Watching Nature Reclaim the Fukushima Radioactive Zone

Our guide for this trip is Mr. Geiger …

Recently I visited some collaborators in Minamisoma, Fukushima, and after our work was done they took me to the exclusion zone around the nuclear plant. We didn’t enter the innermost zone, but traveled right up to edge of it. Similar to Chernobyl, the area is slowly being reclaimed by the wilds, and its level of radiation contamination means this area hasn’t been cleaned up yet, so it still carries a lot of evidence of the destructive power of the tsunami that damaged the plant.

For this drive we first headed in the direction of Namie, then turned off the road to head towards the beach and the tsunami zone. We took a radiation counter with us (shown above) that measures external exposure in micro-Sieverts per hour estimated from 30 second averages. This means you can tell what your exposure would be if you stayed in the particular spot for an hour. Wikipedia tells me that normal background radiation levels are about 0.4 milli-Sieverts per year, which would be about 0.05 micro-Sieverts per hour, so the background level in the car is not so bad.

You shall not pass…

We were refused permission to continue to Namie, because that area is directly under the original radiation plume and the only people allowed in or out are those with a reason to be there. I think it’s safe to say that no car with a foreigner in it is going to Namie for a valid reason, since it’s a tiny town (now empty, I think) that probably has never had a resident foreigner. You need a special permission to pass through, and we didn’t have it, so we turned back and headed to the sea. Note the sign on the roof of the house in the distance: it says “Thinking about the seas of the future.” I find this quite ironic.

The rubble two years on

Turning off the road, we traveled down this small side road towards the sea. In this picture it’s about 2km distant, just audible when one steps out of the car. The land to the side of the road used to be a mixture of rice paddies and houses, but now it’s all overgrown. In the distance along the road you can see the barriers being reclaimed by the forest, and the trees growing over the road. The cars in the field are in the position where the tsunami left them two years ago. In case anyone doubts what the nuclear plant was up against, let’s just think on this for a moment: the tsunami washed this far inland over a sea wall and a mixed community of houses and farmland, carrying a brace of cars with it. It must have come to its end about here, because the road is relatively intact and the cars upright and uncrushed.

A name is not enough…

The boat in the picture above is the Number One Lucky Omen (dai ichi kichijo maru). I don’t know if it was dragged here by a clean up team or the tsunami, but the area around has other, larger boats scattered about. It’s some kind of fishing boat, I think. In the background on the left are the remains of a few cars. Now we’re perhaps a kilometre from the sea, and it should be obvious that the tsunami at this point is not being so merciful as to leave cars upright and uncrushed. In the background is a primary school, almost completely intact. It is a quite modern building, obviously designed to withstand real damage. I was told that all the children in that school survived. Schools have catchment areas, but this school is standing on its own in a huge field. Its catchment area was washed away.

Over the wall…

This picture shows a kind of tetrapod, cast aside on the landward side of the sea wall. The sea wall is just visible in the background as the horizon. Tetrapods are huge chunks of geometric concrete that are piled up on beaches in Japan as wave breaks. They interlock with each other and form a kind of barrier at the edge of the sand. They are huge and made entirely of concrete. The tsunami picked up these tetrapods and carried them over the sea wall, dropping them perhaps a hundred metres inland of the wall as it raged forward. The area around these tetrapods was populated – just behind me as I took this picture stood the remains of a house, and a flattened area that once held a shrine. That means these tetrapods were smashing through houses as they came inland. If you look at the sea wall in the background you can see things sticking out of it, pointing upwards at the sky. These are the innards of the wall. The tsunami didn’t just rush over this wall, it tore it apart as it came.

ずれた！

From that point we headed south towards the exclusion zone. This shot is looking back the way I came (you can see the same primary school looming on the horizon just to the left of the road). The road is, obviously, in a bad state:  those traveling with me thought this was likely the effect of the original earthquake rather than the tsunami. I don’t like to think about how terrifying that earthquake was, because it was pretty scary in Tokyo and we didn’t see anything twisted or broken. The nuclear powerplant had to be resistant against this earthquake, and then the tsunami that followed, even though it was built 40 years ago. It’s quite a miracle really that it didn’t collapse completely. Note the pond to the left of the road: this is another example of nature reclaiming the area, and was rich with the sound of frogs and insects. Soon after I took this photo an enormous crane took off from the reeds and flew to the distant forest.

The exclusion zone

Turning around from that picture we find ourselves facing the barrier to the inner exclusion zone. This is the 10km zone: you can see the roof of the powerplant in the distance over the trees. No one is supposed to enter this region, because a little further south and west of here you will enter the area most heavily affected by the plume. We didn’t cross the barrier. Note the ruined tractor on the verge of the road.

Satoyama

This is a picture of the landscape immediately to the right of the barrier. There is a swampy area full of frogs, insects and small birds, and then beyond that a small hill that would once have been a satoyama, surrounded by local homes and rice paddies and probably with a small shrine in the middle. Satoyama are a unique form of ecosphere intimately connected with Japanese farming techniques, but the satoyama around here have gone wild. This area was thick with birdlife, so standing here I could hear a cacophony of bird song such as I have never heard in rural Japan before. Usually birdsong in Japan is limited to a few common croaking and sqwarking birds, but here there was a symphony of singers. High, warbling birdsong like something from Europe mingled with strange, throaty cries and a kind of laughing whoop that I have never heard before. The area was alive with animal life. In just two years, this whole area has become a huge wildlife sanctuary, and birds that would not normally come near human settlement have proliferated. I think usually you would only hear these birds in the deepest forests, or perhaps in some rare farming communities; but here they are easily accessible in amongst the new growth of the devastated area. I think the people of Minamisoma should leave this area as it is; as a kind of combined wildlife park and memorial, so people can visit to enjoy the sight of Japan how it once would have been, before it was cultivated; and simultaneously appreciate the fury of the ocean, and the damage that was done because the post-war builders ignored the stories handed down to them from previous generations.

Eight times, my friend, eight times!

Finally, here is a photo of our Geiger counter, taken at the barrier. It was hard to get a clear shot due to the frequency of the screen, but it now reads 0.42. This is approximately eight times the background level of Japan (maybe five or six times if you take into account cosmic rays and backscatter from the ground). It’s probably not actually a serious enough level of radiation to preclude redeveloping this area and allowing people to live here again, but I think it would be better if they didn’t. Japan doesn’t lack for wild places (about 70% of Japan’s surface area is forest) but it would be a fitting memorial to the triple disaster and an interesting exercise in ecosystem development to let this place return to nature. I think it’s also very apt for a pagan society to make a memorial out of the wilderness. So, here’s to the lives lost in this stretch of coast, and hopefully they can be honoured through some kind of wildlife sanctuary – a terrestrial mirror of the wild ocean that originally took those lives, and cast this place back to nature.

 

 

 

Is a Carbon Tax Justified Purely on Health Grounds?

The Yellow Dragon can use Stinking Cloud at will

Today it was 26C in Tokyo, and we had our first taste of this year’s yellow dust, the strange and nasty pollution that tends to drift over Japan from China during spring and summer. Today’s was the worst I have ever seen in 5 years in Japan – the above photograph, taken from my ground floor balcony, shows the sky at about 3pm today, just after the cloud reached us. Apparently in Matsue, in Western Japan, visibility was down to 5 km. In case this seems like a strange thing to care about, let me assure you this “weather” is not pleasant: it causes sneezing, eye irritation, headaches and drowsiness in many people when it is at its worst, and I think some towns in Kyushu issued alerts that would cause some people to stay inside (especially those with respiratory problems). The US army monitors this phenomenon in Korea and issues regular warnings. Of particular recent concern is the increasing concentration of what the Japanese call “PM2.5,” very small particles of pollutants of size less than 2.5 microns, which seem to arise from industrial pollution and smog, and have specific associated health concerns. According to the Global Burden of Disease 2010, Ambient PM Pollution is the 4th biggest cause of lost disability-adjusted life years in China, and ranks much higher as a cause of years of life lost than of years of disability. By way of comparison it is ranked 16 in Australia and 10 in the USA.

Some part of the yellow dust problem is natural, due to sandstorms in the interior of China, but in the past 10 years the problem has become worse and its health effects more significant. No doubt part of the concern about its health effects arises from greater awareness, but there is also a confluence of factors at work in China that create the problem: desertification, soil erosion and pollution, and industrial pollution due primarily to coal power and transport. It’s becoming increasingly clear that as China develops, it needs to make a shift away from coal power and personal transportation, and it needs to do it soon. No matter how bad the yellow dust is in Japan, it has become very bad in China, and concern is growing about the seriousness of its health and economic effects.

This puts China on the horns of a dilemma. Development is essential to the improvement of human health, but the path China has taken to development, and the rapidity of its industrial and economic growth, are seriously affecting environmental quality. It’s possible that China is the canary in the coalmine of western development, and may be the first country to find its economic goals running up against its environmental constraints – and this despite a rapid slowing in population growth. China is going to have to start finding ways to reverse desertification, soil erosion, and particulate pollution, because it cannot afford to continue losing marginal farmland, degrading the quality of its farmland, and basing its industrial and urban growth on highly-polluting fossil fuels.

This raises the possibility that China needs to introduce a carbon tax (or better still, a carbon-pricing system) for reasons largely unrelated to global warming. A carbon pricing system with options for purchasing offsets, linked into the EU market, would potentially encourage reforestation and reductions/reversals in the rate of desertification; it would also provide economic incentives for investments in non-fossil fuel-based energy sources, probably nuclear for the long term and renewables for the short term. The government, by selling off permits, would be able to raise money to help manage the infrastructure and health needs of the poorest rural areas most in need of immediate development. These effects are important even without considering the potential huge benefits for the world from China slowing its CO2 emissions. I notice I’m not alone in this idea; Rabett Run has a post outlining the same environmental issues, and suggesting that there are many direct economic and social benefits of such a system.

This is not just of practical importance to China, but it’s rhetorically a very useful thing to note: that a lot of carbon sources (and most especially coal) have huge negative health and social consequences in their own right; raising the cost of using them and finding financial incentives to prevent or reverse deforestation is of huge benefit for a lot more reasons than just preventing runaway climate change. It would be cute indeed if China’s immediate economic and environmental problems became the cause of strong action to prevent climate change; on the other hand, it would be very sad if the focus on the AGW aspects of carbon pricing – which are a shared international burden rather than a national responsibility – led China’s decision makers to miss the other vital environmental problems it can address. Especially if failure to address those other environmental problems caused China’s economic growth and social liberalization to stall or fall backwards.

If any country is going to run up against environmental limits to growth, it is China; and if China can avoid that challenge, and the social and health problems it will cause, then there is great hope for the future of the planet. So let’s hope the Chinese can come to terms with their growing environmental challenges as adroitly as they have dealt with some of their others … and if their efforts to tackle those problems will benefit the rest of the world too.

 

Japanese Thrash-punk Line Dancing with Satan!

Rabbit-headed cuckoo clocks were all the rage!

Yesterday was another Gothic Lolita-styled live event by the crew at A la Mode, the 42nd event of this venerable institution. This night had the same excellent value-for-money line up of 6 or so bands interspersed by DJs, for just 3000 yen, but this time there were less of the pretty little 5 minute floor shows, and instead there was an excellent steampunk fashion show, and a very weird 30 minute theatrical performance (pictured above).

This time gas-mask free…

The fashion show appears to have been organized by one of the two members of the band Strange Artifact, who I refer to as Miss Artifact (pictured above, singing). I failed to get any functional pictures of the fashion show, but it was excellent – mostly women in voluminous 19th-century-styled dresses, wound about with belts festooned with mysterious gear, all intricately worked with geometric designs and brasswork. One girl was wearing a leather shoulder-guard that held glowing potions in test tubes, like an elegant and feminine version of the Witcher; two carried briefcases studded with brass designs; another carried a tiny pistol and what looked like a glowing, arcane power tube on her back. There was also a man in velvet pants and fine waistcoat, festooned with accessories and carrying an elaborate clockwork-styled gun, a feather jauntily perched in his top hat. Overall, it was an excellent showcase of craftwork and over-the-top steampunk sense, relatively free of gothic influences and heavily influenced by cowboys-and-indians railroad America, and industrial-revolution England.

Death and the Angel…

The show wasn’t lacking in gothic influences, though. The two bands that followed Strange Artifact, himemanik and Remnant, had a healthy dose of gothic style: himemanik with a nice electronic pulse, and (as can be seen from the photo above), Remnant with a large dose of over-the-top old school coffin-guitared goodness. I really liked himemanik, actually, but I failed to get any pictures of them. I also failed to get pictures of Elupia, who I have reviewed before. Elupia are working on a new album, and were really in fine form at this gig, playing with a lot of energy and strength. They really epitomize the level of technical quality that even minor Japanese bands achieve, and are a good advertisement for the Japanese live scene – which in my experience is worth spending money on even if you don’t know the bands, because they are usually at a very high standard.

At this event, I had noticed a couple of women who had turned up wearing zombie nurse outfits, and who spent the afternoon drinking and checking their make-up (and sleeping). One of them was wearing a badge that said “Satan,” also incidentally one of the band names, so I was thinking we might be granted an audience with a zombie nurse rock band. However, as time passed my friend pointed out that the hall was becoming something of a “midgetorama” (his words) as it filled up with really, really short girls, some obviously very young (this was somehow an all-ages gig). These women seemed to have no fashion sense or style in common, but we soon discovered that they all shared a deep, powerful obssession with the headline act of the evening, Satan. For when Satan began playing, they all charged forward, unveiling Satan-themed sweat towels or t-shirts, and lined up at the front of the stage.

You spin me right round baby, right round!

What followed was a revelation. Satan (pictured above) are a standard thrash/punk band with nothing special to recommend them – good, savage, loud and raw, but so are all of their kind – except the slavish devotion and energy of their fans. They proved this early on by producing a troll doll and spinning it around before the audience. This was the trigger for all of their fans to form up in serried conga-line ranks and do a complete circuit of the dance floor, charging around in one revolution and returning to their places to resume head-banging crazily to the thrash. Satan invoked this ritual regularly through their songs, somehow managing to hold out an arm or do a spinning sign with one hand and get all their fans to charge around the room. The rest of us had to step back in stunned incomprehension to allow this horde of tiny 16 year olds to take the floor.

It was then that Satan produced his pogo stick. At the sight of this wicked device of ancient power, his fans formed into three neat ranks, all facing in the direction he pointed, and began pretending to be pogo-ing, moving slowly up and down as the guitarist drew out a deep, ferocious roar. Then, of course, off they charged. Their dark lord could reproduce this pogo action just by crouching down on stage.

Other things that Satan got his little girls to do included worshipping the guitarist – whenever a solo was played, the girls all fell to their knees and genuflected – and a kind of mini bus-stop dance, in which the entire crowd went through the same series of arm-crossing and uncrossing, head banging motions.

He also produced a rubber hammer with which he whacked girls at the front of the stage, got them to slap his arse, spat water on them, and whipped them with his dreadlocks. Thus does Satan rule supreme over the gathered hordes of Tokyo’s schoolgirls …

Unfortunately I couldn’t get a picture of all this because, even though Satan is just some second-rate Tokyo thrash/punk band with about 30 devoted followers, he fancies himself special, and has a staff member who came over to tell me further pictures were banned. Further proof, if proof were needed, that intellectual property law is the work of Satan.

At this point as well my phone batteries died (all these photos were taken on my phone), and I failed to get any photos of the last band, Velvet Eden. No loss, since they were completely boring aside from the fact that their singer was cross-dressing, and stopped halfway through the performance to tell us that the band had been running for 10 years and this meant he had also been wearing a “T-back” (g-string) for 10 years. It was, he told us, 10 years since he became TBO – T-back Ore (g-string me!). Just as well he had the gimmick, since the band was ordinary.

So, another a la mode gothic lolita night passed in style and (mostly) musical excellence. This one was quite different to the last, and it’s clear that they put a lot of effort into each night they run, with very different performances and themes for each one. The next will be in early March, and if you are in Tokyo then and have a chance I strongly recommend it …

 

AKB 48: Modern Nuns?

Today we heard word of a scandal overtaking the modern Tokyo phenomenon of AKB48. Their 14th most popular member, Minegishi Minami, was caught by a journalist leaving the house of a “boyfriend,” a 19 year old member of some random boy band (compared to AKB48, the boy band in question is largely irrelevant). The pictures were published in some scandal rag, Shukan bunshun (週刊文春), a magazine which basically makes its income from printing shit. As a result of this indiscretion, Miss Minegishi has been demoted to research student (kenkyusei) status, meaning a massive loss of pay and  that in the strange heirarchy of AKB48 she will have to climb back up the ranks to reclaim her position as an enormously popular public figure.

The heart bleeds, doesn’t it? Actually the apology is a beautiful and heartfelt thing, and it’s clear that Miss Minegishi is under a lot of pressure, as one might expect if one were published leaving the house of one’s lover the morning after a trist and published in a magazine read by millions of people, in a country where everyone (well, not me!) is watching you and discretion in sexual encounters is paramount. This is a nation where holding hands in public is still frowned upon by many young people, and kissing generally avoided at all costs. Being photographed the morning after a shag is obviously going to be very embarrassing.

AKB48 sold $200 million of records alone in 2011, and endorse everything from elections to instant coffee. They are the very definition of a household name, and getting into the top 48 of this weird little business enterprise is a license to print money for the young women involved. It’s also not easy: their recent documentary carries the subtitle no flower without rain, which draws on an old saying about how beauty and/or success depend on suffering. The structure of the AKB48 system is redolent of university and the early years of the corporate system: it is intended to reproduce the sense of having to strive to make it, being indebted to one’s seniors, and being vulnerable in the face of life’s challenges. In many ways, AKB48 are perfect representatives of the Japanese notion of gaman, of having to suffer through adverse circumstances to achieve: this is the same spirit of gaman that enables Judo masters to bully their charges[1], but which makes a Sumo wrestler like Takanoyama enormously popular because he tries so hard. Two sides of the same coin … I don’t know if it could be said that Miss Meinegishi is being bullied in this instance, though … what she did do is fall foul of a contractual obligation not to go on dates. That’s right – AKB48 girls are not allowed to go on dates! The Guardian article makes it appear as if this rule is based on “the strict rules to which Japan’s young pop stars must adhere to project an image of unimpeachable morals” but this isn’t the reason at all – that’s just bullshit western misinterpretation of east Asia’s so-called conservatism. The real reason that Miss Minegishi has to live a sexless (or at least secret) life until she “graduates” from AKB48 is that her band is idolized by nerds and pre-sexual teenage girls, and to both groups of fans they have to appear pure and single. These are girls next door who are struggling through a metaphorical high school/university/early corporate life, and girls like that don’t get DP’d in love hotels.

Miss Minegishi’s extreme haircut is also not forced on her by her contract: she did this all by herself, to symbolize her abasement. This means she’s going to be trying extra hard to regain the favour of her fans, and my prediction is that this little cock up is going to be a goldmine for her and for the AKB48 business: she’ll soon be returned to the top ranks, fans will love her more for having fallen and strived, and there’ll be another documentary with tears and struggle – a genre that AKB48′s fans love.

Which brings me to my William Gibson-esque point: these girls are Japan’s modern shrine maidens, the modern equivalent of western nuns of yesteryear. They’re required to swear themselves to celibacy, live lives of constant self-flagellation and torment, and simultaneously have to symbolize everything that is admired in the women of their time: chastity, beauty, sexiness, innocence and endurance. They also have to tread the line of hypocrisy that characterizes modern attitudes towards young women: at the same time as they are making swimsuit videos and soft porn, these girls will get demoted if they are caught having sex. And because it’s Japan they also have to be educated: there’s currently a TV show about some of these girls going to college and trying to get a qualification. William Gibson has a few short stories about these kinds of characters in the cyberpunk world (I think Idoru is the most apt, though I haven’t read it): women whose celebrity depends on their embodying all of the ideals of femininity of their time, and whose personal lives are warped or ruined as a result of it. So let’s hear it for Minami Minegishi, embodiment of all the trials and tribulations of modern womanhood – and of the complexities of the cyberpunk era. Ganbare, Minegishi san! The hopes of a generation, and the weight of an entire society’s sexist expectations, are resting on your skinny shoulders …

—

fn1: though maybe not anymore: watch the video of the coach apologizing and listen to the cameras – the girls he bullied weren’t willing to tolerate it and his humiliation is pretty much complete. These guys’ world is changing, and it’s apparent that they aren’t catching up…

 

Towards a Neo-liberal Explanation of Japanese Equality?

I want to start this rant with a quote from the British chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander. In discussing a review of the alternatives to the UK’s trident missile program, he announced

We are in a position where the costs of the Successor have to be paid for from within the MoD budget. There is no magic pot of money that is going to be created out of thin air to go on top of that. As a government, we have been very clear about that. Certainly myself and the chancellor. [emphasis mine]

This is an interesting phenomenon. Like most developed nations, the UK maintains a fiat currency system. That is, the government decides by an act of will (by “fiat”) how many pounds are in circulation. There is, quite literally, “a magic pot of money” that can be “created out of thin air.” Yet the current government’s chief of the treasury and its chancellor want to tell us that their is no such option for Britain. Now, it may be that creating money out of thin air carries political risks that they don’t want to bear, and a high-value strategic weapon like Trident is not worth the risk (after all, what ex-imperial power would want to invest lots of money in its military?), but they aren’t telling us this. They’re telling us that the treasury and the government are unwilling to accept the basic tenets of the financial system they are in charge of.

This little moment of magical thinking comes at a time when the Japanese government has announced a plan to do just the opposite – they’re going to spend 4% of GDP on infrastructure investment (aka “bridges to nowhere”) and introduce a huge new program of quantitative easing in order to try and get Japan back to inflation. This has the business pages of the western world in uproar, because the new prime minister (PM), Shinzo Abe, is acting against the economic orthodoxy that brought the UK its triple-dip recession, and which journalists love because their slow minds are very good at talking about “if this economy were a family” and “weaning society off the drug of government debt” but very poor at actually analyzing economic policy in a modern fiat currency. Thus we have Evans-Pritchard giving us a detailed account of how Abe is channelling his granddaddy, and we should all be worried about this (because Japan has a strict non-militarist clause in its constitution …? There are really no dots here to join). We have breathless quotes from ex-members of the Bank of England (which has a sterling record in preventing economic bangs) suggesting

‘When a large country with its own currency reaches its fiscal limit, growth ends not with a bang but a whimper,’’

Is there any sense in which this is even verifiable? What is a “whimper” in economic terms, and when did any country on the planet have its growth end with “a whimper”? Is this something we define through official statistics? Is three quarters of negative growth a whimper? What, for that matter, is a “bang”? Note that the man who coined this fantabulous piece of illusionism was a member of the UK monetary policy advisory committee and, despite that country’s spectacular recent failures, is still quoted as an expert on something (what?) by journalists.

Nothing makes economics journalists slobber more than the chance to deride Japan for its big spending, low baby economy. Thus we have Michael Pascoe essentially repeating Pritchard-evans in a cascade of frothing stupidity as he attempts to describe how terrible deficit spending is, but falling back only on the age-old canard of “Japanese men have small willies”:

Not only is a quarter of the population aged over 65, increasing numbers of Japanese women are deciding they don’t want to marry Japanese men and have their children.

I live in Japan, I know this schtick: it’s called “Charisma man.” Implicit in this kind of language is the suggestion that Japanese men are terrible and Japanese women are looking for something more … fecund. Someone who can rescue them from those terrible Japanese men who just can’t get it up. The sentence is an awkward construction, intended to emphasize that this lack of rogery is an internal problem. It’s also carefully constructed to elide any concept of progress or equality. Good societies breed. Bad societies have women who don’t want to marry. Heaven forfend that modern women might have control of their own fertility, and decide that children aren’t worth the bother.

Arguments about the need for more babies are heavily dependent on the idea that the proportion of government spending is a key measure of risk. Japan, we are told,

already runs on an unsustainable funding model, a level of indebtedness and spending that makes the Greeks and Americans look frugal.

This seems pretty strange to me. Good old unsustainable Japan, 10th most populous country in the world with no natural resources to speak of, 3rd biggest economy in the world, one of the world’s largest aid donors, the world’s major source of manufacturing exports, with many of the biggest manufacturing and service companies, the lowest infant mortality and the longest life expectancy. Also with very low unemployment and very low levels of inequality by any standard you care to measure. Poor, unsustainable Japan. What is it to do?

Never fear, another vapid journalist has a host of suggestions, because he understands “the merits of skepticism.” We are told that “Japan has become a nation that can’t proceed without the economic equivalent of a walker.” Remember, there is no magic pot of money, so any solution which involves government investment must be, by definition, “a walker” – even though almost every country on the planet is dependent on Japan for almost all its heavy manufacturing and high tech needs. There is no multiplier from government spending, not even if you’re a British company buying high speed trains from a country that developed advanced heavy manufacturing on the back of 100 years of industrial policy and targeted deficit spending. Fortunately, our intrepid journalist knows better. Debt is bad, government spending is bad, and Japan can’t sustain more. So we need to consider alternatives, encapsulated in these questions for Abe:

does he have a plan to make Japan more competitive to take on China or halt Sony’s slide toward irrelevance? How about ideas to make the labour force more flexible and international, starting with a new immigration policy? Or a strategy that inspires young Japanese to start new companies or families? What about freer trade? Increasing women’s role in politics and business? Even an energy plan that champions something other than the nuclear reactors Japanese fear amid earthquake risks? None of the above.

So this journalist wants Abe to simultaneously find a way to make Japanese technology competitive against a nation 10 times its size, wants to make it possible for women to enter the workforce and start families, wants more immigration to a nation with one of the most challenging language contexts in the developed world, and wants to dismantle nuclear energy policy – without spending a yen of government money. How is this going to happen?

The last time this idiot journalist traveled on a shinkansen, did he consider the effects of eliminating the government spending that made the train possible, while simultaneously dismantling the nuclear power system that propels it?

I think he didn’t. He also didn’t think about the actual barriers to immigration policy in Japan (most especially, the fact that Japanese don’t speak English) or the barriers to workplace flexibility. Japan maintains an excellent system of public maternity leave. Good luck getting your employer to give you the time off to use it – but this is the government’s fault, right?

Here we see a classic symptom of the modern commentator on Japan. Wherever Japanese government has achieved success, we hear economics pundits and journalists screaming about government incompetence. But wherever the truth might lie in the overwhelming power of Japanese corporations and business elites to determine policy, we hear a sudden silence about the role of government in weakening those forces. Anyone who has worked in Japan knows that the single biggest force influencing people’s decision to delay childbearing is the difficulty of finding family friendly work. This is a classic situation where government intervention and public spending can make a difference – but no commentator will consider those options. And so we have a strange situation where massive government spending has made Japan one of the most successful economies on the globe (without natural resources), but modern lack of growth is taken as a sign of the complete failure of government spending to make Japan better; while the private forces that dominate ordinary Japanese people’s lives are completely ignored.

The truth is that, while Japan has massive government spending and is one of the most equal societies in the OECD (with all the benefits for social cohesion that this brings), it is also one of the most schizophrenically neo-liberal economies in the OECD. Japan has limited workers rights, limited licensing laws or restrictions on the entertainment economy, businesses are self-regulating to an extreme degree (see e.g. TEPCO), university education is almost entirely fee-based, there is very little social welfare for the unemployed, and many utilities and services are essentially privatized. Yet when I read neo-liberals commentating on Japan I never read anything about how the Japanese economic model might present an example of a neo-liberal pathway to equality and happiness. Instead we have unsustainable spending, women who won’t breed (with dubious hints that they are waiting for a white man to show them what it’s all about) and the dead hand of government. Why can’t market commentators move beyond their fixation on Japanese government spending and start looking at the Japanese economic and social system as a whole? I don’t think I’ve ever read a discussion of Japan’s declining birthrate in the mainstream press that discusses the role of workplace culture in preventing child-rearing decisions. Ever. I’ve never read a discussion of Japanese government spending that mentions the bullet train, although it’s implicit in much of the discussion of Japan’s past. Every failure of the Japanese economy is slated home to the government, but all its successes – born on the back of a conscious industrial policy and a massive program of public spending spread over 40 years – are just good luck and corporate endeavour.

So my challenge to neo-liberals is: put your money where your mouth is. Admit that Japan’s laissez faire labour market practices are the real reason for its declining birthrate, admit that government spending worked to make Japan great, and then move on to construct a narrative in which Japan’s neo-liberal market elements and laissez-faire social order created, or helped create, equality and wealth. Spin me a story – how does this work? Is your knowledge of Japan and your ability to analyze economic systems more than skin deep? Or is the extent of your analytical ability “government spending bad, Japan proof?” Are you an economic commentator, or a neo-liberal parrot? Surprise me!

 

 

Japan’s Science Fiction Political Party

But what is our policy on Godzilla?

It’s election season here in Japan, and this morning the full listing of competing parties fell through my mailbox. This multi-page, newspaper-style document lists the major parties and their main candidates, along with a very brief statement of their agenda. It’s a useful summary of the state of policy debate in Japan, I suppose, though it can make depressing reading if, like me, you think that the future of Japan depends, at least medium term, on nuclear power – aside from a few fruit loops who want nuclear weapons, almost every party is committed to Nuclear Zero. Even the Communist Party, though at least they have the decency to propose an alternative energy policy. I scanned this set of policy agendas to see if any party had any policies on immigration or foreigners, but I didn’t get very far because I got distracted by a glossy brochure from the Happiness Realization Party, which I think should rename itself the Giant Robot Party (ジャイアントロボット党). This glossy brochure is as disturbing as it is cute: the front page demands that a rock star who made landing on the Senkaku Islands be made governor of Tokyo, presumably not as a token of goodwill in international relations. The back page also makes the nationalistic path to happiness clear, with its number one demand being action to protect Japan from China.

But the middle of the pamphlet is the two-page spread reproduced above, showing the Happiness Realization Party’s vision of a future Tokyo. For those who aren’t familiar with Japanese, some of the more notable features include:

• Making Haneda Airport operate 24 hours a day (far left of the image)
• Heliports! (on reclaimed land: next to the lobster- and crab-tower)
• Fish farms in buildings (below the heliplane-y thing with the crate: the actual phrase means “become able to catch fish inside buildings!”)
• Maglev trains! (These are the big loops running around the outside of the city)
• All motorways underground
• Underground safety shelters (I guess this is necessary if you’re going to go for nuclear armaments)
• Giant robots!!!

The party is also, apparently, in favour of lower taxes. So how they’re going to get to this future Tokyo isn’t entirely clear. I think the way they envisaged it is obvious though: the Tokyo in that picture is basically the city depicted in the Appleseed comics, though the robot’s a little bit bigger than anything in Appleseed. I’d like to point out, though, that the future world of those comics is not exactly a smoothly functioning democracy …

The Happiness Realization Party is also, apparently, pro-foreigner and denies the Nanking massacre, in a classic example of the weirdness of Japanese conservative politics: this party is a low-taxing, pro-foreigner, nationalist and militarist religious party. Based on this weird-looking cult, apparently, which means the health policy will be fascinating: on their website this religious group claim you can heal yourself of cancer. It’s space exploration policy should be interesting too: apparently the religious group’s leader discovered a speed faster than light 30 years ago.

As a foreigner living in Japan I don’t feel it my right to offer advice to Japanese people about how to vote, but on this occasion I think we can all agree that it is my duty to demand all good citizens vote for the Happiness Realization Party: the sooner we can move to a Bladerunner-esque, nuclear-armed Japanese state guarded by giant robots, the sooner we will all achieve full happiness.

 

In Which Faustus Eats Grasshopper

Last night I went to a work-related dinner with foreign guests, and my students did the stereotypical ’80s Japanese thing of subjecting the foreigners to every gross food that Japanese people eat, without warning. Uterus, raw octopus with horseradish, frogs legs, stewed guts, grilled chicken skin, pickled plums, some kind of tiny fish that tastes like socks… and inago, grilled grasshopper. Me being one too many sheets to the wind (and having secret theories about the morality of insect eating), I tried it.

Inago is actually very good. It is sweet-salty, crunchy and bite sized. I was expecting some kind of gross prawn-brain flavour that needs to be washed down with beer (and carries the attendant risk of an explosion of fishy aftertaste, that the Japanese call namakusai and appreciate). It has none of these things, so is vastly superior as a beer snack to either dried squid or deep fried whole peawns. I recommend grasshopper, though I can’t vouch for the effect of eating a whole bowl.

If you want to try this “delicacy,” the old-fashioned restaurant chain Hanbei (半兵ヱ？) sells them, and has an english menu. There is one in Shibuya near the station. Good luck!

 

Letters from Iwojima: Deep Insight into the Futility of War, or Defense of Noble Sacrifice?

Or both? Last night I had the pleasure of watching Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwojima, which is a superb and beautiful movie with a genuine sensitivity to both Japan’s sad war history and to its wartime culture. It’s all the more impressive for having been directed by an American (and from a generation not renowned for their sensitivity towards Japanese feelings over the war), who obviously gave the Japanese a great deal of space to express their own culture within the movie. However, while I was watching it I found myself torn between repulsion and respect for the Japanese general, Kuribayashi, who had the sad task of setting up 20,000 Japanese men to die for no good purpose. Reflecting on this movie, I’m really not sure if it can be placed into the small number of movies that offer a genuine critique of the futility and stupidity of war (and especially of that war, for the Japanese), or whether it is just another chapter in the long and disappointing history of movies that defend or glorify war through the vehicle of its horrors and futility.

First, though, the good. This movie has a gentle and understated tone in the first half, as we watch the preparations for the island’s defense and the fears of the various Japanese soldiers are portrayed through letters home, and through the ordinary soldiers’ conversations with each other. We have occasional flashbacks to their lives before the war, the circumstances of their recruitment or their assignment to Iwo Jima, and some of the politics that undermine the efforts of General Kuribayashi to defend his island. Kuribayashi’s vicious defensive plan is described but not in so much detail that it bogs down the story. The story is primarily told through the eyes of an ordinary soldier called Saigo, who has a wife and child at home and is desperate not to die. He has many lucky escapes both from the cruelty of his own superior officers and from the vicissitudes of battle.

The film also offers a novel perspective on the US Marines, because it treats them just as the enemy is usually treated in a war movie of old: they are just faceless foes who need to be killed, and until near the end of the movie we do not see them or hear them, or learn anything about them. There are only really three face-to-face encounters between Japanese soldiers and Americans, and in one of these encounters we see US cruelty that is known about by historians but usually glossed over in war movies. In many ways this movie depicts the key properties of allied and Japanese propaganda that I described in my series of posts about the book War Without Mercy: the Japanese see the Americans as inferior and barbaric, their suspicions that they will be treated badly on surrender are confirmed by Marine savagery, but the movie itself ends with a (somewhat jarring) moment in which the Japanese soldiers adopt a moral message taken from a dead Marine’s letter: just as described in the last chapters of the book, this American movie maker begins to portray the Japanese as good captives, receptive to American moralisms and cultural tropes now that they have been subjugated.

This unconscious lapse into one of the classic propaganda tropes of the war’s victors made me aware of the possibility that this movie is not as radical as perhaps some reviewers of it might like to think. The decision to portray the entire episode through the eyes of the losers was a bold and impressive move, but I found myself ultimately disappointed by the depiction of General Kuribayashi. We’re obviously intended to view him sympathetically: he’s something of a radical in the war effort, rejecting suicide tactics and favouring gentle treatment of his men, and he obviously believes the war is lost. Having lived in the USA he understands (as did the ill-fated Admiral Yamamoto) that Japan cannot defeat such a titan, and yet he does all he is ordered to do, and does it well. I think this movie asks us to view this as a noble tragedy, of a man doing his best in circumstances he cannot escape, and maintaining his humanity throughout, but I think there were two fatal flaws in the depiction of this character: one, that his supposedly noble humanitarianism was really just a kind of utilitarian brutality; and two, that we never see him struggling with or justifying the one decision he never even considers – surrender.

The sense projected in the movie, through letters and flashbacks and his dealings with Saigo, are that he is a humanitarian, a general who cares about his men and their wellbeing. But whenever he deals with his men as soldiers, or as a group subject to his orders, his reasoning is always strictly utilitarian. He forbids suicide charges due to their futility, but at the end when there is nothing left to fight for he himself leads a charge, rather than surrender. He stops a captain from beating his soldiers, but not out of any leniency on footsoldiers who have been voicing the same doubts of victory that he voices to his comrade Nishi; rather, he doesn’t want men wasted – his issue is with the stupidity of the punishment, not with its necessity. Similarly when he rescues Saigo from an unnecessary beheading, his reasoning is that Saigo was following orders, not that beheading men for cowardice is wrong. Nothing in his actions questions the fundamentals of the war, his role in it or the inevitable expendability of his men – and he certainly doesn’t hesitate to leave his men for dead or to command their deaths when the battle begins. He is also remarkably uncritical of his own peers and his leadership: when he learns that the Navy have been lying to him about their defeat in the Marianas and the impossibility of naval support, he seems singularly unfazed. Would he react the same way if his privates were revealed to be shirking off work, or surrendering quickly?

The second, bigger problem I had with the supposed sensitivity of his portrayal is very simple: he didn’t surrender. I know it’s a historical movie, so he can’t (everyone here is trapped in an infinite loop of cruel slaughter that no one can escape), but this doesn’t mean I have to be subjected to a vision of him as a gentle and kind soldier when the inexorable flow of the story is to the pointless deaths of 30,000 men. Kuribayashi had another, simple option at the beginning of summer, about halfway through the movie, when he discovered that the Navy had been lying to him about the powers and disposal of the Combined Fleet: he could have arrested his admirals and navy commanders for treason, had them shot in front of their men, and then surrendered the island and all the men on it to the Americans. This would have meant the bloodless capture of Iwo Jima four months earlier, which would have ended the war – which Kuribayashi already knew was lost – four months earlier, which would have meant four months less of starvation, burning and mass murder on the Japanese mainland, as well as four months’ less brutality and oppression in China. Furthermore, this surrender would have sent shockwaves through the other isolated islands of the Pacific, and by shaking the Americans’ belief that the Japanese would never surrender, it might have led them to consider alternatives to the nuclear attacks on Japan. Of course, Kuribayashi didn’t surrender, and it’s good that the movie presents the actual events of Iwo Jima rather than my silly alternative universe ideals; but the fact that he didn’t surrender really makes me doubt the depiction of him as a man who cares for his men. Or perhaps more viscerally, it makes me doubt the depiction of him as a good man. I guess the movie would have been less popular if instead of showing a man tortured by his inevitable noble sacrifice, it showed a hard and cruel leader who used his men efficiently rather than with the casual brutality and scorn that seems to characterize much of the Japanese high command. It’s probably not a palatable alternative, and certainly wouldn’t have been popular in Japan, to have the central relationship of the movie not Saigo’s gentle respect for his noble leader, but the continuing dialectic of conflict between the human needs of the men and Kuribayashi’s burning desire to use them pitilessly and efficiently to kill as many Americans as possible, for no better purpose than to keep Japan independent for a few more months.

The final scenes of this movie have Kuribayashi leading a so-called banzai charge, the single most futile expression of the cruelty and inhumanity of Japan’s WW2 military. This charge was led by a man who had banned such charges earlier as counter-productive, and it is obviously intended to be viewed as noble but tragic. Watching this, I just felt it was pathetic and hopeless, and I would like to see more war movies which, rather than just viewing the war through the ordinary soldier’s eyes, actually try to critique it through their eyes. I think Letters from Iwo Jima goes part of the way towards doing this, but it fails at the last, and it fails for a simple reason: Japan’s war in the Pacific was a horrible mistake that plunged millions of people across a huge swathe of the world into 15 years of bloody darkness, none more so than the people of Japan itself. Portraying Japan’s experience of this war sensitively is a sign that the west has matured in its approach to the USA’s (inevitable) victory in that senseless war, but portraying Japan’s experience sensitively is also a very difficult task, because of that simple fact. In my opinion, you can’t properly approach this task by the kind of narrative presented in Letters from Iwo Jima. Instead, I think a more radical narrative is required, one that presents a more nuanced and critical view of the relationship between the fascist, repressive Japanese military leadership and its supposedly passive military mass. Elevating the leadership to the position of noble losers doesn’t, in my view, achieve that goal: instead, it serves to reinforce the view that war is a fundamentally noble enterprise in which, unfortunately, a few eggs need to be broken in order to make the omelet.

Japan’s experience of World War 2 is a clear case of “war, what is it good for?” – a whole generation burned away in a conflagration with no purpose and no hope of victory. I don’t think that approaching the enemy from a position of sensitivity and understanding (as Clint Eastwood is obviously trying to do in this movie) should mean throwing away that simple fact. Rather, it means incorporating it, and presenting your view of the war first and foremost with a critique of the leadership, the criminals who pushed ordinary citizens like Saigo into that fire. While this movie does a beautiful and impressive job of presenting folks like Saigo as real people rather than faceless enemies, I think it fails to be sufficiently critical of Kuribayashi, who may have been a great guy to his family but still failed to intervene in the senseless deaths of 30,000 people, because he clearly thought that those deaths were right and just. Such men are history’s greatest criminals, and I think that there should be more space in the narrative for recognition of their flaws.

Which isn’t to say, of course, that I could do a better job. This movie is a splendid piece of work, a great showcase of the subtleties of ordinary Japanese life and culture, and deserves its critical acclaim. It’s definitely worth watching and deserves acclaim, as well, for taking on the rare and difficult task of viewing “our” victory through “their” eyes. If you appreciate war movies and you’re interested in seeing an American perspective on the Japanese in the war, I definitely recommend it.

 

Current Viewing: Thermae Romae

Profound moments in inter-cultural exchange …

I watched this movie on the plane returning from Germany, a situation so desperate that even watched two thirds of Battleship. Needless to say, Thermae Romae was much better. Thermae Romae is a Japanese comedy about an ancient Roman public bath (thermae) designer, Lucius Modestus, who somehow slips through time into a modern Japanese bathhouse (onsen), probably in Itami, near Tokyo. Suffering creative block and horrified at the way his fellow ancient Romans treat the baths that they are supposed to love, he gains new insights into bathing culture from his brief time-slips into modern Japan, and after each slip he introduces new ideas to ancient Rome.

For some reason Lucius’s time slips always take him to a bath near or occupied by a young woman called Mami, who is perhaps his love interest. She is an aspiring manga writer suffering similar creative problems to Lucius, and so they inspire and aid each other in achieving success in their own goals. In the process Lucius is also helped by all the old men of Mami’s village, a hilarious bunch of cheerful old lazybones who cheerfully accept every weirdness that comes their way.

The movie incorporates an interesting mix of time-travel gimmicks, under-stated love story, and cultural confusion. Its central conceit is that modern Japanese bathing culture shaped the bathing culture of ancient Rome, which is a hilarious idea done very well. It also gently pokes fun at Japanese notions of cultural superiority: Lucius, obviously played by a Japanese actor, thinks that the Japanese people he meets are slaves (who he refers to as “the Flat-faced Clan”) and is ashamed that slaves from some provincial province have more sophisticated technology and bathing culture than the “unique” Romans. He’s also embarrassed to be copying their ideas, and keeps his sources secret (though the Japanese have never really been embarrassed to admit when they steal ideas). This is also a common misconception about Japan held by foreigners – that they can never invent anything for themselves, but only copy. So it’s a cute turnaround on that idea to see Japanese bath culture being stolen by the Romans. Incidentally, having just returned from the spas in Germany (in Baden-Baden) I can safely say that Japanese bath culture is in every way superior: as Lucius realizes when he surfaces in the bathhouse in Itami, grandiosity is trumped by tranquility when one is intent on bathing.

The love story is gently understated and left open for interpretation by the viewer, and although at times Mami seems to be ignored by all around her, she is ultimately a key part of the plot, helping Lucius to achieve his goals and playing a crucial role in the Roman empire. Both Mami and Lucius seem to be misfits in their own time, and perfectly suited to each other. They also have problems with authority, and both seem to learn from each other’s culture as they seek ways to overcome the problems they have with their own. This development from cultural confusion to shared learning is also a very nice microcosm of the interaction of Japan and the West (though I think the relationship in the movie is perhaps more equal than it has often been in the real world).

This movie is funny and sweet in equal measure, and the first half, particularly, is hilarious. Although I can’t comment on the sets and camerawork, having watched it on a 2″ screen on the back of a seat, the character development and pace are excellent, and the ending is surprisingly good for a romantic comedy. It’s a richly multi-layered movie, being entertaining at the level of simple slapstick, but interesting as an exemplar of a very important part of Japanese culture (onsen), and as a meditation on Japan’s interactions with the West. Plus it has a cute sci-fi element incorporating time travel, usually a recipe for disaster but handled well in this case. The version I watched had Japanese subtitles, and I strongly recommend watching it if you are able!

 

Low Levels of Radiation Exposure in Fukushima Residents

I have been collaborating on some research to assess levels of internal exposure to Cesium in residents of Minamisoma, Fukushima prefecture, and today the results have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (paywalled), along with news reports in the Washington Post amongst other media outlets.

Minamisoma is a small town located mostly just inside the 20-30 km “stay-indoors” zone around the Fukushima power plant, and is one of the closest towns to the plant that isn’t under a long-term evacuation order. Minamisoma Municipal General Hospital began to assess internal exposure to Cesium in August last year, and we report on the first year’s assessment of just over 8000 residents, finding most had no measurable levels of exposure (38% of adults and 16% of children). Those who were exposed had generally low levels of exposure. Although calculating the equivalent dose of internal exposure is a bit tricky and controversial, the lead author estimated the maximum at about 1mSv, and suggests this is about the equivalent of half a chest X-ray. The linked Washington Post article describes some other comparisons and gives the opinions of other experts in the field who know more about these kinds of calculations than I do. We also observe that the levels of exposure less than one year after the Fukushima disaster are much lower than those observed even several years after Chernobyl, despite the fact that supposedly similar amounts of radionuclides were released into the atmosphere. Our suggestion is that the combination of early evacuation and comprehensive food monitoring and control were key to containing the effects of the disaster.

These results suggests that in many ways, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant explosion is far from the worst aspect of the disaster that hit Fukushima prefecture on the 11th March, 2011. I have visited Minamisoma before and previously put up a post describing the destruction at the seaside and some of the difficulties the town faces, and I hope that this research will serve to give some perspective to the severity of the various problems the town faces. I have now been given a two year grant by the Toyota Foundation to continue research (in collaboration with the local hospital), monitoring the radiation exposure of the residents and conducting a broader needs assessment of their health needs and the ways in which their mortality risks have changed since the earthquake. As I said in my previous post, the experience of these communities in Japan is of value to other countries with a similar aging problem that might experience similar disasters, including possible nuclear accidents, and it’s important both for the people of Minamisoma and for other communities at risk of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident that we more clearly understand the best potential policy both for preparing and responding to these kinds of disasters. Hopefully this research will benefit both the town’s residents, and policy-makers in other places who face the potential of similar catastrophes.