Today I had an interesting conversation with some good folks who, when I asked for directions to the bus stop on my way home from renewing my visa at the Immigration Office, kindly offered to give me a ride to the Tachikawa Train Station. Our conversation gravitated--like a pin and a magnet--to the topic of radiation. (Honestly, I am not in the habit of bringing this topic up with strangers and people I meet in public, but they are constantly bringing it up with me!) The comment that this man made to me is that Japan, being the only country ever to experience atomic bombs, knows what it is like to recover from radiation, and the people are therefore not as scared as one might expect. Everybody has a friend or a family acquaintance that either survived Hiroshima or Nagasaki, or is closely related to someone who did. Needless to say, everyone also knows of people who did not survive. Having that knowledge gives the Japanese public a historical gauge by which to calibrate fallout risk.
Through this conversation I realized there is a good reason, other than a fundamental trust in society to mobilize as needed to address risk on so many levels, why most Japanese people in the Kanto area (centering on Tokyo) have no reason to evacuate and everything to lose by evacuating: as Japanese people, they have a history of overcoming radiation. I also came to accept the possibility that when people mention the history of atomic victimization, it need not be taken as defensive or political, necessarily. But certainly for most people here, it is foundational to a muffled, but buoyant, sense of patriotism. I could detect a sort of matter-of-fact national pride when he blithely explained to me how this current level of radiation is really nothing for Japan to make a big fuss about, having gone through what it went through in the past century (remember, the atomic bombs fell BEFORE Japan’s rapid economic growth into a global power).
But the racially visible absence of many foreigners is, I think, a public concern, and for me it feels a bit different to be a foreigner now. However, this public concern might be a bit misplaced as well, because the foreigners who have ‘left’ Japan or simply stopped coming to Japan are mostly tourists and short-term visitors. Certainly this is a valid concern for tourism and for the Japanese Language education industry, and internationally minded universities such as my own need to think about implications for student demographics. But this is likely to be a blip in the long-term, I think.
That said, Tokyo’s low level of radiation, both in air and drinking water as of today (radiation was reported at undetectable levels in drinking water today for the first time since the great earthquake in March), will only be maintained if the Fukushima Daiichi Plant disaster is kept under control. But all bets are off about that, and some news sources reported the situation worsened today. Nevertheless, even if the Fukushima disaster management efforts do not go well, the immediate impact in most of Japan is not likely to be dramatic.
In a nutshell, I think most of Japan’s efforts should be directed to the recovery, while TEPCO and the committee Japan is now forming to supervise its nuclear power (including international specialists) keep working to address the nuclear disaster. If the nuclear cleanup does not go well, Tokyo will get more radiation, but most likely not at levels that will put us at immediate risk.
What the rest of the world should perhaps worry about is toxic rain. At least in Tokyo people usually use umbrellas…
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