Appendix 2. Interviews with Experts and Intellectuals

The Role of Civil Society

Chika Watanabe “The History of International NGOs (INGOs) in Japan”

The Role of Japanese International NGOs

The Japan NGO Center for International Cooperation (JANIC), a networking and information center for NGOs in Japan, identifies the first international NGOs (INGOs) in Japan as Christian medical groups that traveled to China in 1938 to provide care to refugees who were forced to flee by the Japanese military invasion (JANIC 2007). A couple of decades of inactivity followed due to the Second World War and its aftermath, but in the late 1950s, new aid activities began to emerge. By the 1960s, the first INGO-type organizations were established, such as the Organization for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement (OISCA, 1961), the Japanese Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning (JOICFP, 1968), and the beginnings of the Asia Rural Institute (ARI or Ajia Gakuin) in 1960. The precursor to the government aid agency, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), was also established in 1962 (under the name of Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency (OTCA)). In the 1970s, the growth of INGOs continued, particularly those with liberal and advocacy orientations. A number of them appeared in response to the large number of refugees from Indochina and Cambodia who arrived to Japan during this time period. Throughout the 1980s, development aid INGOs grew in number, as well as those addressing environmental, human rights, and other issues. The 1990s saw the greatest increase of INGOs, partly due to the impact of global calamities such as the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide, which raised public consciousness on the need for international aid interventions. The Kobe Earthquake of 1995 and the upsurge of volunteer activities afterwards also spurred the growth of nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations in general, particularly due to the creation of the 1998 Law to Promote Specified Nonprofit Activities (“NPO Law”), the first legal framework for nonprofits in Japan (Osborne 2003). This new law enabled groups to register as formal organizations, which facilitated their cooperation with other organizations and government agencies, the expansion of funding possibilities, and “a shift in state-society power balance” (Pekkanen 2003:53). Nevertheless, nonprofits in Japan remain operationally and financially small compared to Euro-American contexts: as of 2011, about half of the approximately 44,000 registered nonprofit organizations had an annual income of 50,000 USD or less (Cabinet Office 2013).

The late 1990s and early 2000s were also the beginning of professionalized emergency INGOs in Japan. In addition to INGOs that had been working with refugees in Southeast Asia since the 1970s and 1980s such as Shanti Volunteer Association (SVA), new organizations such as Japan Emergency NGO (JEN, 1994) and Peace Winds Japan (PWJ, 1996) appeared on the scene. These INGOs worked in war-torn countries such as the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, often in the midst of armed conflicts, and responded to natural disasters around the world. In 2000, Japan Platform was created out of the lessons learned in Kosovo, where Japanese INGOs realized that multi-lateral cooperation between NGOs, governments, the business community, media, and the academic community was essential for conducting effective aid activities. Thus, Japan Platform today is composed of members from NGOs, corporations, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who administer funds and resources that can be mobilized rapidly by member NGOs in times of disaster and emergency aid.

When a calamity strikes, the Japan Platform Board of Directors and INGO representatives meet within 24-48 hours, if not earlier. Interested domestic NGOs and INGOs submit proposals to conduct preliminary assessments and implement emergency relief activities, which are approved by the board (they are rarely rejected since consultations happen before decision-making). Funds are dispensed in a very short amount of time. Unlike Western-based INGOs such as World Vision and Save the Children, which tend to have extra funds for emergency situations, Japanese INGOs do not have extra resources that they can quickly tap into. Moreover, whereas other types of funds such as from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and corporations—the two biggest sources of funding for most Japanese INGOs—take time to process, the moneys available through Japan Platform has made rapid responses by Japanese INGOs possible. Although some observers are concerned about the links between corporate interests and NGO activities that became visible in the wake of the 2011 disasters (e.g. Robertson 2012), it is a fact that without such financial backing, either through or outside of Japan Platform, professional nongovernmental aid organizations in Japan would not be able to exist, especially to respond to emergency situations. Moreover, if one follows the collaboration between corporations and INGOs ethnographically, it becomes clear that it is not simply about the government and corporations setting the humanitarian agenda. Humanitarian and disaster aid in Japan is made up of a set of exchanges and deliberations that move between local people's concerns and state interests in complex ways.

Overview of JEN

Japan Emergency NGO (JEN) was established in 1994 in the midst of the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. It began as a consortium of different Japanese INGOs to respond to the refugee crisis and other humanitarian needs in this region, but it eventually became one organization and expanded to projects worldwide. As of 2013, it conducts relief and rehabilitation efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Sudan, Haiti, Japan, and Jordan for Syrian refugees. Its projects are funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government schemes, corporate donors such as UNIQLO and Ajinomoto, the UN, and individual donations. Although JEN is not a religious NGO, the Buddhist-based new religion, Risshō Kōsekai, has also been a long-term supporter, given the religious group's participation in the initial consortium in the former Yugoslavia.

JEN's activities include infrastructural projects such as the reconstruction of schools, but it focuses mainly on “soft aid” activities that enable “efforts [to restore] a self-supporting livelihood both economically and mentally” among people affected by conflicts and disasters. A characteristic activity was, for instance, a workshop for fishermen in Sri Lanka to make and mend fishing nets after the tsunami of 2004, which took away their livelihoods, family members, and even entire communities. Instead of handing out already-made fishnets, JEN provided the raw materials so that the fishermen could engage in an activity that helped them regain their sense of self-reliance. The men were able not only to create the material resources necessary to restart their fishing activities, but also to use the workshops as spaces of healing. To this end, JEN hired social workers to facilitate these activities and encourage conversations that might help the fishermen process their losses and strengthen relationships with their neighbors. All of JEN's activities aim in these ways to encourage both economic self-reliance and psychosocial care.

Although JEN's projects are usually outside of Japan, the organization has also conducted activities in Japan. The first was a rehabilitation project in Niigata, an area north of Japan, after the Niigata Chūetsu Earthquake in 2004. JEN focused on a small ageing community in a rural area and sought to revitalize the community by tackling the effects of the earthquake, but more importantly, the long-term problem of depopulation. JEN and the villagers worked together to implement volunteer programs that brought urban participants to help with agricultural and other labor, and to encourage villagers that their village was worth keeping alive. Six years later, young people and families had moved to the village. The villagers decided to manage the volunteer and other revitalization programs on their own. Thus, in 2010, JEN closed its Niigata project, although it continues to maintain relations with the villagers. When the March 2011 disaster happened, people from this community were among the first to contact JEN to offer their help in the devastated areas of Tohoku.

Japanese INGOs in Tohoku after March 11, 2011

When the earthquake struck on March 11, 2011, Japanese INGOs quickly took action. Unlike in most other disaster situations in the developing world where the United Nations coordinates relief activities, in this case, the Japanese government facilitated nongovernmental and volunteer aid activities through the quasi-governmental Volunteer Centers of the Social Welfare Council (shakai fukushi kyōgikai, or shakyō). Unfortunately, the administrators at the municipal and shakyō offices were themselves victims of the disaster, and the coordination of the various groups and individuals proved to be a challenge. As Leo Bosner, a former employee of the US government's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) found in his research in Japan in early 2012, prefectural and municipal officials were expected to be the first responders to disasters, but they received almost no training in disaster response (Bosner 2012). Furthermore, he points out that “the government did not appear to have a plan for incorporating NPOs [nonprofits] or donation management into the disaster response” and it relied too heavily on news reports rather than information from on-the-ground specialists at disaster sites. This led to the misallocation of relief items, and in some cases, the government's rejection of goods that were in fact much needed on the ground. Bosner also found that the actual experts in disaster aid were found outside of the government agencies in charge of managing the response, such as in INGOs and the fire service, but the government did not draw on their expertise.

Staff members at INGOs such as JEN had ample knowledge managing and implementing large-scale disaster aid projects. However, seen in the same rubric as “volunteer groups,” the government relegated them to simple activities such as mud and debris removal through the Volunteer Centers. Thus, there was a general sense among INGO aid workers that their programmatic expertise from years of experience worldwide was not used to the fullest extent, echoing Bosner's findings.

Despite these challenges, as soon as the disaster hit, JEN staff prepared to go to the most severely affected regions of Sendai and Ishinomaki city along the coast in Miyagi prefecture. Although there were some delays due to the sudden threat of radiation coming from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, staff members from Tokyo were in the region by the 13^th^, distributing food, clothes, and other needed items identified through their assessments. On March 25, 2011, JEN established its Ishinomaki office and hired local staff members who have since been conducting a variety of livelihood assistance and other rehabilitation projects. As time has passed, JEN staffers have been able to cultivate trusting relationships with local communities, enabling the implementation of mid- and long-term projects beyond the tasks allowed by the government. Programs involving volunteers have also continued, similar to the Niigata projects that aim to address wider problems of rural depopulation in conjunction with disaster rehabilitation efforts.

The interview that follows is an excerpt from a conversation that took place at the JEN office in Tokyo with the Secretary General, Ms. Keiko Kiyama, in January 2012.

For more information please visit: www.jen-npo.org.

References

Bosner, Leo 2012 Can Japan Respond Better to its Next Large Disaster? The Asia-Pacific Journal 10(21)(1). Electronic document, http://www.japanfocus.org/-Leo-Bosner/3754, accessed May 25, 2012.

Cabinet Office 2013 “Let's Get to Know NPOs (Statistical Information)” [NPO wo shirou: tōkei jyōhō]. Electronic document, https://www.npo-homepage.go.jp/about/npodata.html, accessed December 8, 2013

Japan NGO Center for International Cooperation (JANIC) 2007 NGO dēta book 2006: sūji de miru nihon no NGO [Data Book on NGOs 2006: Japanese NGOs Seen Through Numbers]. Tokyo: JANIC.

Osborne, Stephen, ed. 2003 The Voluntary and Non-Profit Sector in Japan: The Challenge of Change. London: RoutledgeCurzon.

Pekkanen, Robert 2003 “The Politics of Regulating the Non-Profit Sector” In The Voluntary and Non-Profit Sector in Japan: The Challenge of Change. Stephen Osborne, ed. Pp.53-75. London: RoutledgeCurzon.

Interview with Keiko Kiyama, interviewed by Chika Watanabe

Note: In January 2012, when this interview took place, JEN had finished their work with emergency relief and had begun working on providing livelihood assistance and the renewal of community events like tea and coffee hours (ochakkonomi in local dialect) in the temporary housing established after the March 11^th^ disaster. At present, in the spring of 2015, they are involved in psychosocial care for children, livelihood assistance, and community revitalisation.

Could you tell us a little bit about the work JEN is doing in Tohoku

On March 11^th,^ when the earthquake and tsunami struck, our first thought was that we had to get help out there. Naturally, we were also affected by the disaster, but on the 11^th^ we found ourselves busy getting things ready. The first group went out on the 13^th^. In the first few months, in what's known as emergency relief, the support we provided was primarily essential supplies and helping out with things. And by things I mean, for instance, dispatching volunteers to help clear the mud the tsunami had caked on to houses, that kind of thing. That's the kind of emergency relief with which we started, but now things are moving in the direction of getting things back to normal.

JEN also does work overseas. Has that been different to what you've been doing in Japan, or have they been similar?

They've been surprisingly similar. I felt the same way when we were providing relief during the Chūetsu Earthquake in Niigata in 2004; that what we do overseas can be put to use domestically as it is. I think that our aid abroad has been successful because we quickly moved away from the assumption that you mustn't try to impose your own ideas just because you're abroad and the culture's different, and started from the idea that we are people who are at some point going to leave. When you try to achieve sustainable results, based on the idea that you're going to leave eventually, the question of how local people can play a role in continuing to develop the project becomes very important. All of this was the case in Niigata, and is now what we are attempting in Tohoku. While we're focusing on Ishinomaki in Miyagi at the moment, the environment in which the people of Ishinomaki originally lived and the one we lived in is different, and the culture that had developed there over time is different as well. Obviously we speak Japanese, but there are dialects and words particular to the region, and even if we get to talk to people, if we only do this while thinking about the kind of lives we lead in Tokyo, we'll never understand their needs. In the sense that the support we offer is to get people to become more actively involved, I think the work we've been doing overseas to make people self-reliant is exactly the same as what we're doing in Japan.

Is the earthquake in Tohoku comparable to the one in Chūetsu?

Obviously in Chūetsu the people the earthquake hit were severely affected, but in terms of the region and areas, I think the damage was more limited there than in this case. If there hadn't been a tsunami following the earthquake, I don't think as many people would have died as have at present. So many things have been damaged by both the earthquake and the tsunami that, in terms of degree and scale, the damage is different. But as the individuals involved are precisely that, individuals, even though in Ishinomaki alone almost ten thousand people have died and others remain unlocated, they each have a family. In terms of one to one involvement, I think they're the same.

When someone feels positive, it affects someone else, and I think that getting the entire region back on its feet is what happens when you make all the people inside it feel that way. Naturally there are cases where people feel better because the area has been revitalised and such, but I think it's important to focus on both. It's obviously pointless to try and make all of Ishinomaki feel better, but by giving people back their lives, one person at a time, as things ease up, it eventually starts to spread, and I think that's when a town starts to get its spirit back.

What exactly do you think you do to make those affected by the disaster feel better?

While it pains me to say it, I don't think what those affected by the disaster lost is something they will ever get back. For the families that have lost loved ones, sad as it is, they'll never see them again. But even as you hold on to that sadness as you move forward, if you can get your hope for the future back, and if you can feel like you're not alone in this, you also feel like maybe you can keep on going.

Which isn't to say that there's nothing to be done, and we just give up on the people whose houses were washed away. But those people themselves have given up on the idea that there is anything to be done, and if they don't look toward something else, they'll remain trapped in that grief forever. They can't take the next step so long as they're stuck wondering why they had to lose these things. Because it's important for these people to accept this themselves, to come to terms with it, efforts have to be made that provide them with something that makes this possible. While JEN has, for a very long time, been talking about “psychosocial care and supporting self-reliance”, we believe that a certain amount of emotional recovery is an important prerequisite for the process of becoming self-reliant. In order to bring about that kind of recovery, it's necessary to feel that you've come together with the people around you to accomplish something. And that comes about when you feel that you are truly connected with other people, when you feel that other people understand the grief you're going through, that kind of connection. While people have been talking a lot about recovering kizuna for this sense of connection, we believe that it's absolutely vital that people get back this connection or kizuna as a psychosocial one.

There are, for example, movements in the temporary housing for this purpose. Particularly in the case of Ishinomaki, as the number of people affected by the disaster is exceptionally high, this meant that even the people at the municipal office were in an extraordinary state of disarray. It was terrible. While it would have been great for people who had become close in the evacuation zones to be relocated together when moved into temporary housing, there just weren't enough people at the city office to arrange it. And as a result, the relocation of people from the evacuation zones was all done by lottery to decide where each individual household should go. In these really small towns and cities, you want to listen to people who only move in community units and move them in those units, but in Ishinomaki this wasn't possible and the people who were moved into temporary housing together didn't know each other. Obviously they said hello to each other, but it's part of the local culture to be unassuming, and we've heard that even if people wanted to invite someone over for tea, they were worried that it might seem like they were taking the upper hand in the situation. And so JEN invited everyone to have a cup of tea together at an ochakkonomi, and they all came drink tea and introduce themselves in a more formal setting. After that they started going over to each other's houses, and then people became friends, and could share what was weighing them down. It seems that it was a matter of people meeting up to share what was getting to them.

I see. But the areas affected are very large, and there are limits to what a single person or group can do. How do you continue your work given those limitations?

That's also something that's been on my mind. That we're dealing with such wide area, with this many people, that it's this severe. If it had escalated gradually then people would have been prepared for it, but it happened so quickly that it ended up being the way it has. Everything changed overnight. And so we had to rush, because we wanted to support more people, quicker, over a wider area. We know that's not really possible. But I had a teacher once, who used to tell me, whenever I was struggling with a dilemma, “Light up even a corner of the world”. Whenever I heard this, I thought that there was truth in it, this idea of ‘lighting up even a corner of the world’. When you want to help support people in the way they live their lives, a portion of time and materials is necessary. My little story isn't going to heal anyone's heartbreak but, even if we assume that it could, this would still only be limited to a certain number of people in a given area, and after I told them this story, they would all go to their own homes, where the same kind of life is waiting for them. If we assume there is a limit to the amount of people it can affect, even if measures are taken to change the way people do things, then there's nothing to do but do what you're doing now, with all your heart and soul, and believe that this will have a ripple effect. You do it all the while thinking that when you meet another person, that nothing exists apart from them. You do it that way, person by person, politely, properly. You light up even just a corner of the world. Even if, in this vast darkness, I can light up only one little corner of the world, then someone can carry on from there, in the space lit up, and can light up another corner. Convinced that if we kept it up then before we knew it things would light up, we stopped being in such a rush to fix things.

What can you do exactly to expand the effects of this ‘lighting up a corner of the world’?

What's important for JEN is, like we say, whether or not the project is about supporting self-reliance. Can the people involved in that project establish JEN's three watchwords for self-reliance, can they can involve themselves in the community, and can they come up with solutions. This is actually something the people can do themselves, but because they find themselves in situations that make them think they can't, JEN is involved. I don't think the really big issues are ones that can be solved. But if you take those big issues and break them down, they become a more manageable size. You take what you can, bit by bit, and if people come along who feel like they can really solve one of the big issues, the community starts to work alongside them.

One example of this would be fishing nets. We're giving support with fishing equipment right now, but it isn't just a matter of just handing it over, like ‘here you go’, but of making sure that you show people how to use the equipment and how they can use it to get their livelihoods back while also trying to form a bond with them. If people's emotional state is any worse than it is already, then even if they want to really make a go of it with the fishing then there will still be days where nothing goes right, and days when they're just miserable. You have good days and you have bad, but to have to suffer from a bad catch or a day when the fish won't bite, after you've already lost everything in the tsunami, makes people tend to give up and there's no point in them going on. This loss of self-confidence, this giving up, isn't something you can stop, but if people have strong bonds, if they have kizuna and people to look after them, and if you can make sure that they have friends, then I think it's easier for people to get back on their feet. And so it's not a matter of just giving fishing equipment, but annoying people by asking whether or not everyone's using the equipment they've been given together, or asking people to hurry up so we can eat their oysters. We end up being quite harsh. We expect people to engage with it out of a kind of resentment they feel toward us, a kind of, ‘I'll get you something to eat since you're bugging me so much’ attitude. We try to involve ourselves with the idea that, since they're the ones who grow the oysters, we're just people who want to eat them. For a start, we don't know the first thing about growing oysters; people have to develop methods of producing a better product by themselves, because they're the ones who have, from the get go, been capable of doing this. And, even when we do get to eat them, if the oysters aren't good, we have to just come out and say it. When we say it, we get people to try harder to produce something better. In the end when they've managed to produce something truly delicious, and they cry tears of joy, maybe it's because they realise that there was a reason for all the work they put into it. And when you put something wonderful out there that people all over the world can make use of, then the scope of the future you see in front of you sort of pans into widescreen. At first circulation comes back within Japan itself, and as a result that might lead to expanding globally. We are accompanists, and our partner performs the main role. It's important to us how our partner put things in motion, and when they do that and things go well, we're happy. To take joy out of this, or to put it in everyday terms, the joy we get out of something like being able to experience many successes, is, I think, connected very much to a sense of independence. That kind of involvement is something that can only be done with a limited number of people. When people keep that up, when they do things because they take an interest in it, the people around them begin to do the same. It's a small level of involvement, but still, I think it sets the light in motion.

Speaking of light, the impression I have of what JEN is doing in Ishinomaki is that the local staff take centre stage and are doing a variety of jobs shared between them. I thought that that kind of thing might be the reason why people are starting do so well there.

JEN began with the former Yugoslavia. There were no jobs for refugees and so we started from the idea of taking on as many refugees as possible. We didn't consciously do this to make them feel better. But we realised that just the very fact of being made refugees is extremely psychologically damaging. Through their work at JEN, these people began to do things for other people. That's what draws out psychological strength. What I'm always surprised at is that at the interview stage these people are completely depressed, pale, have no ambition, but after one or two months working at JEN, they begin to look much better. That is, just as you're saying, in doing things for other people, their own lives begin to light up. Because those affected are also emotionally devastated, what I want, and what JEN is actively devoted to achieving, is for them to start to feel better by doing things for other people.

There's still a world of possibilities out there for young and old alike, and it makes me happy if we can help draw those possibilities out. The ideal is that people start to get back on their feet while thinking that they've been given nothing by JEN. Obviously we do a wide range of things, but I'm inclined to think that it's the people who can think to themselves that they're getting nothing from us that are probably most self-reliant. Because the support JEN provides isn't the kind that's given, but one that supports, the shortest way to get survivors to be self-reliant is to have a variety of voluntary projects that give them the sense that they're doing everything themselves. Even if you take people somewhere and have them to experience something, and they end up thinking this way on their own, then of course people will go, but it's not a matter of telling people they should go, but of putting it out there in a way that tells them that they should go if they might be interested in what's there. And, when people want to have a look at something because they find it interesting, and then decide that they want to do this thing or that thing, and can act on it, then this means that though the impetus may have come from JEN, the person decides for themselves what they want to do. They have a sense of ownership in what they go on to do. If they feel that sense of propriety, it's sustainable, they change things, there's a high rate of success.

And what would you like to do following on from this?

While I really don't like the division of people who support and people who are supported, what we who have the opportunity to provide support have to remember is how necessary it is to have local people be in charge. At the same time, obviously getting things back to the way they were is what we try to do, but these places were already in the process of depopulation. Even if we could restore, 100%, how things were, all that lies beyond that is further depopulation. And so, if the local people have to hope for something, I think, fundamentally, that it would be better if they hoped to work together for a different future. They say that there are ‘three things’ necessary for village renewal — young people, outsiders, and idiots. Which means that you need the reckless energy of young people and the different viewpoint of outsiders, along with the blissful ignorance of idiots. If we can put those three things out there in some form, I think the end result is village renewal.

“Build back better” is a phrase used a lot in the world of emergency aid, but in places originally underpopulated, if you just build it back it's not going to get any better. The original meaning of build back better is to build a better place than was there before, but this unfortunately doesn't extend to making it an economically and materially better place. And that being the case, we outsiders think that there's nothing to do but create a different future. But to tell people whose heads and hearts weren't looking for it that now is the time for change, and that now, when people have been emotionally devastated by the disaster, that we should do something new, is extremely difficult. This is precisely the reason why local people must have an active role, and why I also think it's important to support people being able to shape their own future. What kind of future we can make together, for these places damaged by the disaster that have been emotionally and physically weakened, is the challenge facing those who support and those who are supported, the challenge facing everyone. And yet if we don't do this then nothing will change, and all that's left is hope. It's inconceivable for us to do nothing just because it's difficult, and so it's important that we take things one step at a time.

You often hear people in Tokyo say that disaster is a chance, and sometimes it feels as if people don't actually understand how difficult the situation is. I get the sense that maybe the fact that there are struggles, and that the local people are frustrated, is being ignored. I feel like maybe what's needed isn't necessarily just connections or kizuna… but what do you think?

I feel like it's the same as environmental issues. And incidentally, I think the expression “being kind to the earth” is a misunderstanding; we are alive because the earth is kind to us. Putting up with insufferable circumstances and living in horrible conditions doesn't necessarily mean that you have a keen sense of the environment. But if you're earth-friendly because you really want to do be, and because it's fun. Then what you get out of that is people who are actually ecological, and a way of going about things that doesn't destroy the environment.

At the moment, people are being divided into those who support, and those who are supported, which means those ‘poor survivors’ of the disaster. But, as has been said before, if you take the country known as Japan as a single body, when the left hand is injured and no longer works, but the right still functions, it feels as if the whole body is healthy just because the right is. The entire system of Japan could only be put in motion so long as Eastern Japan was a part of that body. If it's damaged to the extent it has been, this doesn't mean there's no effect felt elsewhere, even economically. It's not true that just because the right hand is undamaged that nothing has happened. What the left has been holding on to comes to be placed on the right, and to think that this means the right hand has become more active in response is also a mistake. This is precisely why sustainable renewal of Eastern Japan is beneficial for the whole country. And so it's just not a matter of kizuna or ganbare, of connection or giving it your all, but of what we can do ourselves. Those of us in Tokyo, people in Kyushu — I want us to think about what we can do.

And I don't think this is just the case for Japan. If we expand this idea, that somewhere out there in the world there are people like this, dying, then you realise that it doesn't make any sense. You come to imagine people living together on the same planet. I think we can give more then a passing thought to imagining that we can change the way things are now, which tells us that just by virtue of being born in a poor country, people have to live with heartbreak. The idea that you can convert anything into money and put a price on things is a bad habit. Maybe the chance we have is to change that.

The people who live in Tohoku as well as the people who were there sighting, aren't find any joy or value in something that's purely monetary through volunteering. It's a difficult thing to express, because it can't be converted into money. I think that though many people understand that this is a difficult thing to express, they just pretend that they don't. If this weren't the case, that people find something that isn't money in the volunteer effort, then the idea that so many would take pleasure out of volunteering in such a terrible situation, or would exhaust themselves for other people while putting up with bad food, would make no sense. People enrich their own lives by doing things for other people, for that support to be more direct makes the people who receive it happier too. Think every day about what you can do for someone far off, try doing what you can. Even if you fail, when you get it in your head to do it differently next time and try harder, I think that can change a person and society as a whole. I think that's caused this change in values.

In the wake of the present incident, a lot of things have been talked about under the bracket of ‘Japan’. How do you think we can think about relief and this disaster from an international perspective?

In terms of the flow of information, and economically, Japan isn't isolated in the slightest. And so if you look as Japan as a single person, it may seem like a matter of the left hand being injured, but if you look at the whole world as a person with a single body, Eastern Japan, and Somalia too, are injured. Haiti is still injured. The entire body is riddled with wounds. So supporting places that we're involved in, first in using what we're directly involved with to positively influence the people around us. It's my hope that those people influence other people who influence other people, and that goes on to change the world. That's why, in that sense, I think Eastern Japan has become a wake up call for a lot of people living in Japan. Looked at on a global scale, given that it was a large disaster that occurred in a developed country, I wonder if it hasn't been an important chance for an awareness to spread out through the developed world.

Everyone wants the people close to them to be happy. In English people often say “I wish the best for you and your loved ones”. Who are these “loved ones”? They may be your family. Maybe your friends as well. The people who matter to your friends should also be important to you. And so, when you speak about just how far out your nearest and dearest are, then isn't a matter of that term extending to the entire world?

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

I feel like for relief, a lot of it comes from the feeling that people want to do something, and a lot of support comes from the desire to give support in a way that makes someone else happy. Superficially, for instance, you could give someone a sweet to make them happy. But when everyone has sweets it's impossible to eat all of them. In that case, I'd like people to think about what would make people happy whether or not they got a sweet or not. Maybe it's more the case that these people want to give other people sweets. This means it's not a matter of wanting to give, but of wanting to receive. That's the kind of support I want to give. The idea of getting to eat oysters I talked about earlier is part of that support. In other words, it's important to provide a role for people so that they can feel like they're doing something. There is no one who can't be useful, but, when they lose their faith in themselves, or are feeling down, then they get convinced that that's the case. There are many people who have lost their confidence simply from the experience of losing pretty much everything they had managed to get, loss of that degree. People might feel like, “Oh, I used to buy this and that by myself, with money I saved and put aside myself, but now I have to be given everything.” So in order to get people to believe in themselves again, it's important to support without giving. It's support, but it's a strict kind of support. Presenting people with requests like, “Do this for me, please” — I think that's probably a good way to go about giving aid.

A form of aid where you ‘have something done’ is a novel idea. I wish JEN all the best with your future endeavours. Thank you very much for your time today.

The Role of Architects and Engineers

Interview with Shin Sakurai, interviewed by Hirokazu Miyazaki

I'm writing here about what I was doing on 3/11, 2011, and also writing my comment about the direction of general architecture/design after the 3/11 disaster. That day, I was conducting amandatory inspection of a university laboratory, which I designed two years prior to March 11, 2011. When the initial jolt occurred, I was on the fourth floor of the seven-story building. Since the building was designed as a quake-absorbing structure, we felt the quake but it seemed to be approximately a level 3 on the Japanese scale. Of course, it was no problem to stay standing upright, but it shook just enough to feel like a really big shake. I thought that the jolt which I felt must have been from the restorative force of the rubber of the quake-absorbing structure. As a result, there were no serious damages in the building. There are several agricultural departments’ laboratories and research offices in the building with a lot of fragile equipment such as beakers and flasks, but the quake did not cause much damage to that equipment. Usually, elevators are programmed to stop once the system detects an earthquake, but they normally restart working right after the initial jolt. However, I finally realized that there was something extremely abnormal going on when I saw how severely the lightning rods of neighboring buildings were shaking. My building is equipped with a measuring device that records the degree of jolts when a quake hits the building. I checked this device later and found out that the initial jolt shook the building at 4cm.

The university is in Tokyo's Machida city. On the day of the earthquake, I could not go back home because all public transportation was out of service. The university kindly let me stay over at their facility. Several districts near the university suffered a blackout. Depending on the location of the electric substations, it was clear where the blackout areas were and where the normal areas were (roads were often clear geographical markers). I thought that we might have to think about redesigning electric circuits to provide electricity from multiple substations for different districts, if we can make such infrastructure. When I designed a hotel building for an international hotel corporation, the corporation had a standard requiring their engineers to secure electricity from multiple substations. I thought that this kind of circuit method was meant for regions with frequent blackouts such as developing nations with poor energy supplies. However, I had to change my mind after this earthquake.

The Saturday and Sunday after the earthquake, I inspected the damage of the university facilities. This school has more than 100 buildings, and it took two entire days to finish the inspection even though we had multiple people on this job. As we predicted, we found damages in the buildings that were constructed before 1980 under the previous earthquake-resistant standard. Also, most importantly, the earthquake had scattered books in many of professors’ offices, and those books had become obstacles particularly to inward-opening doors. As a result, some people had a hard time evacuating from their buildings. Based on this inspection, we use sliding doors in newly erected buildings for the university as much as possible.

Also, a critical theme for us is how to maintain buildings that have lost their infrastructure supplies, an integral aspect to improving the quality of earthquake resistance. Even before the 3/11 earthquake, as a part of our BCP (Business Continuity Program) and LCP (Life Continuity Program), we, Kume Sekkei Co., Ltd., proposed to design buildings with self-sufficient water and electricity systems in case of a disaster. When we accept any project, we make it mandatory to discuss these systems with our clients. We just completed a building with the BCP and LCP standards last year in the Chubu region (central Japan) and are currently designing a hospital with the same concept.

Fukushima within the Configuration of the U.S. Cold War Strategy

Interview with Yuko Yamaguchi, Interviewed by Naoki Sakai

When I went to college from my high school. There was absolutely no critical perspective toward nuclear power. There was of course no nuclear engineering departments at University of Tokyo at the time [in the 1950s]. Later on [in the 1960s] we had the student protest movement against the university system. During those struggles Mr. Takagi and I realized that scientists could not at the university be faithful to their sense of social responsibility. Knowledge production was called into question in the student protest movement. Knowledge itself was problematized as a matter of politics. And this questioning of knowledge had a major impact on the student movement. Each of us responded to this question differently; we were young and at the beginning of our careers. For those of us who took this question seriously and were starting out as young researchers it was impossible to avoid asking whether we could possibly do our scientific work outside the proscriptions imposed by our employers, be it government, university, or corporation. This was a critical problem of "the microphysics of work-place politics." It is in this context: in his later life Mr. Takagi came up with the idea of “citizen scientist.” In contrast those intellectuals who supported nuclear power were untroubled by this question. You mentioned this question of the micro physics of work-place politics in a note you sent me a few days ago. We are conditioned by this physics, which has created an antagonism among us, researchers, between the supporters and the opponents of nuclear power. Antagonism over nuclear power is not only about policy; it has to do with the way of life and thought from the 1960's until today. The fundamental meaning of March 11th Fukushima is the history of this antagonism.

Yesterday when I interviewed Mutō Ichiyō, he talked about postwar Japanese history. In short, he demonstrated how problematic the idea of the peaceful use of nuclear power is. He claimed that this idea was part of the U. S. global military strategy of the 1950's when the phrase “peaceful use of the atom” was invented. The Japanese state took clever advantage of the U. S. strategy so as to establish the nuclear power industry in Japan. But you cannot agree with Mr. Mutō, can you?

As a general assessment, his view is right. Basically I agree with his recent book on Japan's nuclear armament. In the 1950's, who in Japan understood the U. S. strategy? The question is, who on the Japanese side decided on these policies, what group in Japan? What I am interested in is to ask what Japanese physicists were doing at the time? I understand Mutō's point of view, but for me as a scientist. I want to know whether on the Japanese side there were scientists in that group who went along with the U.S. nuclear strategy.

That is something I wanted to ask you. During the war, evidently, Japanese scientists were working on a nuclear weapons program--though I'm not certain how feasible they believed their nuclear project was. Japanese physicists were fully aware of the possibility of using nuclear science to develop nuclear weapons during the war. In Japan, nuclear science was fully integrated into the Japanese State's structure a long time before the end of WWII. Thus, it is not surprising that this complicit relation should remain in place postwar. Almost every nuclear physicist in Japan was involved in the Japanese State's military program.

Every one of Japanese nuclear physicists was involved during the war. After the war, almost every one of them. Strictly speaking to some extent Yukawa Hideki resisted this complicity. But I'm not sure if these few acts were at all effective. In the case of nuclear armament the overwhelming majority of Japanese scientists were against it. But in regards to the peaceful use of nuclear technology there was not any dissent, I think.

It's a real problem that the ethics of intellectuals and scientists, in the end, were always posed in terms of their loyalty and devotion to the country or the nation.

Yes, it is a problem. At least in Japan education is an obstacle, what is taught in school. Let me show you a very interesting thing: it is a section of a U. S. school textbook called “Hall, Science” 1996.

Let's show this diagram to the camera.

What has been done in this U. S. textbook is genuinely impressive. In this science textbook for 4th and 5th graders there are several pages devoted to nuclear energy. This illustrates how a nuclear pressure reactor produces energy. It says that, for people on the outside of the plant, the buildings appear clean white, with no smoke or anything coming out. That's where power is produced, and inside of that is this: what is pictured here in the diagram. Thus power production is explained in its basic mechanism. But what is surprising is this: this textbook actually says that it is not certain whether or not the processing and storage of nuclear waste is safe. This textbook also mentions that there is a possibility of the failure of the cooling system for the fuel rods. Evidently the textbook was prepared after the Three Mile Island incident, so it tried to learn from that accident. And one more thing: in the Q & A part of this textbook, it asks primary school children to respond to both sides of the debate on nuclear energy: on the one hand, nuclear power seems quite clean but on the other scientists have to worry about exposure to nuclear material. So it asks the children to judge for themselves what they think of the debate. This textbook actually poses the question “what kind of thing is atomic energy?” And "what merit or demerit does it have?" In Japan there is no such textbook. The question is never asked. In order to sustain the civil society, you cannot hide contradictory views or opinions that are inconvenient to the authorities. That is the lesson March 11th Fukushima taught us. Yet in Japan the repression of contradictions or inconvenient opinions has been taken for granted by the state bureaucracy and business. So, those in the state bureaucracy and business could not figure out what to do after 3/11. The data of SPEEDI could have been released earlier to reduce the effects of radioactive contamination. It is clear that the age when people's economic and social well-being can be comprehended and judged within the scope of one nation is over. The age when usefulness in life – in which I would like to include the conception of industrial time – can be promoted within one state sovereignty without regard to other nations, other regions, other peoples --- that age is over. Essential things in life go beyond the scope of one nation. This is best shown by bio-diversity, not just humans but of other life on earth. And now, immediately, we need to make this point in our education of young people, in textbooks and the like. Children who are taught to be aware of bio-diversity and social responsibility will eventually become scientists, and, hopefully, they will be able to sustain an ethical sensitivity to science and knowledge. This is what Mr. Takagi's idea of “citizen science” attempted to explicate. “Citizen science” is a modality of knowledge production, science generated from the perspective of citizens, from within people's daily life.

To try to grasp science from these other perspectives. To conceive of a new modality of knowledge production outside those rationalities imposed by state bureaucracy and corporations.

In addition to the failure in Japanese education, the Fukushima disaster disclosed the disingenuous role of mass media in Japan. And this is nothing new, something that has been evident for some decades, and often pointed out by foreign reporters stationed in Japan. It has been pointed out that Japanese media and reporters are “spineless.” They they have no clear sense of professional mission as journalists, and are only aggressive in pursuit of lucrative scandals. But as soon as the story veers away from that track toward some political situation, they pull back from it. They don't investigate thoroughly and do not delve into the records of the past as much as they should. So you may say they are soft, but really they appear anxious to accommodate themselves to whatever is the dominant opinion. They are afraid of standing alone, isolated. Japanese mass media failed to serve an absolutely essential function for the civil society. The major national newspapers did not report about what was going on within the so-called “nuclear village” after the Fukushima disaster. They must do some soul searching. Including NHK [Japan National Broadcasting Company], all the public press has been useless.

Well, as you say, on the problems of the Fukushima reactors, from immediately after the incident, NHK has invited many opportunist scholars from Tokyo University and made them say what the government and Tokyo Electric Power Company wanted to say. From the viewpoint of those of us who have been criticizing the nuclear industry and Japanese government, their selection of the scholars is just outrageous. But NHK has been doing that for a long time. That structure is beyond our comprehension.

I wonder how such a program could be justified within the NHK. Were there any who complained about such a policy? I cannot understand, either. Tokyo Shinbun has been active in reporting on the problems of nuclear power. They collect information widely and investigate news sources thoroughly. But the Tokyo Shimbun is an exception. Many young idealistic people join the world of journalism every year, yet generally speaking, they are tamed and deprived of their idealism. Is it because of a structure of the state?

Interview with Ichiyo Muto, interviewed by Naoki Sakai

1954 was a very, very important year in many senses, but one important thing that happened was the Bikini incident that on March 1st there was the explosion of the American hydrogen bomb for experimental purposes on Bikini atoll in the Pacific. And this was known as the radioactive infliction on the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon #5. 23 fishing men were inflicted with what was called “the ash of death,” radioactive fallout from the nuclear explosion. The Bikini incident triggered a tremendous movement, and that movement was one of the two or three major, mass movements in post-war Japanese history. The Bikini incident started the first of these mass movements. Out of it came a sort of permanent movement that from the beginning addressed both world public opinion and the governments of the world. This initiative led to an international movement and the first world conference was held, in Hiroshima in 1955.

I was employed by that movement as a staff member in charge of the international section. I enjoyed the work very much. It was very vivid, sort of active and high-spirited movement. And I was young and so I did not hesitate to accept the job offer; I went to Hiroshima for the first time in my life and, of course, visited the Peace Museum. Then I walked along the route, and at the end there was another door. That door opened and I stepped into the annex, a brightly lit place, not very large, but yellowish as I remember. It was a great contrast to the grey and darkish atmosphere of the main hall. It was such a nice, but a strange, place, smelling of the occupation forces. The occupation forces had a certain soapy smell for hygiene. It was not that smell exactly, but the place instantly reminded me of those forces. This was my impression of this yellowish, bright place.

Anyway, what was this strange place? It was the special room for the exhibit of the peaceful use of atomic energy. [The exhibit seemed to say,] “Here is the future of humanity, the bright future of humanity..” Supposedly that was all thanks to the great achievement of modern scientists: [the great achievement that was] nuclear power. Actually I was stunned and speechless. I went through it [=this exhibit], but couldn't understand why it was there. At that time I didn't investigate any further. I was working for the anti-nuclear bomb movement, and atomic bombs were my focus; I was not particularly concerned with the peaceful use [of nuclear technology]. And so I set that aside and buried that memory... until the catastrophe in Fukushima.

Eventually two things, Fukushima and the exhibition of the peaceful use of nuclear energy, came together. I went back to some writings of those times, by Professor Ichirô Moritaki (1901~1994), philosopher, activist and leader of Hiroshima, who was widely regarded as a spiritual guide for the entire anti-bomb movement. He recalled that he encountered, for the first time, the idea of the peaceful utilization of nuclear power in 1955. In 1955 the victims of the atomic bombs came out and spoke in public for the first time. That year, a proposal also came from the United Strates, that a nuclear power station should be built in Hiroshima. It was proposed by a Democratic congressman. This was Moritaki's first encounter with the idea of the peaceful use of nuclear power. In 1956, the following year, an exhibition of the peaceful use of nuclear power came to Hiroshima.

I think that three factors led to the presence of nuclear power generation in Japan. First, America. Second, the Japanese desire to have nuclear bombs. Third, a philosophical and ideological tendency to accept whatever is new, whatever is represented as an achievement of science – development, economic growth, prosperity etc. Of these three factors, the first – the American initiative – began to work in 1956, because this exhibition, a part of an international project, was brought to Japan to up-root the so-called "nuclear allergy." And specifically it should be held in Hiroshima as a remedy, so as to overwhelm the anti-bomb feeling and the image of nuclear power as a bomb, to replace it with the image of the good guy.

Moritaki met Futsi, president of American Cultural Center, who was in charge of the exhibition in Hiroshima. The American Cultural Center promoted an exhibition for the peaceful use of nuclear energy in Hiroshima. Everybody there, the city government, university, newspaper, had to support the exhibition, following the famous speech of president Eisenhauer's at the United Nations on “atom for peace” in the previous year. Futsi proposed holding the exhibition at the Hiroshima Peace Museum. But the museum was not big enough, so all the atomic bomb exhibits had to be moved to make space for this “atom for peace” exhibition. You cannot say that the exhibition was welcomed by people. Moritaki told Futsi that the American Cultural Center should not use the [Hiroshima Peace] Museum. Then Futsi replied, “we will overwhelm Hiroshima, with peaceful use.” Futsi repeatedly said this, according to Moritaki. No doubt, Futsi's determination reflected the will of the United States Government and its people, a will to overwhelm anti-war movements in the world. This point has been documented and studied by many scholars and journalists including the NHK, the Japanese semi-governmental Broadcasting Company. NHK produced a very interesting documentary, depicting the Central Intelligence Agency and a Japanese wartime intelligence officer, Matsutarô Shôriki (1885~1969), war criminal imprisoned in the Sugamo Prison after the war, who established the Yomiuri Shimbun, the largest national newspaper in Japan. This documentary even disclosed the CIA code name for this operation for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Thus, American strategies towards Japan after the end of the Allied Occupation of Japan have been well documented. These historical documents, which clearly show how threatened the US Governement was by those anti-war and anti-nuclear bomb movements, can be read today in such archives as the Library of Congress.

It is interesting that the phrase “peaceful use” is only used for nuclear power. It is never used for petroleum; we have never heard of the “peaceful use of iron.” Surely only mad scientists think of this extremely dangerous technology in order to boil water and feed steam into turbines. Globally it is evident that the peaceful use of nuclear energy was part of the Cold War strategy.

Thus, the American factor was present from the beginning as far as nuclear power in Japan is concerned, and it continues to be present until now. But, unless the Japanese side had wanted it, America would have had difficulty to establish this kind of relationship [between the US and Japan] in the nuclear industry. There were certain people, many and various groups who wanted the nuclear industry. But, the main force was a political one, connected to the name Nakasone Yasuhiro (1918~).

So it was accidental, but very ironic, that the day after the Bikini incident, March the 2nd, 1954, the first budget for nuclear power was presented to the Japanese Diet by Nakasone Yasuhiro and his collegues from different parties. And the person presenting that budget explained why Japan should have nuclear power development, why they should study nuclear power generation. The reason cited at the time was astonishing, because it was a military one. He started with an explanation of how the military technology was developing. He said that this technology was expanding so fast that we [Japan] would fall behind unless we trained the young generation to cope with the situation, that is, in order to enable them to handle such weaponry. Otherwise we would have to be satisfied with old, used-up weapons provided by the U.S. under the Military Security Agreement (MSA) which had just been signed.

Hence the motivation was so explicit at the beginning. But people stopped expressing the real intention after the budget was passed; it was only once, at the beginning, that the military implication was stressed. Instead, there was another channel that was opened, of a legal nature. While the nuclear power development itself was a material basis, the other was a legal foundation. This was laid by Kishi Nobusuke (1896~1987), who was fresh out of Sugamo prison [as a war criminal]. Already in 1957 he became Prime Minister of Japan. And he was the first one to tell Parliament that keeping nuclear weapons illegal was not good. He didn't say that having such weapons was a good idea, but rather he said that having certain such weapons was not against the Constitution. And this reasoning was later repeated by various conservative governments. So it is still the official interpretation of the Constitution. In that process the core, the political-industrial core, of the Japanese nuclear industry emerged. This political-industrial core is often called the "nuclear village." It is equivalent to the military-industrial complex in America.

Actually it was in the 1960's that nuclear power generation was adopted in Japan. In 1966, the Tokai nuclear power plant was opened. Then a rapid expansion of nuclear industry followed. Now there are 54 nuclear stations, more than half of the total number of such stations in the US.

In Japan the military-industrial complex is not so strong as in America. You shouldn't underestimate it but its size is far smaller. However, the nuclear village complex has a very special position in the Japanese economy and society and politics. It encompasses bureaucracies, electric power companies, reactor makers, scholars, and the media. It was fully formed during the Sato government period. This was between '65 and '72. Yes, Sato Eisaku (1901~1975) was Kishi's brother. And he's a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He's the one who actually seriously studied and pursued nuclearization or nuclear armament.

This was a very crucial period in many senses. In 1962, China became a nuclear super power. The Vietnam war, China's nuclearization, and the Soviet-China conflict all took place. The Sino-Soviet confrontation was a dangerous one that could have developed into a nuclear war. So, around that time, nuclear power was key. Henry Kissinger (1923~) pursued an expansion policy, ultimately toward a nuclear war, so he wanted the other side, the Soviet Union and China, to step away from the possibility of a nuclear confrontation. This crisis ended with the U.S.-China rapprochement.

The end of the Sato Administration came in the midst of the Nixon-Kissinger period. This was a very important turning point. Sato decided that Japan should prepare itself for nuclear warfare, and arm itself with nuclear weapons. But previously, as soon as he became prime minister, he went to Washington to meet Lyndon B. Johnson (1908~1973) and his Secretary of State, Dean Rusk (1909~1994). Rask asked Sato what Japan would do vis-à-vis China armed with nuclear weapons. Sato said, “Although Japanese people do not like nuclear armament, I am for it.” Sato said this deliberately. But America didn't want Japan to go nuclear. So Sato said, "Okay, we can build, but we don't build. So please continue to place us under your nuclear umbrella and return Okinawa without nuclear weapons.” So that was the sort of a deal that he wanted to make. But it did not work at all because America wanted Japan to sign a secret agreement. This agreement has now been exposed: it says that, in case of emergency, America can bring in nuclear weapons [to Japan]. Sato's deal didn't work. Upon returning to Japan, he triggered a serious study of the technological, economic and political feasibilities of Japan's nuclear armament.

But that nuclear card was used by America later, in fact, by Henry Kissinger, in dealing with China. In 1971 there was the Kissinger-Zhou Enlai discussion, the full text of which is now available. They started the discussion with Vietnam and Korea and so forth. But in 1969 there was the Sato-Nixon joint agreement which related to Okinawa's reversion, and also Japan's increased military commitment to the security of Korea and Taiwan. This was a very harsh anti-China commitment. Zhou Enlai did not like approve. To Zhou who disliked anti-Chinese Japan, Kissinger replied, "Okay we can withdraw from the Far East and let Japan go free. But that would mean that Japan would be a nuclear power. Are you ready to accept that?" He used Sato's card to justify America's presence. And that's the beginning of the "cap of the bottle" theory. So the Japanese nuclear industry, the "nuclear village," is not just an economic or energy industry. It's a security matter, at the core of the national security consideration of the Japanese State.

The Role of Economists

Interview with Yuji Genda, Interviewed by Naruhito Cho

1.What is Crisis?

[Professor Yuji Genda, thank you for taking your time to participate in this interview.] In this book, we are collecting the results of our online discussions on Meridian 180. You are one of the initial members of this project, and we would like to ask for your insights about “crisis”. By way of introduction, we would like to begin by asking you to briefly talk about your background.

I am an academic and I received my Ph.D in economics in Japan. I have been writing papers and books on labor economics, especially labor issues in Japan such as income inequality, youth unemployment, and job creation.

Since the 2000's, Japanese people began to talk about how “there is no hope.” So I also work on “Hope Studies (Kibougaku)” which focuses on studying societies where hope disappears or emerges.

By starting this original research on “Hope Studies,” I met Hirokazu Miyazaki, Annelise Riles, and many colleagues in Meridian who are also interested in the theme of hope.

The main theme of this book is “crisis.” What does “crisis” mean? Japan experienced a major crisis in 2011 when the Great Tohoku Earthquake and the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster hit the country. Did the meaning of the word “crisis” and the way people understand “crisis” change in Japan through this experience?

When you look up the word “crisis” in a Japanese dictionary, it defines the word as “a dangerous moment or situation where something [critical] might happen.” A famous example of crisis in post-war Japan is the “Oil Crisis” during the early 1970's. During the 1990's and the 2000's, we also often heard the word “financial crisis” being used in Japan.

In my opinion, the word “crisis” in Japan used to have a strong nuance that it is “something external that could not be fully prevented.” The Oil Crisis came from the Middle East, and the financial crisis came from Asia during the 90's and from the United States in 2008. They were all major events that began from somewhere outside of Japan.

However, the Great Tohoku Earthquake in 2011 and the Nuclear Disaster significantly changed the way Japanese people understand “crisis.” The disaster showed vividly that crisis is not only something that comes from the outside, but is also something that could suddenly emerge from within Japan.

The Japanese fiscal economy has also been in crisis since the 2000's but the Japanese people did not seem to think of it too much before the Earthquake. However, after the Earthquake, many Japanese people began to seriously think about the existence of our fiscal crisis – the crisis that comes from within. I think this is why the majority of the public began to approve raising the consumption tax.

What about the meaning of “crisis” in economics, particularly in labor economics, your field of research? You introduced the concept of “NEET (Not in Employment, Education, or Training)” to Japan, and you recently published your research on SNEP (Solitary Non-Employed Persons).” Do the underemployed youth, NEETs, and SNEPs suggest a crisis that Japan is currently facing, or may face in the future? What kind of crisis would that be, and what kind of responses do they require?

When we discuss economic theory, we usually do not use the word “crisis.” The more often used term is “shock,” which means an “unexpected event that suddenly occurs.” Some shocks occur at a national level, while others concentrate on a particular region or industry. Some shocks are temporary, while others are long term. In economics, the important initial step in taking appropriate measures is accurately understanding the nature of the shock.

I have been focusing on youth unemployment in Japan since the 2000's. Unemployment in Japan until the mid -90's was low – it was around 2 – 3%. However, it began to rise since 1998, and 4-5% became the new standard. This is due to the increasing number of youth who are struggling to find jobs.

However, those young unemployed job seekers are not the only unemployed figures that are increasing. The “NEETs” who gave up on job search altogether, or the “SNEPs” who, in addition to being jobless, do not have any interaction with friends, are also increasing rapidly.

The common issue among the NEETs, SNEPs and the underemployed youth (フリーター) who gave up full-time employment and work as a part-time employee (非正規社員) is that they “lack hope.” There is an increasing number of youth who lost hope and feel that “there is no future” at all in terms of jobs and future prospects. The youth has an abundance of valuable resource called time, and thus they should be more prone to feeling a sense of hope about their future. But the fact that the youth is in a situation where they cannot feel hope, in my opinion, is a crisis for Japan's future. What needs to be done, then, is to understand why this lack of hope is spreading in order to build an environment where the youth can build and nurture hope themselves.

2. The Role of Intellectuals, Especially Economists, at a Time of Crisis

One of the goals of Meridian 180 project is to discuss the “roles of intellectuals at a time of crisis.” This could take place in various forms. For example, one significance of your research is your identification of problems such as NEETs and SNEPS. Before then no one recognized their existence as such. What are the challenges of identifying, conceptualizing, and defining a “crisis” and what role do intellectuals play in resolving it?

When we deal with a crisis, I think it is important to shift its meaning from something that is ambiguous to something that is clear and defined. We need to transform a conceptually incoherent “uncertainty” to a “risk” for which many can share a common understanding. The responsibility of the intellectual is to play a central role in contributing to that transformation.

There are 600 thousand NEETs and 1.6 million SNEPs. Although there are many people facing difficulties, nobody recognized their existence until we identified this problem. Unless the problem is recognized, there will be no progress towards its resolution, of course.

When I introduced the concept of NEET, some criticized me that my research will lead to discrimination against, and stereotyping of, those struggling youth. However, if the NEETs or SNEPS are discriminated against because of this categorization, it is not because they are being lazy or entitled. It is because of a social illness. And the role of the intellectual is to scientifically explain this social illness and resolve such misunderstanding.

What is even more terrifying than being misunderstood is being ignored. For those facing a crisis, continuous ignorance of the situation is the real crisis.

Economics and labor economics do not have a direct connection with crises such as the Great Tohoku Earthquake or the Nuclear Disaster. However, when we face such a major crisis, we need to work together and take an interdisciplinary perspective. How can economics help resolve a crisis like the Great Tohoku Earthquake?

In a time of crisis like the Earthquake, economics should first strive to reveal facts. Those facts could become a basis for designing an immediate response, and also for preparing for future crisis.

Many lost their jobs due to the Earthquake. When we used the tools of labor economics to conduct a large scale survey to analyze their circumstances, we found out a few important facts. First, many of those who lost their jobs due to the Earthquake were actually the youth, the less educated, and the contract workers. Those who were in unstable employment situations were the first to lose their jobs. On the other hand, many of those who were full-time employees may have suffered some decrease in wages or hours, but they did not lose their jobs. We can explain this using the theory of human capital in labor economics.

There is another important fact. A lot of the people in the Fukushima prefecture have been subject to unwarranted discrimination since the Nuclear Disaster. Some say that the Fukushima residents are drinking all the time and playing pachinko (Japan's gambling games) all day and making no effort to look for jobs – they are living off the compensation they received from TEPCO for the disaster. However, when we use the tools of economics to examine their circumstances, we find no evidence that the Fukushima victims are not looking for jobs.

If [the Japanese people] are not informed of these facts, the rumor that the Fukushima residents are being lazy and are not seeking employment will spread. Such rumors will [eventually] be the only [“fact”] that will be recorded in history. Social scientists, including economists, must explain that such a rumor is false by introducing objective facts [to the public]. This is our role in a time of crisis.

There are however those who claim that intellectuals only talk among themselves, and would not be able to do anything to resolve a crisis. Even if we have an international and/or interdisciplinary discourse, if we cannot bring the results of those discussions into action, are they meaningless?

To be honest, whether you are an intellectual or not, there is not much each individual could do at a time of major crisis. In fact, by coming up with an unrealistic plan and by forcing that plan into action, we might worsen the situation for those who are already suffering from the crisis.

On the other hand, there is something that each of us can do. For example, in my case, I have visited Kamaishi-city – one of the cities that suffered from the tsunami – several times even before the Earthquake as part of my research on Hope Studies. Based on this experience, there is something that I am certain of in terms of what the people at the site of the earthquake, including the Kamaishi residents, most strongly hope for after the Earthquake. And that is to “not forget.” The victims of the earthquake do not want this to easily become a crisis that has gone by – an event in the past. It is thus our duty to keep [looking after] the people continuing to struggle from the [aftermath of the] crisis.

Now that several years have passed, most of those who did not directly experience the earthquake are increasingly forgetting about it and the nuclear disaster. However, for those victims of the Earthquake, the crisis is still present and continuing. This is why I believe that it is my way of “taking action” to continue to disseminate the results of my data analysis and what I learned by speaking with the Earthquake victims.

Intellectuals, especially researchers, have the freedom and the duty to follow their interest throughout their lives. By slowly but definitely building on this freedom and duty, I am certain that we can find some suggestions or insights for the future – even if we cannot find an immediate resolution.

In other words, [today's] intellectuals must take into heart the messages sent and actions taken by earlier intellectuals during the various crises that occurred in the past, and reintroduce those messages and actions to overcome the current crisis. I think this is also an important role for intellectuals.

In your recent book “SNEP” you mentioned outreach as an important method to help the SNEPs. How should this outreach be done? And how is this different from educating the public, which is generally considered to be one of the activities of an intellectual? Is outreach something that would be effective against other forms of crisis such as the Great Tohoku Earthquake?

Outreach refers to an activity where somebody who has expert information reaches out to those who are in need of medical or welfare care or support, but cannot access locations where they could receive such treatment. SNEPs are isolated from their society and have difficulties asking for support. Therefore, to keep them connected to their society, it is important that those who are willing to provide support reach out to them.

When we provide outreach, the most important element is to “not try too hard.” Even if our intention is to support them, people who are in difficult situations may fall into a deeper state of panic if there is a sudden outside intruder. As a result, they might lose their place of escape and begin to hurt themselves or become aggressive against their family members who allowed such intrusion.

This is why we need to take our time and be careful when we conduct outreach. We need to let the outside intruders become part of their lives. I am not sure what it means to “educate” but outreach should not involve trying to force somebody to change or to force your thoughts upon them. That being said, when individuals are trying to take a step forward and to break out of their shells, we must have the tools to identify the opportune moment to stand by their side and to gently encourage them.

There are many who have found refuge in temporary housing, suffering from isolation at the Earthquake site. Even those who live in places that did not directly suffer from the Earthquake are also suffering from the shock of the disaster and refuse to return to their homes. They also require assistance through outreach.

What does an international and interdisciplinary community like Meridian 180 mean to you? What kind of possibilities does this project propose?

This interview is about the theme of “crisis” right now, but if I was only talking with economists in Japan, I would probably have never thought about this topic so deeply. I think Meridian 180's efforts to discuss universal truths by transcending regional and disciplinary differences make it a very valuable project.

By participating in Meridian 180, experts and intellectuals should be able to recognize the value of the tools they have, and improve upon them as well. And this will become an important way of protecting not only themselves, but also their community from the various crises that may arise in the future.

Living in Japan, I feel that all the trust between US, China, Korea and other regions that our predecessors built is starting to fall apart in various ways. I hope that Meridian 180 will become a movement that will contribute to building a new relationship of trust among the intellectuals in the Asia-Pacific region.

3. Beyond Crisis

You led a forum on “How to Bring an End to Crisis.” How do we bring an end to a crisis like the Great Tohoku Earthquake or to a long-term crisis like the NEET or SNEP? What does it mean to bring an end to a crisis?

As of January 2014, there are 2,640 missing due to the Great Tohoku Earthquake. Until those who are missing return, their families and friends have no way of bringing an end to the crisis. Likewise, there is a possibility that our outreach efforts – however hard we may try – may not successfully help the NEETs and SNEPS. It is possible that even if we reach out to them, we cannot help them recover from their difficulties. In this sense, the fact is there is a possibility that we cannot bring an end to a long-term crisis.

This is not an issue that pertains only to SNEPs. The reasons hikikomori (those who are in reclusion in their homes all the time) have fallen into their current situation are diverse and entangled in an extremely complex way. In addition, just because we can find out why they have become a hikikomori or SNEP does not mean that we have the means to improve their situation. We cannot overturn the crisis that has already occurred in the past, however hard we may try.

That said, if these individuals can understand, in their own way, why they are trapped, then this understanding may open up possibilities for bringing an end to their crisis. Expert knowledge and experience, including outreach activities, might be useful in figuring out why they cannot overcome their difficulties. If we can find out even a little bit more about the reason behind their difficulties, then we might be able to take action, one step at a time – even if we cannot immediately overcome our crisis.

To bring an end to crisis, we must not avert our eyes from the current difficulties and sadness. We need to accept them in our own way as much as we can. Perhaps when we say “bring an end to crisis,” it is not necessary to overcome crisis, but to find a way to continuously deal with crisis in an effective way.

Professor Genda, you initiated a new field of study called “Hope Studies” and have been researching about “hope” from various perspectives. Could you tell us more about your research on hope, and the relationship between “crisis” and “hope."

Through my research on hope, I learned that crisis and hope have a very close relationship with each other. Through various surveys, I learned that those who have hope and are moving forward are always those who experienced some major crisis in the past. They have the confidence that they have somehow overcome their past crises.

This is very different from “dream” which is something that we often juxtapose with hope. Like hope, dreams are also about your desired future. However, compared to hope, dreams tend to arise unconsciously, and are more pure. For example, a child's dream might be to become a “soccer player.” There is no special impetus behind this child's dream (including a question of profit or loss). Of course, perhaps there is a part of him that wants to become rich or famous. But in the end, “he wants to become what he wants to become.”

In contrast, hope arises consciously. It was so after the Great Tohoku Earthquake, and the 1995 Kobe Earthquake. People at the site of the earthquake often talked about “hope.” During the 1950's when a lot of people got sick or died due to the Minamata Disease caused by mercury poisoning, those victims did not forget about the word “hope.” Those who experienced crisis and failure are more likely to consciously use the word “hope” when they begin to believe in the future and try to move forward.

In fact, we can plant the seed and nurture hope from the experiences and knowledge gained through overcoming crisis. Crisis, therefore, is a mother of hope.

I would like to ask about your research on the Kamaishi City. You have been interested in Kamaishi even before the Tohoku Earthquake. The city was known to be the “hope of the local regions” during the 1960s and 1970s. However, as the steel industry declined, so did the city. Now the population of the city is half of what it used to be, and the economy does not seem to have the momentum it used to have. As such, the city is now symbolic of the “crisis of the local regions.” However, you conducted your studies on hope in Kamaishi city, and found something beyond those crises in this city. Now that the city experienced a new crisis – the Tohoku Earthquake – what kind of suggestions or hope can we find from Kamaishi in terms of “how to overcome crisis?"

In 1857, Kamaishi was the first city in Japan to have a modern steel industry. Since then, Kamaishi experienced many crises that destroyed the city – it experienced two major tsunamis and a bombardment by American warships during the end of the Pacific War. Even after the War, when Japan was experiencing rapid economic growth, the decline in the steel industry caused the city to lose many jobs. So the city has also experienced economic crisis.

The history of Kamaishi is a history of overcoming crises. In fact, Kamaishi's economy has recovered to an unprecedented level before the Earthquake due to the growth of the precision machinery and the food manufacturing industry in the city. Now that the city experienced a new crisis that is the Earthquake, Kamaishi is now working hard towards their new hope. Their efforts are not something that I can I explain in a few words. I would like to introduce their efforts through Meridian 180 when there is an opportunity to do so.

As I conduct my research at Kamaishi city, I found three criteria for revitalizing hope in regions facing crisis. They are 1)“reconstructing their local identity (what makes them who they are, their strength)", 2) “having the residents with diverse needs and skills continue to talk amongst themselves to share and spread hope,” and 3) “never letting go of the possibility of new innovation or collaboration by creating a diverse network both within and outside of the region.”

Whether these criteria will serve as a suggestion for “overcoming crisis” in other regions is something that I would like to discuss with Meridian 180 members in the future.

The Role of Lawyers in Nuclear and Natural Disasters

Ashina Yuki “What role should attorneys play in nuclear and natural disasters?”

I registered with the Shizuoka Bar Association in 2008.  Prior to moving to Shizuoka, I worked as the inaugural director of the Soma Himawari (“Sunflower”) Foundation Law Office in Fukushima's Soma City.  The Himawari Law Office (Himawari kikin houritsu jimusho: ひまわり基金法律事務所) is part of a program by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA) to establish law offices in areas with attorney shortages (shihou kaso chiiki: 司法過疎地域– literally “attorney-depopulated area”).  JFBAprovides funding to their members to open law offices in these attorney-scarce areas.  This fund is called the “Himawari Fund” (Himawari kikin: ひまわり基金)and is supported by the JFBA membership fee (JFBA started this program in 1999).  

The East Japan Earthquake caused devastating damages to the entire Fukushima Prefecture, including the Pacific coast of the prefecture where Soma City and my previous law office are located. 

Even though I lived in Soma only for a short while (for two and a half years), I'm very much attached to this city, and I really like it here.  With another attorney, I opened the office in this “attorney-scarce area,” and we were the only attorneys in this area of approximately 12,000 residents.  Therefore, the work kept me extremely busy, but, at the same time, I had lots of opportunities to find joy in serving others as an attorney. 

While I was serving in Soma and becoming more psychologically attached to this place, I devoted myself to instituting the rule of law in this beloved city.  The smiles and tears of the residents encouraged me to serve them, and some of my days were extremely busy.  The number of attorneys in Soma increased since then, and there are currently eight attorneys serving the area.  The disaster took place just when I was beginning to think that the local residents in Soma finally started recognizing what attorneys could do.  

The basic premise of attorney's work and the rule of law is that people live in the areas where we work.  Our work is rooted in the livelihood of local residents.  The Fukushima nuclear disaster, more than the tsunamis, broke this foundation.  My two and a half years in Soma were also wiped away by the tsunamis and now contaminated by the radiation from the nuclear power plant.  The sorrow and anger within me are what drives me right now.  If I don't do anything for Fukushima right now, then I would wonder why I even became an attorney.

The Characteristics of the Nuclear Disaster

3/11 was an unprecedented disaster consisting of the big earthquakes and the nuclear disaster.  I think that the effect of this disaster has two distinctive characteristics: (1) the effect of this nuclear disaster is serious and covers a wide geographic area, and (2) this disaster has taken away the future of the local residents.

(1) Its wide geographic scope and serious effects

I would like to start with the damage from this nuclear disaster.  Currently, there is an exclusion zone of a 12-mile (20km) radius around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and nobody is allowed to enter this zone in principle.  It is expected that nobody can live in this area for a few decades.  The residents in this zone lost their social infrastructure and were literally “uprooted” from this zone.  This means that they lost everything such as their land, house, job, school, and homeland.

Also, some of the residents who lived outside of the exclusion zone inevitably decided to move out for their children's health.  It is estimated that approximately 100,000 residents have evacuated from Fukushima, and they are called the “jisyu-hinansya” (voluntary evacuees: 自主避難者).  Even if they live outside of the 18 mile (30km) radius from the nuclear power plant, it is still near the plant.  They worry about the unknown physical effects of the diffused radiation and so evacuate to different areas for saving the future of their children.  In this sense, the label “volunteer evacuee” fails to explain their difficult reality.

At this time, many residents have evacuated from Fukushima.  However, there is a serious gap between those who stayed in Fukushima for various reasons and those who evacuated.  As a result, the kizuna (bond) among the local residents has been completely destroyed.

(2) The loss of local residents’ future

Another characteristic of this nuclear disaster was the loss of the future for local residents.

This nuclear disaster stalls any kind of recovery plan.  What should they do after removing debris, restoring the lifeline, building houses using various kinds of public funding and recovery efforts, and restarting local businesses?  Due to the radiation contamination and rumors, neither farmers nor fishermen can take any further action.  The nuclear disaster is smashing any local hope which could have grown out of their hopeless desperation.

The victims are thinking about a future which is much further away than we can imagine.  Do you know what the victims are saying?  They say, “Had I known that this kind of hell was coming, I would have wished that the tsunami would take me away.”  I became an attorney eight years ago, and I've never heard such a sad expression until now.  We can't say anything back.  This nuclear disaster easily crushes the strong spirit of a person who survived the devastating tsunamis.

In the case of a nuclear disaster, the victims can get a certain amount of compensation.  However, even if there were an infinite supply of financial resources, it would be impossible to fix this damage.  Several hundred thousand victims got irrevocable damages from this nuclear disaster (I would like to come back later to the problems with compensation claims of this nuclear disaster).  As attorneys, we have to keep in mind that we are supporting those who lost “what they cannot buy or regain with money.” 

Also, as I discuss the loss of the local residents’ future, I would like to mention that the number of children radically decreased from the Pacific coastal side of Fukushima Prefecture.  The reason is very tangible.  The children have been evacuated to avoid land with radioactive fallouts.  However, what kind of light do you think is out there in the land without children's smiles?  If they do not grow up in Fukushima, do you think that they will have any psychological attachment to this homeland?  Will they come back, or can they come back?  What kind of future can you imagine in the land where children will not come back?

Furthermore, even after they escape from Fukushima, they may face discriminative treatment from thoughtless people.  One of my attorney friends moved to Tokyo to protect his little children after the nuclear disaster, but he is hiding the fact that he is from Fukushima.  Also, as far as I've heard, there have been cases in which evacuees changed their “Fukushima” license plates from fear of vandalism, and in which their children were bullied because other children thought that the evacuees carried and disseminated radiation.  Evacuees have been cut off from information, and they need legal support.

Role of Attorneys 

This nuclear disaster has brought such devastation.  Now, what role should attorneys play?  I think we have to engage in the following two things: (1) we have to accomplish a comprehensive compensation system for the victims of this disaster, and (2) we have to get involved in the legislative process for a special recovery support act.

(1) Comprehensive compensation

It sounds easy when we translate this into a written format.  However, we can get lost when we start working on this issue and hit a big wall. 

There are more than several thousand victims from this nuclear disaster, and they are currently dispersed all over Japan.  It is also not easy to legally sort them out because the nature of damages varies victim by victim.  Moreover, we still don't know when this disaster will stop causing further damages.  The exclusion zone was also an attorney-scarce area (bengoshi kaso chiiki: 弁護士過疎地域) when my partner and I set up our publically funded law office.  The local residents do not have a strong consciousness of legal rights; they are not familiar with an “attorney.”  They don't voluntarily visit law offices, and attorneys have to actively reach out to them.  However, we don't have enough attorneys on the ground.

At this moment, there are three options for victims seeking compensation: (1) fill out TEPCO's claim forms, (2) appeal to the ADR Center on Damage Compensation by the Nuclear Power Plant Incident, and (3) appeal to the court.  However, all three options have pros and cons, and there currently is no ideal option.  With any of these options, I think that it is an attorney's long-term responsibility to fight for a system that provides the most comprehensive compensation for the victims and prepares a path for victims to easily move on with their lives.

(2) Involvement in the legislative process

Attorneys have to accept that one of the characteristics of this nuclear disaster is the fact that “money can't restore the damage.”  Our role is to translate long-lasting support systems into laws such as various forms of recovery support systems, a medical and health monitoring system, a continuous information support system, a ban on unjustifiable discrimination, and proper management of a victims’ registry (these things are vulnerable to political games). 

We need an unimaginable duration of time to engage in these two roles.  In this sense, what I think is really important is probably for us to always remember the victims and to constantly think about what we can do for them.  Even if it is a little something, there is a significant difference between “taking an action” and “not taking any action.”  Moreover, if we “continue” doing so, the value of our actions will increase as we make a long-term commitment.

Lastly, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA) is proactively sending attorneys to Fukushima. 

However, support should go not just to the affected areas.  Because there are many victims dispersed all over Japan, there are many other opportunities for providing legal support, such as outreach to the victims living in your area.  

Even if you are living far away from the victims, you can shorten the psychological distances between you and the victims by using your imagination.  We probably can make helpful policies and laws for victims if we are creative.  Now more than ever, people need the fortitude of attorneys who believe in the power of language and the power of logic.

Interview with Yuki Ashina, interviewed by Miyazaki Hirokazu, translated by Paul McQuade

Ashina Yuki, who contributed an essay to the February 2012 forum, is a lawyer currently based in Shizuoka City. Ashina was dispatched to a coastal region of Fukushima Prefecture (Hamadōri), an area with only two lawyers for a population of 120,000, under the Himawari Foundation system, previously established by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations as part of the Control Measures for Judicial Underpopulation and Maldistribution, and has experience working in a legal office established at Soma, a city in the same prefecture. Hamadōri is an area heavily damaged by the nuclear incident of March 2011, and Ashina, who for some time has been involved in the area in her capacity as a lawyer, has, along with the cooperation of lawyers from around the country, become involved in the issue of compensation following the nuclear incident in 2011. Miyazaki met with Ashina in Tokyo in December 2013 to discuss her activities since the disaster.

More and more problems are arising concerning compensation in Fukushima. One of the reasons given for this is the artificial and arbitrary categories used to determine who receives compensation.

The most concrete problem we are facing is that compensation is being determined based on artificially defined areas, rather than looking at the victims on a case-by-case basis. Even putting aside the question of whether or not the amount itself is appropriate, for places deemed evacuation zones, there will be a corresponding amount of compensation. But take for example one of the cases I'm dealing with, which involves a family who were living not three kilometres from an evacuation zone. These are people with a small child who were just a stone's throw away from an area deemed no longer inhabitable, and who moved to Shizuoka for safety. In the current system for compensation, for people like this, they just come out with excuses like, “Oh you were a full three kilometres away,” or, “Even though nobody explicitly told you evacuate, you went ahead and did it anyway,” “We're not going to pay out compensation for people who decided to leave on their own.” I mean, it just flies in the face of normal common sense.

The evacuation zones are something originally created by people who decided to leave on their own, and whether there is any scientific rationality to these areas has never been looked at. The dispersal of radioactive material from the incident has absolutely no relation to the distance between concentric circles, and that its dispersal varied according to the weather and the direction of the wind at the time of the incident is an objective fact, demonstrated by all sorts of data. I think that even for your average citizen who isn't a scientist, the fact that the atmosphere isn't something you can apportion by distance is just common sense. It's precisely because it's a given the world over that the atmosphere has no national border that pollution of the atmosphere and the oceans becomes an international issue. The fact is, those people who were living in Hamadōri in Fukushima never really wondered just how many kilometres their houses were from the nuclear plant. And a system that, despite all that, decides whether or not they receive any compensation based on artificial standards that then get thrown on to these places after the nuclear incident, however you try to think about it, makes absolutely no sense. And because the system makes no sense, the division among the residents is deepening because the amount of compensation received is completely different just because of a random line drawn by someone who isn't even involved.

However, the more fundamental problem is, what do we class as damages that come from the nuclear incident in the first place, what are the measures taken for recovery, and what the reconstruction of Hamadōri will look like. Can all that be resolved with money? I think that if we try to simply fix everything with money, taking a proper count of all the victims and making a sincere attempt at reparations for all of them, then the Japanese state finances would undoubtedly go bankrupt.

The nuclear incident has done irreparable damage in Hamadōri. Whether this damage is something that can ever be taken care of within the framework of compensation, well, that point is something that has to be taken to heart by the lawyers involved in the issue of compensation following the nuclear incident, as well as the grief of the residents, which will never heal, alongside their frustration.

Are you dealing with many cases like this in Shizuoka?

There are a few, yes. What they all have in common is that people are just trying to protect their families. Obviously there are as many different circumstances as there are evacuees. There are people from inside the evacuations zones and from outside it. There are people originally living in Shizuoka, and others who moved there for work. If we take these cases as examples, though they all appear different, I think there's a lot of people who still want more out of life, who, even among those similarly affected by the incident, remain independent. And although it also involved a certain amount of luck, these are people who had the strength to get themselves somewhere with a lawyer. What I do each day, while sometimes hard, is usually with a sense that I can't abandon the people who have made it this far.

But what's more difficult than that is the fact that I'm aware that there are people out there whom I can't help. People who can't move, even though they want to, and when I thought about those people who can't make their voices heard in even the slightest, it breaks my heart. This isn't just the elderly, or victims of the disaster, but maybe members of the family, or people living in the area. who are vulnerable, or the economically disadvantaged as well — they can't make their voices heard either. For example, there was a young mother who was taking care of her in-laws while also bringing up a young child, and she told me that she spent a long time agonising over the fact that as a mother all she wanted to do was take her baby and run, but as you might expect, she was worried about what the neighbours would think, and when she thought about how she would be able eat if she left with the baby and got divorced, she realised it was up to her to take care of everything.

This isn't the only example. There are clearly lots of people in different circumstances, and we have no choice but to pick from among them. But when it comes those people I just mentioned, who are trying to make themselves heard but can't, you have to learn to strain your ears to hear them, and strain your heart to feel them, if you're going to pick up on them. Going back to what I just said, I personally cannot get on board with the idea that giving those people monetary compensation is somehow a resolution. The problem of how we are meant to respond to damage that can't be monetarily compensated is on my mind morning and night.

You aren't just insisting on work being done in a legal form, but on the need to offer support with the creation of a network which relies on the skills of various experts.

Not isolating people like this, who are vulnerable and voiceless, I think, is extremely important. One thing I learned when I was newly appointed to Soma is that there are limits to what a lawyer can do. As professionals, lawyers are only involved in in the legal portion of disputes. And their work is primarily concentrated on getting to the issue entangled in all the various threads of the dispute within a given timescale. But at present there are many things that, even if you untangle them from all the arguments around them, won't resolve the fundamental problems. Lawyers are involved for only a brief time, and in a small portion, of people's lives, and in a very small capacity, certainly not capable of solving everything.

For example, when I was in Soma, in problems frequently associated with debt, even if the currently existing debt was manageable, if you didn't find and fix what the original reason was for taking on that debt, then you just ended up back at square one. Though the problems associated with short-term loans seem as though they can be resolved with “debt adjustment” and “personal bankruptcy”, the fundamental problems that person is dealing with and the issues in their lifestyle can't necessarily be fully addressed by the efforts of a single lawyer.

In dealing with a lot of cases, what I've learned through a lot of suffering and a lot of hard battles, is that because a lawyer can't do everything, it's necessary to create networks of different people to work together hand in hand to combat the underlying pathology of a social problem. With the debt issues, at the start it was just me checking household accounts and giving advice on expense management, but it was soon too much to handle. At that time I made up my mind to speak to the city office, and slowly the district welfare officer, the social welfare council, and so on, came on board. There were lots of individual discussions, like someone would say I'm worried about how this person is handling things so I'd like to see their expense book once a month, or, I think it'd be a good idea for people with alcohol and gambling problems to get periodic counseling so I'd like to take them to a place that offers mental care. In doing things like this, which I would never have been able to do alone, we built a network, and with the right people in the right places giving us help, we could respond to individuals issues, and eventually, as we kept pushing ourselves to deal with each case, we gained experience dealing with larger societal problems. That was a huge turning point for me.

Based on this experience, since the nuclear incident I've been especially preoccupied with how we how we draw on the strength of people beyond the legal profession, and how we can keep gathering momentum. For example, when an NPO informs us that there is a relief event for victims of the disaster, then I ask them to make the event they're sponsoring the main focus instead. And I tell them that I'd like to take part too, in some small way, maybe in the form of a little picture show about compensation, so that people can come for the show and have a consultation if they'd like. That way instead of making it into the kind of formal affair you normally have for these consultations, you have a place where the mothers can mingle with people the same age, and victims of the disaster can relax as well, and because we want the children that come with them to have as much fun as they can, I advise that people to really focus on the things that are ancillary to the relief effort.

A new kind of litigation is emerging with the nuclear incident damages suits aiming at “full reparations”.

That full reparations must be given out is something that I've also come to start saying, and as an idea, I believe that's absolutely right.

But the problem is, what constitutes “full reparations”? If we speak about it in technical, legal terms, the present system for damage compensation has at its base the idea that the price of something lost is monetarily compensated. For example, when someone is made paraplegic in a traffic accident has to spend the rest of their life in a wheelchair, if they had been able walk and lead a normal life before, then they because they would probably have been able to receive this much income based on the average Japanese income and they've lost that money, that income ends up being the figure for the compensation. Or, if they are paralysed, even though they haven't incurred any excessive medical expenses, they probably will have extra medical expenses over the next ten years or so, and so they end up receiving those expenses as their compensation. Determining what was lost in a certain accident or case, in other words, determining the losses and converting that into money, is at the base of the legal discourse on compensation.

But with the nuclear incident it's hard to grasp exactly what's been lost, and thus what the ‘losses’ are. For example, if you were forced to lose a job or a house because you had to evacuate, then when you try and determine the losses it's not so difficult to calculate an amount for the compensation. And let's say you won't be able to work in the future precisely because of this incident. Then it becomes a matter of compensating for the money you would have normally earned. And if your family would have, under usual circumstances, kept on living in the house as was, you would end up receiving the price of the house as compensation.

The problem is whether what was lost is really just practical things you can easily grasp, like a house or a job. What the majority of people lost in this incident isn't something that the legal profession is used to converting into everyday cash, it is home itself. It was the old school that still held a piece of your heart after you graduated, it was the grandmother's house where you caught cicadas in the summer, it was the excitement you felt going fishing in the neighbourhood stream, it was being able to lose yourself reminiscing with the classmates you only managed to meet once every few years, and even then, only when you came home. How much would that come to? Can you even put a price on something like that? And plus, what was lost is different for each person. There are people who just happened to be there for work, and people who had lived in the area their whole lives.

This problem, of how one goes about turning this “loss of home”, which is different for everyone and hard to put a price on, into a monetary value, is a challenge that the legal profession has never directly dealt with. When you look further into the loss of home, you have to really look at how you convert damage that has stolen the hope people had, the futures they planned on.

It's a challenge trying to grasp damages like this, but from the outset we have to also point out that damages have until the present never been something that has been defined. Right now, even though we can't really feel exactly what was lost, after a few years have passed, we might be able to sense the scale of it. How we put into words, and how we make sense of, damage that isn't going away as time passes, but being magnified, is an extraordinarily difficult task. Even if a full picture of the damage is impossible to grasp, anything we do after the survivors have passed is too late. It's a battle against time. And I can't speak to what kind of judgments will be passed down in the courts for those lawsuits that have just begun to take place up and down country.

In the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, several laws have been created for the purpose of victims’ relief, but as for laws that had to be penned with a view to offering relief to the victims of the nuclear incident, there is only the “Law on Special Measures concerning the Statute of Limitations on Claims for Compensation for Damage caused by Nuclear Accident” (Established December 4th, 2013, brought into effect December 11th). In effect, though in principle there is a three year period in which one can make a claim from compensation, beginning with the date of the damage itself or from the time at which one became of aware of it, but now under the special measures law, that period has been extended to ten years.

This a law specifically tailored to the reality of a nuclear incident. It is a law put in place so that no one can say that requests for compensation are no longer valid since three years have already passed since the incident in 2011. The victims of this disaster are somewhat relieved to be told that they don't have to rush to file a claim, and that they can take their time to deal with it.

The problem of time and the statute of limitations is a serious issue. For example, for public health hazards, it's impossible for the statute to start until the cause of the damage is known.

For compensation claims for acts of tort, you have three years from the time you become aware of the existence of the damage or of the perpetrator. In lawsuits for pollution-related illness, there's come to be theoretical backing for the statute of limitations to proceed from when the perpetrator is brought to light. For victims of pollution-related illness, symptoms like pain and numbness are foremost and you only work out later whether the cause of the symptom is actually something like mercury or cadmium. Well, then you have to have an investigation into where the substances that are causing the symptoms entered the body, and eventually find out that they came from factory drainage or pollutants released into the atmosphere or something like that. We've come to deal with cases by first ascertaining the cause: it's industrial culpability, you can pursue companies for that, and so the point when statute of limitations starts to count down is shifted to that point in time; not when the symptoms appeared, but at the point when you've discovered a causal relation between the symptoms and commercial decisions.

What's different in this instance from the pollution-related illnesses that have occurred in the past is that everyone the world over knows that TEPCO caused a nuclear disaster in March of 2011, and so, at first glance, the point at which the statute of limitations starts counting down seems clear. Because the fact that an accident occurred is public knowledge, when we think about whose fault it was that residents were forced to flee their homes and lose their houses now, it's 100% clear that it's because of the nuclear accident. So if the person you can pursue for culpability and the cause of the on-going results is clear, then the danger is that people will ask, hasn't the three years since the nuclear incident been more than enough time for a claim to be made?

But the truth is, you can't just file a claim so easily. For example, if we think about the cases we've been talking about, when people think about rushing to file a claim and the price given for the house they lost being low and only getting a pittance in terms of compensation, then there's bound to be a lot of people hesitant to file. Plus, the majority of people have their own problems to deal with and don't know what to do, they're at an endless set of crossroads: do they stay as they are in the evacuation zone, or go back to their hometown? Is the house so damaged that it can't be rebuilt? Or maybe if they repair it they could live in it again. Maybe they'll buy a new house at some point and live there. So there are people who can't file a claim because they can't decide on what to list as damages for the compensation.

Here, because the loss isn't yet determined, that the statute of limitations should, theoretically, proceed from the moment it is, is perfectly fine, but, sure enough, even though the period in which the incident occurred and the entity you can claim as responsible for it is evident, because the figure for the losses can't be determined, when I'm asked whether we can go ahead with it, as a lawyer a part of me is still too unsure about mustering the courage to put a seal of approval on it. I'm personally anxious about whether I'd be shot down the moment I try in earnest to float the idea that if TEPCO is the one responsible then the point at which we discovered the source of the losses was March 2011, with the simply rebuttal: the losses weren't determined then. And in light of this fact, well, I think it was necessary to unilaterally extend the period for the statute of limitations. Because thinking that claims could be filed in the three years since the incident occurred was so dangerous, I think it's fair to say that the necessity for a special measures law was higher than with previous cases of pollution-related illness.

In order to establish this special measures law, lawyers from across the country had to stand up and be heard. The lobby movement was especially passionate, and a lot of signatures were collected. I think we can easily attribute this as result of the damages caused by the incident becoming more evident as we go on. The individual municipal bodies of Fukushima Prefecture banded together to help as well.

In the lawsuits that are currently taking place throughout Japan, for what kind of damages exactly is compensation being sought?

What they're asking for depends on the location and the suit, but in general, everyone seems to be trying to fundamentally change the way we think about claiming damages. One item on the agenda is compensation for pain and suffering, which they're also pursuing legally. In order for what was lost to be understood in a court of law, you have to carefully make the case for life before the incident, and use data to demonstrate the fact that after the incident a community has been left in pieces. A lawsuit is taking place right now, for example, where they're claiming thirty million yen per person in compensation for the pain and suffering of losing their hometown/home.

And then there's a lawsuit for the voluntary evacuees, as they're called. Those people who have received compensation amounting to about the same as consolation money, and who at the least have the same feelings as those people inside the evacuation zone, and because they're in the same situation, with the same resentments piling up, say that at the very least they want to be given the same amount for pain and suffering.

To repeat myself a bit, for experts and regular people to think beyond the nuclear incident itself and seriously think about just what was lost in it, including, naturally, those whom this disaster affected, is, I think, the starting point. It's just not right to try and make it all go away by saying that everything's fine because everyone can get some money. I feel like we're doing something hugely disrespectful, like we're just slapping the survivors in the face with wads of cash. They must feel like they're being told to put up with it because they'll get paid. But the people affected by this disaster want people to understand that they're not just out to get money. “What we lost wasn't money, so money in and of itself won't bring it back.” I want us, as legal experts, to pass these words on where we can. Dismissing the survivors as people to be pitied because of a stroke of bad luck just won't do. I want people to consider each and everyone one of them, as one of them.

I'm always wondering whether or not I can say something more about the hope that was lost. How I can possible express the atmosphere of despair in the air, palpable every time I go to for a consultation in the temporary housing. For now, when people look at me, haunted, and say, “I don't know when I'm getting out of here. It might be that I have to stay here until I die. Is this a concentration camp?", the only thing I can do is write it down word for word; but what I'd really like to do is analyse what these words mean in more depth.

The idea that it's okay for me to give a set amount of money to these people, even though hundreds of thousands of people were affected by this disaster, or that it's okay for the nuclear plant to continue operations so long as this time it doesn't eventually cause another incident, is inexcusable. Leaving aside the fact that the the risk of another disaster threatens underpopulated areas with huge amounts of damage, and that the installation of the power plant was a mindless political measure with the idea of simply discarding the regions themselves if an accident did occur, I don't think it makes any sense to just say that there won't be anymore accidents, that it's safe now, without taking a long hard look at the problems and fundamental paradoxes of those measures. They're avoiding the reality of the situation. They're intent on burying their heads in the sand without taking a single lesson from this disaster.

In Japan, people are forgetting the earthquake and the nuclear disaster itself.

When I look at the survivors of the incident, the country, and the world which is forgetting it, it seems like those who've already taken so many hard knocks are beginning to think that they should forget it as well. Even among those people who have been desperately engaged in this issue, I feel like a sense of defeat, of powerlessness, has started to hang over them. It seems as though people are beginning to feel like they need to put an end to the issue, thinking that even if they say anything, it'll fall on deaf ears, that if they say something, it won't change anything, and even if they do say something all they're doing is getting themselves hurt, that the people around them think they're mad to keep going on about something that would be better soon forgotten about, that it was all just down to bad luck.

Naturally, I think everyone has this fierce anger building up inside them.

But that being said, then you have something like Abe's speech for the Tokyo's Olympic bid, and having to listen to what amounted to taking Fukushima off the table and declaring that Tokyo is all we should care about. During the deliberation of the Special Secrecy Law, the moment we opened the public hearing in Fukushima, those in attendance protested against the law on the basis that covering up the issue of the nuclear incident would be a catastrophe, and regardless of this, the lower house of the Diet voted on it the next day. The feeling that so far people's feelings have just been calmly trod all over with muddy shoes is, well, it's still ongoing, and this kind of thing itself is obviously something that's becoming unbearable for those who have been hurt and are trying to keep going. People are beginning to think that, no, they don't want to be a “victim” any longer. I'm concerned that they're starting to get caught up in the feeling that, if no one's going to listen to them when they say how little something makes sense or that it's not going to work, then they might as well not bother speaking in the first place.

I think that because our job as lawyers is to get close to the victims and restore their happiness, we have to encourage people to be strong and make their voices heard. I think we have to push for the voices of those affected by the disaster to be at the fore as we go about changing history, because hearing directly from them is so extremely important. I believe it's vital that we not be deterred from saying that there is a history of people who came before, who fought hard against so much in the past, and who made their voices heard in order to get what they wanted.

Whenever I have the chance to talk to law students, I always tell them, “It's a lawyer's job to give people hope in the depths of despair.” I truly believe that right now is a crucial period for us. The truth is, where the victims are right now is the depths of despair. I believe we have a responsibility to keep telling people that we want to help them with all we have, to tell them to cry themselves hoarse, that it's still possible, even as they're sinking down into this mire of grief, to lift themselves up and out of it.