Post-3/11 Japan

By Kim Mi-kyoung

The legacies of the 3/11 disasters are poignant, for they reveal the gap between the people’s wishes and the ruling elites’ prerogatives.

The perfect storm of earthquakes, tsunami and radiation fallout still remains a heart-breaking tragedy for the fatal combination of natural and man-made disasters. Fukushima Daiichi, still exuding lethal fumes, is a tell-tale case in point. Has Japan changed since then? Has it learned a lesson from the public outrage? Is it fulfilling its obligations to the international community?

My answers to these questions are unfortunately negative, and the reasons have a lot to do with Japan’s nuclear mercantilism.

Sorrow and anger define the overall mood in post-March 11 Japanese society. The people express solemn sympathy for the disaster victims and their bereaved families. Public outrage against the nuclear power establishment exemplified by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) also remains in force.

While citizens’ anti-nuclear sentiments are on the rise, the government is out to export its nuclear technology to other countries. The radiation exposure has resulted in as many as 154,000 former Fukushima residents still being displaced.

The magnitude of the Fukushima radiation contamination is estimated to be about 30 times bigger than that of Hiroshima’s "Little Boy,” and about 100 times larger than that of the Chernobyl disaster. The contaminated water stored in the basement of Fukushima Daiichi is yet to be treated. "Clean energy” can be lethal and very expensive, citizens have learned.

Protesters continue to gather before the prime minister's residence demanding an end to Japan’s reliance on nuclear energy. The deceptive elite establishments of TEPCO and relevant government offices still exert their influence over the country's future energy policies, again, on the grounds of economic calculations.

Japan, the only country that suffered from atomic bombs, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is one of the leading nuclear powers in the world. It is ironical. It began building nuclear power plants in 1954, only nine years after the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. A total of 54 plants were in operation at the time of the Fukushima Daiichi incident. The drive to rebuild Japan’s war-torn economy in the 1950s paved the road for the 3/11 nuclear disaster some 60 years later.

Soon after the Fukushima incident, the Tokyo government began to explore overseas markets, and talks with Vietnam, Turkey, China and India are underway. Japan signed memorandums of understanding with Bulgaria and Canada for nuclear technology cooperation in June 2011, only three months after the 3/11 disasters hit the country.

On the surface, nuclear know-how is nothing more than an energy technology. The experiences of Chernobyl and Fukushima, however, show that the scope and nature of devastation have no parallel when compared to other energy sources. Should technology entail no moral values, an atomic bomb has to be nothing but a bomb. It is the bomb’s indiscriminately destructive capacity that entails moral values on the weapon. This debate is about respect for human life and environment.

Haruki Murakami, the internationally acclaimed Japanese novelist, described Japan as "a rich country without hopes.” Whilst money is a quantifiable concept, hope belongs to a moral dimension, moral dimensions of ethics, and a sense of duty, equality and justice. Money does not have a color, but it still can have many shades.

In this day and age of compassionate capitalism, Japan needs to demonstrate its leadership by becoming more selective in its economic strategies. The country bears a unique burden to prove to the world that it can set an example in promoting environmentally friendly energy utilization by being the country that sacrificed the lives of 700,000 innocent civilians to atomic bomb attacks.

If it behaves and calculates just like any other country, its past tragedy loses its relevance. That defines Japan’s challenge and contribution to the world community.

The author is an associate professor at Hiroshima City University-Hiroshima Peace Institute. She can be reached at mkkim_33@hotmail.com.