{"id":94,"date":"2021-08-23T18:52:51","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T18:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/of-shelters-and-survivors\/"},"modified":"2021-08-23T20:18:49","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T20:18:49","slug":"of-shelters-and-survivors","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/migrated-posts\/of-shelters-and-survivors\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Shelters and Survivors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I\u2019ve written a bit about the people who survived the tsunami \u2013 the folks I consider to be the primary hisaisha<\/em> (not to dismiss the significance of the experiences of what we might call \u201csecondary hisaisha<\/em>\u201d) \u2013 a few times already, scattered across different posts.\u00a0 I\u2019ve expressed a sense of awe at their individual fortitude, and also my respect for the ways they have found to mourn their losses.\u00a0 Without meaning to take anything away from the weight of their experiences \u2013 as individuals or collectively \u2013 there are many things I heard and learned while in Ishinomaki that I\u2019d like to comment on here.<\/div>\n
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As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, our tendency as human beings is to want to believe that those whom we see suffering are somehow ennobled by the experience.\u00a0 Perhaps this is because doing so makes it all the easier for us to feel a sense of pity for them; pity well spent on unfortunate but virtuous souls.<\/p>\n

But that is just our desire.\u00a0 As such, it is also interesting to note how it stands in sharp contrast to another common belief about disasters.\u00a0 Back to one of Rebecca Solnit\u2019s observations: when the normal order of everyday life breaks down completely, we tend to believe that those stuck in such a situation will resort \u2013 or \u201crevert\u201d \u2013 to the most barbaric and Darwinian mode of struggle for individual survival, turning their backs on their fellow humans without a second thought, if that\u2019s what it takes to make it through.<\/p>\n

From the little bit that I have seen and heard over the course of my time in Miyagi, though, I have arrived at two hunches: 1) much as we would like to believe it, we do no one a service be expecting the victims of misfortune to behave better than the rest of us; and, 2) this is precisely because as things begin to return to normal \u2013 or rather to some altered state of normalcy \u2013 the problems really begin.<\/p>\n

I call these \u201chunches\u201d rather than \u201cconclusions,\u201d because I admit that the sources from which I have drawn them by no means comprise a thorough survey of peoples\u2019 experiences and opinions.\u00a0 An extensive oral history of life in the evacuation shelters eventually deserves to be recorded; but I believe it probably won\u2019t be until well after the last residents have moved out.<\/p>\n

Hinanjo<\/em>: from evacuation centers to shelters for the displaced<\/strong><\/p>\n

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A prefectural sports complex in Onagawa, which in the days and weeks after the tsunami sheltered many of the town\u2019s surviving population.\u00a0 At the present time, more than 150 are still living here.<\/em><\/p>\n

During my stay in the Tohoku area, I had the opportunity to talk for various people who had resided temporarily in evacuation shelters in different towns and cities.\u00a0 These included my friend Takumi and the others whom I met on that evening after the funeral, as well as another old friend from the basketball team, Komatsu; three individuals I met in Ishinomaki during the course of volunteering with JEN (one of them being the earlier-mentioned Ueshima-san); and a couple of people I met later in Sendai, during the Tanabata Festival.\u00a0 I also talked to a student of Hariu-san\u2019s who was from Ishinomaki, and knew many people who had lived or were still living in the shelters, although she and her family never had.\u00a0 Yama-chan as always proved to be a source of detailed second-hand information through the conversations he had had with people living at the shelters in the course of his work.\u00a0 The stories I heard from these people ea about what it was like during the early days and weeks after the tsunami came from shelters in Ishinomaki, Kesennuma, Natori, and the coastal parts of Sendai city.\u00a0 I did not approach each and every one of these people with a standard battery of survey questions, but simply got them on the subject and let them recall whatever came to mind, although I would ask the occasional clarifying question.<\/p>\n

What follows is thus not a detailed exploration.\u00a0 A thorough history of the hinanjo<\/em>, as evacuation centers are called in Japanese, will need to explore various facets of their administration and composition which these anecdotes alone won\u2019t permit: for starters, what determined where people ended up?\u00a0 On a walk through any Japanese town or city, you are likely to come upon signs identifying a specific area as a hinanjo<\/em>.\u00a0 Usually, these are school buildings and the grounds attached to them.\u00a0 The reason for designating such places as evacuation centers is not only because they are public spaces easily recognized by people living in the vicinity, but also because the open grounds are the safest place to be in the event of an earthquake and the fires that often follow them.\u00a0 Most hinanjo<\/em>, in fact, seem to have been selected with the threat of earthquakes \u2013 not tsunamis \u2013 in mind: a situation that will require some rethinking in many areas in light of this disaster.<\/p>\n

If you live in a Japanese town, and particularly if you own a home there, the municipality and your accumulated knowledge of your neighborhood make you aware of the nearest hinanjo <\/em>to your home \u2013 the one you should go to in case of a disaster.\u00a0 With the quake hitting at 2:46pm, however, most people were not at home at the time.\u00a0 Schools and places of work have their own designated evacuation centers, of course, but what this meant is that many families ended up scattered among different hinanjo<\/em> in the immediate aftermath.\u00a0 This was precisely my friend Takumi\u2019s experience.<\/p>\n

How, or even whether, these separated families managed to regroup in the days that followed, represents the point at which the hinanjo<\/em> began evolving from truly temporary places of refuge to residential shelters.\u00a0 In all too many cases, of course, whatever joy came from reunions after days of uncertainty was tempered by anxious waiting for the appearance of other family members, and the eventual, bitter news that they would never be coming back.\u00a0 Over time (although how much time it took is of course another question deserving exploration), families appear to have reconstituted themselves as best they could in the shelters nearest their homes \u2013 or whatever was left of them.\u00a0 Even before this point, however, it appears that many of the shelters began compiling lists of the people taking refuge there, probably under the instruction of municipal officials.\u00a0 The primary point of this exercise was of course to make it possible for families scattered across different shelters to find one another.\u00a0 In the days after the tsunami, some of these lists were posted on internet web sites such as Google\u2019s missing persons pages, as well as on municipal government homepages.\u00a0 The earthquake and tsunami had drastically disrupted cell phone and land line phone service across northeastern Japan, but I have heard from many people within the hisaichi<\/em> and outside of it that the internet faired a bit better, perhaps owning to the widespread use of fiber optic cable in Japan; as power began to be restored, people got back on-line.<\/p>\n

Another purpose of the lists, though, was to serve as a head count.\u00a0 Here too, the timing is important and deserves further examination.\u00a0 The Japanese Self-Defense Force, with some aid from American forces stationed in Japan, began delivering food and supplies to the various hinanjo<\/em> as soon as they could reach them.\u00a0 The quantities delivered were at first based upon rough estimates of the number of people at each shelter, and probably constrained by logistical concerns such as the amount of supplies that could be carried on any one sortie and the number of hinanjo<\/em> that required supplies during the course of it.\u00a0 Eventually, however, the task of providing food and necessities to the shelters was turned over to the municipal governments, with aid from the prefectural and central governments.\u00a0 The lists served to indicate the number of meals and other supplies to be delivered to each shelter.\u00a0 This is where the timing becomes an issue, however: as I learned from Hariu-san, and mentioned in an earlier post, in some cases people whose names had been recorded on the lists moved out soon afterwards, either to return to their homes or to find other living arrangements.\u00a0 Since their names remained of the list, though, the local government still delivered means for them \u2013 meals to which some still felt entitled; hence the anecdotes of ethically-questionable behavior, such as folks living in luxury condos making the daily trek to their local hinanjo<\/em> to receive their rations.<\/p>\n

Anecdotes from the early days<\/strong><\/p>\n

But let me get back to the very first days, since the lists and rations based upon them \u2013 and the problems this system subsequently created \u2013 didn\u2019t start until weeks after the disaster.\u00a0 People I talked to about life in the shelters immediately after 3\/11 generally claimed that, although everyone felt a deep sense of uncertainty, signs of open panic and hysteria were few.\u00a0 Part of this was due to the local nature of the centers; even if your entire family was not there with you, you were at least surrounded by many of your neighbors.\u00a0 Of course, this introduced an element of personality into the situation that wasn\u2019t always ameliorative: a student of Hariu-san\u2019s whom I talked to told me about a friend of hers from Ishinomaki who took refuge in her neighborhood shelter.\u00a0 The people empowered to be \u201cin charge\u201d of each shelter (whatever being \u201cin charge\u201d meant in the early days \u2013 or even later on \u2013 is another topic that still remains to be explored) were the leaders of the local jichitai<\/em> \u2013 \u201cself-governing bodies\u201d \u2013 typically neighborhood associations and the like.\u00a0 In this particular student\u2019s case, the head of the jichitai<\/em>, either out of stress or an inflated sense of self-importance under the circumstances, become quite dictatorial.\u00a0 In such cases, however, the fact the shelters contained mostly neighbors who knew one another before the disaster disrupted their lives may have acted as a break on such high-handedness.\u00a0 The student told me that after a few days, her friend\u2019s parents and other adults at the shelter approached the individual in question and urged him \u2013 in no uncertain terms \u2013 to reconsider his approach.\u00a0 He had no choice but to comply.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure if this counts as a triumph of democracy in action, but it does strike me as something that probably wouldn\u2019t have happened under normal circumstances.\u00a0 The Japanese are usually pretty good at putting up \u2013 grudgingly, at least \u2013 with high-handed behavior from their bureaucrats and politicians; it\u2019s part of that gaman<\/em> thing, I guess.<\/p>\n

From others I talked to, I heard intriguing episodes of generosity, as well as a willingness for people who didn\u2019t even know one another to work together, based upon that the realization, perhaps, that they were indeed all in this together.\u00a0 Takumi told me that on his second day in a shelter, a large trailer truck pulled up and two men began handing out gourmet wakame<\/em> seaweed, kamaboko<\/em> fish cakes, and other seafood delicacies, telling people to take as much as they wanted.\u00a0 The company warehouse where all this food was usually stored had only been slightly damaged by the tsunami, but the loss of electric power had rendered its refrigerators and freezers useless: unless they got rid of it all in a hurry, they\u2019d be stuck with a warehouse full of rotting marine products.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, it was the refugees who took the initiative in acquiring what they needed, but in a way that seemed more like negotiation than looting.\u00a0 I heard of such example from Kesennuma.\u00a0 With no running water available, a group of thirsty evacuees debated amongst themselves whether they should break into a row of vending machines that stood across the street from their shelter.\u00a0 The machines had not been damaged by the tsunami, but had lost power like everything else in the city.\u00a0 Finally, they decided to contact the owner of the machines, whose name, number, and address appeared on the face of each, right by the locks that the group was prepared to break through to get to the precious contents within.\u00a0 A representative went to the office of the owner to ask if it would be all right to break into the machines.\u00a0 Instead, the owner accompanied him back the spot with the keys. \u00a0(This episode reminds one of the behavior of \u201cthe mob\u201d during the Rice Riots of 1918, when skyrocketing inflation prompted groups of largely working-class Japanese in urban areas across the country to \u201cnegotiate\u201d with rice merchants to sell their grain at a more agreeable price.)<\/p>\n

To be sure, there was a strong element of self-interest at work in such generosity: the marine products company didn\u2019t what to be stuck with a warehouse full of rotting fish and seaweed; likewise, the vending machine owner understood that giving away a few cases of beverage was better than having to repair his machines.\u00a0 As such, they may not count as examples of true altruism.\u00a0 But with the exception of the anecdote about the dictatorial jichitai<\/em> leader, the people I talked to generally spoke of a strong sense of solidarity and generosity in the hinanjo<\/em> during the first weeks after the disaster.\u00a0 The refugees were low on everything \u2013 food, drinking water, toilet paper, and diapers in particular \u2013 but they seemed to have ample supplies of patience and goodwill for one another.\u00a0 They shared what little they had.\u00a0 I noticed that many of these folks spoke with a certain kind of nostalgia mixed with a tinge of excitement as they recalled these early days, as if there was something they experienced in that situation that was more subtly powerful in shaping their recollections than the uncertainty and desperation that had every right to feel.<\/p>\n

Nor was this solidarity and mutual aid observed only among those in the shelters: people from the surrounding areas who were fortunate enough not to lose their homes delivered what they could to shelters nearby.\u00a0 Many stories of this sort of generosity that appeared in local papers in the Tohoku area have since been republished by Bungei shunj\u016b in a collection entitled The Great Eastern Japan Earthquake \u2013 News that Connects Our Hearts<\/em> (\u6c60\u4e0a\u5f70\u3001\u6587\u82b8\u6625\u79cb\u7de8\u3001\u300e\u6771\u65e5\u672c\u5927\u9707\u707d\u30fb\u5fc3\u3092\u3064\u306a\u3050\u30cb\u30e5\u30fc\u30b9\u300f\u3001\u6771\u4eac\uff1a\u682a\u5f0f\u4f1a\u793e\u6587\u82b8\u6625\u79cb\u30012011\u5e746\u670830\u65e5\u51fa\u7248).\u00a0 As the title implies, there is an emphasis on the heartwarming and sentimental in this collection.\u00a0 Still, the anecdotes in these reports provide a glimpse of some of the best, most altruistic behavior exhibited among survivors in the aftermath.\u00a0 There was the group of junior high school students in Watari, some taking refuge in the shelters and others whose homes nearby had survived, who took it upon themselves to clean the shelter in their area (Arahama Junior High), do the cooking for all the refugees there, and take care of trash and sanitation as best they could during the early days.\u00a0 If all of these students had been members of the same school, it would have been impressive enough; in fact, however, many went to schools other than Arahama JHS, and many did not know one another prior to taking this duty upon themselves.\u00a0 There were also the members of an amateur rugby team in Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture, who carried the handicapped and infirm up and down the stairs of a hospital that had become a shelter, since the loss of power had made it impossible to use the elevators.\u00a0 In one case, such generosity actually led to the creation of a shelter.\u00a0 A farmer in Shiroishi, a town in Miyagi Prefecture on the border with Fukushima, opened his home to 40 refugees from a town near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.\u00a0 With the exception of his cousin and his family, all of them were complete strangers.<\/p>\n

My point in relating these anecdotes is not to make the claim that there is something uniquely Japanese going on here; similar acts of generosity and concern for fellow human beings no matter who they may be follow in the wake of disasters wherever they occur.\u00a0 What these anecdotes suggest to me is that, in the days immediately following the tsunami, there was no sense of the hinanjo<\/em> as a kind of \u201cspecial place.\u201d\u00a0 Evacuees and people from neighborhoods that had been spared the worst interacted freely.\u00a0 The outpouring of goodwill was tremendous.<\/p>\n

In the days after the disaster, it also rapidly spread to areas of Japan outside of Tohoku, as well as across the globe.\u00a0 Individuals and groups across the country began sending relief supplies and volunteers to towns and even to individual hinanjo<\/em> with days of the tsunami, before the roads to many areas were even passable.\u00a0 Moral support \u2013 as well as donations to various charities \u2013 poured in from Japan and overseas in the form of condolences and messages of encouragement, addressed to local government offices and specific hinanjo<\/em> alike.<\/p>\n

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Messages of encouragement sent to Ishinomaki from various groups around the country and world, on display in City Hall.\u00a0 The flag above was sent from the participants in a relief concert held in Rome on April 21.<\/em><\/p>\n

Although the disorganized nature of the some the material relief efforts at this point may have been a source of occasional logistical headaches for local authorities, the hisaisha<\/em> appreciated it enormously.\u00a0 (If anything, during the early days it was the media, which profited through making a spectacle of the disaster and their plight without bringing any relief supplies to the hinanjo<\/em> along with their cameras and microphones, toward which some of the hisaisha<\/em> felt animosity.)\u00a0 They were even grateful for the mementos of support and encouragement that they received from around Japan and the world; at the very least, it helped to know that people were thinking of them and wishing the well.<\/p>\n

The hinanjo<\/em> as a self-contained community<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the weeks dragged on, however, and the state of crisis became the \u201cnew normal,\u201d what we might call the permeability of the hinanjo<\/em> during the early days seems to have declined.\u00a0 Part of this was due, I believe, to a common phenomenon: as with any ongoing experience, life in the hinanjo<\/em> became something that was not only shared by the people who had to live there, but at the same time something that set them apart from those who didn\u2019t.\u00a0 But this wasn\u2019t the only factor in the loss of permeability, nor perhaps even the main one.\u00a0 More important still may have been the realization on the part of those living there that unlimited access to the shelters by people who did not live there was, for a variety of reasons, not a good idea.<\/p>\n

Hariu-san shared an anecdote with me from some of the shelters in Sendai in which acquaintances had lived for a time.\u00a0 In the days immediately following the tsunami, anyone who could reach the shelters with food and supplies was welcomed.\u00a0 Within a few weeks, however, a variety of religious groups began to send people to the shelters to proselytize while distributing food and other necessity.\u00a0 Some of these groups were Christian, others Buddhist, still others were of less discernable lineage, but in any case the message that most brought to the shelters hit similar themes: this disaster befell you because you did not believe; it was a sign from god \u2013 or whatever \u2013 that you\/the Japanese\/humankind are not leading the proper life and\/or that the end is near.\u00a0 Salvation, rebirth in paradise, etc., were possible only by embracing the faith and joining the group; all others were doomed to suffering and perhaps even eternal damnation in the next life.<\/p>\n

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A Christian evangelical group on the streets of Sendai, with signs and a recorded message about God\u2019s judgment and the significance of the earthquake and tsunami as a sign of divine displeasure, played on a tape loop over a bullhorn.\u00a0 Groups like this have become a regular sight in the city since the quake.\u00a0 The signs read: (top) \u201cChrist will judge each person\u2019s secrets\u201d [Romans, 2:16]; (bottom) \u201cRepent!\u201d [Matthew, 3:2].
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Despite the ubiquity of shrines and temples, the Japanese tend to be fairly suspicious of organized religion, and especially congregation-based religions that demand of the believer a voluntary separation from the social world that most Japanese operate in.\u00a0 In this sense, Japan is a tremendously agnostic country: people don\u2019t wear their faith on their sleeves, and one\u2019s spiritual beliefs \u2013 no matter whether they adhere to the teachings of a particular religious tradition or not \u2013 are considered one\u2019s own business.<\/p>\n

And on top of that, these groups were showing up at the shelters with the message that the suffering of these people, who had lost their homes and loved ones, was essentially their own fault.\u00a0 It should come as little surprise that most evacuees had very little patience for this.\u00a0 Residents of the shelters complained to their jichitai<\/em> representatives, and rapidly the shelters established \u201cfront desks\u201d to regulate who obtained access to the shelter and its residents.<\/p>\n

Annoyance at the insensitivity of evangelicals was not the only issue at stake here, I believe.\u00a0 On a deeper level, it also reveals how the people living in the shelter were beginning to regard it as a kind of \u201chome\u201d \u2013 a place where they belonged, and which belonged to them, even if that sense of belonging didn\u2019t involve a strong sense of emotional attachment per se.\u00a0 In the same way that most of us find visits to our door by religious proselytizers to be something of a nuisance, because it represents an intrusion on our time and privacy, so to did the residents of the hinanjo<\/em> \u2013 for \u201cresidents\u201d is indeed what they had become \u2013 find the intrusion to be an invasion of their privacy, and an especially irksome one in light of the message that came with it.\u00a0 A similar sensitivity lay behind the criticism that Prime Minister Kan Naoto received from the residents of a hinanjo<\/em> he visited in Rikuzen Takata on April 2nd<\/sup>, when the PM apparently entered the building without first removing his shoes.\u00a0 From Kan\u2019s perspective, the building was just another public space; for those residing there with no place else to go, it was \u201chome\u201d \u2013 even if a rather uncomfortable, inconvenient one at that \u2013 a place that should not be entered with ones shoes on.<\/p>\n

I got a bit of a sense of this myself one morning in Watanoha, while on my way back from the local convenience store to buy supplies for the day ahead.\u00a0 The route took me past the front of Kazama Elementary School, which stands in an area that probably took on a less than a meter of water during the tsunami.\u00a0 The school gymnasium probably housed around 70 people during July, or so I was told by some of the JEN staffers.\u00a0 In the mornings in particular, the residents could be seen outside in the school athletic ground or hanging laundry out to dry on racks set up for that purpose in the parking area between the gym and the road on which I was traveling.\u00a0 There were almost always a few people hanging out in a makeshift smokers\u2019 area in a corner behind the gym, right next to the fence that separates the school parking lot from the road, as there were on this particular morning.\u00a0 As I approached the spot on the JEN bicycle, I happened to make eye contact with one of them, and said \u201cgood morning.\u201d\u00a0 I seemed to have caught him off-guard, but in a rather startled manner he returned my greeting.\u00a0 As I passed the group, though, I heard one of the others say to him, \u201cWhat \u2013 you know that guy?\u201d\u00a0 (Nan da \u2013 aitsu shitteru ka.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

This brief encounter probably requires a bit of explanation to underscore what I see as significant in it.\u00a0 First of all, the Japanese education system, and increasingly the media, place a great deal of emphasis on the importance of the practice of exchanging such everyday social greetings, even among (or rather especially<\/em> among) strangers.\u00a0 Elementary school lessons and even public service announcements extol the virtues of saying \u201chello,\u201d \u201cgood morning,\u201d and \u201cgood evening,\u201d and thanking people when they do something for you, no matter how small the favor may be or how perfunctorily it is performed.\u00a0 The overall message seems to be that a society in which people greet each other with proper courtesy is a healthy, cohesive society.<\/p>\n

As a quirky aside that nonetheless illustrates this emphasis, take a look at the following video clip.\u00a0 This is a public service announcement aimed at young children, which encourages them to get into the practice of saying \u201chello,\u201d \u201cgood-bye,\u201d \u201cgood night,\u201d etc., by connecting these phrases to the names of animals, cutely rendered in the anthropomorphized form.\u00a0 Such everyday greetings, the accompanying song tells us, are in fact \u201cmagical words\u201d that will increase the number of friends one has.\u00a0 In the aftermath of March 11th<\/sup>, when every network turned its programming over 24\/7 to covering the disaster and the unfolding situation in Fukushima, regular commercials apparently disappeared from most TV broadcasts (why this was is not entirely clear to me \u2013 either the commercials disappeared with the programs that they were intended to sponsor, or else the networks decided that it would be somehow inappropriate to plug the fruits of commercial convenience in the midst of a disaster).\u00a0 In their place, public service announcements filled the breaks, and the PSA below attained particular notoriety, both for its frequency and its cutesy content.\u00a0 (Thanks to Tokyo-based friend Michael Burtscher for the background story and the link.)<\/p>\n

I doubt that this PSA was produced specifically in response to the disaster.\u00a0 At the very least, though, the fact that folks in positions of authority see the need to plug the practice of exchanging greetings through such media may suggest that they are concerned about a declining sense of social cohesion.\u00a0 As for the actual state of the practice itself, it is much as you might expect; in big cities, it\u2019s fairly rare to hear greetings exchanged between strangers, unless you\u2019re in one of the \u201cold neighborhood\u201d enclaves tucked away off of the major thoroughfares.\u00a0 In more rural areas, it\u2019s not at all uncommon to hear people exchange greetings, although that also could be because there are fewer strangers in such areas to encounter in the first place.\u00a0 In Ishinomaki, though, I noticed that even the little children we often ran into in the neighborhood of Watanohaus, including those around the school, seemed pretty good about returning our greetings, as did may of the adults in the area (I should admit that I\u2019m not typically so good about this sort of thing myself, but after the episode with the smokers, I began to make a point of greeting the people I passed first, just to see how they would react).<\/p>\n

At the risk of reading too much into the encounter, though, what really interests me in it is not so much the act of greeting a stranger itself, or the decision not to do so, but what lay behind the \u201cWhat \u2013 you know that guy?\u201d comment.\u00a0 Was it because I was an obvious foreigner?\u00a0 Maybe \u2013 although that didn\u2019t seem to the prevent kids and adults in the immediate vicinity of Watanohaus from saying hello.\u00a0 Also, it\u2019s interesting to note that the utterance wasn\u2019t \u201cwhat \u2013 you know that gaijin<\/em>?\u201d \u2013 which it probably would have been if the person was questioning why his companion had bothered to greet a foreigner.\u00a0 In this case, it seems I was just a \u201cguy.\u201d\u00a0 Since I clearly wasn\u2019t a resident of the shelter, though, the question might have had a different significance: why would you bother saying hello to him<\/em>?<\/p>\n

This was just one comment by one individual, after all, so I\u2019m not willing to read too much into it, but it may be indicative of a kind of \u201cus and them\u201d mentality among residents of the hinanjo<\/em> that has taken root as their term of occupancy drags on, seeming to become a semi-permanent state.\u00a0 Local authorities across the hisaichi<\/em> seem sensitive to this plight and the problems it creates, and are thus trying to get the dislocated out of the shelters as quickly as possible, by moving them into prefabricated housing units know as kasetsu j\u016btaku<\/em> \u2013 \u201ctemporary housing.\u201d\u00a0 After leaving Ishinomaki, I learned that in both Sendai city and in Rikuzen Takata they had achieved just that by the beginning of August, and that the last of the shelters in both cities had since reverted to being what they were prior to March 11th<\/sup>: school gymnasiums, neighborhood meeting halls, and government offices.\u00a0 The fact that so many hinanjo<\/em> remain open in Ishinomaki perhaps attests to the depth of some the tensions between people from different neighborhoods and livelihoods in the city that I mentioned in earlier posts.<\/p>\n

Whatever the reason, they are still there \u2013 or at least were as of the beginning of August.\u00a0 The Ishinomaki City homepage still lists Kazama Elementary as an active hinanjo<\/em>, along with numerous locations in other parts of the city (http:\/\/www.city.ishinomaki.lg.jp\/bousai\/bousai_jyoho\/bousai_info_hp.jsp<\/a>), although it does not provide information on the number of people still residing there.\u00a0 The stress of this lifestyle is difficult to imagine, especially as the weather gets hotter.\u00a0 Kazama Elementary doesn\u2019t even have bathing facilities; the residents have to travel over a kilometer to another hinanjo<\/em>, where the Self-Defense Force built a temporary public bathing facility for the displaced back in April.<\/p>\n

And that underscores some of the disparities that arise as life returns to normal for people outside of the shelters \u2013 disparities that may only accentuate whatever feelings of separation and social isolation those in the hinanjo<\/em> already feel.\u00a0 While discussing these issues one night with Yama-chan and some of the other volunteers, Kuwabara-san made the cogent observation that all of the houses surrounding Kazama Elementary no doubt had baths and showers of their own; if the bonds uniting people in a city that had suffered the tsunami to the extent that Ishinomaki did were indeed as strong as the media constantly claimed they were, then why didn\u2019t people living in the homes around the hinanjo <\/em>at least allow the folks living there to come over for a bath or shower every so often?\u00a0 This, after all, is not an unheard of thing in Japan.\u00a0 Had this ever occurred at any time since March 11th<\/sup>?\u00a0 Had no one even thought of offering to do so?<\/p>\n

Tensions within<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even if circumstances have forced an identity upon the residents of the hinanjo<\/em> that serves to set them apart \u2013 or rather make them feel set apart \u2013 from people who are not in the shelters, this doesn\u2019t mean that all is harmonious within the hinanjo<\/em>.\u00a0 Images from inside the shelters broadcast by the Japanese media over the past five months reveal a subtle but significant development: the rise of partitions.\u00a0 In the first days after the disaster, photos of the hinanjo<\/em> showed exhausted refugees crowded together on the floors of school gyms.\u00a0 People far outnumbered the possessions they had managed to bring with them.\u00a0 Families and friends huddled together for warmth under blankets or around whatever heat sources happened to be available.<\/p>\n

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Over time, however, the floors of the shelter were divided into spaces for individuals and families.\u00a0 The earliest attempts of this kind involved using the cardboard boxes in which relief supplies arrived at the shelter to erect makeshift walls.<\/p>\n

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Eventually, materials specifically for the purpose arrived: large sheets of corrugated cardboard; polls and curtains, even specially designed prefab cubicles and camping tents.<\/p>\n

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This is an obvious development in many respects: people require a certain amount of privacy, after all, and the shelter is a very difficult environment in which to secure it.\u00a0 There is a symbolic dimension to this transformation too, however; the rise of partitions suggests an attempt to return to some semblance of normalcy \u2013 a way of life in which the communality of the earliest days after March 11th<\/sup> is disaggregated back into separate units of families and individuals.\u00a0 This is not to say that a sense of community no longer exists, but with the immediacy of the disaster fading and the arrival of relief supplies obviating the need to hang together in order to survive, people seek to return to the way things were before the disaster that transformed everything \u2013 even when it is infeasible to do so, and even at the cost of personal comfort in other areas.\u00a0 Both Hariu-san and Yama-chan told me separately that the trend in the shelters seems to be to erect higher and higher partitions over time.\u00a0 That this trend continued even as the weather grew hot and humid \u2013 in gymnasiums that have neither air conditioning nor enough electric fans to go around \u2013 suggests how much people are willing to sacrifice in order to secure a sense of privacy and normalcy.<\/p>\n

At the same time that residents of the hinanjo<\/em> do what they can to achieve these things, however, the very fact of their shared situation creates tensions that cut against the desire to do as one pleases, without concern for the group.\u00a0 In the course of his work spraying odor neutralizers, Yama-chan gets to visit many hinanjo<\/em>.\u00a0 The residents are quite thankful for the work that he does for them, and he has attended many meetings of residents at their shelters in order to introduce himself and explain how his products work.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, I try to avoid going as much as I can, because once the meeting starts you sometimes get to see the uglier side of living at close quarters for so long.\u00a0 For some people in the shelters, I think things were actually better right after the tsunami, when they all had practically nothing but each other.\u00a0 I know it sounds horrible to say that, but before they began receiving relief rations, people tended to share whatever they had.\u00a0 Now, though, problems arise over really stupid stuff.\u00a0 Everyone gets three meals a day in the shelter, right?\u00a0 So, someone decides to go out and buy some ice cream or maybe some corn-on-the-cob to have with the food they get for dinner one day.\u00a0 Someone else sees that and has a problem with it \u2013 like it\u2019s somehow not fair unless everyone gets to eat the same thing.\u00a0 At the meetings you have to sit through a lot of that sort of complaining.\u201d<\/p>\n

As society outside of the hinanjo<\/em> returns to its normal state \u2013 a state based upon the premise that in exchange for money one should be able to fulfill ones personal needs and desires as conveniently as possible \u2013 the gap between what has become normal outside and inside produces such conflicts.\u00a0 Some residents wish to overcome their predicament \u2013 or at least take the edge off of it \u2013 with whatever creature comforts they can obtain from a society that views individualized consumption a good thing, if not indeed a virtue.\u00a0 \u00a0Others feel that this kind of behavior undermines the principle that the shelters operate on as relief centers; namely, that everyone gets just as much as everyone else, and no more.\u00a0 Which view one adopts in any given situation largely depends on whether one is exercising their right to pursue fulfillment of their desires, or whether one is observing others do so.<\/p>\n

There is an element of a Japanese-style approach to achieving equality through bureaucracy in the latter sentiment; ensuring equality of opportunity is considered a tenet of a democratic society in Japan to a much greater degree than it is in the US.\u00a0 That in itself is certainly not a bad thing.\u00a0 It has always sat uneasily with the consumerist culture of Japan that took hold in the high-growth years and beyond, though.\u00a0 The altered state of life in the hinanjo<\/em> has brought this tension to the fore, however, with particularly stressful results.<\/p>\n

This, incidentally, was probably why the JEN staff in Tokyo urged me not to bring the t-shirts, and why Yama-chan felt that donating them to the Oshika flea market would be a much better course of action that bringing them to a shelter for distribution among the residents.\u00a0 Although the JEN staff told me that they could not effectively assess the needs of the people in the shelters, it may have been more a problem of finding a shelter in which everyone would get a shirt of the proper size to fit them, and nobody would be left out.\u00a0 With only 70 t-shirts in a variety of sizes \u2013 plus a certain number that were clearly women\u2019s tees and thus could not be given to men \u2013 it would be very difficult indeed to find a shelter small enough to ensure that everyone got a shirt.\u00a0 Even if we had managed to, in the end I would have been left with quite a few shirts and nowhere else to distribute them that wouldn\u2019t leave someone out and run the risk of creating discord.\u00a0 By contrast, donating the shirts to the Oshika flea market put them in the realm of purchasable commodities, but in a way that would keep the price well within reach of anyone who needed them and generate funds to help support folks displaced by the tsunami at the same time.\u00a0 It was a proverbial win-win, in that sense.<\/p>\n

What is to be done?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In any case, this episode and the discussions I had with JEN staff people, other volunteers, and many other people in Ishinomaki and other parts of Miyagi Prefecture drove home the difficulties involved in aiding victims of the tsunami.\u00a0 The first response of human compassion to a situation like this is to give something, and in a capitalist world system money seems to be an obvious choice as both the easiest and most helpful thing to give.\u00a0 In this disaster it was certainly so at the start, and still is greatly needed in regard to some specific aspects of the current situation that I will return to in a future post.\u00a0 For the most part, though, what is needed now are things that no amount of donated capital can buy for the survivors: clear policies to rebuild not just the infrastructure and other physical aspects of the area destroyed by the tsunami, but also the economy and culture; as well as a sustained will on the part of the central government to make this happen.<\/p>\n

And this is exactly the problem now, because neither is entirely evident yet.\u00a0 Local and prefectural governments have, up to this point, concentrated most of their efforts on clearing the rubble, reestablishing utilities, and rebuilding basic infrastructure \u2013 particularly roads.\u00a0 This is necessary, but as Yama-chan pointed out, what the hell are the people living in the area \u2013 whether they are stuck in a hinanjo<\/em> or not \u2013 supposed to do in the meantime?\u00a0 For its part the central government finally enacted its Basic Act for Great Eastern Japan Earthquake Recovery (\u6771\u65e5\u672c\u5927\u9707\u707d\u5fa9\u8208\u57fa\u672c\u6cd5) on June 24, 2011, over 100 days after the disaster.\u00a0 In contrast, a similar law enacted after the Great Hanshin Earthquake that destroyed Kobe and other parts of the Kansai area in 1995 took only about 40 days to enact.\u00a0 The delay has been caused not so much by the enormity of the problems in this instance \u2013 including as it does the technically, logistically, and politically tricky question of what to do about the Fukushima Daiichi reactors and what the impact of that crisis will be on national energy policy \u2013 but more so by political infighting plain and simple.\u00a0 The opposition Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito have used the crisis to undermine the legitimacy of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan.\u00a0 Doing itself no favors, the DPJ was itself mired in factional disputes over whether PM Kan should be replaced, and if so by whom, for much of the spring.\u00a0 Democracy in action\u2026<\/p>\n

From the standpoint of the stricken prefectures in Tohoku and the hisaisha<\/em> who live there, though, it really doesn\u2019t matter what party is in charge, as long as the central government takes a firm hand in bringing reconstruction and recovery about.<\/p>\n

The Basic Recovery Act at least opens a door to the possibility that this could happen, by instituting an administrative framework, including the creation of a new Reconstruction Agency, to oversee the work to be done.\u00a0 In the interest of not making this entry any longer than it already has become, I won\u2019t get into discussing the Act now.\u00a0 Here\u2019s an overview of the Act, in English, from the DPJ website, for those who are interested:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.dpj.or.jp\/english\/news\/index.html?num=20276<\/a><\/p>\n

The language is quite vague, to the point of being a bit unclear at times.\u00a0 This might be due to the quality of the translation, but I think that it probably has more to do with the nature of laws of this kind, which serve primarily to define the spirit of what is to be done; the actual content will have to be fleshed out later by numerous new pieces of legislation, studies, and plans to come.\u00a0 One bit of this that concerns me in regard to the task of rebuilding not just infrastructure but communities is the following line: \u201cThe basic philosophy of the reconstruction process would be to create new local communities, as well as to work to establish communities fit for mid-twenty-first century Japan, to respect the wishes of the residents of the affected areas\u2026\u201d This assumes, of course, that the residents will want their communities to be reconstructed as such.\u00a0 This may be a very hard sell in some areas, especially in regard to fundamental issues like where people will be allowed to build and live.\u00a0 Moving coastal communities up into the hills will most likely put them out of harm\u2019s way in the event of future tsunamis, but it will also so radically alter the way residents relate to their immediate environment, including the kinds of economic and perhaps even cultural activities they pursue, that \u201creestablishment\u201d or even \u201crestructuring\u201d might be better terms to use than \u201crecovery\u201d and \u201creconstruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the hinanjo<\/em>, even in Ishinomaki, with its large number of shelters and residents in these, the days are numbered.\u00a0 The government seems set on ending the special payments to those living in the shelters as of the end of September, at which point the shelters will be closed as well, and any remaining residents will either have to move into the prefab temporary housing units that have been built for the purpose, or else find housing on their own.\u00a0 The prefab housing units will be provided rent free, and would certainly provide more privacy and a greater semblance of normal living conditions than the shelters, but many are not conveniently located, nor would those who move in have any connection to the neighborhood around them \u2013 a big concern especially for the elderly.<\/p>\n

On top of this, these people will need jobs, and soon.\u00a0 In the interim, the government can continue to provide them with meals and other relief aid, but this does nothing to deal with the fundamental problem.\u00a0 In fact, given the propensity in capitalist systems for people to look down upon the poor, the unemployed, and those on public assistance as indolent and content to live off of the taxes paid by others, it is absolutely crucial that jobs be created for these folks as soon as possible.\u00a0 Otherwise, the people living in the temporary housing facilities will become stigmatized \u2013 something that can happen all too easily in Japan\u2026as anywhere, perhaps.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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