Dochakumin

On March 11th, I happened to be in the US conducting my research, and watching with unbelief as the horrible events on my computer screen were unfolding an ocean away in Tohoku, where I lived my early childhood. My first reaction was a suspicion of media hype. As friends, relatives and neighbors kept approaching me with words of condolence, I eventually had to face the fact that the disaster was real.

My next set of thoughts were deeply patriotic toward Japan, but also non-plussed toward Western pundit descriptions of "needing to learn from Japan's tragedy." "From Japan's tragedy?" I thought. Why not from Japan's diligence and preparedness. Among these emotions was the thought that of all the countries this disaster could happen to, it happened to the one country that can take it (this is ultimately proving true, but I had not known the other half of the tragedy yet) -- a thought that made me well with pride in my association with Japan.

Events ultimately turned in the other direction as the nuclear reactors began their meltdown, and the whole world became impacted. The immediate issue at that time was what the countries of the world were to do in advising their people. Countries like France immediately called its citizens out of Japan. Countries like Bulgaria moved their embassies out of Tokyo. The US, for its part, announced a larger evacuation zone than that officially given by the Japanese government. Now, perhaps, we were seeing the other side of Japanese crisis management, namely denial. Why couldn't the Japanese government quickly recognize at least the possibility that people living farther than 12 miles from the crippled reactors may be in grave danger of deadly radiation? Certainly they had no evidence these places were safe.

Before returning to Tokyo I struggled daily with the issue of whether it was safe to return to my home and work there. My family in the US was hosting a relative from Tokyo, but she eventually returned to Tokyo as soon as her international school restarted. I was scheduled to return to Tokyo on April 3rd, just in time for the new school year at my university. In many respects the timing for the nuclear scare was providential, sandwiched as it was between two fiscal/academic years, but now decisions had to be made and life had to go on in Tokyo.

During that time in latter March, the word "dochakumin" (people fastened to the land) entered my vocabulary. My family's invitation to other Japanese relatives to come to our place in the US was answered by the explanation, "we are dochakumin, after all."

Coming back to Tokyo, I was again deeply moved by the daily pathos one was showered with in every news presentation, sprinkled with constant messages of "ganbare!" (do your best) and "makenaide" (never give up) and apologies from Tokyo Electric Power Company for all the inconvenience they had caused.

As the stories have unfolded, however, I have come to see why Japan will certainly rise once again to its feet: they are dochakumin. That is, it is never good enough to resettle victims from the nuclear (not to mention tsunami) disaster. People love their homes and wish to stay. Their ancestors' spirits are thought to remain in graves located nearby. The sense of grounded belonging is immobile. Now that the Japanese government has finally expanded the evacuation zone, they are severely scolded by locals and by the media at large, but why? Because it took them so long to say so? No, it is because the government gave up. People wanted to still stay in their homes and blame the government for making them leave at all.

It is a deeply troubling scene to see the lone farmer who, breaking the rules, stays with his cows who are starving in the evacuation zone. There is no revenue to be had from them, as their milk has already been condemned, but the farmer interviewed on NHK explained that he made is money from them, and he was even fed by them, he simply could not leave them there to die. So he stays in the irradiated zone and tends them alone. 

Many people refused to leave their homes even after being told to stay inside at all times, and plenty of farmers have hesitated to leave their farms even after their towns were slated for evacuation. People have been allowed to send one family member back for belongings, but some have complained they could never retrieve what they needed without more family members going along.

Thousands of people live in evacuation sites at schools, awaiting placement through a lottery system into temporary quarters that are being built. The grief over leaving their homes seems more intense than if it only had to do with losing everything. There is a deep sense of belonging to the land.

This is precisely why Japan will quickly rebuild. The people belong on their own land. The fishing village of Kesennuma has been covered in news stories describing how rebuilding the fishery should be the first step of recovery. People are willing to live in large school gymnasiums while they work if they can simply get a job. The people of the destroyed town see little hope of recovery unless they can quickly re-employ the young fishermen, so they focus on rebuilding that.

Through this disaster, Japan has discovered a new function for its civil defense force. More than in any other previous disaster, they are being dispatched to the disaster zones to remove rubble from the ground, as well as located the dead floating in the ocean. Up until yesterday, I had not heard of any movement to recruit volunteers from outside of Tohoku for the rebuilding. I attended a presentation at the Institute for Asian Cultural Studies at ICU addressing the prospects of volunteerism. Interestingly, out-of-region volunteering has not been organized on a large scale, although churches and other organizations certainly have sent volunteers, particularly drivers with loads of supplies. But yesterday NHK announced that over a 10-minute time slot 600 volunteers registered to participate in a volunteer program, and of these 200 were chosen. The interest in volunteering has never been so high in Japan, I feel.

I am sure these volunteers are feeling the sense of patriotism I myself have caught. They love their land. They are not nationalists. They simply love their land and know it is the right thing to do to go and help. People know radiation is bad for them, but some intentionally buy vegetables grown in Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Chiba to support the agriculture that remains.

Worse disasters may still be on the way. But if they can be averted, Japan will write the book on how to recover from nuclear disaster. Of this I am quite certain. Whether, as has been suggested to me by a Canadian acquaintance, Japan's after-the-fact model of crisis management results in contributing to the world a cure for cancer twenty years from now, remains to be seen.