{"id":98,"date":"2021-08-23T18:52:50","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T18:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/reverberations-part-2\/"},"modified":"2021-08-23T20:20:45","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T20:20:45","slug":"reverberations-part-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/migrated-posts\/reverberations-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Reverberations (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sorry for the extreme delay in posting this!\u00a0 Time is short, so I\u2019ll pick up where I left off.<\/em><\/div>\n
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September 11, 2011 was simultaneously the ten-year anniversary of the eponymous terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the half-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the coastline of Tohoku and crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.\u00a0 The Japanese media covered both stories, although the bulk of its stories concerned the latter catastrophe (the American media, by contrast, didn\u2019t mentioned the significance of the date in Japan).<\/p>\n

These two events defy comparison in so many ways.\u00a0 Certainly one can say that March 11th<\/sup> was the deadlier of the two, taking roughly ten times the number of lives as were lost in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001 \u2013 but to what point?\u00a0 9\/11 was an act of willful brutality on the part of a small circle of men, fueled by a tremendous hatred of America for its interventions, military and otherwise, in the Middle East.\u00a0 At a decade since, there can be little doubt that it was a turning point in world history.\u00a0 The significance of 3\/11, on the other hand, is still very hard to pin down.\u00a0 Unlike 9\/11, which gave Americans and, eventually, other first-worlders a new enemy to hate and fear and sent the United States and its allies off on a new round of wars, 3\/11 has left the Japanese less of a focal point for popular emotions.\u00a0 No matter how cruel it is to us on occasion, it makes no sense to despise nature, nor would it be healthy to go through life fearing it.\u00a0 While TEPCO and even the Japanese government itself may come close to the role of the villain, however, with the exception of their attempts to conceal and obfuscate the extent of damage to the nuclear reactors in the first few weeks after 3\/11, \u2013 itself a by-product of decades of energy and educational policies that assured people that nuclear power was \u201csafe\u201d \u2013 Fukushima Daiichi was a colossal (albeit foreseeable) accident. \u00a0Mistakes by domestic actors just can\u2019t provide the sense of national unity \u2013 or the desire to seek vengeance \u2013 as acts of malice by foreigners do.<\/p>\n

Where the two elevens do seem similar, though, is in the way they have (or most like will, in the case of 3\/11) defined an epoch; in the same way that Americans and others speak of a \u201cpost 9\/11 world\u201d and most can recall where they were and what they were doing on \u201cthat day,\u201d people in Japan will probably think of society and their own lives in \u201cpre-\u201c and \u201cpost-\u201c 3\/11 terms.<\/p>\n

What will become the hallmarks of \u201cpost-3\/11\u201d Japan?\u00a0 Historians make notoriously bad fortunetellers (although no worse so than many social scientists, it would seem), but there are some elements of the emerging reactions to this disaster that seem to echo trends and concerns from Japan\u2019s modern past.\u00a0 Others diverge from the past \u2013 or at least the immediate past of \u201cpre-3\/11 Japan\u201d \u2013 in significant ways.\u00a0 I\u2019ll examine a few of both below.<\/p>\n

Searching for a new mode of life \u2013 coalescing forces and traditions<\/strong><\/p>\n

In an earlier posting on this blog, I talked about the buzzword and the practice of setsuden<\/em> \u2013 conserving electricity \u2013 which the government and the various regional electric power companies throughout eastern Japan were promoting as a means of easing the burden on the grid during the hottest months of the year, since most nuclear power generators had been taken offline pending clearance of stress tests.\u00a0 With the arrival of fall, the government has since officially declared the conservation campaign over.\u00a0 Even so, the declaration did not result in a sudden spike in electricity consumption; many individuals, households, and companies have continued to practice setsuden<\/em> even without government exhortations and conservation targets.\u00a0 Some Japanese, in fact, saw in the crisis that began to unfold in Fukushima Prefecture on March 11th<\/sup> a wake up call of sorts, one that demanded a fundamental rethinking of what affluence and convenience should mean.<\/p>\n

It might be an exaggeration to describe this as a \u201cmovement,\u201d but my sense is that it would be too cynical to view it simply as a fad.\u00a0 A public opinion survey conducted by NHK after the disaster found that 38% of those polled expressed a strong interest in shifting to a more environmentally friendly and ecologically sustainable lifestyle.\u00a0 (\u300e\u30af\u30ed\u30b9\u30a2\u30c3\u30d7\u73fe\u4ee3\uff1a\u30e9\u30a4\u30d5\u30b9\u30bf\u30a4\u30eb\u3092\u898b\u3064\u3081\u306a\u304a\u3059\u30ad\u30e3\u30f3\u30c9\u30eb\u306e\u591c\u306b\u300f\u3001NHK\u4f01\u753b\u3001\uff12\uff10\uff11\uff11\u5e74\uff16\u6708\uff12\uff12\u65e5\u653e\u9001)\u00a0 As concern over the Fukushima Daiichi situation grows, municipalities and even private home owners have begun to explore other options than the grid to supply their energy needs, including solar, wind, and geothermal power.\u00a0 Although still quite small in scale, in some areas groups of like-minded citizens have formed \u201ctransition towns,\u201d in which families reside in group-living arrangements that seek to build community while eliminating some of the wasteful redundancy of the one-household-per-nuclear-family lifestyle; in some of these communities, for example, laundry, bathing, and even cooking facilities are communal.<\/p>\n

There is an irony here: this \u201cmovement\u201d \u2013 or at the very least the shift toward conservation, getting by with less stuff, and abandoning the consumerist lifestyle that characterized much of Japanese society prior to 3\/11 \u2013 is more prevalent outside of the hisaichi<\/em> than within it.\u00a0 For those living in the hardest hit areas, re<\/em>acquiring the things they lost in the tsunami has taken precedence, no matter what the people there may think of the need to find a more sustainable lifestyle.\u00a0 As I mentioned previously, the Tohoku region led the nation in consumer spending for the first quarter after the disaster, and will probably continue to do so as the reconstruction work gains traction.\u00a0 I also suspect \u2013 although I have no survey data to back me up on this \u2013 that practicing this renewable, sustainable lifestyle (and perhaps even the desire to do so itself) is more prevalent among wealthier and more highly-educated Japanese than it is among the working and lower middle classes.\u00a0 Shifting to a sustainable lifestyle costs more, at least in the short run, than pursuing one\u2019s old, wasteful ways.<\/p>\n

This is in many ways what we might call a \u201cgreen\u201d consciousness, one that was by no means unheard in pre-3\/11 Japan.\u00a0 In most areas of the country, for example, municipalities instituted mandatory separation of trash well over a decade before 2011, enabling Japan to recycle an astounding 96% of its refuse, as I mentioned before.<\/p>\n

At the same time, though, the post-3\/11 desire to simplify might also have a bit of a cultural nationalist element to it, at least for some.\u00a0 Consider this, for example: in spite of the asinine nature of Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintar\u014d\u2019s comment about the earthquake and tsunami being \u201cdivine punishment\u201d visited on a Japan that had become too materialistic, I was surprised to find many people in the hisaichi<\/em> who agreed with his assessment. \u00a0Yes, the timing of his comment was ill considered, most would admit, but they felt he had a point nonetheless: the Japanese had become a nation of conspicuous consumers with no broader or deeper vision of what was really important in life.\u00a0 They also agreed with something that Ishihara only implied in his statement, by claiming that the Japanese \u201chad become\u201d too materialistic, instead of accusing them of simply \u201cbeing\u201d so: that there was a time, back somewhere in the nation\u2019s past, when this was not the case.\u00a0 In one sense this is good old nostalgic nationalism: the \u201cold days\u201d are always simpler, kinder, and purer (in a cultural and even ethnic sense as well as a moral one) than things are today.\u00a0 Such visions of a better past, before everything went to hell in a shopping basket, can be found in any modern state that builds a sense of national unity around the specter of a shared past.\u00a0 These notions are as ubiquitous as they are inaccurate.\u00a0 Japan is of course no exception to this phenomenon, but the argument seems to have a particular appeal across the political spectrum here, due to a preoccupation with the impact of the West on Japanese culture, as well as Japan\u2019s \u201cclient state\u201d relationship with that mecca of consumerism itself, the United States, since the end of the Occupation.\u00a0 Owing to the peculiar historical nature of that relationship, however, decrying the evils of materialism in Japan, whether from the Left or the Right, often carries an implicit criticism of the relationship itself, and Japan\u2019s emasculated position within it.<\/p>\n

In brining this up, I don\u2019t mean to suggest that every Japanese person who now believes that it is time to rethink his or her lifestyle should, by dint of that belief, be regarded as a staunch nationalist.\u00a0 3\/11 and its aftermath, however, have once again raised the perennial question \u2013 what does it mean to be Japanese? \u2013 with a renewed sense of urgency.\u00a0 One possible answer to that question is a retooled cultural essentialism that makes hollow claims to Japanese \u201cuniqueness\u201d and discounts the values shared with other peoples and cultures.\u00a0 Another would be to call for a return to \u201ctraditional Asian values,\u201d without first establishing what those values are or how they actually differ from (and are superior to) the values one seeks to discard.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>If a return to some variety of cultural nationalism is one possible avenue, however, a return to a different kind of past also seems to be taking place.\u00a0 The nuclear crisis at Fukushima Daiichi, and the subsequent realization that TEPCO, the central government, and most of the mainstream media in Japan tried to cover up or otherwise downplay the severity of the situation throughout much of the spring, as the failed reactors and spent fuel pools spewed radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere and ocean, has revived a willingness to protest in Japan.\u00a0 By late March, TEPCO\u2019s mishandling of the situation and lack of clear explanations for what happened and why led to demonstrations in front of its Tokyo headquarters, some of which led in turn to clashes with the police mobilized to protect the company and its executives.\u00a0 Chat sites on the internet soon carried the names, addresses, and salaries of TEPCO executives, along with demands that they take responsibility for the disaster by descending into the fractured reactor containment vessels themselves.\u00a0 Death threats were also sent to the company, along with thousands of messages of a less extreme nature that arrived daily from throughout Japan.\u00a0 But the main focus became the demonstrations, which have continued to grow in size.\u00a0 On September 19, in fact, a demonstration in Tokyo attracted a crowd of 50,000 from across different generations and all walks of life.\u00a0 Such a turnout for a demonstration has probably not been seen in Tokyo since the heyday of postwar popular oppositional politics in the 1950s and 60s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

50,000 demonstrators gather in Tokyo\u2019s Meiji Park to protest the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.<\/em><\/p>\n

The thrust of these protest is not simply to criticize the mishandling of the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi facility or the way TEPCO and government officials tried to cover up and then down play the dangers it posed; the protestors are calling for an end to the government\u2019s long term energy policy that placed nuclear power generation at the center of Japan\u2019s electricity supply.\u00a0 The demand itself is nothing new, either.\u00a0 There has always been a fairly vocal, albeit small, anti-nuclear power faction in Japan \u2013 as the only country ever to suffer attacks by nuclear weapons it could hardly be otherwise \u2013 and despite the best efforts of the government and the nuclear power industry to put people\u2019s minds at ease about the safety of nuclear power through school textbooks and advertisements, most Japanese felt a great deal of ambivalence about the reactors even prior to 3\/11.\u00a0 Familiar \u201cnot in my backyard\u201d opposition prevented power plants from being built in areas were the local population was large enough and its standard of living high enough to mount staunch opposition, to the result that most of the country\u2019s 54 reactors are located in rural areas that were sparsely populated prior to the construction of the plants, and\/or suffered from legacies of socioeconomic disadvantage.\u00a0 Once established, the companies bought off local governments, politicians, and even residents through a variety of means, to the extent that the local economy became largely dependant on the existence of the plant.\u00a0 Even in such areas, however, most residents viewed the monster in their midst as a necessary evil.\u00a0 Most other Japanese were content to not think about where their electricity came from, but this of course was not the same thing as unequivocal support for nuclear power.<\/p>\n

The alarming extent of the spread of radiation from Fukushima Daiichi and its insidious threat to the national food supply, however, has caused a sea change in public opinion.\u00a0 Furthermore, the obvious parallels between the victims of this disaster and those who suffered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki add to the sense of national importance, due to the central position of the two cities in the iconography of Japan\u2019s postwar pacifist nationalism.\u00a0 If fact, by sheer linguistic coincidence, the Japanese terms for \u201cthose who survived the atomic bombings\u201d and, more generically, \u201cthose who have been exposed to radiation\u201d just happened to be homonyms written in slightly different character combinations: \u88ab\u7206\u8005 for the former and \u88ab\u66dd\u8005 for the latter, both read \u201chibakusha<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with the willingness to gather and protest, the protest song too may be coming back into style.\u00a0 As with the anti-nuclear movement itself, the protest song genre never completely died out in Japan after the 1960s, but during the \u201cBubble years\u201d of the roaring 80s the Japanese folk music scene all-but disappeared, and upbeat pop ditties touting a consumerist \u201cyouth culture\u201d lifestyle came to dominate the Japanese popular music scene.\u00a0 The result was that protest was no longer \u201ccool.\u201d<\/p>\n

In light of the Fukushima fiasco, however, that may be changing.\u00a0 Just one case in point: singer\/songwriter Saito Kazuyoshi.\u00a0 Saito has been making commercially successful music since his debut in 1993.\u00a0 Although his sound is more rock than pop, he\u2019s not known for writing politically charged material.\u00a0 As criticism of TEPCO and the government mounted, however, he revisited one of his hits, a ballad of unrequited love titled \u201cI was always fond of you\u201d (Zutto suki data<\/em>), and rewrote the words to create the protest song \u201cIt was all a lie\u201d (Zutto uso data<\/em>).\u00a0 I\u2019ll just give you a taste, from the first verse and refrain:<\/p>\n

If you walk around this country,<\/em><\/p>\n

you\u2019ll find 54 nuclear power plants.<\/em><\/p>\n

The textbooks and commercials told us,<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cthey\u2019re safe.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

They deceived us,<\/em><\/p>\n

And now their excuse is this was \u201cunexpected.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The sky I miss,<\/em><\/p>\n

now pestered by the black rain.<\/em><\/p>\n

(refrain)<\/p>\n

It was all a lie.<\/em><\/p>\n

And now it\u2019s come to light.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was really just a lie,<\/em><\/p>\n

that nuclear power is \u201csafe.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It was all a lie.<\/em><\/p>\n

I want to eat spinach again.<\/em><\/p>\n

So now you see what\u2019s going on.<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no way to stop the radiation blowing in the wind.<\/em><\/p>\n

How many people will be exposed,<\/em><\/p>\n

before the government of this country takes notice?<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the video clip that Saito posted, with the lyrics in Japanese added in:<\/p>\n

(Just in case you\u2019re wondering, \u201cblack rain\u201d is a reference to the fallout-laden rain that fell from the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima.\u00a0 Saito mentions spinach because it was one of the first agricultural products from Fukushima Prefecture to show signs of contamination with radioactive cesium 137.)<\/p>\n

Anger about the situation in Fukushima Prefecture and opposition to any further development of nuclear power in its wake are not the only things bringing people in Japan together these days.\u00a0 The disaster seems to have urged people to rethink the importance of the connections they share with those around them.\u00a0 According to a survey by NHK, even outside of the three Tohoku prefectures most heavily damaged on March 11th<\/sup>, 57 percent of those polled claimed that the disaster taught them the value family and other personal relationships.\u00a0 Within the three prefectures of Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate, 71 percent responded that these relationships meant more to them now than they had prior to 3\/11.\u00a0 It also urged many to give; 87 percent of those surveyed responded that they had contributed money to the relief effort.\u00a0 Although much smaller in proportion, eight percent also said they had volunteered on relief work in the hisaichi<\/em>.\u00a0 The exact number would be impossible to determine, but the same survey estimated that in the first half-year since the disaster, 7.5 million people had taken part in some form of volunteer work in the Tohoku area. (The survey and its results were reported on NHK\u2019s nightly news program \u201cNews Watch 9\u201d on September 5, 2011.)<\/p>\n

This renewed sense of the importance of relationships is captured in a single Japanese word that has become something of a slogan in post-3\/11 Japan, along side the gabare<\/em>-type exhortations I mentioned previously: kizuna<\/em> (\u7d46).\u00a0 Prior to the disaster, this was a simple noun, covering about the same range of meanings as its English translations of \u00a0\u201cbonds\u201d and \u201cties,\u201d such as in the phrase kazoku no kizuna<\/em> (family ties). \u00a0After 3\/11, however, it took on a new ideographic sense of importance.\u00a0 The character came to symbolize the idea that people would only get through this together; that reaching out to others to help them was not just a virtue, but in fact the proper form of human society.\u00a0 Kizuna<\/em> suggested the importance of not just giving of oneself, but of the relationship between giver and receiver as members of a greater community.<\/p>\n

Is it more than just a slogan, though?\u00a0 It is probably still too soon to tell.\u00a0 Furthermore, as we\u2019ll see below, there are contradictory trends that seem to suggest that this sudden discovery of the importance of social cohesion has its limits.<\/p>\n

That said, however, a few observations about the new volunteer spirit and its potential for lasting impact seem in order.\u00a0 The first is this: while a volunteer rate of eight percent of the national population may not seem like a mass movement (or maybe it should?), it is important to make note of the fact that many of these volunteers belong to the under-30 demographic.\u00a0 Why is this significant?\u00a0 Because in much the same way that American pundits wring their hands about the lack of public spiritedness among the young \u2013 be they \u201cgeneration X-ers,\u201d \u201cmillennials,\u201d or what have you \u2013 Japanese pundits across the political spectrum have tended to view the youth of Bubble-era and post-Bubble Japan in much the same terms.\u00a0 Young people in today\u2019s Japan, so the common characterization goes, have no sense of ambition, do not understand the value of community, do not understand the meaning of hard work, etc., etc.\u00a0 The much\u2013maligned image of the \u201cfreeter\u201d in Japan is that of a young person who lives parasitically off of his or her parents, while working only long enough at part-time jobs to earn enough money to pay for a lifestyle based the immediate gratification of consumerist desires.\u00a0 This image is not only wrong in assuming that most choose to become \u201cfreeters\u201d (in fact, given the lack of full-time employment opportunities for college graduates over the past decade in Japan, living at home while working part-time is the only option many young people have to get by), but in light of the surge in volunteerism among this generation, the charge that they are self-centered hedonists is simply wrong.<\/p>\n

Again, during my stay at Watanohaus I met many Japanese among the eight percent, most of them under age 35.\u00a0 Groups of college kids generally came for short stays, but I learned from talking with them that for many this was not their first time: they had done volunteer work in Ishinomaki or in other hisaichi<\/em> areas before contacting JEN.\u00a0 While college students often volunteered in groups, and introduced themselves in a way that suggested they saw themselves as representatives of their universities, there were also folks \u2013 a bit older (or even much older) \u2013 who had become, for lack of a better way to describe it, professional volunteers.\u00a0 Folks like the Ishida family and Hana-chan exemplified the type.\u00a0 They were the \u201crepeaters,\u201d who had stayed at Watanohaus on several occasions prior to my brief time there and, judging from what I have gleaned from their frequent Facebook updates, they have been back more than once since.\u00a0 As I said before in regard to the special camaraderie among volunteers, it is easy to see how people can get addicted to this.\u00a0 But I doubt that is the only reason they keep coming back; the convenience and comfort of the \u201creal world\u201d have their seductive power, too, after all.\u00a0 No, there is something else going on with these folks.\u00a0 Perhaps they\u2019ve discovered that the easiest way to stay hopeful is to stay involved.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hana-chan and Cat on lunch break during yet another day of cleaning rain ducts in Ishinomaki.\u00a0 Lord that pavement looks comfortable!<\/em><\/p>\n

And that is something that they can take with them, even beyond the situation in Tohoku.\u00a0 This is where I believe the term \u201cprofessional\u201d best suits the kind of volunteers they have become.\u00a0 They have learned the value of helping and the skills to do it in the Tohoku hisaichi<\/em>, but this knowledge can be employed in any disaster.\u00a0 Hana-chan is a case in point: during the last week of September, she traveled once again from her home in Osaka to Miyagi \u2013 this time to the city of Kessenuma \u2013 to do more volunteer work there.\u00a0 No sooner had she arrived than a massive typhoon slammed into the Kii Peninsula, along the southeastern coast of the island of Honshu.\u00a0 TV broadcasts showed footage of the aftermath that looked eerily like the coast of Tohoku had back in the immediate aftermath of 3\/11, albeit on a much smaller scale.\u00a0 Tohoku had come a long way since then, so she decided that Kessenuma would be all right for a few days without her.\u00a0 Hana-chan packed her bags and headed down to the most recent hisaichi<\/em> to lend a hand.<\/p>\n

Avoidance and prejudice \u2013 divisive forces and the pall of radiation<\/strong><\/p>\n

If people like Hana-chan are worthy of sainthood, however, we should remember that most people in Japan, as anywhere, remain bound to a day-to-day existence in which the extent of both their desires and troubles seldom reaches far beyond themselves and those closest to them.\u00a0 The same NHK survey that I cited, above, also examined current levels of donations to and volunteer participation with relief organizations that continue to operate in the Tohoku area.\u00a0 Despite the fact that all the major broadcasters continue to run frequent public service announcements asking people to give, donations have rolled off dramatically.\u00a0 Part of this is probably what we might call \u201cdonor fatigue.\u201d A greater part, though, seems to lie in the fact that most Japanese outside of the Tohoku area have little to no connection with it.\u00a0 Japan is still a surprisingly regional society, especially for a nation that emphasizes its homogeneity vis-\u00e0-vis other foreign countries.<\/p>\n

In regard to Tohoku, this parochialism is exacerbated by a long-standing image of the region as an economic and cultural backwater.\u00a0 The view of the region as somehow culturally \u201cdifferent\u201d from the rest of Japan dates back to premodern times; indeed, its roots may lie in the fact that the Japanese court fought a series of sporadic wars against the so-called emishi<\/em> tribes in these parts for control of northeastern Honshu during the ancient period.\u00a0 By Tokugawa times, at any rate, travelers from Edo and points further southwest commented with a mixture of fascination and disapproval on the strange customs and incomprehensible dialect of the region.\u00a0 In the late nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries, poor climate and a series of disastrous crop failures, coupled with high tenancy rates and usurious land rents led to widespread poverty that further strengthened the image of the region as hopelessly backward. (For an insightful history of the construction of Tohoku as an \u201calien\u201d region, see Kawanishi Hidemichi, T\u014dhoku \u2013 tsukurareta iky\u014d<\/em>, Tokyo: Ch\u016bk\u014d shinsho, 2001.) The notion persisted until surprisingly recently, in fact.\u00a0 In 1988, when the central government was contemplating the relocation of some of its ministries to other cities, Saji Keiz\u014d, Osaka Chamber of Commerce head and CEO of Suntory Beer, went on record to criticize plans to move some of these offices to Sendai.\u00a0 The Tohoku area, he explained, had been the ancient home of peoples opposed to the throne and, presumably as a result, had a very low level of cultural development. (http:\/\/ja.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/\u6771\u5317\u718a\u8972\u767a\u8a00<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Prejudice to the level of Saji\u2019s statement is probably very rare today.\u00a0 Still, certain reverberations linger.\u00a0 A case in point is a characterization of the hisaisha<\/em> that cropped up in countless Japanese reports on the disaster, especially in the immediate aftermath; much like the foreign media said of the Japanese people as a whole, the Japanese media emphasized how gaman-zuyoi<\/em>, or \u201cgood at putting up with adversity\u201d the people of Tohoku were by nature.\u00a0 There seems to be a bit of a backhanded compliment in this.\u00a0 The people of Tohoku are assumed to be gaman-zuyoi<\/em> because they have had so much practice at it.\u00a0 Below the surface of the compliment is the image of a hard life in an unforgiving climate, and the pointless, hopeless perseverance of stolid peasants struggling wearily through life.\u00a0 At the very least, the appeal to Tohoku gaman-zuyosa<\/em> (the noun form, for you linguists out there) in these reports suggested \u2013 in a similar vein to David Sanger\u2019s comment on NPR\u2019s On Point<\/em> \u2013 that although things were tough up in the hisaichi<\/em> the people there could take it, because they were used to living under harsh conditions.\u00a0 While I have no doubt that the intention behind such characterizations was to express a sense of awe and admiration for just how well the victims appeared to be dealing with the crisis in the early days and weeks, it also implied that the people of the region would be okay, at a time when that was far from certain.\u00a0 It still isn\u2019t; a recent survey of survivors\u2019 attitudes found that many believe things are harder for them now both financially and psychologically than they were in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. (NHK Special: \u8ffd\u3044\u3064\u3081\u3089\u308c\u305f\u88ab\u707d\u8005, broadcast 9\/10\/11).\u00a0 The region has also seen a gradual rise in suicide rates over the past few months.<\/p>\n

In tandem with donor fatigue, regionalism, and whatever parochial prejudice there may be, benign or otherwise, perhaps the largest factor in the decline of donations and volunteers is the decreasing visibility of the present conditions in the hisaichi<\/em> in the national media.\u00a0 By \u201cmedia\u201d here I mean more than just the news media; TV, print, and internet news outlets continue to cover the reconstruction efforts, although with somewhat diminishing frequency.\u00a0 Beyond the news, however, the pop culture industry has moved on.\u00a0 Japan\u2019s ubiquitous \u201cwide shows\u201d (variety\/talk shows broadcast during the late morning through early afternoon time slot) carry very little on the situation in Tohoku.\u00a0 The disaster-related news that they do offer generally concerns the nuclear crisis and, especially, the threat that its spreading veil of radioactive contamination poses to you, the viewer.\u00a0 NHK has been far more consistent is keeping the plight of the hisaisha<\/em> in the public eye, through regular segments on its news hours and frequent documentaries on various aspects of the disaster \u2013 most likely because, as a public entity, it is supposed to operate in the public interest (as NHK itself chooses to define it) and is less beholden to the wishes of advertisers than its commercial rivals.\u00a0 Even on NHK, however, this coverage represents only a small portion of the broadcast day.<\/p>\n

The result is that the present state of things in the hisaichi<\/em> areas is much less visible to the nation than it was back in March, April, and May.\u00a0 This is what prompted Toba Futoshi, the mayor of Rikuzen Takata that I mentioned in a previous post, to write his book.\u00a0 According to Toba, what most people outside of the stricken areas see in the media these days is stock footage of towns reduced to rubble, often juxtaposed to images of the same areas, now largely cleared of debris.\u00a0 The unintended message this sends is that the areas are making progress toward recovery and reconstruction.\u00a0 Viewers are lulled into the belief that the gradual disappearance of stories on Tohoku in the news must mean that progress is being made and things are getting back to \u201cnormal.\u201d\u00a0 If they are moving toward anything, though, it is a \u201cnew normal\u201d that is far from desirable.\u00a0 The same NHK Special I mentioned, above, reported on the situation in Ishinomaki, where some of those dislocated by the tsunami have started to move out of the shelters and back into upper floors of their severely damaged homes.\u00a0 In some cases these homes have no electricity or running water.\u00a0 Why do they do this?\u00a0 Because most of the prefab temporary housing units that have not already been taken are located at a great distance from the city center, in areas that are very inconvenient without a car.\u00a0 Although Ishinomaki\u2019s problems may be particularly severe in this regard, across the hisaichi<\/em> there is a growing sense that reconstruction has stalled.\u00a0 In response to a survey question on the state of reconstruction work in their towns, 74 percent of municipal officials in towns hit by the tsunami responded that the pace of work had slowed in recent months or was not progressing at all.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yama-chan walks past a row of prefab housing units, complete and ready for occupancy but still empty, since they are located too far from central Ishinomaki to commute from without a car.<\/em><\/p>\n

The decline of media attention is only to be expected, perhaps.\u00a0 \u201cGetting back to normal\u201d for folks outside of the hisaichi<\/em> means getting back to a state in which one\u2019s own problems and desires take precedence over those of complete strangers; indeed, the very notion of \u201ccomplete strangers\u201d as people with whom one shares no connection is part of this sense of normality.<\/p>\n

And the news in Japan today provides plenty to worry about.\u00a0 Since the meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, Japanese viewers have been subjected to a crash course in the science of radioactive isotopes.\u00a0 Terms such as millisieverts, microsieverts, and bequerels \u2013 all measures of the amount of radiation detected in a given area or object \u2013 come up repeatedly in the news, although despite occasional efforts to enlighten the public on what these terms actually mean and measure, most viewers have very little idea about them, beyond the understanding that the higher the number, the worse things must be.\u00a0 Detection, quantification, and reporting have led to new fears \u2013 and with these new patterns of avoidance and even prejudice \u2013 not only because the viewing public tend to be unclear on the concepts, but also because even the experts admit that the state of our understanding of how much radiation is tolerable is not very well developed.\u00a0 The current guidelines of the Japanese government declare that individuals should not be exposed to more than 1 millisievert per year above the natural level of background radiation, but this is more of an arbitrary number than a level based on painstaking research.\u00a0 In fact, the long-term effects of exposure at this and even lower levels have not been studied, nor is it understood how radiation at lower doses might affect children differently from adults.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A map of average levels of detected radioactive contamination by area, complied from local readings taken as of September 11, 2011.\u00a0 The readings are in microsieverts per hour (<\/em>\u03bcSv\/h).\u00a0 Red = 8 or more <\/em>\u03bcSv\/h; dark orange = 4 or more \u03bcSv\/h; orange = 2 or more \u03bcSv\/h, and so on, in descending order.\u00a0 It should be noted that, while this map is detailed, the values assigned are interpolated from the average readings observed across the area; in any given area, readings will often fluctuate significantly from one sample location to another.\u00a0 For example, red indicates that there is a greater preponderance of \u201chot spots\u201d in that zone with readings of >8 \u03bcSv\/h; not that every location within the red area registered >8 \u03bcSv\/h. (Source: http:\/\/kipuka.blog70.fc2.com\/<\/a> the personal blog of Dr. Hayakawa Yukio, a volcanologist at Gunma University who specializes in distribution dynamics of ash after volcanic eruptions.)<\/em><\/p>\n

The main concern that has emerged in this crisis is over \u201cinternal exposure.\u201d\u00a0 In any sort of nuclear event, one can be exposed to the radiation produced externally, by absorbing the radioactive particles that are emitted by decaying radioactive isotopes in the immediate environment, or internally, by actually ingesting those isotopes into one\u2019s mucus membranes, lungs, or digestive track.\u00a0 The latter is more harmful than the former.\u00a0 As long as the emitter of radiation is external, I as victim am only exposed to the radioactive particles emitted straight in my direction; if they don\u2019t hit me, they don\u2019t hurt me. \u00a0If the emission source gets inside my body, however, I\u2019m exposed to all of the radiation it produces, no matter in what direction it is emitted.\u00a0 Putting children at risk for this kind of exposure is doubly dangerous, because of the relative length of exposure they will have to suffer in comparison with adults, and the effects this will have on the cells of their bodies as they grow and age.\u00a0 We know that radiation can damage the DNA of cells, and that when this damaged DNA is copied in the process of mitosis the result may produce malfunctioning, cancerous cells, which then go on to produce more of their kind.\u00a0 For adults, however, the spread may be so slow at low levels of exposure that the individual may well died of other natural causes before cancer takes its toll.\u00a0 In children, however, the greater rate of cell reproduction during their growing years, along with the greater number of years they would have left in their normal life span from the time of exposure increase the likelihood that DNA damage could lead to cancers over time.<\/p>\n

Add to this uncertainty a deep mistrust of the government and TEPCO over the botched response to the crisis and their initial efforts at \u201cdamage control\u201d by concealing the extent of the problem, and the result is a perfect storm of popular concern for the safety of oneself and one\u2019s family and suspicion of information disseminated by officials.\u00a0 The discovery of hot-spots well outside of the 30km evacuation perimeter has exacerbated this reaction.\u00a0 The phenomenon, little understood prior to the Fukushima disaster, first came to light soon after the quake, when surprisingly high levels of radioactive iodine-131 were detected in drinking water reservoirs serving Tokyo Prefecture, despite the fact that they were a great distance from the evacuation zone.\u00a0 Since then, hot spots have been detected well outside of the zone, sometimes with levels of radiation exceeding areas within the zone.\u00a0 This iodine, as well as the radioactive cesium that is now turning up in hot-spots scattered in some cases over 100km from the plant, escaped into the atmosphere during the hydrogen explosions that blew the roofs off buildings housing reactors 1, 3, and 4, as well as in the plumes of radioactive steam that were released in order to lower mounting pressure in the containment vessels at several times in the days following the meltdowns in three of the six reactors at the plant.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Satellite image of the radioactive plume released<\/em> from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (located along the coast of Hnoshu, under the red tip of one of the plume\u2019s tendrils), taken at 11am, March 15, 2011.\u00a0 Red indicates the highest levels of cesium 137 (greater than 200 bequerels per cubic meter) and dark blue the lowest (less than 0.5 per cubic meter).<\/em><\/p>\n

When rain fell through this plume, as it did in many parts of Japan on March 15th<\/sup>, it carried radioactive isotopes in it to the ground, creating the now seemingly ubiquitous hot spots.\u00a0 Subsequent releases of steam from the reactors produced similar plumes, creating new hot-spots.\u00a0 In fact, the government\u2019s decision to establish an evacuation perimeter now appears to be based on a flawed understanding of how radiation spreads in accidents of this kind \u2013 one more appropriate to a nuclear explosion than to the release of airborne radioactive isotopes.\u00a0 (See, for example, the eye-opening report on a survey of radiation levels in Fukushima Prefecture conducted by the watchdog group Safecast, issued September 20, 2011, http:\/\/blog.safecast.org\/2011\/09\/safecasting-inside-the-evacuation-zone\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Although iodine 131 was detected in great abundance at first, with a fairly short half-life of about a week it is nowhere near the threat posed by cesium 137, with a half-life of 30 years.\u00a0 This long half-life (and bear in mind that half-life means, in this case, that after 30 years the radioactivity of a given sample has only diminished by half), along with the fact that the isotope has entered the food chain and been detected in a variety of meats and vegetables that made their way into national distribution networks, has added an understandable sense of panic to the suspicion.\u00a0 Since there are no conclusive studies on the long-term effects of low dose radiation, no one knows how much is too much.\u00a0 Yet despite the fact that hot-spots have been discovered at a great distance from the Fukushima plant, the continued images of the 30km evacuation zone on any map of the country that appears on the news in connection with the crisis, as well as an all-too-common tendency to believe that things can\u2019t possibly be so bad in one\u2019s own neighborhood (as long as that neighborhood isn\u2019t too near the plant, that is), has led to various understandings of how much of Japan has been contaminated and how much of it is safe.\u00a0 The website \u201cnanohana,\u201d just one of many blogs providing information on the crisis from Japanese and foreign sources for consumers and concerned citizens, parodied this multiplicity of interpretations with a series of \u201crange of contamination\u201d maps, which I have copied from the site and provided translations for, below.\u00a0 (A shout-out to Facebook friend Ogura Satoko for the introduction.\u00a0 The original page can be found at: http:\/\/nanohana.me\/?p=5003<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What people in Tohoku think is the range of contamination<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What people in the Kanto area think is the range of contamination<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What people in Hokkaido think is the range of contamination<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What politicians think is the range of contamination<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What people in the Kansai area think is the range of contamination<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What people in Okinawa think is the range of contamination<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What people overseas think is the range of contamination<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What TEPCO thinks is the range of contamination<\/em><\/p>\n

Parody aside, though, uncertainty over the effects of low-level radiation, coupled with the tendency for people to imagine that there is a specific region of Japan that is contaminated more-or-less uniformly and thus must be avoided has produced very unfortunate reactions.\u00a0 In the second post on this blog (\u201cFirst and other impressions\u201d) I mentioned reports of children evacuated from Fukushima being shunned and teased by kids at the schools they had transferred into, because these children believed that they could \u201ccatch\u201d radiation from the Fukushima evacuees.\u00a0 I also mentioned the case of a woman who returned to her parents\u2019 home in Tokyo from Fukushima, only to have people in the neighborhood express their dissatisfaction at the presence of a car with Fukushima license plates parked in their local lot.\u00a0 Such stories were all-too-common in the early months after 3\/11.\u00a0 Nor were they confined to areas outside of Tohoku; one of the most discouraging stories of the kind I heard was from Sendai, told to me by Hariu-san as we drove back from my first visit to Ishinomaki.\u00a0 Apparently, in the days soon after the growing enormity of the crisis in Fukushima became widely known, a convenience story in Sendai posted signs at the entrance to its parking lot, asking costumers with Fukushima license plates to refrain from parking there, since it would be \u201cbad for business\u201d to do so.\u00a0 Hisaisha<\/em> discriminating against other hisaisha<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At first glance, it is tempting to see in these acts of ostracism a basic misunderstanding of how radiation poisoning works.\u00a0 Radiation cannot be passed from one individual to another, after all, nor would a car be able to absorb enough radiation to become radioactive itself, even if it had been parked near the failed reactors \u2013 which most cars from Fukushima had not.\u00a0 But in the reactions on the part of adults, at least, the underlying cause of the ostracism in these cases probably has less to do with any misunderstanding the science involved than a desire to avoid association with anything that threatens to draw negative attention to oneself, for whatever reason.\u00a0 Note that those who react negatively to the presence of vehicles with Fukushima plates say nothing about the threat of radioactive contamination.\u00a0 The cars aren\u2019t described as a health hazard; they\u2019re just \u201cinconvenient\u201d or \u201cbad for business.\u201d\u00a0 What\u2019s going on here is not so much a concern for one\u2019s health as it is a concern for one\u2019s reputation; the perpetrators are not trying to avoid radiation, but rather stigmatization through association with the unfortunate situation of Fukushima.<\/p>\n

This seems to be a modern recasting of what historians of discrimination in Japan have called kegare ishiki<\/em>, or \u201ca preoccupation with defilement.\u201d\u00a0 In tradition Japanese culture, the argument goes, avoidance of physical and spiritual defilement was a major everyday concern.\u00a0 The variety of things that could cause such defilement was myriad, and religious traditions such as Shinto in particular prescribed various procedures for avoiding it, or else ridding oneself of it once contracted.\u00a0 Since ridding oneself of defilement was typically an arduous process that required a certain period of self-imposed exile or \u201cquarantine\u201d from the community to complete, however, it was best just to avoid all contact with sources of defilement whenever humanly possible.\u00a0 This premodern way of viewing the world dovetailed seamlessly with modern, Western ideas such as germ theory, hygiene, and eugenics when they first entered Japan in the late 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 The combination yielded new, \u201cmodern\u201d reasons for ostracizing certain groups of people, such as those suffering from Hansen\u2019s disease (leprosy), outcastes under the feudal system of social status and their descendants, and the poor in general (including those in Tohoku and other culturally \u201cperipheral\u201d regions like it).\u00a0 In the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, survivors faced social ostracism from other Japanese for similarly pseudo-scientific reasons.\u00a0 The current avoidance of refugees and others from Fukushima seems strikingly similar in its genesis.<\/p>\n

I suggest this as an explanation with some unease, however, for two reasons: for one, as an explanation for contemporary Japanese behavior, it smacks of a cultural determinism not unlike that employed by Western journalists in their appeals \u2013 pro and con \u2013 to the power of the Japanese trait of gaman<\/em> (although the idea of kegare ishiki <\/em>is at least a bit more historically informed than that).\u00a0 Second is the shadow that the unknown effect of low dose radiation casts upon the situation.\u00a0 When Japanese in the early twentieth century quarantined Hansen\u2019s patients in leper colonies and avoided contact with outcastes, the poor, and others, they often explained their reasons for doing so in \u201cscientific\u201d terms: these people spread diseases and compromised the gene pool.\u00a0 We now know these explanations to be so much pseudo-scientific drivel.\u00a0 When a business owner today asks customers from Fukushima not to park their cars in his lot because it is \u201cbad for business,\u201d he may do some because he actually believes their vehicles are radioactive, or he may simply do so because he is afraid that other potential customers will think so, and avoid his business as a result \u2013 in the former case, he is ignorant, in the latter, gutless.\u00a0 But when a consumer thinks twice about buying rice or vegetables grown in Fukushima, despite official assurances that the produce is \u201cclean,\u201d or the citizens of a city well outside of the Tohoku area begin to have second thoughts about accepting debris from the Tohoku area for disposal in local landfills and recycling centers for fear that it may have come from a hot-spot area \u2013 as is happening now with increasing frequency \u2013 what are we to make of it?\u00a0 Given the unknowns involved, can we blame them?<\/p>\n

One answer would be to put a Geiger counter to everything and declare it \u201cclean\u201d before sale or processing, thus dispelling any reasonable basis for doubt. \u00a0Yet this is not so feasible in practice (to take the case of meat, it apparently takes nearly an hour to test a sample, and the number of machines designed to do this is limited, whereas in the case of debris, the sheer volume of it presents similar challenges for thorough screening), nor would doing so necessarily satisfy people who have lost faith in official proclamations of \u201csafety\u201d in the wake of the government\u2019s mishandling of the situation at Fukushima Daiichi.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A recent unfortunate incident in Kyoto provides a poignant illustration of the dilemma.\u00a0 The \u201cGozan no Okuribi\u201d festival takes place there every year on the evening of August 16th<\/sup>.\u00a0 It is a festival to conclude the Obon holidays, during which the spirits of departed ancestors supposedly return to be with their living loved ones and descendants.\u00a0 The Gozan no Okuribi is thus in essence a farewell to these spirits, and involves the lighting of bonfires in the shape of various Chinese characters and illustrations on city-ward sides of the five mountains surrounding Kyoto.\u00a0 The most famous of these is the \u201cdaimon-ji<\/em>\u201d fire, in the shape of the Chinese character for \u201cgreat\u201d or \u201cbig\u201d (\u5927).\u00a0 The combined length of the three strokes of this character for the bonfire is roughly 360 meters, which requires a substantial supply of logs to create.<\/p>\n

The tsunami made large supplies of lumber available for the purpose.\u00a0 In Rikuzen Takata in particular, the 16-meter high wave destroyed a picturesque forest of nearly 70,000 pine trees that had lined the coast since its initial planting and cultivation as a wave break in the early Tokugawa period.\u00a0 Out of the 70,000, only one tree survived.\u00a0 Understanding the meaning of the Gozan no Okuribi festival and the need for logs to build its bonfires, Mayor Toba contacted his counterpart in Kyoto to see if he would be interested in accepting logs prepared from the fallen pines for constructing the daimon<\/em>\u2013ji<\/em> bonfire.\u00a0 The mayor of Kyoto agreed, and a group of survivors in Rikuzen Takata set to work cutting some of the fallen trees into logs for shipment to Kyoto.\u00a0 As they did so, they wrote the names of friends and loved ones lost to the tsunami on the logs, so that the bonfire would serve as a memorial to those who died.<\/p>\n

But this is where the story turns from touching to maddening.\u00a0 In early August, after news of the planned use of logs from Rikuzen Takata became known in Kyoto, some residents of the city contacted the organizers of the festival to protest the decision out of concern that the wood might be radioactive.\u00a0 The initial shipment of 340 logs had already arrived and was duly screened for traces of cesium and other radioactive isotopes.\u00a0 Despite that fact that city officials determined that the logs were contamination-free, however, festival organizers decided that it would be better to allay citizens\u2019 fears by not burning the logs in the festival.\u00a0 The shipment was returned to Rikuzen Takata, where the town used it for its own bonfire ceremony on August 8th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

When the story hit the national news, Kyoto city hall was once again barraged with protests, this time from people across Japan decrying the insensitivity and arrogance of people in the \u201cold capital,\u201d as well as from residents of the city who felt deeply ashamed of the way their city had comported itself.\u00a0 With just a few days left before the festival, another shipment of 500 logs was ordered from Rikuzen Takata.\u00a0 This time, however, there was another problem: a foot-long section of the lumber, tested at random from the shipment, revealed trace amounts of cesium 137.\u00a0 Although subsequent tests of other samples in the shipment did not test positive for the isotope, the organizers once again decided that it would be best not to use the wood.<\/p>\n

The mayors of both cities offered their apologies to one another over the whole situation; Mayor Kadokawa of Kyoto for disappointing the people of Rikuzen Takata a second time, and Mayor Toba for the anxiety that the good people of Kyoto must have felt at the thought that radioactive smoke might waft over their festival.\u00a0 I am much more inclined to see the need for Kadokawa\u2019s apology than Toba\u2019s.\u00a0 Given all that the folks in Rikuzen Takata had been through since March 11th, the excessively-NIMBY reaction of some people in Kyoto seems egregiously insensitive, just as the decision of the festival organizers seems cautious to the point of cowardice.\u00a0 (As a postscript to the story, Buddhist monks at the Narita-san Shinshoji Temple in Chiba Prefecture burned 30 of the logs from the latter shipment in a festival held at the temple on September 25, despite the initial protests of 100 residents of the area.)<\/p>\n

But this is the dilemma posed by nuclear contamination to a democratic society: since we really have no idea what the long term effects of internal exposure are, even at very low doses, how can such fears be definitively laid to rest?\u00a0 And if some folks in Kyoto get upset about burning a few hundred logs that may<\/em> have trace amounts of cesium on them, how are municipalities ever going to convince their residents to allow tons of debris from the hisaichi<\/em> to be processed in their backyards?\u00a0 The out-sourcing of debris processing is of crucial importance to the work of reconstruction in Tohoku; it would take Miyagi Prefecture an estimated 23 years to dispose of the 18.2 millions tons of debris left in its coastal communities by the tsunami on its own.\u00a0 Yet the concerns of Japanese outside of Tohoku are real, not unreasonable, and would be ignored only at the peril of central, prefectural, and local governments alike.\u00a0 (In recognition of this fact, the central government has declared that the debris in Fukushima Prefecture \u2013 all 3.4 million tons of it \u2013 will have to be processed and disposed of \u201cin-house.\u201d)<\/p>\n

All of this undermines the sentiments in ubiquitous slogans such as kizuna<\/em> and ganbar\u014d Nihon<\/em> (\u201cHang in there, Japan!\u201d), with their appeal to mutual support and shouldering the hardships of reconstruction together.\u00a0 \u201cWe will gladly share your burdens, just not that<\/em> particular<\/em> burden,\u201d seems to be the unintended national message to the people and communities most severely affected by the tsunami in general and the Fukushima Daiichi fiasco in particular.\u00a0 But given the uncertainties of the science of radioactive contamination, who can blame them?<\/p>\n

There is another layer of irony here, too, involving the nation-state.\u00a0 Shortly after the worsening situation at Fukushima Daiichi wrested the world\u2019s attention away from the plight of the tsunami victims and urged media outlets across the globe to offer alarming reports on what the release of radiation into the environment might mean for the safety of food supplies in their own countries, Japan\u2019s trading partners around that Asian Pacific rim either banned or else placed stringent restrictions on imports of agricultural and other products from Japan, pending reliable assurances from the Japanese government that these exports were contamination-free.\u00a0 In at least one case, a cargo ship from Japan that showed heightened levels of radiation was turned away before reaching its port of destination in China.\u00a0 Some Japanese pundits claimed that this was overkill based on hysteria \u2013 if not in fact a ploy to take advantage of the crisis to shut out Japanese imports to the benefit of domestic producers.\u00a0 It is quite likely that many \u201cjust plain folks\u201d in Japan during the spring of 2011 agreed with such views.\u00a0 One wonders how they might feel now about processing debris from the hisaichi<\/em> in their hometown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry for the extreme delay in posting this!\u00a0 Time is short, so I\u2019ll pick up where I left off. September 11, 2011 was simultaneously the ten-year anniversary of the eponymous terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the half-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the coastline of Tohoku […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"parent":694,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98\/revisions\/725"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}