Financial Times March 11th 2011
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c8576f88-4c19-11e0-82df-00144feab49a.html#axzz1WV4KM3Sy
Long-term residents of Tokyo tend to be blasé about earthquakes, but this one felt different right from the start. It announced itself with a thunderous jolt. Then it just kept growing in intensity.
When the lamp starts swaying crazily, it is time to stand up and remember the earthquake code: first thing – crawl under the table. But suddenly on Friday that did not seem such a good idea. With books spinning off the shelves and desk drawers crashing open of their own accord, it felt as if there were poltergeists in the room.
What about the next piece of official wisdom: go to the smallest room in the house, where you will be hurt least by the ceiling caving in? No, that did not seem like a good idea either. The walls were vibrating and groaning in a way nature never intended. So in defiance of the earthquake drill I rushed out on to the street, where two young women and a man, all with dyed orange hair, had already assembled. Without thinking, we assembled in the middle of the road and – I cannot stress how unusual this is in Japan – started hugging each other.
That was also not such a good idea. Looking up, I saw a cat’s cradle of telegraph wires and cables criss-crossing the space above us, and a plethora of television aerials and dishes poised to hurl themselves in our direction. Strangest of all, the ground below our feet seemed to have turned to tofu, shuddering as waves of energy coursed through it. But then the reality hit home – there was no good place to be, not in the winding backstreets of urban Tokyo.
Gradually the trembling faded. It was long and intense, the worst quake for decades here in Tokyo. We knew the damage was serious, that somewhere else buildings had been destroyed and people had died.
It was strange, then, to return to my office, and see the soothing official pronouncements scrolling down the Bloomberg screen: train tracks being checked for problems; a baseball game cancelled halfway through; no trouble reported at the nation’s many nuclear power plants. Sometimes no news is decidedly not good news.
Japanese folk wisdom holds that earthquakes are caused by the thrashings of a giant catfish that lives in the mud below the earth. Normally the fish is kept under control by the god Kashima who has placed a large stone on top of it. Every so often, though, Kashima snoozes on the job and the catfish breaks free.
As in European mythologies, natural disasters have often been taken to signify great changes in the human world. The Ansei Great Earthquake of 1855, which destroyed much of Edo (present-day Tokyo) came at the end of the Tokugawa period, Japan’s two-century period of splendid isolation. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 came at the end of a period when Japan had developed democratic politics and been a British ally. The future was to be much darker.
More recently, the Kobe earthquake of 1995 – which claimed 6,400 lives, more than twice as many as the September 11 attacks on America – marked a definitive end to Japan’s era of all-conquering industrial expansion and heralded the entry into deflation and banking crisis. Faith in the competence of official Japan was severely tested by the bumbling response of prime minister Tomiichi Murayama’s government. A few months earlier, Japan had despatched a group of experts to Los Angeles to investigate the recent earthquake there. Their hubristic conclusion was that the damage – mild by the standards of what Kobe was to suffer – was down to shoddy American design. “It could never happen here,” the Japanese public was assured.
If Kobe meant sayonara to the myths of official omnipotence and industrial supremacy, what if anything does the trauma of March 2011 signify? Notwithstanding the cost in lives and disruption, the economic impact on a country as wealthy as Japan is likely to be minimal. Even September 11 had little direct effect on the US economy – although the indirect effect on events has proved to be immense. Furthermore, Japan is not the same place now as it was in 1995. There is no hubris left to be punctured, no belief in the ability of government to improve people’s lives; just a gritty determination to keep going – cheerfully, if possible – in circumstances that nobody expects to change much.
Superficially, Japan seems in a dreadful state. Prime minister Naoto Kan is the latest in a succession of leaders to fall victim to collapsing poll numbers and financial scandal. The economy was the hardest hit of all the Group of Seven advanced economies in the global financial crisis, and the Topix index of stock prices remains mired at 1985 levels.
Yet Japan’s hidden strengths are being under-appreciated, not least by its own public. Since the summer of 2007, the yen has risen dramatically against the euro, the pound, the dollar, the won and the renminbi. Even so, listed companies are expected to return to peak profitability next year. This is an astonishing achievement under the circumstances, and a testament to how much Japanese management has changed since the 1990s, when labour was still seen as a fixed cost.
Japan is ageing rapidly, but – for better or for worse – has not opened its doors to large numbers of immigrant workers. Instead Japanese workers keep going longer – 20 per cent of over-65s are in the workforce, against 5 per cent or less in most European Union countries. Even people in their 80s can be found working – usually with good spirits – in securities houses, restaurants and other businesses. Living off your pension is a concept from a bygone era. Japan may not be supreme in consumer electronics any longer, but it is leading the world in realism.
Young Japanese are much criticised by the elders for apathy and lack of political engagement, but one remarkable side effect of the Kobe earthquake was the surge in volunteerism. More than a million Japanese participated in one way or another. Even Japan’s largest yakuza (gangster) organisation was involved in distributing free food to survivors. It was a spontaneous sprouting of networks of mutual support.
Crisis and disaster can be a spur to positive change too. In Nietzsche’s formulation, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. This disaster will not kill Japan, and it could emerge psychologically stronger if the aftermath of the quake is handled well. Everyone knows there’s no god to put the stone back on the catfish. People have to do it themselves. The greatest cause for optimism about Japan is the reservoir of social capital that has sustained it through two tough decades.
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