A year has passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake took place on March 11, 2011. What has changed in our society and how? What effect did the earthquake have on the way we live and think?
A year has passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake took place on March 11, 2011. What has changed in our society and how? What effect did the earthquake have on the way we live and think?
We asked playwright Masakazu Yamazaki for his views.
For many years, Yamazaki, who lives in Hyogo Prefecture, has discussed the state of modern Japan from a historical perspective and in terms of civilizational theory.
Excerpts of his interview with The Asahi Shimbun follow:
* * *
If we start with the end results, politically, socially and culturally, the Great Kanto Earthquake before World War II and the two big quakes after the war were very different from each other. Their effects on society differ greatly. This is what I want to highlight.
Even more interesting is how the idea of "disaster prevention" meant to protect society colluded with "national defense," a military concept. After the quake struck, rather than escape from the fires, people in some parts of Tokyo's Kanda district stayed and fought the inferno. An army officer later wrote about the incident in an essay, which people throughout Japanese society admired because it suited the (then popular) idea of fighting, not running away. Textbooks on ethics even used the story.
And now we have experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake. When it comes to how foreign residents behaved and were treated, Kobe doesn't even compare. Managers at companies that suffered damage frantically tried to help Chinese laborers who had come for training. Foreigners who left the towns to return to their countries for a time came back wanting to join in the rebuilding. Wives from other Asian nations are helping the elderly and protecting communities. There are many stories like these.
One other decisive difference that became obvious was that the phrase "disaster prevention" was replaced with "disaster reduction." Scholars at the government's reconstruction planning committee used this phrase. They publicly stated that the idea of 100-percent disaster prevention is impossible and we should run away if we can't fight.
It goes without saying that a major earthquake is a terribly unfortunate event. However, this one has shown a better side of the Japanese people through our international character, our culture and our pacifism. This is what I want to emphasize.
Note that we have had two major earthquakes in Japan in a space of 17 years that were on a national scale, by which I mean that they shocked our entire citizenry. The psychological impact is huge. I think the result may be that the Japanese have woken up to a sort of sense of impermanence.
This is a distinct difference with modern Western civilization. A great earthquake struck Lisbon, Portugal, in the middle of the 18th century that delivered a tremendous shock to Europeans. However, just at that time the Age of Enlightenment was emerging, when people like (Denis) Diderot and Voltaire were preaching humanity's greatness and our shining future. This rationalist thinking led people to forget about such shocks.
But in Japan's case, we have an intriguing tradition of forging onward while holding a sense of our impermanence. You could call it a proactive sense of impermanence. We may have gotten that back.
There's a place in Tokyo called Kiba. In the Edo Period (1603-1867), rich people and landlords would keep a constant and huge stock of lumber here. They couldn't stop fires, but they could rebuild if buildings burned down. Edo was administered under the assumption that big fires would occur and houses would burn down. This also embodies a proactive sense of impermanence.
The more civilization and science progress, the greater our sense of impermanence can become. For example, seismology is in a sense a troublesome field of study. The more precise your earthquake predictions, the more anxiety you sow in people. Because it's science, you can't lie. So as a result you release predictions like: "There is a 70 percent chance of an earthquake striking directly below the Tokyo area within four years." It makes people feel a sense of impermanence and anxiety.
Well, (this growing sense of impermanence) alone isn't going to put cultural activity on the decline in Tokyo. And although people are demanding more leadership from our politics, nobody's saying stupid things like we should give society a military structure.
* * *
Masakazu Yamazaki is a playwright. Born in 1934, he is designated Person of Cultural Merit and serves as vice president of the Suntory Foundation. He survived the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake. Late last year he published "Sekai Bunmeishi no Kokoromi" (An experiment in the history of world civilizations).