Cry from the Scene

Naoki Kasuga “Cry from the Scene”

What follows are excerpts from a document found at the following website: https://web.archive.org/web/20210223092500/https://iam-k.com/HIRAI/pageall.html

I don't know if the contents of this document are trustworthy, but the document was circulated as significant reference material among the members of a research group based at Kyoto University. I cannot imagine any absolutely trustworthy information in the current situation. The fact is that the socially constructed nature of information itself has been exposed. Many of my Japanese colleagues do not believe that this document should be circulated further. They want to handle information as carefully as possible and keep it limited so that any panic may be avoided while the current difficulty is being overcome. (A majority of Japanese people would probably accept this view). This is very different from the way I think Americans approach a crisis. The American way would seek to overcome a crisis situation by exaggerating its criticality and creating a strong leader and self-sacrificing heroes.

The questions I would like to put forward through the following excerpts are: 1) What does the current situation illuminate about contemporary problems nuclear power plants embody in a highly concentrated fashion as ostensible foundations of the global economy, such as manualization, audit culture, modularized industries, non-regular employment, and social discrimination?; and 2) What does the circulation of this document itself tell us about the kind of information we need to sort and link together in order to construct reality? I would appreciate your comments.

Please find below some information about the author of the document, Hirai Norio:

Hirai Norio passed away in January 1997. He was a plant plumbing technician who served as an advisor to the Citizens Forum for Nuclear Power Plant Accident Investigation and director of the Support Center for Nuclear Power Plant Workers Exposed to Radiation. He also served as a special assistant to the plaintiffs in the injunction against the construction of Hokuriku Electric Power Company's Noto (later Shiga) Nuclear Power Plant and special assistant to the plaintiffs in the injunction against the construction of Tohoku Electric Power Company's Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant, as well as a witness for the plaintiffs in the injunction against the operation of Reactor No. 3 at Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant.

What follows are excerpts from the document:

I am not an anti-nuclear power plant activist. This is simply a report from someone who worked at a nuclear power plan for twenty years. There are many people who can talk about the design of nuclear power plants, but there are few who talk about the actual construction of plants. My specialty is plumbing at industrial plants, such as large chemical factories. I worked as a site manager for a long time.

The central government and electric power companies emphasize that all nuclear power plants are safe because they are earthquake-resistant and are built on solid rocks. However, this is nothing but a fairy tale. As the Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake (Kobe Earthquake) has revealed, no close monitoring is being done on the actual construction and maintenance of these plants.

In recent years there have been numerous accidents caused by human errors at nuclear power plants. This is because there are not too many professional (experienced) technicians on site. Even if the design of a plant is excellent, it is not followed in construction and maintenance work. What is assumed as an absolutely critical condition at the stage of designing is that construction is performed by craftsman technicians with superb skills. But the reality is that nuclear power plants or any other buildings are constructed by a bunch of unskilled persons, from on-site workers to inspectors. Until recently, craftsman technicians known as boshin and team leaders with more experience than younger site managers were always on construction sites.

About ten years ago, these craftsman technicians started disappearing from construction sites. Complete amateurs are recruited. Prior experience is not required. Since craftsman technicians disappeared, construction has been manualized so that amateurs may construct buildings. As a result of manualization, what is done at the construction site is just like piling up toy building blocks, that is, simply matching prefabricated parts already partially assembled at factories like matching No. 1 to No. 1, No. 2 to No. 2, etc. Workers construct buildings without fully understanding what they are doing at each step, what particular significance each step has, etc. This is one of several factors contributing to the frequency of accidents and malfunctions.

Because of the exposure to radiation, you cannot train your successors at nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants are dark and hot. Because you wear protective masks, you cannot speak to each other. You communicate by gestures and hand signals. You cannot transmit your skills easily. Additionally, the more skilled you are, the more quickly you reach your annual allowable exposure level.

Some people say that we do not need experienced construction workers as long as inspection is done thoroughly. But the regime of inspection itself is problematic. In Japan inspection is done after the plant is completed. Inspection is more critical during the process of construction. Current government inspection only consists of listening to manufacturers’ and construction companies’ explanations and checking required documentation.

Only when nuclear power plant accidents became more frequent was a cabinet decision made to allocate an operation management supervisory officer at each plant. Even in a critically serious accident in which the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) is set off at Tokyo Electric Power Corporation's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, [national newspaper] Yomiuri Shinbun reported that the plant's operation management supervisory officer was “completely unaware of the accident.” Why wasn't the official informed of the accident? That is because the electric power company knew that the official is a complete amateur. In the midst of a frantic crisis situation the company did not have time to explain to the official what had happened as if they had had to explain the accident to a child and did not allow the official to enter the site. He was left uninformed, and he did not know anything.

Japanese nuclear power plants have caused astonishingly serious accidents so frequently, accidents equivalent to the Three Mile Island accident and the Chernobyl accident. In 1989, the incident at Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Dai-Ni Nuclear Power Plant involved the crumbling of its recirculation pump. This was the world's first accident of the kind. In February 1991, at Kansai Electric Power Company's Mihama Nuclear Power Plant small pipes broke and radioactive substance was emitted to the air and the ocean directly. Water containing radiation from the reactor also flowed into the ocean and was about to cause the empty reactor to start heating itself. The multi-staged safety valves that Japan is proud of failed one after another, and a veteran worker who happened to be at the site that Saturday made a quick decision to stop the leakage manually. A critical incident with potentially global impact was averted. The cause of the accident was a simple construction error.

Radioactive substance comes out from those tall chimneys of nuclear power plants. Radioactive substance falls over local residents, and they are exposed to radiation all day long. I once received a letter from a woman who was 23 years old: “I found a job in Tokyo and fell in love with someone. We decided to get married. We even exchanged betrothal gifts. But suddenly our engagement was cancelled by my partner unilaterally. He told me that I had done nothing to blame. He said he wanted to be with me. But his parents told him that I had grown up in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture and had spent ten-odd years there. He said that women living near a nuclear power plant have a high chance of giving birth to children with leukemia. It would be too much to his parents to have to see their grandchildren sick with leukemia. That was why he said his parents had asked him to stop marrying me. Did I do anything wrong?” I have heard so many stories like this all over the place.

I once gave a lecture sponsored by a teachers’ union in the Town of Kyowa, Hokkaido, near Tomari Nuclear Power Plant. I solicited questions after my lecture. A second year junior high school student raised her hand. She said, “All of you, grownups, who are here just want to look good. I came here to see their faces. What kind of face are they showing? Those grown-ups who are here pretend to be activists concerned with pesticide, golf course development, the nuclear power plant and others things claiming that they are concerned about children. I live in the Town of Kyowa right next to Tomari Nuclear Power Plant and am exposed to radiation 24/7. I learned from books that there is a high probability of giving birth to a baby with leukemia in Sellafield, a U.K. town near a nuclear power plant. I am also a girl. I will probably get married when I reach marriageable age. Is it okay for me to give birth to a baby?” She was in tears while posting this question to 300 adults in the audience. But no one was able to answer her question. “We girls always talk about this among ourselves. We won't be able to get married. We won't be able to have children.” Their teachers had no idea that students had these kinds of concerns today.

Everyone knows that a nuclear power plant accident is horrifying. Does that mean that they are safe as long as accidents are avoided? Do they count as peaceful uses of nuclear power? I don't believe so. As long as power plant workers keep dying from radiation and local populations are suffering, nuclear power plants are not peaceful.

Cynthia Bowman

Here's an American response, not guaranteed to be representative. I am a law professor at Cornell who became involved about two years ago in environmental law, both as a professor co-teaching a legal clinic in water and land use law and as an activist in my local community, which is an idyllic rural area facing the threat of widespread drilling for natural gas by a process called hydrofracturing, to break out the shale deep below our homes, farms, and parks and release the gas trapped in it. I knew nothing about either the science involved or environmental law when I threw myself into these projects. Perhaps that is why I have been constantly shocked by discoveries about the virtual failure to regulate dangerous industries and the control of regulators by the powerful industries in this area.

Natural gas, like nuclear power, is touted as a “clean” form of energy and a solution to dependence on foreign oil, global warming, and the like. Dig a bit deeper and you discover that although natural gas may be clean to burn, the process of releasing it from the earth is far from clean and poses huge dangers to the water supply, the environment, and the social and economic foundations of our communities. We are told that none of these dangers will come to pass because of the care with which the companies in charge will manage the process and the widespread regulations that will require them to do so safely. I quickly discovered that the very companies involved had managed to secure exemptions from the most important federal environmental regulations with respect to this industry, from the acts passed, for example, to protect a clean water supply.

I set my students to pour over the regulations that did apply and to enumerate the tasks required to carry out the proposed New York State regulations of the proposed gas drilling and to estimate the hours and personnel that would be necessary to do so. The tasks involved were clearly much more than could even theoretically be performed by the number of employees of the Department of Environmental Conservation, and in the next state budget, due to recession-imposed reductions, there were major cuts to the state resources that did exist. Simple-minded as it seems, releasing all those numbers to the local press led to a front-page story on the problem in the local newspaper, at a time when the public was just beginning to become aware of it. The students also wrote comments to the Department of Regulation on the proposed regulations. With a local group of activists, we arranged speakers, held demonstrations, contacted our representatives in Albany and Washington, wrote articles for the local newspapers, and fed information to the national press.

In New York State, this growing awareness came in time to prevent any licenses being issued to the drilling companies, delaying final issuance of the regulations, and leading to a temporary moratorium on the process. In our neighboring state, Pennsylvania, by contrast, the companies had gone ahead with drilling before anyone became aware of the dangers, that is, until people began to report that their drinking water had become unsafe to drink – indeed, that it was possible to hold a match to it and light a fire. Photographs of what the gas drilling has done to the beautiful rivers, valleys and forests are appalling.

I'm saying all this just to explain why I was not surprised to read the account Professor Kasuga circulated, although I was at the same time horrified. Until profit-making corporations can genuinely be held accountable to the public, not just after an accident but before and during construction, and until regulatory agencies are genuinely independent of the industries they are meant to regulate, I don't think that one can ever speak of either nuclear energy or hydrofracturing as “safe” or “clean.” I personally am not hopeful that day will come, at least not soon, and think it is essential not to proceed with either of these forms of energy, no matter how much foreign oil they may be able to replace. Until alternate forms of energy have been developed, there is no answer except to reduce our energy consumption substantially.

The natural gas companies take out full-page ads on an almost daily basis in the New York Times, saying how natural gas is the answer to all of our problems, the clean energy of the future. These ads invariably feature a picture of an attractive young woman, usually African or African American, and perhaps a child. Money prints ads, so they will never include the dilemma of the young women described in the excerpts, who have come to see themselves as unmarriageable, never to give birth to their own children because they lived in the vicinity of a nuclear plant without even knowing the dangers. And we certainly cannot trust the information provided to us by the companies or our governments. This places upon us a heavy responsibility to acquire and analyze information on our own and to disseminate it widely. I've been reading, and demanding explanations of, a lot of science lately. In short, I agree with Prof. Kasuga about the typical American response but I hasten to add that I am far from certain that these efforts will be successful in the long run. As human beings of conscience, impelled by the disaster that is affecting the lives of so many people in Japan, we don't have any choice but to try, do we?

Grace Guo

I am from Taiwan. Ever since March 11th, the local media and all kinds of networks have been reporting as well as discussing the Japanese nuclear disaster, civilian and government reactions after the disaster, and comparing Taiwan's media and Japanese media in terms of media coverage, etc. The whole society seemed very concerned about the situations of the neighboring country Japan. I would like to share two points first. First of all, I want to start with Professor Kasuga's mentioning of the attitude toward Hirai Norio: uneasiness and distrust. Hirai Norio's document has also become popular in Taiwan, but there is also plenty of suspicion that the document was a 'fake.'

Anyways, the attitude toward this story, I think, has shown our (even though we too are experts in some fields) uneasiness toward "so-called" high-tech professional fields, and our distrust about regulators. Secondly, take nuclear power as an example, could we discuss the issues between "pros" and "cons" with the help of "sufficient information and judgment"? Could we not be kidnapped by the two ideologies that have been pushed to extreme dichotomy, that is, cleanness and prosperity, etc., which are represented by "supporting nuclear-powered electricity," and progress and love of nature which are represented by "opposing nuclear-powered electricity"? Or, is it simply not possible that the presumption that I have brought up, i.e., "sufficient information and judgment," would exist in the debate on the kind of nuclear disasters?

Naoki Kasuga

Thank you, Professor Bowman, for your immediate response. I want to express my utmost respect for Professor Bowman's research and outreach activities. I've shared the link to Mr. Hirai's website because I wonder why Japanese scholars who are familiar with technology and nuclear energy – both in the social and natural sciences – avoid spreading this information. I think it's odd to see them pressuring the authorities for immediate information disclosure, but concurrently – and confidently – trying not to raise others’ fears. It is understandable that those trying to overcome the differences between the natural and social sciences are particularly sensitive about the power of information to construct reality. But in my view, there is something wrong with this approach. It's not about either the American or Japanese approaches. I can't share their conviction about their sense of reality. This may be true not only for those Japanese scholars, but also for some American and Chinese intellectuals.

I admit that I can't clearly explain my sense of discomfort with their conviction, but in what follows I would like to try to explain it as concretely as possible. One thing one needs to keep I mind in constructing an argument is that one should avoid a style that seeks simply to confirm one's own reasoning. Even if one's argument or statement is logically consistent, needless to say one must leave things “open.” Nevertheless, though I'm exaggerating this a bit, many researchers are only engaging in a kind of discussion to reaffirm their expert positionality in this state of emergency.

I think that we (at least I) are every day facing a situation that is beyond imagination. For example, today (March 23), the authorities announced that the radiation in Tokyo tap water was found to be twice the allowed limit for infants, and they requested that the public not mix it with infant formula. The Consumer Food Cooperative [a widely used grocery delivery service] is running out of bottled water and perishable goods. Mr. Hirai's comment raises familiar questions of risk and trust. Yet, what is “trust”?  There are numerous definitions in the social sciences, but discussing or thinking about trust in unimaginable conditions requires asking ourselves once again what and how each human being believes.  That in turn requires us to confront the nature of religiosity, science and conviction.

How can we decide what is trustworthy? For example, like many anthropologists, I was critical of the arguments of [atheist evolutionary biologist] Richard Dawkins. But I am no longer certain. He challenged those people who worshipped at church after the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. Why do you worship a God who could not prevent the disaster? Alternatively, if God is not powerful enough to stop the disaster, in what sense do we consider him as God? (God and Disaster. Richard Dawkins.Net. 13.3.2011.An RDFRS Original). I've never sensed such a challenge from Dawkins’ question ever before. Are contemporary scientists willing to confront religion head on? And what is our understanding science, anyway, and to what extent should we believe in it? This question is like a knife at my throat.

I also don't know what to think about the death of the young daughter of one of my informants in Fiji where I conducted fieldwork, whose father (my informant) rejected modern medical treatment for her due to his belief in witchcraft. I've long been spending my time engaging with debates in anthropology, science and technology… Yet, I now feel I have never asked myself what it means to “believe.” In 1995, as a victim of the Kobe earthquake, I struggled with losing a sense of reality.  This time, even though I'm not a victim, I'm facing severe confusion. If my postings are the products of my confusion, Professor Bowman's thoughtful and considerate response is probably a gift to me to recover my sense of balance. 

Clark R. West

Professor Miyazaki has asked me to offer a response to this thread. I do so both as a priest and as an academic who has studied religion for some twenty years. I am very moved by the questions Professor Kasuga has raised about the possibilities and threats re: trust in the areas of religion, science and public accountability of government officials. My most recent research has been in the area of religion's responsiveness to the kinds of massive trauma currently being experienced and witnessed to in Japan and in people with close ties to Japan. As Professor Miyazaki has written about elsewhere, the category of hope is one that is regularly mobilized in such circumstances, and yet hope in the midst of trauma may look strikingly different from what religious (and non-religious) people expect. Thus, I am sympathetic to the kinds of questions and challenges Professor Dawkins raises--too often religion and religious narratives in traumatic contexts rely upon a rhetoric of nostalgia or naive optimism at best, to self-blame and enervating shame at the worst (see Saint Augustine for a classic Christian examples of both strategies).

More recently, western theologians influenced by psychoanalytic and sociological trauma theory have suggested that these classic strategies need to be replaced by ones more sensitive to what both Professors Kasuga and Miyazaki have pointed to as the confusion, epistemic uncertainty, and ambivalence ingredient in traumatic experience. Religious people are not given a pass from these conditions, as Dawkins rightly notes. Trauma inflected theologies are deeply sensitive to this epistemic situation of being 'in the middle' rather than beyond tragedy and trauma, and thus rightly reject the classic answers of theodicy highlighted in the Dawkins piece. Classic theodicies feel most often like a ‘view from nowhere’ rather than the response of an embodied subject deeply marked by ongoing woundedness. How to pray in such a situation thus becomes the crucial issue for the trauma theologian, and it is no surprise that prayer is the issue the Dawkins piece expresses the most suspicion of.

A number of theologians have recently suggested that in contrast to the dogmatic, doctrinally confident prayer Dawkins scorns, tentative near-wordless prayer is particularly concordant with the experience of trauma. Here we might find some strong resonance between Christian forms of near-silent meditative prayer such as one finds in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and the Japanese Buddhist tradition of shikan-taza, just sitting zazen. Both of these forms of spiritual practice, interestingly, eschew words that could suggest a greater degree of clarity or epistemic confidence in a traumatic situation. Language exposes and makes one vulnerable to suggestion and in the traumatic situation needs to be handled with great care. Both zazen and hesychiastic (silent) prayer seek to avoid running after restless, fleeting thoughts so common in the wake of trauma (through attentiveness and a steadfast letting go of thoughts in both zen meditation and in neptic practices in the hesychiast tradition of eastern Christianity). Both seek a restfulness, or stillness of the mind, not as an escape, but as a deeper attentiveness to the heart's wellsprings for compassion which lie deep within a troubled mind. Neither practice, interestingly, requires strong dogmatic commitments, nor even much 'god-talk' which can be quite problematic in trauma settings.

Finally, for the scientific mind, the possibilities of these kinds of spiritual practices for healing are intriguing. As Yoshiko Suzuki, a Japanese grief counselor currently working in Tokyo at a counseling center points out, grief and trauma along with its physical and psychological effects are scientific facts, and ‘whether you like it or not, whether you admit it or not, your brain has been affected and we need some help.” [see http://www.npr.org/2011/03/25/134821398/grief-stricken-japanese-reluctant-to-open-up] Much recent scientific research has also been done on the effects on the brain of long-term practitioners of various forms of meditation practice. Though results are not conclusive, it is certainly possible and credible to believe that such spiritual practices may well be one way the human person copes with and even resists the most destructive effects of trauma. One might turn to the work of the great American psychologist William James here, whose own studies as a doctor, of mystical experience, were full of similar insights as to the measurable effects of spiritual practices on the wounded soul.

Tai-Li Lin

Follow me but trust me not? “At present I think I'll still follow the advice given by the government,” a woman replied when asked by Taiwanese media whether she would evacuate from Tokyo two days after the earthquake. Japanese have been praised for their orderliness and self-control, and there's no exception while encountering the tsunami of 11 March 2011 and the radioactive leak at Fukushima thereafter. Fukushima has raised panic as well as protests elsewhere in the world. What many people find exasperating is the reluctance of TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) to inform in the beginning what exactly happened inside the nuclear power plant at Fukushima. Was the relevant information regarding the power plant, such as sustainability to disasters, accessible to common citizens?

I visited the website of Japan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC, http://www.aec.go.jp/jicst/NC/about/index_e.htm), the competent authority of the Cabinet. There is plenty of information to be disinterred thereon, but is it what people really need? According to Article 3 of “Act on Access to Information Held by Administrative Organs” (http://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/law/detail), any person may request disclosure of Administrative Documents pursuant to this Act. Under the request, the administrative organ concerned has the obligation to disclose the Information which is found necessary to be disclosure in order to protect a person's life, health, livelihood or property. (Subparagraph (b), Section (i) of Article 5) The Exclusions are listed as Section (ii) and (iii) of the same Article, which could be unsurprisingly argued NOT to disclose the information regarding the sustainability to earthquakes of nuclear power plants by JAEC (or TEPCO). Is the Government free from the obligation to disclose to the general public about the potential danger power plant even without prior request? Is government's judgment still to be trusted as before after Fukushima? Perhaps we had better take the burden of judging for ourselves.

Grace Kuo

As for the story of Hirai Norio, I would like to add two more points about which I would appreciate comments. The first point is about the relationship between the use of energy and the project of modernity. To supplement debates about the (dis)continuation of nuclear power plants (of course, I think that all of us would agree that steering clear of the use of nuclear power is the safest way forward), I suggest that if human society seeks to become nuclear-free in the future, we should thoroughly rethink and redefine the symbols of 'prosperity' and ‘civilization’ associated with modern life. Examples include the colored lights that hang around Christmas trees, those that adorn leafless trees in the winter, and those that shine from sleepless city-views of large Asian cities (e.g. the lights seen at lively and bright night markets). These have become part of our life and serve as embodiments of a warm and encouraging modern civilizations.  While discussing energy policies and moving toward nuclear-free countries, should we transform how we have long imagined 'prosperity'?

The second point is about a situation mentioned in Hirai Norio's story, in which girls in irradiated regions complained that they were unjustly discriminated against so that they could not get married. Around 2000, it began to become increasingly common for men in Taiwan to marry women from the Southeast Asia. For a long time, these marriages were seen by many as 'buy-and-sell marriages' in which women sought to marry in Taiwan for monetary gain, while men sought Southeast Asian brides because their social and economic statuses were too low to marry Taiwanese women. Many prejudices related to gender, economy, and social class are woven into these perspectives, including people's ignorance (or unwillingness to learn about phenomena they deem unnecessary to know about) about forms of international marriage. All of these prejudices, I think, are represented in a 2006 statement by one Taiwanese legislator: "Vietnamese brides have 'poison' in their bodies because herbicides polluted their land during the Vietnam War, therefore Vietnamese brides have the remaining poison in their bodies. Thus, males from Taiwan should not be allowed to marry Vietnamese brides, otherwise they will give birth to a lot of abnormal children which in turn will become Taiwan's burden."

As soon as this comment was made, a great number of women's organizations spoke critically of its inappropriateness. As time goes by, demographic research conducted in Taiwan has begun to show that the children born of South East Asian women are healthier than those of Taiwanese women because the latter generally wait until an older age to have children. Today, the trend in Taiwan's immigration policies tends toward goals of 'openness,’ 'inclusiveness,' and 'multiculturalism.’ Further, allegations that 'Vietnamese brides contain poison' have disappeared among official and/or civil cultural activities. At the same time, the labor and fertility that has been brought to the country though these Southeast Asian women has indeed become indispensable material power for the families of male Taiwanese. 

Naoki Kasuga

I have read all of your comments with great interest. The nuclear power plant incident that has followed the earthquake reminds the world again of the importance of information. As I reflect on this, I can't help but think about how difficult it is to find credible and grounded information in such heavy and difficult circumstances. Reverend West's comment was very enlightening to me in this regard, as I sensed the thorough grasp of modern theology in his sympathetic response to the questions and objections of Professor Dawkins. I recognized that, perhaps more than those in other fields of study, theologians have candidly shed light on the radical questions that natural sciences like evolutionary biology, the cognitive sciences, physics, and mathematics impose on human society.

I think that the current nuclear power plant incident is not only causing us humans to question our very trust in the natural sciences and our methods of reasoning and rationality, but also questioning "truth" as our absolute value, the nature of "facts" themselves. At least in my fields of study, I think, we have cleverly avoided such challenges by shifting from critiques of essentialism to a rising interest in constructionism. What is sought right now is a way to produce knowledge that can endure the practice of self-questioning, as we continue to question ourselves as we hold onto the pursuit of "ultimate evidence." Reverend West's concept of silent prayer presents us a powerful window into how the intellect could come to bear this challenge.

Naoki Kamiyama

It seems that many people in Japan have read “Hirai's Comment” which Professor Kasuga posted on this discussion wall. My friends have also sent it to me by e-mail. When I read this piece for the first time, I couldn't help recalling some of my own personal experience. Also, it became an opportunity for me to think more broadly about the responsibility of scientific technologies and private corporations. As for Professor Kuo's first point, I immediately agree with her thoughts on reconsidering our energy sources and current lifestyle. But we also need to take into consideration the North-South problem, the discrepancies between developed and developing nations. One the one hand, we find an argument to reduce the amount of energy consumption to avoid a possible energy shortage, and on the other hand, there are also nations and societies which demand the development of their economic power prior to reconsidering their energy consumption patterns. Because fossil fuel is cheaper and easier to process, developing nations and those of lower economic capacity have an incentive to use it over more expensive, cleaner technologies. It is thus more feasible for wealthier developed nations to bear with the inconvenience that arises as a result of the reduction of fossil fuel consumption.

However, if these wealthier nations see capitalist economic expansion as their primary concern, the reduction of fossil fuel consumption could bring about unfortunate consequences for those developed nations by giving them a competitive disadvantage in certain manufacturing industries. The residents of developed nations presently have more leeway because they live in wealthy nations, but I believe their tone would change if they were to fall behind the others. Relative economic wealth might nor correlate directly with personal happiness, but I think that many of us have to admit that there are overlaps between wealth and happiness. At this juncture, can we imagine an economic and social system with restricted competition? It can exist as a kind of utopia. However, the limits of our accumulated knowledge discourage us from undertaking practical economic and social initiatives, those that seem necessary in a system in which the weak become victims of the strong due to market function and human greed. This can also be called “incentive,” and I think that we need to discuss what would be the ideal level of market competition.

In response to Professor Kuo's second point, I'm writing about my own personal experience. I was born in Nagasaki in 1961 (16 years after the dropping of the atomic bomb). When I was seven years old, I moved to Fukuoka with my family. On the first day when I was going to go to my new elementary school, my mother told me, “Don't tell anyone that you were born in the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Genbaku Hospital, and don't tell anyone that your mother carries atomic bomb victim certificates (hibakusha techo).” As a seven-year-old child, I didn't think that I needed to say such things to anybody, and told my mother, “I won't.” What Mr. Hirai's comment reminded me of was the expression of my mother when she was much younger than I am right now. However, I haven't faced discriminations based on my place of birth so far. I can't ask my mother what she would think about the incident in Fukushima because she passed away a year ago. But since my father worked for a regional electric company for a long time, she might have been sympathetic to the workers of the electric company and would not have said negative things about the nuclear power plant. However, when I read a news article in which the schoolteacher asked the parents of an elementary school child from near the Fukushima nuclear power plant whether or not they would hide that they were from Fukushima (and no children sat next to her after the parents responded not to hide it), the story felt very personal to me.

When I was in elementary school, it was just around the time when the US stopped their hydrogen bomb tests. But it was also still around the time when the Soviet Union and China were still engaging in hydrogen bomb tests (though those were conducted underground). Therefore, when it started raining on the way back home from school, my friends and I used to run, laughed and sang, “We will go bald if it rains on our head” (though none of us really thought that we would become bald). Also, after the current incident in Fukushima, since the media strongly criticized the liability of the electric company, I heard the rumor that the electric company was vandalized and the children of the company workers were bullied (I'm not sure about the validity of those news stories since they were not broadcasted, nor have I personally heard it from the victims). This news also struck a very personal chord with me because I too was a child of an electric company worker. I wonder if it is a human instinct to ruthlessly create such boundaries between and within groups. If such incidents are really taking place in our educational institutions, I have trouble thinking clearly about what would be the best response.

I also thought about the meaning of “self-sacrifice” in relation to Professor Kasuga's comment on leadership and Professor Lhuilier's comment on language. What I'm writing below includes what I heard from others and I have not confirmed the accountability of the information. The leaders of the industry I'm working for – including those of my own company – are predominantly British and American. As the information on the nuclear incident has continued to circulate since just a week after the earthquake, I heard that the “leaders” of my industry evacuated to the Kansai region two weeks after the earthquake and directed the company remotely via phone and e-mail.

Some of the international corporations revised their risk management strategy, and moved out from Tokyo to Osaka or Nagoya. In this process of corporate relocation, there were numerous discussions on the question of “whether to evacuate or to stay.” In light of this, I paid attention to how many Japanese businessmen suggested that “If the leaders leave, their companies will lose the trust of their employees and their customers.” I thought that there were some rational reasons to relocate their business to the Kansai region because all were uncertain just how dangerous Tokyo was, and it was not clear whether or not we could trust the government's information. Further, the train schedule in Tokyo was chaotic and there were scheduled blackouts. Finally, it seemed very possible to work for a couple of weeks via e-mail or phone. However, I sensed that some of the Japanese workers “viewed the organizational order with pride and hated the idea of considering individual happiness over the collective body.” (I'm sorry that I'm writing this based on limited information).

I think that there were significant differences between the Westerners and the Japanese even if the definition of self-sacrifice was to “sacrifice oneself to save a society or many people.” At least in Hollywood movies, there are possibilities for an individual to give up his/her life to save the life of millions. However, I don't think anybody will praise those taking their lives for organizational pride. Anywhere in this world, few would respect those who immediately run away. However, if their decision would entail the best consequences, I think we will probably respect their proper decision-making ability.

In most cases, the expatriate company leaders allow their Japanese employees to either relocate to the Kansai region with them or to be on call at home. In Japan (even though I'm hesitant to generalize this), I thought Japanese leaders expected to stay long enough "to be the last to leave.” It seems that the Japanese wanted their leaders to stay in Tokyo until they could confirm that nobody - including the workers and the customers - was left behind. I don't think that all Japanese people should stay in Tokyo.

I heard a story that an owner of a medium-size financial corporation suspended a meeting right after the big earthquake, told his employees to take the day off from work, ran down the stairs faster than anyone else, and even got angry at an employee when he noticed his driver was not there to give him an emergency evacuation. I think that the fact that there are such rumors spreading around indicates how much we dislike such scenarios. But there is also an opposite example. I heard that even though a Japanese worker of an international corporation was preparing to evacuate to the Kansai region because his Western expatriate manager did so (I hypothetically set them as Western expatriates but they could be the Italians or Turkish), he decided to stay in Tokyo in the end because the Japanese employees were extremely angry at their manager's decision to evacuate.

This story reminds me of an incident in which Japanese citizens were injured by an IRA terrorist attack in London. I'm sorry that I don't remember it in detail, but it was around 1994 when the IRA and the UK government had not agreed to a ceasefire (I think this incident has already been forgotten because I can't find much about it on the internet). I was living in London after being sent there by a Japanese brokerage company. The IRA used to engage in suicide attacks at the “White House” near my office, and used to set up bombs in a trash box. It was a serious problem for me as some of the workers in my office got injured by their terrorist activities.

The bombing was on an evening day in the city's financial district. It was the IRA's usual strategy to set up large-scale bombing in sparse areas during the weekends. Typically, their bombings lead to only a small number of casualties. However, I remember that the employees of Sanwa Bank were working over the weekend, and sadly over 10 people (I guess all of them were Japanese) got injured from the broken glass and other causes. When the IRA made their announcement, they stated that they did not think that the Japanese were working over the weekend. What I thought at that moment was that it must have looked strange to the British and the IRA that the Japanese were working in a high risk place that the British couldn't even get close to. One might say this incident would spark questions about whether or not the “foreigners” had appropriate information, as if they have different patterns of behavior and judgment standards. I think the Japanese feel more uncomfortable not going into work alongside others than facing the fear of terrorism.

In terms of information sharing, (I'm sort of joking, but) it seems that some of the Westerners in Japan exchange information mostly in the changing room of the gym of the American Club near the US Embassy. Even if some of them have Japanese spouses, it is not strange for them to find the information from these other sorts of social networks more important. While I lived in London for five years, I didn't have a British friend who I could expect to provide me with information about how to respond to an emergency. I think the evacuation was an appropriate decision because it could have had a significant impact on people in business once they decided that they might be in a weak position in terms of available information. I was sort of horrified by the fact that the decisions of some Japanese changed those of other Japanese. I would like to discuss it more because I think my fear is related to what Professor Lin pointed out as “the orderliness and self-control of the Japanese.”

I guess there is something intangible here, an unconscious will to try protecting the organizational order (otherwise they will be stressed out) when they would be reacting to protect their health or lives as an individual. Such urge can be interpreted as the traditional group consciousness to protect a relatively narrower sense of a societal order as it is understood in Japan: “There is no society but interpersonal relationships in Japan.” However, I rather think that there is a value standard which treats “individuals' lives as relatively lower” than what they might actually be worth. A surviving kamikaze pilot and a novelist, Toshio Shimao, wrote in his novel of the “strangeness of not feeling the strangeness” of volunteering to give his life over as a weapon. I'm not saying that it is appropriate to engage in looting in disaster-stricken areas-- it is rational and appropriate to have social order. However, I find that the value judgment steering this case is not an ideal thing to be considered somehow universally righteous (I'm sure there are discussions about whether or not there is a such thing as universal righteousness), but rather something intangible that must be protected even if it would be dangerous for the individual.

It's not strange for a leader to stand in front of an evacuating group, nor necessary for them to be the last one to evacuate the disaster site. Also I can't currently find any words to express the unfortunate feelings of those who gave up evacuating even though they personally thought that it was an appropriate course of action. I agree that the Japanese have demonstrated a high moral standard in their response. I also think that we can praise the value judgment that guided their decision because it was connected to a good consequence. I'm not saying that the psychological stress of those who engaged in the orderly response in the disaster area corresponds with the sort of strangeness that the Kamikaze pilot had faced. However, I thought that such a standard would lead to criticism of those who decided to leave their posts in Tokyo due to the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant incident and the confusions of public transportation.

I saw an interview of victims who were staying in a shelter, eating only a few rice balls a day. This victim responded to the media, “My relatives in the other town called me to evacuate, but I can't move out from this place by myself.” I assumed that the victim must have wished to look for his/her missing family members, could not leave the farms or livestock behind, or wished to repair their damaged house. Yet, I must confess that I find it strange that I'm sympathetic to the response, “I can't move out from this place by myself (even if, at the end of the day, nobody is stopping me).”

Lastly, I never doubted the potential for the development of nuclear power plants to reduce CO2 emissions. However, based on the knowledge which I have gained from the incident in Fukushima, I started to feel strongly opposed to the use of nuclear energy. As Professor Bowman pointed out, I learned that I can't make any correct judgment without proper knowledge. The knowledge and information weren't enough for voters to make their decision. I understand that nuclear energy development was led by the government rather than an electric power company. The biggest reason for its development was to diversify Japan's energy sources after the oil shocks of the 1970s. However, I think nuclear energy is far more than humans can handle. It always needs a cooling system and it produces far more energy than we can consume, thus causing enormous energy loss. And once the cooling system gets damaged, the nuclear system goes out of control as it starts producing the unnatural chemicals that can damage our health for a long time.

From the current incident, we could learn how difficult it is to stop the disaster or to collect the right information on this matter. I see Mr. Hirai's comment as the resource to support my opinion. Moreover, it is not easy to process used nuclear cores. It was reported that the new nuclear waste disposal site in Finland would “last for 100 thousand years.” However, if such a facility really requires us to protect ourselves from its dangerous nuclear core for a period of 100 thousand years, it is reasonable to suggest that this sort of energy resource is currently inappropriate to use.

Until recently I've never thought about why nuclear weapons are “worse” than regular weapons. I thought there was little difference between killing a person with a knife and killing many with a nuclear weapon: indeed the intentions behind both of the acts concern the will to take others’ lives. However, I've begun to think that the major difference between a knife and a nuclear weapon is not reducible to the deaths it causes. It is deeply concerning that a nuclear weapon is capable of wiping out entire ethnic groups or communities in just a moment (I say this probably because I read Foucault). This nuclear power plant incident has (probably) destroyed the livelihood of more than 100 thousand residents in just a second.

Even though I see this as extremely destructive, the farms and the factories remain there just as they used to be. However, it has become a place that residents cannot easily go back to and won't be able to inhabit. Of course, a nuclear power plant is not a weapon and its intended use is completely different from that of a nuclear weapon. However, even though the total number of the dead is different from a nuclear bomb explosion, the consequence is quite similar. I think this technology far exceeds what we can handle. My grandmother told me that the amount of discrimination in Japan dropped drastically after the first atomic bomb explosion. In western Japan, for instance, there existed strong discrimination based on peoples' occupations or places of residence, and she said that it dissolved significantly in Nagasaki after WWII.

But the atomic bomb also destroyed or ended so many individual lives and communities. I guess, in some way, it was good that this event triggered the end of a tradition of prejudice, but of course I don't want to consider this experience to be a light of hope. Moreover, even though it was a government entity, the management of a nuclear power plant is generally administrated by a private corporation. It is an obvious problem that we have private corporations managing nuclear energy in ways we are unable to control. And behind the problem of information transparency, the actions of the electric power company might be constrained by the will of its stockholders (plus there are loopholes in the Act on Compensation for Nuclear Damage).

Indeed a model of corporate capitalism has supported the prosperity of developed nations so far. However, I think that the innovation and use of technologies which extend beyond our control such as nuclear energy have shown to us the contradictions internal to this system. From this point forward, we will also notice contradictions in a regulatory system in which “a law determines how we define our lives” in other fields such as biotechnology. On the other hand, years after Winston Churchill said, "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others" that have been tried, some economists (such as Raghuram G. Rajan and Luigi Zingales) have suggested that "capitalism is the worst form of economic system except for all the others" that have been tried. For them, it is our job to maintain and save capitalism.

But just as militaries wish to obtain stronger weapons, I think corporations seek to obtain stronger technologies. Just as we need global information exchange, legal regulations at national level, citizen monitoring by what has been called the “New Public,” and voluntary corporate ethical management patterns springing from movements such as CSR, we also probably need an education system that challenges us to ask whether the use of dangerous technologies will lead to an unsustainable future. Even though full understanding of the complex fixtures of economy and society extend well beyond our imagination, the need to create frameworks to understand what constitutes proper courses of action in these arenas remains. Even though it seems infinitely complex to question how to balance scientific technology and corporate activity, I believe that we should not give up on working toward this goal.