Disasters as Change Agents: Three Earthquakes and Three Japans

��� IntheaftermathoftherecentJapanesetsunamiIwasaskedforinterviewsbyanumber of Southeast Asian broadcast journalists because I had written a book on Japanese earthquakes. Most of them politely gave me their questions in advance. This was not just politeness, of course, because writing out all one’s questions in advance predetermines the course of the interview, constructing a narrative ahead of the conversation. One narrative that I was continually invited to contribute to could be called “the admirable stoicism of the Japanese in the face of natural disaster.” My role as a historian, I was signaled, was to help viewers or listeners understand how the long historyofearthquakes,disaster,andsimplyhardshiphadinuredtheJapanesepeopleto sublime misfortune. One interviewer (who had an undergraduate degree in history) actually asked me to begin in the Tokugawa period and tell viewers how each successive period and its crises had made the Japanese more stoical. Another wanted me to explicitly contrast the behavior of the Japanese with that of other peoples who had faced similar crises and (supposedly) had not behaved so admirably (he mentioned Haitians and the citizens of New Orleans). I did my best in every interview to complicate the narrative of a unitary Japanese people inured to crisis, but to no avail. I mentioned, for instance, that the mayor of a northern town had complained of the slow response of the central government, whom he claimed was leaving elderly residents of the town to die. I reminded reporters that therehadbeenastringofnuclearaccidentsinJapanandthatthereweremanyactivists (and just regular people) who deeply mistrusted the nuclear industry even before the disaster.IsuggestedthatthesameJapanesewhoappearedstoicalontelevisionscreens today would punish the ruling party at the polls tomorrow if it did not perform well in thiscrisis.Thefishingvillages mostaffectedbythedisaster,Imentioned,were indeed used to hardship, and could weather the crisis as fishing and farming villages around theworldhaveweatheredcrises forcenturies.ButtheywereonlyoneofmanyJapans. In any case, any comment that I made which could be construed as complicating the narrative of a unified stoical people was edited out of my eventual appearances on