hello?  A global conference on how to change the entire way the country’s infrastructure functions?  Open to anyone able to register on the internet and pay the $30.oo entrance fee?  This is exciting stuff.  Why would young people NOT be there?  Because their friends aren’t going.  Because they will know no-one there. Because it’s something they know nothing about and feel no connection to. Because they’re not used to taking the initiative and doing something outside of their familiar routine.  Probably a combination of all these things.

In contrast, Japan’s seniors are outspoken and active. They regularly plunge into rivers (twice a year in my neighborhood) to dredge up trash and debris, wake up at four-thirty on hiking trips to reach the the top of the mountain before noon, patrol the streets with armbands and flashlights looking for loiterers or gangs of potential troublemakers, form committees to teach traditional skills to their neighborhood children, pack themselves onto busses to attend anti-nuclear rallies, attend alternative energy forums, take a mind-boggling variety of courses, classes, and lessons, and are not afraid to be interviewed, either in English or Japanese.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that many do all this while juggling the care of their grandchildren.  Who will carry the torch when they’re unable to?

My guess is that the leaders will be people like the Hunger Strikers for the Future: four

Hunger Strikers for the Future: They’ll be doing good things, and maybe even big things.

college-age students who spent 10 days sitting along the sidewalk outside the Kasumigaseki buildings  in peaceful protest to draw attention to their cause: the closing down of all of Japan’s on-line nuclear power plants, and a halt to the construction of any new ones.  They took in nothing but water and salt during the long hot days in early September .  I visited them twice during the ten day stretch, expecting to find signs of listlessness and fatigue, or at least crankiness, but they remained almost miraculously cheerful and patient up through the final day when they broke their fast and held a news conference. I found the hunger strikers themselves (and their entourage of faithful friends) to be well-informed, well-educated, cool and collected, and in possession of impressive reserves of inner strength. Responding with respect and thoughtfulness to questions posed by passers by and reporters alike, no-one could possibly accuse them of being subversive.  Watch their leader, Okamoto Naoya, explaining exactly why they are protesting, and sharing his vision of a nuclear-free future.

The hunger strikers are Japanese, but there are foreigners in Japan doing amazing

Jamie El-Banna, hard at work in Ishinomaki

things out of love for their adopted country as well.  I recently heard of Jamie El-Banna, a 26 year old from the UK who has lived and worked in Japan since 2008. You can read in detail about Jamie and his organization (“It’s Not Just Mud”) in this blog spotlighting  foreign volunteers in Japan.. To give a brief summary, El- Banna was living in Osaka at the time of the quake and travelled to Tohoku as a volunteer in May; camping on the grounds of a University in Ishinomaki known as “Tent City” and finding each and every day fulfilling, he realized he was in no hurry to return to his former life.  In a move that would unsettle most Japanese young person of the same age, he swiftly decided to leave his regular job and apartment in Osaka and installed himself in Ishinomaki permanently.  In the Tent City, he networked, and eventually formed his own volunteer organization made up of like-minded young people.  Their energy, skill, and good humor so impressed the locals that they were given two partially-damaged houses to use as their own base camp.  Undaunted by the “festering sludge under the floors”, rotting insulation, and shattered windows, El-Banna and his friends restored the houses in addition to their other community projects. These include gutting tsunami-damaged houses (done by those with strength, experience, and expertise), restoring and cleaning photographs damaged by the tsunami (done by those who cannot dig, haul, or do carpentry work), and delivering fresh fruits and veggies, winter coats, kerosene heaters, and fuel to those in temporary shelters who are carless.  Jamie, who admits to having no previous experience in volunteer work, now has his own soon-to-be-official NPO and a very professional blog site. He also keeps a personal blog, in which he  professes his desire to “become a super handsome force for good.”  Now that’s my kind of positive role model!  Japanese children, take note!

Rather than waiting around for central and local governments to find and implement solutions for them, young people like the hunger strikers and Jamie El-Banna are unafraid to buck the system and take risks in an attempt to affect change. They are already in the vanguard of the anti-nuclear movement and reconstruction projects. In addition, the high school students, college students, and young office workers who spend their weekends in Tohoku volunteering with Peaceboat (whose weekend trips to clean up Ishinomaki are booked solid, my daughter says) or Jamie’s “It’s Not Just Mud” group, are providing the people-power and experience needed to continue the fight for years to come.  Mothers who have learned to educate themselves and be pro-active for the sake of their children are creating wider networks and helping to foster ties between Fukushima and the rest of the country.  Renegade academics, scientists, and whistle-blowing experts are making sure that accurate assessment trumps propaganda; bloggers are recording all this, and making sure that those who speak truthfully become heros in the end.  Skilled translators are then making sure that everything gets passed around in as many languages as possible.  Artists, actors, writers, and musicians are providing the inspiration and energy to keep the movement flourishing.  I wish there were more leaders, more willing volunteers, more brave mothers, more renegade academics and whistle-blowers, more skilled bloggers and translators, many more artists, writers, and musicians, and at least twice as many young people involved.  In the end, that may happen, as the chain linking together those devoted to re-inventing Japan’s future becomes steadily longer and steadily stronger.

It will take years and years from here on in.  I still go through phases of impatience and

“Let’s live the slow life, not the life ruled by nuclear power”

frustration, wanting wrongs to be righted in a more timely fashion, but these days I try to return to the “Spirit of Madei” way of thinking. In fact, during my last visit to the Fukushima Tent in Tokyo, I found myself face to face with the words of the Iitate Village Mayor. “Let’s live the slow life, not the life based on nuclear power!” read the sign taped inside the tent. “Do you really believe this?” I asked the folks gathered around the tiny gas heater, warming their hands and snacking on Taiyaki cakes.  “Do you really believe that living gently and thoughtfully will instigate change in the end?”  “Absolutely,” replied Obitani Reiko, a 63 year old woman from Yokohama.  Obitani and several other friends live in the tent, spreading their bedrolls in a curtained-off part of the tent each night. Reiko-san sends me weekly updates in Japanese each week on the happenings in Kasumigaseki, and seems impervious to the frustrations I fall prey to. She is confident that, to quote the old Aesop’s Fable, “Slow and steady wins the race.” Let us hope that’s the case. It’s very late, so good night, and thank you so much for reading.

“Save the Amphibians”!

An Act of Murder?

Yes, this is a pretty extreme title for one of my blog entries, but I’m only quoting the words of the Mayor of  Namie Town, Fukushima.  My previous post,” The Spirit of Madei“, told the story of another Mayor , Norio Kanno of  Iitate Village, who advocated “slow life”,  controlling one’s anger, and living in harmony with man and nature. While writing that particular post, I came to feel a great respect for the thoughtfulness and restraint of Mayor Kanno. I still feel that respect.

However, I am forced to admit that following the Mayor’s philosophy of retaining one’s dignity by not making a fuss will not effect change.  Each day brings new and more outrageous news reports, and I’ve already been knocked off  my peaceful plateau by stories about what happens when citizens don’t make a fuss. Mind you, I still think that retaining one’s serenity in the face of chaos is an admirable thing, and though I feel completely comfortable marching in demos, I would not be comfortable hollering into a microphone or leading the ranks. This past month’s news, however, makes me think I may need to move outside my comfort zone. For instance…

News reports during the third week in January featured reports from a town in Fukushima called Nihonmatsu, where

Apartment complex in Nihonmatsu…looked fancy, but it hid a deadly secret. (photo by Gen Hashimoto, Asahi Shinbun)

evacuees from Namie Town had been re-located. Children living in a newly-built apartment complex had been wearing dosimeters indoors and out, and monitoring the results; when a Jr. High school student’s dosimeter showed consistently high readings (radiation levels higher inside than out, and higher on the ground floor than on the upper levels), investigations showed that the culprit was….concrete. Ironically, the stones used to make the cement for their brand-new apartment complex had come from a quarry in their former irradiated  hometown, Namie.

Neither the NHK televised report nor the reports in the daily papers used adjectives like “ironic” or  “unbelievable”–just the facts. Well, reports are one thing, but this is also a human interest story that begs to be written.  Kevin Dodd, in his “Senrinomichi” blog, uses the analogy of a ghost train to describe Fukushima. While passengers doze in their seats, unaware of exactly where they are and what is passing by, the train progresses without ever reaching its destination .  That is, unless (and this is the crucial part) passengers force themselves to stay awake and write postcards containing the stories, to be recorded in history and remembered.  Thanks, Kevin, for that analogy, and here’s my postcard.

More on the contaminated concrete: a January 15th report from Kyodo News, stated that some 5,280 tons of crushed stones were shipped to some 19 different contractors from a quarry in Namie between the day of the quake and April 22nd.  By the following week, investigations showed that at least sixty houses and condominium buildings in Fukushima Prefecture had been tainted by concrete made from Namie stones.  According to another article from Kyodo News on January 24th, the same concrete was also used to re-build the infrastructure of damaged cities. In other words, Fukushima cars travel along roads built from radioactive asphalt, and walkers may stroll along the river, following the radioactive embankments.  By January 26th, the amount of stones shipped from the quarry was listed at 5,725 tons, and more temporary housing units in Fukushima were deemed “likely” to have have been built from the radioactive concrete.

According to the head of the quarry in Namie, “I never imagined the crushed stones were radioactive when I shipped them. I feel very sorry for those who have been involved.” Fukushima Prefecture officials will help in finding new accommodations for those living on the first floor of the Nihonmatsu condominium, where radiation levels are highest. The Central Government “closely studied” the distribution routes of the Namie stones and the radiation levels of various housing units, but has declared that the annual radiation exposure in the units will not be high enough to warrant evacuation.

And that’s it: there’s been no news since then. Plenty of other head-shaking and even jaw-dropping incidents to focus on ( particularly the revelation that the central government’s   Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency failed to keep records for 23 meetings held directly after the nuclear catastrophe. No records—nothing at all. They are now in the process of “reconstructing” the events of each meeting, for what it’s worth, ten months down the road. Although failing to keep public records is in violation of Japanese law, there is in fact no punishment involved for perpetrators, so the central government is legally off the hook, although its reputation at home and abroad is even further tarnished. Never mind tarnished, it’s shot. There’s really nothing left to uphold. )

Namie Town

Since the news has already moved on, let me go back and piece together the story of Namie Town for those of you who are not yet in the know.  As you can see from the photo, Namie  stretches from East to Northwest, and borders the ocean. The eastern area  in particular suffered heavy damage from both the quake and the tsunami.  After the explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the town was under an information blackout which would prove to bring about tragic and still-reverberating consequences. While the citizens of Namie Town (dealing with the fresh emotional horror of the quake, the aftershocks, the tsunami damage, and the ensuing fear of the uncertain situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant) were being assured that radiation levels outside of a 10 kilometer radius were safe, the central government was reviewing data based on radiation measurements that showed a blanket of radioactive fallout stretching as far south as Tokyo.

On March 14th, the central government’s computer-produced map predicting the pattern of  the radiation fallout (the SPEEDI map, now a well-known and infamous entity) was shared with the US Military. This , oficials explained afterwards, was an effort to ensure US support, advice, and cooperation in the days to come. The US used this information in deciding on their own “safety zone” of a full 80 kilometers from the Daiichi plant.  The SPEEDI map was not shared directly with residents, or even with the local government officials in Tohoku, who desperately needed the information to make life-changing decisions on behalf of their citizens. In fact, in those first days, there were no communications at all from the central government.  Naoto Kan was busy directing an attempt to dump  water from a tiny helicopter onto the smoking inferno that was the power plant. We all watched, as time and again the wind blew the meagre amount of water off-course and another helicopter bravely hovered over exactly the right spot in a futile effort to do something–anything–to avert further disaster. And so, lacking guidance and vital information, the Mayor of Namie decided to evacuate his people North, to the area of the town that lay furthest away from the still-smoking reactors.

The people of Namie,  alerted by a community radio station broadcast, evacuated to the district of Tsushima, a mountainous region lying a full 30 kilometers Northwest of TEPCO, but still within the confines of Namie.  Approximately 10,000 residents fled to Tsushima, where they were welcomed with generosity,  receiving shelter and comfort as families, friends, and strangers set up housekeeping together in what they believed was a safe refuge. Mizue Kanno, who owns a spacious house in Tsushima, took in 25 friends and strangers on March 12th. She later told her story to Japan’s Asahi Shinbun, where it was published in serial form, under the title, “The Prometheus Trap“.

The serial story reveals that the radiation levels in Tsushima were, in fact, dangerously high on that day, but that police were forbidden to tell locals. Kanno-san and her

Kanno-san’s  house in Tsushima (photo by Jun Kaneko)

housemates learned of this from two mysterious men in white protective suits who drove to the house, stopping only long enough to warn them to evacuate immediately, then speeding off into the night.  Sounds like something out of a novel??  Well, everything was surreal at that point in time, and Kanno-san and her new friends decided to trust the warning.  Leaving in staggered groups, they all fled the Tsushima district; “Prometheus Trap” follows up, giving details on how they fared and where they eventually landed.  Many others who had not been warned and chose to stay on in the district were exposed to varying levels of radiation.  Although I share in the widespread dismay over the lack of detailed media coverage on many aspects of the 3-11 triple disaster, I give credit to Asahi for publishing the story, eight installments in all, in both its English and Japanese editions.

Let me continue the story where Prometheus Trap leaves off.

Take a leap of the imagina, and put yourself in the shoes of Namie mayor, Tamotsu Baba. He had successfully taken the initiative and evacuated citizens from the eastern part of the town when the western half of Namie (the Tsushima district) was then declared to be dangerous, and designated as part of a new, expanded evacuation zone. Those who had taken refuge in Tsushima from the eastern Namie were forced to move again, this time scattering far and wide. The Mayor himself  became homeless, and felt the heavy burden of having chosen the wrong refuge for the citizens who had depended on him.

Some of the Namie citizens who fled the Tsushima district in March  found shelter in the northerly village of Iitate, whose Mayor Norio Kanno welcomed them to his “slow life” community.  Happy ending at last?  No, not yet.  Those of you who read my previous post know what happened in Iitate:  an unexpected northwesterly wind had blown a blanket of radioactive snow straight across the village, effectively causing radiation levels matching–and in some places exceeding–levels within the evacuation zone. This was discovered some weeks after the fact, and Iitate was also evacuated, marking the third move for a number of Namie families.

Niihonmatsu in relation to the evacuation zone

Other Namie citizens fled from Tsushima to Nihonmatsu, a city lying well to the west of the evacuation zone…. and now it has been discovered that evacuee housing in Nihonmatsu has been built with radioactive cement from the Namie rock quarry, which continued to function after the majority of its citizens had evacuated. When I saw the article in the Japan Times, my heart sank.  It seems that families from Namie have been betrayed many times over.

The radioactive cement incident is terribly disturbing, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry can certainly be blamed for establishing no radiation restrictions on crushed stones (if other products within radioactive zones have restrictions, why would stones not?) , and for allowing shipments to continue to leave the quarry well after residents, fearing for their health, had deserted the area. The head of the quarry’s protest (“I never imagined the stones might be radioactive!”) also rings hollow, and the central government’s easy dismissal of the incident is troubling as well.  I remembered that the Mayor of Iitate  had also fought to ensure that industries in his village could continue to function after the evacuation orders were in place, and wondered if  similar damage was unknowingly done as a result of his desire to preserve his beloved Iitate’s economy. Complicated, isn’t it?  I don’t pretend to have an answer, but I certainly recognize and feel the injustice suffered by the residents of both Iitate Village and Namie Town.

Now, fast-forward to January 2012, ten months after the quake.  Namie Town’s Mayor Baba has learned that vital information that could have changed the fate of thousands of his town residents (the data contained in the SPEEDI map) had been purposely witheld. Apologizing for the “delay”,  Reconstruction Minister Goshi Hosono explains that the central government had  “feared it might trigger panic. ”  Ummmm…maybe a bit of panic had actually been in order, and certainly a measure of haste would have limited residents’ exposure to the high radiation levels in Namie following the quake and nuclear explosions.  Certainly, if the mayors of both Iitate and Namie had realized the scope of the radioactive fallout, they would have acted differently, evacuating residents to areas well beyond the danger zone and preventing later multiple moves.

Mayor Baba of Namie recently spoke out in an Australian news broadcast, regretting that, “Because we had no information we were unwittingly evacuating to an area where the radiation level was high, so I’m very worried about the people’s health. I feel pain in my heart but also rage over the poor actions of the government.”  Yes, his word choice was “rage”.  And it’s understandable rage at that. One never hears such extreme  language in Japan (at least I personally do not), and his concluding statement is even more startling from the Japanese point of view.  The Mayor himself realizes he’s breaking a social taboo by beginning it with an apology: “It’s not nice language, but I still think it was an act of murder. What were they thinking when it came to the people’s dignity and lives?”  The answer is, tragically, that the central government was not thinking at all about either dignity or life, and Fukushima residents have every right to feel betrayed.

In fact, so do residents of Tokyo, and my own Kanagawa Prefecture. While we assumed ourselves well out of harm’s way, data generated by the government that we never saw clearly showed otherwise. Specifically, it showed that radiation levels on March 15th were alarmingly high, not just in Tohoku, but in Tokyo and Kanagawa as well.  Hiroaki

Thank you, Prof. Koide!

Koide, from the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University ( a position he was relegated to as a form of “purgatory” according to some, because of his unguarded criticism of Japan’s nuclear industry)  knew of the extent of this radioactive fallout, but was pressured to withhold the data from publication. Koide-san got his revenge by testifying in front of Japan’s Upper House Government Oversight Committee on May 23rd, and has since become somewhat of a national hero. His speech exposing the government’s dirty tricks and the reality of the threat of radioactivity to Japan’s children was viewed on live stream by thousands at home and abroad, while the you tube video has been widely viewed, shared, and translated into English.   At every demo and rally I have attended, I’ve seen at least one, “Thank you, Koide-Senseii!” sign or banner.

And so, in the end, the full extent of the damage caused by the withholding of vital information by the Japanese government has yet to be evaluated. While Itaru Watanabe, representing the National Science Ministry, now admits that, “….maybe that same data [the SPEEDI map] should have been shared with the public, too. We didn’t think of that. We acknowledge that now,” residents of both Iitate Village and Namie Town continue to suffer from the aftermath of their respective evacuations and re-evacuations.  Google Iitate Village, for instance, and you will find some disturbing statistics gathered from a recent survey of residents who evacuated.  One third of all families, if the Wikipedia article is accurate, are now living apart from their children, which cannot be a good thing. The authors of the fine bi-lingual blog “SeeTell” take a strong stand on the SPEEDI incident, concluding that, “In the end, no-one will be held accountable for this act which was either a calculated and deliberate cover-up to protect the interests of the politicians, bureaucrats, nuclear industry, the US, and whoever else holds influence over this corrupt government or…well…there is no other explanation.”

As for me, I’ll do my best to speak up and speak out, in defense of those who were betrayed.  Calling the government’s witholding of the SPEEDI map an “act of murder” is an extreme statement, but if there are a rash of deaths in years to come from the effects of internal radiation exposure, the Mayor’s words will have been prophetic. In the meanwhile, thousands of people must live with uncertainty and fear, for themselves and their children. That alone is reason for anger and for action. Thank you again for reading.

The Spirit of “Madei”

” A wonderful thing happened when TEPCO visited us. Some villagers were naturally angry with TEPCO and were calling on them to apologize and generally giving them a hard time. But many others told them [the hecklers] to stop as they were bringing shame on the village. ‘We’ve really made a good village here,’  I thought on seeing this. ”

These words were spoken by Norio Kanno,  Mayor of Iitate Village in Fukushima Prefecture.

Iitate Village, northwest of the official evacuation zone, was heavily contaminated and later evacuated.

Iitate village is technically outside of the 30 kilometer evacuation zone, but was heavily contaminated due to a change in wind direction after the hydrogen explosions in March of 2011.  As a blanket of radioactive snow fell upon the village, its citizens, believing themselves outside of the danger zone, were providing shelter for evacuees from villages closer to the Fukushima Daiichi plant. When it was officially announced that levels of radiation in Iitate were alarmingly high (much higher than places within the evacuation zone in some cases), the news was met with shock and disbelief, and the damage was already done.  One month later, the first government-ordered evacuations began, and as of this month, approximately 90% of all residents have fled to neighboring towns or prefectures.  Mayor Kanno told the story of the residents’ meeting with TEPCO officials in May, praising their ability to hold back what could have turned into a raging flood of anger and accusations.

With  Mayor Kanno and the Iitate residents in the back of your mind, let’s move on to a series of articles recently published in the Japan Times about (among other things) anti-nuclear activism and the volunteer spirit in post-3-11 Japan.  According to the Times, although activism and volunteerism are currently at a record high within the country, things look different from a global standpoint.

A January 4th  Japan Times article begins by noting that although change in Japan has traditionally been brought about due to outside factors (i.e. Commandore Perry’s warships in 1853), the country is beginning to change from the inside out, with grassroots activism finally taking a strong hold and young people participating enthusiastically. The movement, given impetus by Internet-savvy mothers who are both emotionally and intellectually engaged,  has empowered average citizens to begin  “..moving toward a more active kind of democracy in which people realize they are the primary actors, not the government.”  Yet, in conclusion, the writer of the article doubts whether the movement is strong enough to impact fundamental change.  Quoting sociologist Ken Matsuda, the writer declares that  “Japan’s affluence is an obstacle. Most people live comfortably and are reluctant to make too big a fuss, even if they’re unhappy with the political leadership.  Culturally, it’s considered better to adjust to one’s surroundings than to try to change them. Most people aren’t hungry or angry.”

Chief Priest of Kiyomizu Temple writes “Kizuna” (photo by Kazunori Takahashi, Asahi Shinbun)

On the same day, January 4th, a Japan Times editorial discussed “Kizuna” (translated as “bonds” or “ties”), the official kanji chosen to represent the year 2011.   The editor praised ordinary Japanese citizens for reaching out to care for the victims of the Tohoku disaster in an unprecedented–in this country– show of generosity and spirit, while chastising TEPCO and the central government for breaking these same bonds, and betraying the social contract between the people and those (supposedly) in control or power.  As an important side note, the editor also regretted that according to an international survey, “….even in 2011 Japan ranked only 105th in giving money, volunteering time and helping strangers. That relatively low worldwide ranking suggests that social bonds in Japan may be more emotionally felt than practically carried out.”  Those statistics bothered me terribly.

One can see why those outside of Tohoku might not feel compelled to protest against the government’s energy policies, or even to disrupt their lives with volunteer trips to Tohoku.  Most Japanese live relatively comfortable lives, and  it’s only too easy for them to disconnect from the events of 3-11 and remain in their cocoon of work, family, and  comforting routines. Yet one would think that those directly affected by the drama would be up in arms, protesting the loss of their homes and livlihoods.  How can we begin to understand why the mayor of Iitate, speaking in early summer when those living in proximity to the evacuation zone were in a state of constant stress and turmoil, expressed his disapproval of the TEPCO hecklers rather than TEPCO?  The Japan Times reporter credits the stoicism and perseverance inherent in Japanese culture (pronouncing these traits to be “liabilities” rather than assets).  Well yes, that certainly makes sense, though it’s difficult for those living in more aggressive cultures to fathom.  But there’s more to it than “gaman”, or stoicism.

Let’s return to the words of  Mayor Kanno, who gave an interview in May with JB Press , which has been translated into excellent English.  In the article, he praises the restraint and gentleness of village residents, explaining that they have been raised in the tradition of “Madei”. Here’s an excerpt:

We have been living a madei life.  ‘Madei’  is local dialect and a concept that has been with us for years. We have many sayings that use this word: If you don’t bring your child up with madei (to be respectful and considerate), there will be trouble later. If you don’t eat your food with madei (with wholeheartedness or without waste), you’ll be punished by the gods and go blind.

The word consists of two kanji characters, one meaning ‘truth’ and the other ‘hand’. If you look in a Japanese dictionary, it will say it means ‘both hands’.  In other words, when giving someone tea, the right way is to use both hands. When catching a ball you can use one hand, but it’s safer and better to use two. ‘Madei’ means respectfully, considerately,  modestly, with care, with spirit, without haste and without waste.

New energy and the like are also important, but the true starting point of the recovery should be making use of people with such feelings-or in other words, people with spirit of madei.

I had not been familiar with the term ‘Madei’, but I could certainly understand the analogy of

Be sure to admire your tea bowl when you’ve finished drinking…and hold it gently.

the tea bowl.  With no “handle”, a Japanese chawan is cradled gently in both hands, very naturally and yet very carefully.  The last dregs of matcha  should not be left to sit, even if drinking them requires a slightly embarrassing (to a westerner) slurp.  When those last dregs have disappeared, some drinkers admire the bowl itself,  turning it and even tipping it upside down to view the craftsman’s seal on the bottom. The whole process is done calmly and without haste, with appreciation for all involved: the tea master (who whisks the powder into frothy tea),  the server (who delivers the bowls with grace, modesty, perfect timing, and perfect placement),  the tea itself (to be savored),  the bowl it is served in, and finally the view from the tatami room or the floral arrangement and scroll displayed in the Tokonoma.   No haste, no waste and no inappropriate chatter, any of which would break the air of serenity and respect.  That same spirit of respect and consideration must be shown, implied Konno-san, even to the representatives of TEPCO, the company that had caused the displacement of an entire community and the contamination of an environment that had sustained them for generations. There is more dignity in silence than in protest.

May 15th: Mayor Kanno comforts a woman on evacuation day (AFP photo/ JIJI Press)

The Mayor of Iitate Village’s words were well-chosen and beautifully expressed; I found them shared and re-printed in countless blogs and newspaper articles as an example of the spirit of Tohoku.  Soon after the  article about Madei was published, the village of Iitate was evacuated, and a photo of Kanno-san, continuing to work at his desk on the last day of official business, appeared in the Mainichi Shinbun. “Even with preparations continuing apace around him, Iitate Mayor Norio Kanno continued his official duties,” read the article. “These are not happy days for his village, and though he appears calm in his work, there is no mistaking his frustration. ‘Where can I put my anger?’ he said. ‘I have to transform it, turn it into a different kind of energy that I can direct to try to get us all back home even one day sooner.’ ”  The Mayor was sounding stressed, but not yet broken or bitter. I followed up on my search, to see what he had to say after the evacuation process had been completed and the de-contamination process had begun.

What I found was not encouraging. Despite findings of plutonium in the ground soil and

Will children return to Iitate Village? (AP Photo/ David Guttenfelder)

continued re-contamination of residential areas due to the village’s proximity to a cesium-laden  forest, Iitate is scheduled to be fully “disinfected”, spruced up, and re-populated within the next two years.  At least that’s the plan of the Central Government. The village is now a ghost town (though one central government official lost his job for saying as much), families with small children have declared their intention not to return, and Mayor Kanno is bluntly critical of TEPCO’s declaration–and the government’s acceptance – of a state of cold shutdown at the Daiichi power plant.  In the December 17 issue of AJW Asahi Shinbun , the Mayor is quoted as saying, “It’s out of the question to call it [the Daiichi Power Plant] under control. They know nothing about the reality here.” I found this in sad contrast to the serenity of his “Madei” speech, yet perhaps this transformation from sage to short-tempered local official was inevitable.  Though the Mayor has lost his serenity (and has become an insomniac, staying awake worrying about the future), he retains his dignity, continues to work hard, and remains devoted to the people of his village, though Iitate’s shops are closed, and its people scattered far and wide.

After reading up on the recent history of Iitate Village, I came away feeling overwhelmed at the complexity of the situation and nothing but sympathetic toward those involved. Residents and local officials of Fukushima are what we call “sei ippai”, or pushed beyond their limits. Families are forced to leave their homes behind, yet still making mortgage payments. Fathers are living alone in Fukushima while mothers and children make new lives for themselves in Tokyo, learning to get along just fine without Papa (this was confirmed to me by several mothers I met at an event for evacuees. “We know we should be depressed,” they said. “but the children are happy here in Tokyo, and they keep our spirits up. It’s our husbands who are suffering.” ) Families are being shuffled from one temporary housing complex to another without being able to put down roots anywhere. Saddest of all are the men who have lost their livelihoods; many have worked at a single profession for twenty or thirty years, and lack the flexibility and skills to start again in a new line of work. Not that there are openings outside of clearing rubble, patrolling areas inside the evacuation zone, or taking a turn at cleaning up the mess at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Mayor Norio Kanno : devoted to his community.

When the central government first acknowledged that Iitate had suffered heavy contamination through a fluke of weather, the Mayor set about trying to protect the residents’ safety (he evacuated mothers, babies, and small children immediately, along with those who expressed worry or anxiety) while at the same time attempting to keep the infrastructure of the village functioning. Kanno-san did his best to keep businesses up and running in Iitate until the very last factory was forced to shut down, and established a task force of local residents to patrol  deserted streets, protecting the homes that still held their inhabitants’ possessions. He also fought to let elderly nursing home residents stay within the evacuation zone, arguing that the stress of moving could be more injurious to their condition that the threat of radiation. His own mother-in-law died en route to an evacuation center, as did many other elderly patients. One horrific news report that sticks in my memory is of a busload of bedridden elderly folks, unused to sitting, caught in traffic trying to reach the “safety” of a neighboring city. By the time they reached their destination, many of them had become critically ill, and one old woman was dead in her seat.

In some areas, families near the Daiichi plant evacuated hastily, leaving pets outside to fend for themselves and livestock trapped in their stalls to die of hunger. Mayor Kanno wanted to make sure that the evacuation of Iitate was done slowly, carefully, and with consideration for

“The Power of Madei” was published in April of 2011.

the needs of everyone in the community. Whether or not he was right to take things slow– in the spirit of madei– one cannot argue that he has not been devoted to his community. That community has already broken apart, but before the evacuation they were able to publish a book they had been putting together called “The Power of Madei”, adding a photo of their scenic village (as it was before the quake) to the back cover.

I was saddened (but not surprised) to hear that Mayor Kanno received severe criticism and even hate mail regarding his reluctance to evacuate each and every citizen immediately.  This was  tragically misdirected anger that should have been directed at both TEPCO and the central government. While Kanno-san spent sleepless nights fretting over the moral implications and practical issues involved with evacuation, TEPCO was callously re-locating tsunami survivors in bayside apartments in Yokohama (true: I read it–again, in the Japan Times– just this morning. A sixty-year old woman has spoken out about re-living the trauma of the tsunami from her window each and every day)!  And then there are the 60 page forms that must be filed to receive monetary compensation from TEPCO; the company has actually paid out very little money so far, as so few of the complicated forms have been successfully completed and filed. I could list more examples, but you get the picture.

 Now let’s return to the Japan Times articles, deploring the reluctance of  Japanese citizens to engage in activism,  speak out,  volunteer, or give as generously as citizens of other well-to-do nations.  The point I want to make is this: Japan as a country must take more action and give more generously, and it is up to those outside of  (or in relatively unaffected areas of) Tohoku to stand up for those who are pushed beyond their limits and focused on survival.  As long as victims of the triple disaster are still recovering from the loss of family, friends, homes, and communities, the rest of the country needs to be working diligently to try to right the wrongs that have been done. The central government must not seek to patronize or reassure, but must present the facts as they stand.  As this does not seem likely to happen in the near future,  reporters must be willing to take risks to bring outright lies or unpleasant truths to light (Japan’s top journalists did not report from inside the evacuate zone until late April, as it had been deemed “dangerous”, and employers literally forbid their reporters to go) , and major networks and newspapers must publish their findings.  Again, as this does not seem likely to happen for some time, individuals have a responsibility to dig for facts on their own, going to blogs, videos, and  reputable on-line publications.

Since it also does not seem likely that the average Japanese middle-aged woman will be spending her evenings surfing the internet (she is busy serving dinner on a staggered time-scale, as her children and husbands all arrive home at different times from their various cram schools and work. She also drives back and forth to the station to pick them up, cleans their dishes afterwards, and does the preparations for making the next day’s box lunches. She then is the last one into the family bath, and the last one to bed.)  The average middle-aged man will not be checking out underground blogs, either.  He’s too exhausted from work, and a beer and a good TV game show are more tempting.  Those of us who do dig for facts and stories (and find them!) would probably do best to wait for the opportunity to poke and prod, rather than trumpeting our findings.  Beating our friends over the head with “the truth” will only cause greater damage in this country where “speaking out” means “causing someone to worry”, and ensures our alienation  from the audience we so hope to reach.

…but what if someone sees me on the nightly news?!

Multiple polls have shown that the majority of Japanese citizens are in favor of closing down the remainder of the country’s nuclear power plants and investing in alternative energy sources…..yet those who cast their vote with the reassurance of anonymity are “not comfortable” marching in demonstrations (“What if someone sees my face on the nightly news?!”), signing petitions (“They might get my name and send me things!”), volunteering on weekends ( “Who would take care of my husband?”), or even donating a significant amount of money (“You never know if it’s going to be used appropriately!”).  I’ve heard all of these reasons/excuses, and think very little of them. It seems that the Japan Times is right on target: people feel sympathy for victims of the Tohoku triple disaster and are truly worried for the future of their country; however, this does not translate into action, and it is a shame.

So how can those who are emotionally involved begin to poke and prod? Among like-minded friends in the blogging world this is a constant dilemma, as we read each other’s articles and encourage each other, while realizing that the people we would most love to connect with are not reading our words. We continue writing, however, and I believe this is crucial. We write to formulate our own arguments, define our own ideas, and then throw them out to sea…perhaps we might get a bite, and a complete stranger will find them. The stranger reads them, learns something, is motivated to act, and our efforts have been worthwhile.

Writing is hardly a social endeavor, though, and I am a social creature. I therefore poke and prod in my workplace as well, by bringing up various human interest stories shown on the NHK nightly news; it’s the national TV channel, and I know my women friends are watching,  so it’s a natural topic of conversation. I do my best to keep Tohoku on the radar, and to find out where friends and relatives stand on various issues, as well as inserting my own thoughts and challenges whenever possible. I poke carefully, rather than insistently, with results that are probably dubious at best. I feel an affinity with Mayor Kanno, I suppose, wanting to prevent potential harm by moving too swiftly or without proper care and consideration.

In the end,  I’ve been touched by the story of Iitate Village.  I relate to the

Iitate grampa showing off his family tree. I wonder where he’s at now…

story of  Mayor Kanno, struggling to preserve the dignity, as well as the safety, of his community. I’m saddened to think of the community that no longer exists in a physical sense,  yet its members have managed to preserve the spirit of their tradition in a book, and in the words of their mayor, which have been so widely shared.  Good for them, and shame on the government and on TEPCO for breaking the bonds of trust by not protecting those dependent on them.  Let us hope and pray that the villagers who have left Iitate will become vital members of new communities and create new bonds, while continuing to honor those who lost their lives on 3-11 through a mixture of natural tragedy and human folly. Thank you for reading, and good night.