Quotable - Minoru Mochizuki

The thoughts of frequent NBR Japan Discussion poster Minoru Mochizuki are sometimes difficult to follow.

In this post of yesterday, however, I think he hits more than a few nails on the head. I especially like the highlighted bit.

Why Japanese prime ministers after WWII have become so feeble? That is because Japan has chosen (partly because of inevitability as a country defeated in the war and occupied, and partly as a choice of free will to reconstruct the nation under the U.S. protection, particularly, the philosophy of PM Yoshida, born out of his many years of experience as a diplomat in the Western world) to become a fat cat, a show piece of winner in the free trade and open-market system created by U.S. against Soviet Block.

Now, Soviet is gone. Both China and Soviet are well into the road to become capitalist countries. So nobody needs Japan as a fat cat as a show piece.　What U.S. needs today is South Korea, as a symbol of military alliance against a rather unlikely North Korean desperation attack.

For a country like today’s Japan, which does not have a military power which operates on its own will, the presence of its leader has little importance in the world politics, as it is a follower than anything else in
the midst of strategic decisions and bargaining of major countries of the world. Thus, its prime ministers concentrate on internal affairs primarily...

(Link）

Japanese elites fret about South Korea's economic performance: its growing economy, its globally competitive giants like Samsung, LG and Hyundai and its free trade agreement with the United States.

Mochizuki points out that it the elites need to just as worried about South Korea's global political presence.

Fewer Than Two Continued - On Death And Dying

Where the new figures for household size in the Tokyo Metropolitan District intersect with the prevailing zeitgeist in two ways.

The first is the reporting of the increasing number, as if it were a surprise, of famous persons dying alone (kodokushi) and not being found for several days or even weeks.

The first really shocking case was of the former porn actress, television talent, then later blogger and AIDS activist Iijima Ai, who was found dead in her home three weeks after her last blog post in December 2008. The 2009 discovery of the body of longtime film and television superstar Ohara Reiko in her home two weeks after anyone last heard from her further shocked the country. Newscaster and television talent Yamaguchi Mie was found dead alone last year under similar circumstances.

Of course, with the greater number of persons living alone, that the number of persons dying alone should be rising should not surprising. Given the anonymity of the big cities and the hyper-sensitivity over respecting a person's privacy, that persons are not being found dead for days or weeks should also not be surprising.

That the number of persons dying alone at home has not, until recently, been a societal obsession can in part be traced to the incredible rates of hospitalization of the very ill and very old, with over 82% of deaths occurring in a hospital and an addition 3% in special homes for the aged (J - page 9).

Iijima, Ohara and Yamaguchi were 36, 62 and 51 years of age respectively at the time of their deaths. Both Ohara and Yamaguchi had spent many years prior to their deaths caring for aged and incapacitated parents.

It is in the latter situation that the new figures on the size of households gives folks the heeby-jeebies, though in the case of Ohara and Yamaguchi, the parents each had been caring for had either been moved to an elder care facility or died.

In recent weeks there have been a spate of stories about caregivers dying, leaving their disabled or senile charges to die of starvation, thirst or cold. The most shocking was a case in mid-February of a 45 year-old woman dying, leaving her four year-old mentally retarded son to die a few days later of an as yet unrevealed cause, despite visits to the home by what were supposed to be help providers. In more recent days, news organizations have been reporting on couples or parent-child homes where the deaths of the caregiver have left the other, incapacitated resident to die, either slowly or quickly, from lack of care. Despite the fact that these pairs of individuals are not technically dying alone, these types of double deaths are being classed kodokushi.

With Japanese enjoying, if that can be the term, extended lifespans, and the chances of one member of a two-person household being seriously incapacitated in some way increasing, the number of these kinds of double deaths is sure to increase unless civil society or local government develop ways on keeping tabs on caregivers and their charges. A great deal of help is currently available. With the society as a whole aging, however, the capacity for society or local governments to continue to provide help services will diminish.

Some companies, such as the ALSOK corporation, advertise home surveillance cameras for younger relatives to keep tabs on the status of their elders. The concept seems way too creepy and invasive to come into common usage, however. This may change. Indeed, the installation of cameras might come to be seen as a natural part of the aging process -- that once you are past a certain age, you will never have a moment's privacy again, even in your own home.

Fewer Than Two

This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don't give up
Until you drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky

This is for all the single people
Thinking that life has left them dry
Don't give up
Until you drink from the silver cup
You never know until you try

- America, "Lonely People" (1974)*

If you are in the Tokyo Metropolitan district, and you are alone, you are not alone. Indeed, you are in the whopping majority.

The TMD released the results of its survey of households yesterday. As of January 1 of this year, Tokyo had 12,686,067 residents living in 6,368,485 households, an average of 1.99 residents per household. Considering the number of families with children in the TMD, the balancing number of persons registered as living alone is simply immense -- over 60% of all households registered.

The Mainichi Shimbun provides a nice graph of the crash in the number of persons per registered household since 1957, the first year the survey was conducted.

TMD Governor Ishihara Shintaro, ever the one to come up with the conservate morality play view of a situation, remarked, "I am shocked. It a matter of grave concern. It's truly unhealthy. I feel as though the family unit has fallen to pieces."

If so, then our dear governor (How is it possible that he has won election four times?) should be worried about our neighbors to the north, with all their cows, corn and sunflowers, for the next in line is Hokkaido, with 2.06 residents per household. (J)

The TMD being the great vampire squid of Japan's prefectures, it still managed to eke out a 0.31% increase in its population, the 16th straight year of population growth, despite its shrinking household size (J). It also has remained relatively youthful, with persons in their 30s being the largest age cohort and the percentage of those over 65 years of age still a low (for Japan) 21% of the population. (J)

So all the ongoing creative destruction, with old neighborhoods and commercial properties being demolished and being replaced by high-rise and low-rise condominium and rental units is not necessarily cheap financing leading developers to run amok.

* Yes, I know that the song is an appeal to rebith through faith in Jesus Christ. However, it was either this or "Eleanor Rigby."

Photo credit: MTC

Dogma, Meet Karma

I am not known as a vicious human being...though Tanigaki Sadakazu may take exception to that assertion.

I have, however, enjoyed almost too much the titanic implosion of Yamamoto Masahiro on the National Bureau of Asian Research's Japan-U.S. Discussion Forum. His self-appointed Sisyphean task is to perpetuate, with increasing shrillness and decreasing tolerance, the now increasingly untenable myth of Prime Minister Kan Naoto's behaving in anything other than a "heroic" manner (J) during the Fukushima Dai'ichi crisis.

NBR is considered a moderately center-right organization. Its list-serve is hardly a sump of leftist skulduggery. Avowed leftist Ronald Dore indeed complains that his most provocative thought pieces are constantly being rejected by the list moderator.

However, if you come aboard with an uncritical recitation of the accounts of last year printed in the Sankei Shimbun or, when you are feeling particularly magnanimous and collegiate, the Yomiuri Shimbun, you are going to get your behind fried. When you go further and claim that your view comes from having read Japanese-language sources rather than reading English-language ones, on a list serve of Japan experts, you are going to get your oshiri handed to you. If you then deliver a farewell address, vowing to drop the subject as others are ganging up on you, then come back with a list of demands on how the debate should be conducted on what is already a moderated forum, well...

Yamamoto Masahiro does not identify himself as being associated with any institution. There are a host of Yamamoto Masahiros on the Web. I would suspect, however, that the Yamamoto Masahiro in question is not the Tokyo University mathematician but indeed the author of Nanking: Anatomy of an Atrocity. The review of the book in the American Historical Review states that Yamamoto is "a self-described 'centrist-revisionist'."

This is an interesting compound noun. It seems to mean, "Yes, we killed, mutilated and raped large numbers of persons in absolutely horrible ways -- but not as many as you think!" with what appears after the "but" as the "revisionist" part of the phrase.

"Centrist-revisionist" in an absolute sense seems to mean cherry-picking the written record for evidence confirming one's prejudices and rejecting the documentation and reasoning of others as biased and politically-tainted.

The fun begins on March 5, in an over-the-top post by Gregory Clark, a character in his own right. Just start on the main list then pop back and forth to follow the discussion.

As I said, I am enjoying the results way too much.

Bo Xilai Is Replaced

From the land where politics is played with a hardball comes the stunning news that Chongqing mayor, princeling incomparable and purveyor of scrubbed Maoist nostalgia Bo Xilai (薄熙来) has been replaced by a central government official.

The Yomiuri Shimbun speculates, in an article entitled "The firing of Chongqing's top official: aiming at an early resolution of internal political strife?" (J) that Bo's departure comes as a result of Bo's conflicts with President Hu Jintao, without specifying what Hu's problems with Bo might be. It also hints that the preemptive removal is an echo of Hu's previous struggles with allies of former President Jiang Zemin, the so-called Shanghai Clique.

The Mainichi Shimbun's article, "The firing of Chongqing's top official: in the leadership group, the severe political struggle" (J) goes into the fine detail of the background of Bo's firing, most particularly the peculiar Wang Liqun asylum episode. The article presents Bo's removal as Hu's protecting his own princeling and dauphin Xi Jinping, the guardian of the legacy of Hu's Chinese Communist Party's Youth League clique in the leadership. Bo's revival of the singing of "Red songs," including tunes from the Cultural Revolution when the CCP turned upon itself, was simply the most easily mockable aspect of a deeper and more cutting criticism of the inequalities in society that have been built up under the leadership of Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao.

The paper states that the toppling of Bo is a blow against both what it calls the "conservative faction" and the princelings, seemingly hinting that even the princelings of the "Youth League faction" have to watch their backs.

The Asahi Shimbun's account (J) is straight reporting of the removal of Bo and also of Wang, without commentary.

More later, as the various news organizations offer their analyses.

The Extraordinary Complexity of Our Planet

The Wall Street Journal's Japan Real Time blog has a not-to-be-missed animation of the course debris from the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami will take across the Pacific and back again.

That the courses the various rafts of debris will/can take can be so indeterminate, and that scientists have a reasonable degree of certainty about the reliability of these pathways affected by "a butterfly beating its wings" reminds me of how little I know about the Earth and of those who have dedicated their lives to studying it.

Two Earthquakes, One National Broadcaster

Two fairly large earthquakes struck Japan's eastern coast last night, a 6.8 temblor at 6:09 far off the coast of Hokkaido and a 6.1 temblor near to shore at 9:05. The earlier one released the greater energy (seven times as much, the Richter scale being logarithmic - correct me if I am wrong) but the latter one was the one causing damage and injuries. The latter one shook the bewillickers out of Tokyo, guaranteeing it would get better press. It even seems to have scared a 95 year-old woman to death, leading to an official count of one fatality.

The timing of the two quakes could not have been more apt for NHK. They gave the national broadcaster a chance to try out its new, hysterical style of delivering earthquakes and tsunami warnings during what are normally news time slots.

Whereas in the past bulletins on tsunami risks were delivered in a flat, informative tone and were checked first with the Japan Meteorological Agency, the new, post-3/11 mode of operation is to, frankly speaking, go nuts as soon as possible, warning viewers in staccato, barking tones to be prepared to run to higher ground even before the JMA has made any predictions.

The new style, which NHK previewed only last week as a part of its pre-3/11 build up is in answer to criticism of the broadcast community for failing to instill sufficient panic in the residents of the Tohoku last year, and in particular for following in lockstep the predictions of the JMA as to the size of the incoming waves. The initial JMA predictions were for a 3 meter wave, then a 6 meter, then finally a greater than 10 meter wave for many parts of the Tohoku (the highest crest was an astonishing 39.7 meters at Miyako City - J).

It is thought that the initial, more conservative warnings misled some early evacuees to seek shelter at lower elevations, resulting in them being swept away when the very much higher surge arrived. In at least three instances, large groups gathered on a raised area or in a tsunami shelter that ended up being far too low, one of which is the now iconic Minami Sanriku Disaster Center.

Whether delivering disaster warning messages in a voice that it both louder and filled with more tension will save lives is a question. Certainly last night, when the tsunami from the first earthquake rolled in at a less-than-astonishing 10 centimeters in height, the new urgent warnings seemed somewhat silly. Then again, with the aging of the population, startling semi-somnolent viewers and listeners may be just what is necessary to get folks off their aging keisters and way up on higher ground.

3/11 - A Selective Online Bibliography

I will not lie. I have not read through, watched or listened to all of the below. However, I will offer a few comments on what I have checked out:

- The Frontline documentary is required viewing for those who want to get a sense of just how tense the situation was at the Fukushima Dai’ichi plant.

- The Economist review “The death of trust” is the most succinct and readable account of the current state of Japan’s political atmosphere.

- The Fred Hiatt op-ed is fatuous. I include it because I mentioned the Washington appearance of the haiku poet in a previous post. From the quote, she has drawn just about the worst lesson one could draw from the disaster. The irony is completely lost on her: one has to have access to a free air ticket to Washington and likely be put up at a fine hotel in order to deliver a message to a well-heeled audience that post-3/11 Japanese have to learn to live more simply.

- Fackler is himself.

- The Kuhn audio starts off in the direction indicated in the title but ends up nowhere.

- The Jayasuriya and Yamashita piece promotes a false history of the Kan cabinet. The cabinet’s popularity did not fall post 3/11 because of mismanagement of the disaster. It fell because of uncritical media reporting of rumors of spread by unknown forces, most likely TEPCO and members of the bureaucracy, which opposition politicians then made Exhibit A in parliamentary interpellations.

- The SSJ Forum (free registry required) and the WSJ’s Japan Real Time blog contain too many excellent posts on the triple disaster to list.

- Dick Samuels gives away too much for free.

- Sheila Smith is everywhere, which is only appropriate.


*
Aldrich, Daniel P.
Fukushima One Year Later: An Interview with Daniel P. Aldrich

*
Aldrich, Daniel P.
Social Networks and Japan’s 3/11 Disaster

*
Aldrich, Daniel P.
Civil society rising

*
Anderson, Kent et al
Nikkei Weekly special online edition

*
Auslin, Michael
After earthquake, lessons for Japan and the world

*
Auslin, Michael et al
AEI Hosts Conference Around Anniversary of Japan Disasters (video)

*
Bader, Jeffrey A.
Inside the White House During Fukushima: Managing Multiple Crises

*
Fackler, Martin
Nuclear Disaster in Japan Was Avoidable, Critics Contend

*
Fackler, Martin
Japan's Nuclear Energy Industry Nears Shutdown, at Least for Now

*
Frontline
Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown (video)

*
Funabashi, Yo'ichi and Kay Kitazawa
Fukushima in review: A complex disaster, a disastrous response

*
Green, Michael J.
Post–March 11: Japan's Political and Economic Landscape Now and Ahead: An interview with Michael J. Green

*
Green, Michael J. et al
Nikkei Weekly special online edition

*
Hiatt, Fred
A year after the disaster of 3/11, Japan looks inward

*
Ishii, Sumie
Relief Efforts in Japan One Year Later: Reflections and Lessons Learned: An Interview with Sumie Ishii

*
The Economist
The death of trust

*
The Economist
Power politics

*
Fukuda, Nobuo
Japan's Nuclear Cabal

*
Hayashi, Yuka et al
An Altered Japan Marks a Year After Quake

(See also http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/ for numerous other articles by many different authors)

*
Kan, Naoto
Former Japanese PM Naoto Kan on the Fukushima Disaster: A Changing View of Nuclear Power

*
Kitazawa, Kay and Yo'ichi Funabashi
Fukushima in review: A complex disaster, a disastrous response

*
Kuhn, Anthony
Rethinking, Not Just Rebuilding, Japan's Northeast (audio)

*
Jayasuriya, Sisira and Nobuaki Yamashita
Japan's 3/11 disaster: one year on

*
Masset, Christian et al
Nikkei Weekly special online edition

*
Matsumura, Masahiro
Japan's revenge of the mandarins

*
MIT Japan 3.11 Initiative
MIT Japan 3.11 Initiative receives grant

*
O'Brian, Miles
Near Fukushima, a Big 'Guessing Game' Over Long-Term Risks (video)

*
O'Brian, Miles
In Japan, Nuclear Cleanup May Be Mission: Impossible (video)

*
Samuels, Richard B.
Policy Change in a Post-Crisis Japan: An Interview with Richard J. Samuels

*
Scalise, Paul
ANS Committee Report on Fukushima

(See also various posts on the SSJ Forum at http://ssj.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/)

*
Singer, Peter
When Prevention is Better Than Relief

*
Smith, Sheila
Japan's political aftershocks

*
Smith, Sheila
Japan's Day of Remembrance

*
Smith, Sheila et al
Nikkei Weekly special online edition

*
Smith, Sheila et al
AEI Hosts Conference Around Anniversary of Japan Disasters (video)

*
Tabuchi, Hiroko
An Anniversary of 'Heartbreaking Grief' in Japan

*
Tabuchi, Hiroko
Effects of Japan's Disaster Are Still Unfolding

*
Tabuchi, Hiroko
Japan Finds Story of Hope in Undertaker Who Offered Calm Amid Disaster

*
Takenaka, Heizo
Will the Sun Still Rise?

*
Yamashita, Nobuaki and Sisira Jayasuriya
Japan's 3/11 disaster: one year on


Suggestions of other URLs are much appreciated. Also reports of any broken links.

And for a low, low price you can get Reconstructing 311, with yours truly and a cast of rather better characters.

Damned Damn Dams Damn Damn Japan

Let me see if I get this straight. After restoring, under the sponsorship of the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), funding for the completion of the egregious Yamba Dam – an immense political liability for an administration for whom the Yamba dam cancellation was seemingly the only campaign promise it had not repudiated or altered beyond all recognition and a tumor that lurks within the budget passed by the House of Representatives last Thursday (J) – the Cabinet has just approved a further bill, again authored by the MLIT minister, providing funding for offsets and new economic revitalization plans for local communites that have been disrupted by the cancellation of dams. (J)

Who the hell is thinking up these bills? OK, the MLIT bureaucrats, given. But who in his or her right mind thinks that these bills will do anything but hurt the standing of the Democratic Party of Japan among non-aligned voters, who at 48.7% of the electorate are the prizes up for grabs in the next House of Representatives election? (J - with background in E)

These communities have already been pigs at the trough in the development phase of these cancelled projects. Now we are going to be giving them seconds?

Who the heck is in charge of this mess?


Later - Many thanks to reader PM for pointing out the broken links.

The Poetry of the Everyday – Senryu of the Week of March 4

Just one, this week.

"Oh, intercourse the penguin!"

ペンギンが教えてくれた想定外
Pengin ga
Oshiete kureta
Soteigai

It is a penguin
That teaches us the meaning of
Inconceivable

Tokyo’s very lovely public aquarium in Kasai Rinkai, the Tokyo Sea Life Park has, or had, a large outdoor colony of 153 Humboldt penguins in an outdoor display. However, on the 3rd of this month came reports and even photographic images of a penguin swimming in Tokyo Bay near the mouth of the Edogawa. It was at this point that the aquarium discovered that one of its yearling Humboldt penguins was not in the pen.

Now this would not be such surprising news, given that the aquarium has had penguin breakouts before. However, what made the story notable was that not only had the escapee managed to make it to the water (earlier breakouts had led to penguins wandering the halls and patio areas) but it had somehow breached the extra layer of security the aquarium had installed after the earlier breakouts.

A fully grown Humboldt penguin is about 60 centimeters tall. The rock wall about the pen is about 120 centimeters high at its lowest point. So initially, a not particularly physically fit penguin had to jump and scramble up a rough surface at least twice its height.

The next layer of security is what is a presumably unclimbable smooth fence, again 120 centimeters tall at its lowest point. The penguin did not have to try to jump this fence, however. Due to an installation lapse there is, a one point, a space along the bottom of the fence where a penguin could, if it flattened itself, squeeze under – which is what aquarium keepers assume it did.

However, once past the low fence there was a higher, two-meter fence on the aquarium’s outer perimeter, with its panels buried into the ground – except, understandably, where the fence had a gate in it for exit and entry – where, as it turns out, in order for the door to swing freely, there is a space at the bottom, where a penguin could, if it flattened itself, squeeze under – at which point a penguin would be on the Kaisai Rinkai shore.

The aquarium has been on the receiving end of criticism for underestimating the risks of a breakout, given previous breakouts and the strength of young penguins.

The kicker expression in this senryu is the final word soteigai. At six syllabic units it violates the 5 – 7 – 5 pattern and thus indicates that the poem is not about the penguin at all but the Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear power plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the government of Prime Minister Kan Naoto, in their explanations of why the earthquake and tsunami that struck the Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear power station on March 11, 2011 resulted in a crippling of the reactors and cooling ponds, constantly attributed the failures of back up systems and preventative measures to the plant's being subjected to inconceivable (soteigai) conditions. The metronomic repetition of this word ticked off a lot of folks, particularly the late Nishioka Takeo, the president of the House of Councillors. He publicly warned the Kan government to cease its overuse of the word. (J)

So a simple penguin, in its thwarting of a main barrier and then two layers of backup, teaches us about thinking the unthinkable – something TEPCO and the government nuclear regulators, despite warnings as to Fukushima Dai'ichi's vulnerabilities, failed to do.

(For the record, the senryu is the work of one Haraguchi Kei'ichiro, a resident of Asaka City, Saitama Prefecture.)


Later - If you should see the penguin, the number to call is +81-(0)3-3869-5152.

Out Of Box Thinking

In this morning's The Tokyo Diplomat, Michael Penn goes along way to answering a question I wish I had thought of: what if 3/11 had never happened?

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Send your requests and inquiries to shingetsunewsagency@gmail.com

It's Time

Please remember.

Perhaps They Will Never Know

Today is a day of remembrance, a day when a goodly part of the nation will actually take a break from its usual frenetic Sundays to stand at attention for a minute of silence at 2:46 p.m. The emperor, bless his 78 year-old soul, will take part in memorial activities, despite having had a heart bypass operation 3 weeks ago. He at least believes this a day like no other. We should all think as he does.

In the spirit of the day, I shall restrain myself from my usual fury or glee at the latest shenanigans of the nation's political classes. My mind is consumed at present with a typhoon of contempt for all but a few of the elected and the meritocratic and nepotistic elites. However, I will hold the storm's fury back for this one day.

One point, however. Many publications and broadcasts (and one famous organization, inexplicably still headed by a defrocked imperial prince) have been carping about the lack of progress in the reconstruction of the ravaged and broken areas of the Tohoku (we should not forget that the earthquake and its aftershocks wreaked havoc far from the reach of the tsunami). The failure to begin rebuilding the lost communities, whether once again in the tsunami zones or on the shaved-off tops of nearby mountains, is ascribed to the current divided Diet or, in certain quarters, the inexperienced hands of the Democratic Party of Japan-led government.

No and no and No and NO!

The elites who are charged with guiding us, or at least using our tax money wisely, are not at a loss with what to do with the Tohoku. They are at a loss with what to do with Japan -- and have been so for 20 years now. Oh some of them have a plan, the Abe Shinzo-Shimomura Kokubun-Hiranuma Takeos and their ilk, to turn the populace into authority-fearing, emperor-loving, nation-building automatons...but sorry, been there, done that and no, it does not turn out very nicely, thank you very much (note to government of the PRC: imprison your colonels now, while you still can). The Liberal Democratic Party and the followers of Ozawa Ichiro made it their common cause in the midst of the disaster's rescue and stabilization phase to drive Prime Minister Kan Naoto from office. Now they are trying to do the same to Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko during what is still the recovery phase. If either of these opposition camps were to seize the wheel of the ship of state, however, neither would have the foggiest notion in what direction to sail the Nihon Maru.

The ship has been adrift for two decades. Every so often a steady hand has taken hold of the tiller -- Hashimoto Ryutaro, Koizumi Jun'ichiro -- but it was always to right wrongs ten years too late, when it hardly mattered anymore. The victory by the DPJ was the same -- its program of putting people's livelihoods first was not revolutionary -- it was archaic, practically an anachronism. By the time the LDP had power stripped from out of its cold, near-dead claws, the treasury was empty; the countryside depleted, dependent and despondent; the cities ugly, unkempt and angry.

So today, as the cameras sweep over the barren lots and skeletons of structures for this anniversary, before running off to cover some other epiphenomenon or catastrophe, tune out the blather about the present day political mess. The images are of Japan as it is, as it has been under the veneer of efficiency and equality and beyond Tokyo's glitz and youth and energy. The stillness and lethargy are not aberrant: they are symptomatic of a ruling class without time in their schedules for the people they are supposed to be leading.

Pour les lecteurs francophones

Mon ami Paul Scalise:

L'incroyable paralysie du nucléaire japonais
(Lien)

Japon : le consensus nucléaire fissuré
(Lien)

Le Japon paiera cher sa sortie du nucléaire
(Lien)


Mon ami Niels Planel, auteur de Un Autre Japon (2001 - 2006):

Primaires républicaines : la fracture
(Lien)

Keeping It All In Perspective

The past few days and indeed the last few weeks have seen the churning up of a massive effort to recall and reflect upon the triple disaster of March 11, 2011, an effort in which I have been a willing and enthusiastic participant.

However, let us remember that today is March 10, the 67th anniversary of the incendiary bombing of Tokyo's low city. In the encyclopedia of horror that was World War II, the March 10, 1945 bombing of Tokyo was just another, particularly heinous chapter. As far as I can reckon, in terms of number of persons killed in a single day, the March 10 bombing was surpassed in recent times only by the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake, the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Five times as many were killed or went missing that night as in the event we will all be talking about tomorrow.

Perhaps these two days together will become a time of reflection – of how the powers of nature and our follies can defeat our best efforts and prey upon our worst tendencies – here at the juncture of the seasons, when the cold bite of winter cedes the land to the warm smile of spring.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis...