Since the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, I have had to repeatedly stop myself from borrowing a line from the TV series "Odoru Dai-Sosa-sen" and shouting: "Disasters are not happening in meeting rooms. They are happening in stricken areas!"
Since the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, I have had to repeatedly stop myself from borrowing a line from the TV series "Odoru Dai-Sosa-sen" and shouting: "Disasters are not happening in meeting rooms. They are happening in stricken areas!"
Adding to the woes of the devastating earthquake and tsunami, the crisis at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant shows no sign of ending. No matter how much we talk about this, there is no easy answer. Just as we finish writing one editorial, the situation changes. We are doing our best to present helpful proposals, but our ideas either seem a matter of course to the people coping with these troubles or do not reach them.
Amid this catastrophic situation, what power does the written word have? For example, I penned an editorial calling for prompt delivery of relief supplies to stricken areas. Of course, such actions are a matter of course.
After the initial shock settled, people started to say things like, "This situation requires us to re-examine all systems, organizations and ways of life from the root," "3/11 will be a watershed of the times" and "We are at a turning point for choosing civilization."
It is as if society suddenly became full of overnight historians, who started to chant in unison, "Let's 'reset' Japan."
Yoshinori Onoki, who heads The Asahi Shimbun's editorial board, also wrote in this column recently: "We must rebuild the nation into a new Japan. Let us make this the starting point."
Indeed, that is true. Before the earthquake, the nation was filled with a sense of stagnation under insufficient political leadership. Why not seize this opportunity to reset our problems, including mistakes, egoism and communities, and go back to square one?
But how do such messages sound to people whose lives have been turned upside down by the earthquake?
They surely want to regain what they have lost--homes, fishing boats, farms and even photo albums, anything of personal value that brings back memories. They don't want to leave their hometowns and their livelihoods.
But reality is tremendously harsh. I image they need time to make heartrending choices. They will be torn by conflict before they can bring themselves to move forward on a new path.
People who live outside the stricken areas have started to voice visions for reconstruction. But we must not keep survivors out of the loop, hastily drawing up agendas as if penciling in plans on a blank map and forcing them to accept it. I want to keep stressing this point.
Let us compare our society before and after the earthquake and identify which things broke down and which withstood the disasters. Our overconfidence in the multilayered safeguard mechanisms of nuclear power plants and concrete buildings that were supposed to protect people from disasters has been shattered.
On the other hand, some people exercised wisdom and survived the catastrophe. Local governments demonstrated solidarity to help each other in the aftermath. Companies and society continue to struggle for survival using their basic strengths.
It is not as though the past must be completely denied. We should learn from mistakes and change what needs to be changed. I believe we must adapt ourselves to new circumstances and move forward for a better tomorrow.
I take to heart these words of a survivor, which ran in the vernacular Asahi Shimbun. They were spoken by a boy who graduated from a junior high school in Minami-Sanriku, Miyagi Prefecture: "I am determined to make the town a better one than before it was washed away by the tsunami."
Aah, I am getting teary-eyed again.
Looking back to the days before March 11, today we stand in the future. Let me fill my pen with tears that have yet to dry and put all my soul into writing.
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Hideaki Ishibashi is an Asahi Shimbun editorial writer who writes about disasters and accidents.