Japan Disaster Relief Donations
Japan: How to help
Donate to Japan Disaster Relief
As Tepco continues to show that it is basically just a less powerful version of BP, except without so much competence, civic-mindedness, and altruism, the survivors in the Tohoku region of Japan (the hardest hit area that includes towns like Minamisanriku, Onagawa and Ishimaki) begin to settle down to the long, hard process of trying to create new lives for themselves. As they do so, they are being assaulted by new foes which, though far less spectacular than earthquakes and tsunami, nonetheless represent real, continuing and perhaps grave dangers: weather and disease. Facing profound shortages of every necessity of daily life, desperately short of qualified medical personnel and supplies and living in cramped and overcrowded quarters, the survivors of the twin disasters of the terrible earthquake and tsunami are exhibiting a degree of patience, self-control and endurance that is fast becoming a marvel of the world. This quality, known as "gaman" in Japanese, is often more likely to elicit frustration or even contempt than praise from all but the most blinkered of foreign observers, for it is a quality that causes much unneeded suffering. It is the quality that makes a neglected or abused spouse stay in a bad relationship. It is the quality that makes a subordinate tolerate unconscionable demands on his time and effort by his superiors. It is the quality invoked when people are unreasonably imposed upon and expected to endure. It is the word used to, from an early age, extinguish the natural thirst for justice that exists in the heart of every human being. It is the word that authority figures and even parents invoke when they refuse to intercede on the behalf of a bullied child. It is the word that salves the conscience of honorable, decent people as they tolerate or even connive at outrage.
It is also the quality that enables people to persevere in the face of events and circumstances so horrible that most of us can scarce imagine them.
It is precisely in situations like that unfolding in Japan over the past several days that this quality, whose esteem among Japanese often seems so self-defeating and destructive, really shows its value. Again and again foreign commentators have marveled at the calm, quiet way in which Japanese refugees are enduring their ordeal. However, I, for one, expected nothing less.
As I have written elsewhere I experienced the Kobe earthquake and in the ordeal that followed I never once had to fear my fellow man. I and those who were with me thought nothing about leaving our damaged but still precariously-standing house, unlocked every night as we went to our little space in the local shelter, where our bedding and belongings were completely undisturbed. In the days wandering through burnt-out and flattened buildings, trying to find friends or simply wondering at the destructive force of nature, we saw people picking through the ruins of their former lives, sometimes pathetically calling out the name of loved one to an unresponsive pile of rubble in the forlorn hope that there would be some sort of answer from within. We saw people shaking their heads as they picked among the shattered remains of their worldly belongings, trying to salvage something that would connect their old lives to the new ones they were trying to build. In all that time we saw people give vent to emotion on only two occasions. Once was when a woman who had a relative trapped under a house mistakenly told my friend and I that everything was okay (She was trying to speak to us in English, as we, at the time, spoke next to no Japanese) and then became irate as we began to walk away. It turns out that she had thought she asked for our help and thought we were indifferently abandoning the trapped woman to her fate. The other time was when we passed the house of a young woman who had just lost her mother and could not stop herself from wailing for the deceased. Both of these incidents took place within about two hours of the quake's initial strike. After that, we encountered nothing but patient endurance and a quiet resolve to do what must be done, in other words, gaman.
Because I had this experience, I do not, as do some foreign observers of Japan, despise the obsession with gaman. I criticize it. I am infuriated by it. I even denounce it. But I no longer despise it, for I have first-hand experience of its value.
Gaman, along with that other quintessentially Japanese trait, a passion for order, has thus far permitted the vast majority of the survivors to face their ordeal with a steely stoicism that many outside of Japan find as admirable as they find it alien. But Japanese are not aliens, nor are they super-human. They are people and just like people everywhere, they have their limits. Sentimental myths about the ethic of the samurai notwithstanding, they can no more live on gaman and a love of order than can we. I was fortunate in that I got evacuated from the disaster zone after only four days. Most, of course, were not so lucky and tempers inevitably flared as the accumulated hardship of living a miserable hand-to-mouth existence on the reluctant and sometimes resentful charity of others for months on end ineluctably ground them down. In the hardest hit regions, there were some ugly incidents even if far fewer and far less ugly than would have been the case in most other countries, they did take place.
Judging from what we know of the enormity of this disaster, those limits will be reached and exceeded far quicker this time than they were after Kobe. The scale of the destruction is almost beyond the capacity of people to imagine. The waves that struck the town of Onagawa are thought to have reached a height of 20m (65 feet) in places. People standing atop six-story buildings would not have been safe. As these killer waves moved relentlessly forward, destroying everything in their path, they exerted a pressure of as much as 50 metric tons per square meter. After being subjected to this, and the loss of so many of their friends, neighbors and family members, these people are now crowded into shelters with inadequate clean water, food, bedding, clothing, and medical supplies. In most cases, they have no power nor any means of regular communication with the outside world. They are so desperate for shelter that in some cases they have gathered in park pavilions and are facing the rigors of a Tohoku winter and a nasty cold wave and snow storm without even the luxury of walls and have been forced to string up tarps in an effort to keep the cold out. Blankets are at such a premium that they are being rationed to children and the elderly and with so much humanity living in close proximity to one another and so many immune systems compromised by stress and malnutrition, fears of a flu epidemic are a part of their everyday lives.
The snow in the area has perhaps temporarily made the sight of all the destruction easier to bear for the moment, covering all in a uniform blanket of white and filling the air with that magical silence that often accompanies a snow storm, but soon it will mix with the black tsunami mud and be just another misery to test the gaman of the refugees.
These people need our help. Please do whatever you can.
Japan Disaster Relief Donations
Japan: How to help
Donate to Japan Disaster Relief
A survivor walks among the wreckage of the town of Minamisanriku during a snowstorm. (Asahi Shimbun)