2012.04.12 Thursday
3.11, one year after, Speech at Swiss Roundtable Tokyo
SPEECH TO SWISS ROUND TABLE, APRIL 10TH, 2012
INTRODUCTION
It’s just over a year since the big wave hit us. Japan is getting back to its normal life. But will it ever be the same? After shocks and waves can still be felt, physically and politically.
But has anything changed? Although TEPCO is guilty of many things in Fukushima, nobody can stop their proposed price increase, whilst the government might tumble because of its proposed sales tax increase!
And the public is still left in the dark about how many “amakudari” are on the board, and how much salary they are paid!
After living here for 40 years, I saw March 11th as an opportunity to give back to Japan at least some of what it has given me; a rather ambitious, if not impossible task. You will see that my story is not a success story, but a story of attempts.
We all saw many TV pictures of the Japanese behavior at its best, which drew worldwide admiration.
For many Westerners, it was something they knew they could never expect in their own cultures.
And maybe just because of this “too good to be true” factor, one is prompted to look for the backside of such heroic behavior, the negative side and motivation for such discipline, for such unselfish subordination of the individual for the good of the community.
I will mention some of the weak points of the Japanese Kanryo system (or Kanri Shakkai which means “controlled, managed, governed” society), but please do not forget that every system has its defaults, no man made system is perfect.
And please also remember, that seeing the difference does not always have to lead to the question; “which is better”!
I will talk about my personal involvement and experiences, which are NOT representative for the whole situation, but really just a very tiny, personal attempt to contribute, against the odds of not being an NPO, and having had no prior personal relations with the Tohoku area.
I hope that this might inspire some more people to turn this disaster into a chance to change Japan into an even better place, and animate a fruitful discussion and exchange of opinions at this round table.
March 11th
After the first shocks of 3.11 were over, like your selves, I had received many emails suggesting that I move back to Switzerland immediately. The world press was full with sensationalism at its best.
On the other hand, on Swiss TV, you could see interviews with Japanese living in Switzerland, who were about to return to Japan to help.
It was a very confused situation, with many Expats leaving Japan with their families, some of them never to return.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Swiss Embassy Team, who did a great job in keeping us informed, giving us the chance to fly back for free, and all the other services and information they provided.
First Call for Help
That being said, I am registered at the Swiss Embassy for voluntary help in case of a disaster. The Swiss Rescue team called me a few days after the quake. They were organizing their rescue mission trip to the Tohoku area and needed volunteers who could translate and drive.
I had already bought a sleeping bag and waited for their final call, which never came. As I still do not have a driving license, they decided not to take me.
That was not a very good start for my new career as a volunteer.
EMERGENCY HOMES
Then, a few days later, I was contacted by British friends. They were trying to offer log houses produced in Russia, as emergency homes. They asked me to help them to register with the authorities, as their partners here did not speak Japanese.
Import from Russia, getting approval to build, with earth quake “prove” tests necessary, and other regulations that are often designed to keep out imports in the first place; you can smell troubles right there already.
For a very short period, about 3 weeks, the government opened a temporary office for applications to import emergency homes. The applications had to be co-signed by a local Japanese construction partner, which was impossible to find, because they were all busy making safety assessment of houses still standing, value & damage assessments for insurance companies, and clearing rubble etc.
Finally, Mr. Sasada, a Japanese former rugby player, kindly offered to include our log houses on his application for imports from China.
Later I heard, that such applications had no chance of going through without the stamp (signature) of a local politician, which usually costs 5% of the assumed selling price.
Anyway, this “emergency” office disappeared after the application deadline, and nobody that applied ever got any feedback. Not one emergency house had been imported, and the contracts were all divided as usual amongst the big Japanese housing companies like Daiwa House, Sekisui, Mitsui Homes etc.
Some say the office was just created as a face saver, because this procedure from Kasumigaseki top down was heavily criticized after the Kobe earthquake, where it took more than 10 years to build all the emergency houses necessary.
So, I went to visit Ishinomaki and Ohshika Hanto areas myself to look for opportunities to help through establishing direct local contacts, but soon realized that the washed away coastal areas could not just be rebuilt, because these grounds have sunk sometimes up to 4 meters, and the total reconstruction would take at least 2 to 3 years for planning and safety checking.
I also had the impression that the local people were not very open to accept help from completely unknown outsiders, because this could cut them off from the flow of money expected to come through the usual, official route from Kasumigaseki to Politicians, to National Construction Companies, to Local Governments, from there eventually to local companies and finally to the public.
You can understand my growing frustration with the Japanese system. I started to look for a place to donate and build such an imported log house against all odds.
It was again through the connection with Mr. Sadada, that I found it in Kamaishi city. This city’s rugby team, The Seawaves (?) won the Championship 7 times in a row. Although much weaker now, they are still a symbol of the town.
Through their management, we found a piece of land not directly affected by the tsunami, where we could build and help a Kindergarden that was overflowing with children joining them from the destroyed areas.
Finally the contact was made, the donation agreed, and the process of designing, production, importing, transportation, getting help from local carpenters, etc. could start, and the project was finalized in July.
HELP FOR CHILDREN
A Swiss friend who started his career back in Japan some 40 years ago, was looking for children who lost one or two parents, and needed financial support. He looked for personal contact with such children and asked me if I could help.
I asked some Universities in Tokyo, if they had such students in need coming from the affected areas, but none seemed to have any list or saw any need for action.
I continued my search by contacting a university professor of the Sendai Tohoku Gakuin Daigaku, and a local elementary school teacher in Watari-Cho, near Sendai.
Both could not come back to me either with concrete name-lists of children, as these were not disclosed, and those children were supposed to be taken care of by relatives or neighbors.
Visiting a friend working at the Ministry of Education did not bring much too.
There were detailed lists of damaged buildings and missing teachers, but not of children who needed help.
I learned however, that the government was paying for the yearly school fees of such children, but not for other living expenses.
NPO organizations seemed to have the same difficulties, and so did Japanese companies and private donors. It was impossible to get name lists of the children in need.
Another acquaintance, she owns several schools in Tokyo and offered to accomodate some children in need, said that the locals were hesitant to let their children go, out of fear that they might never come back.
I started to play with the idea of creating a website, where children could announce their needs directly. And where willing donors who were looking for direct, personal contact instead of going through big aid organizations, could find them.
To protect both sides, donors and children from abuse, a filter from the schools would have been necessary. But again it was just impossible to find a school taking the extra work and responsibility.
Only if all schools would get the same treatment, would it be fair to accept, they said.
Finally, I found a private NPO organization; www.learningforall.com , who provided free education in shelters, and so had contact with the children and families outside of the official Ministry of Education hierarchy, and was ready to set up an English website.
The Role of NPO Organizations;
The terrible TV pictures of the disaster prompted a lot of donations and goodwill all over the world.
But these Aid Organizations had their problems too. In Switzerland, NPO organizations were quick to set up accounts and collect money, but without actually knowing where to send it and without having the proper organizations to distribute it meaningfully in Japan.
Glueckskette; collected quickly a lot of money, but they have a rule to distribute it only through organizations who have their main office in Switzerland. There is no such organization here.
Caritas also had not sent one cent of their collected money to Japan by end of August!
Only in September, the top managers of Caritas (Peter Zihlmann), Glueckskette (Felix Bollmann) and Red Cross (Martin Fuhrer) came to Japan themselves to assess the situation, and decided to support one big hospital project together.
Another project they were looking at to support in Kamaishi for a Children Day Care Center, did not materialize, because the locals and authorities could not agree on the new location.
This project was suggested by Guschti Sidler and a local priest, Max Enderle, a missionary for the Immensee Order for more than 60 years.
It makes one wanting to ask for detailed reports from these organizations on how the donations meant for Japan have actually been spent. And I wonder if there are such reports?
The Red Cross surely sent money to their counterpart in Japan, but they too had difficulties to make it flow into the right places.
3 months after the tsunami, almost none of the international aid already sent (or promised) to Japan had been distributed.
The present status is unknown to me, updated reports would be welcome here too.
Then there is the Japanese side, which is not used to distribute such donations.
In Japan, all government money is distributed through Kasumigaseki, and all depends on the goodwill of the central bureaucrats. This is the source of their power.
Letting the international donation money flow through other routes, could mean a challenge to that system. This maybe explains the slowness of the distribution.
Many local NPO organizations were also having difficulties finding meaningful ways to put their collected donations into action. Local governments usually focusing on Kasumigaseki, just waited, instead of taking actions into their own hands.
I felt that sometimes, because of this extreme centralization, the man power, and maybe brainpower just does not exist, or has been destroyed in the prefectures and remote communities.
Japan’s way of accepting foreign help
Lufthansa flew in 6 tons of wool blankets, all neatly wrapped and brand new. But the customs, being part of a system that finds every reason not to let imports through freely, found something, a color ingredient allowed in the EU, but not yet approved in Japan, and all the blankets had to be flown back to Europe, while it was still snowing in Tohoku.
Swiss Expat Initiatives;
Renato Pirotta, a Swiss architect working with Kume Sekkei; and lecturing at universities, managed a U$ 5 million donation project from the Malteser Orden and Caritas Austria. He offered to rebuild a home and school for orphans in Fujinosono, only to be met with severe local skepticism. He pushed it through anyhow. Congratulations, well done.
http://www.fujinosono.or.jp/top.html
Marco Amman of Hilti Japan;
A yearly children event was about to be cancelled because of limited electricity supply, but he offered to supply energy from a solar panel park he built temporarily on a nearby parking lot. This solar system is now moved to Tohoku for sustainable re-use. Well done too, bravo.
There are countless other initiatives by Victorinox, Lindt Chocolate, etc. Please visit the SCCIJ Initiatives website.
Visiting the area
Steve Yamaguchi, a construction company owner from Yamagata prefecture (ex USA) guided me through some of the areas just after the earthquake. His insight into the politics of construction or “Genecon” as its called in Japan, was a real learning experience.
We stopped at Momonoura, a small village on Ohshika Hanto peninsula, mainly living of oyster farming, only one house was still standing, an old woman came out to greet me, and asked me immediately if I was only here to take photographs.
I shyly answered that I was looking for opportunities to offer help and sustainable rebuilding.
And told her about my dream idea of making sister cities all along the coast with contributions from all over the world, every nation would try to shine like with their World Expo pavillons in Shanghai! Only that these buildings would last and become tourist attractions.
She said that their village had been annexed to the city of Ishinomaki, and that all help was going there, and everything was decided there, and that no official had come to visit them during the first month after their village was completely destroyed.
There were many many villages like that along the coast of Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate. They could have been an opportunity for Prof. Claude Siegenthaler’s initiative for sustainable reconstruction technology support for Tohoku, a joint effort by ETH Zurich, Hosei and the UN University in Japan.
I tried further to find local contacts where such new technology could be applied. But it was difficult to approach local governments or communities without more concrete proposals and concrete donation offers. I am afraid I was not much of help there and got the feeling, that concrete money donations had priority over technology and know-how offers.
But the symposium at this Hosei University on October the 5th gave this long-term initiative a big boost. How far the Japanese are ready to accept foreign know-how has to be seen though.
They are often very proud of their culture and do not see the necessity to be taught by outsiders, and often perceive their technology superior to ours.
Getting Information; Networking, Government
Again and again, getting information about communities in need, and finding communities ready to accept foreign help, and placing donations meaningfully, was very difficult.
Mostly the government was the main hurdle.
Often it was also the local culture of not letting outsiders in.
But once such local personal contacts have been established, like in my case in Kamaishi and Tono, they are long term and lasting, and have given me a new relation with the Tohoku area and a love and gratitude towards their people. I will surely visit them regularly.
CONCLUSION
What went well?
Self Defense Force (Ji-ei-tai);
Within 2 weeks, all roads were cleared for cars to pass. Helicopter ports were built with an efficiency never seen before.
But the Self Defense Teams (and the US forces) had to stay in the background, not to take the spotlight away from the Kasumigaseki bureaucrats and local governors.
In my opinion, Kasumigaseki bureaucrats are also behind the bashing prime minister Kan got for involving himself directly at the front line in Fukushima, without going through them.
The Jieitai’s delicate political position must be hard on the soldiers. But they deserve a big applause. I hope their raison d’etre will soon be cleared, and that they can be openly proud of serving their country.
Shelter provision;
The emergency shelter organization was also speedy and very good. The behavior of the people was a great help there too.
How to be better prepared next time
In a country with so many earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons and landslides etc., the creation of a civil organization with a network of direct contact and help provided between the prefectures could be of great help, as the centralized Kasumigaseki top down organization is clearly not able to handle such sudden big tasks, and their system lacks the necessary flexibility to act quickly.
I am thinking of something along the lines of the Swiss civil service, half military, with all volunteers registered and organized in groups, with tools for help readily stored, communication and leader roles in place, ready to act at any time.
There were plenty of volunteers, like never before, but they also need local help. Providing food and shelter for them brings additional organizational stress on local government.
Further more, such “unknown”, unregistered volunteers are often mistrusted and their relation with locals were not always smooth.
NPO organization’s disaster relief would also have to link into that system.
There were many newly created NPOs, for some, the final purpose might not only be help, but business and profits.
May I mention Nat Vuong, a Swiss citizen with Vietnamese origin.
Nat created an award winning website, www.ikifu.org , where all NPOs and NGOs can show their projects, and donors can target their contributions much better than before.
What did we learn;
Humans do not learn easily, habits and attachments to the “known” are normally stronger than the will to adapt to new knowledge.
Closing the whole coastlines with high (but not high enough) concrete walls did not give the protection hoped for, but made many builders involved rich!
It has to be seen how it will be rebuilt this time? The key will be how much the local communities can decide themselves and how much new know-how will be offered and explained properly.
-Many want to go back and rebuild on the same land, even though the next tsunami will come for sure. (A Swiss missionary, died of a tsunami hitting Kamaishi 110 years ago!) A major educational effort has to be made and new safer city building solutions have to be promoted more attractively.
- Emergency Home Villages (kasetsu jutaku)
The selection criteria for such villages had not taken into consideration if these people knew each other, or could develop a sense of community.
Not knowing their neighbor, isolated and cut off from free shelter aid and food supply, no job offers etc., drove many into desperation and even suicide.
Instead of giving everybody a small box with their own bath and kitchen, it would have been better to have public bath houses, public kitchen and dining facilities, where dinner tables are shared, which would naturally build community spirits.
Later, finally, community rooms were built, but they were not used immediately, lacking any incentive to go there.
Also, the location of some of these villages is far away in the mountains, with no public transportation. They are simply inaccessible without a carpool or bus service.
Rebuilding Communities;
Most importantly, this will also have to prove attractive for the young people, who are now flooding even more to the big cities. With governors and business leaders mostly over 60 years old, this will pose a major challenge.
If the reconstruction is only filling the needs of the present, rapidly aging society, an already dying community will just be rebuilt to disappear.
This huge disaster, for which no one can really be blamed, represents also a real chance to build entire villages and cities more eco friendly.
The present Japanese one family house life cycle is 27 years.
Technically, houses that last a 100 years can be built, with much better energy efficiency, with less burden on the environment.
But the housing loan system, where mortgages have to be paid back over 30 years, has also to be extended to longer terms, or this might not become affordable.
Not to mention that it is necessary to convince the housing construction industry to build houses that do not have to be rebuilt every 30 years! They must see it as a loss of future business.
More decentralized Government, deep structural changes, shifting more power (political and brain power) and responsibility to the prefectures, seems once again a must for progress!
Can Japan change from the centralized Kanryo system to a real “democratic” system?
This is the big but urgently necessary challenge for the whole of Japan, in my opinion.
There is a real danger that the area will just be forgotten, as the Tohoku represents only 3% of the total Japanese economy, and as the central government has other, bigger, more urgent national problems to solve.
INTRODUCTION
It’s just over a year since the big wave hit us. Japan is getting back to its normal life. But will it ever be the same? After shocks and waves can still be felt, physically and politically.
But has anything changed? Although TEPCO is guilty of many things in Fukushima, nobody can stop their proposed price increase, whilst the government might tumble because of its proposed sales tax increase!
And the public is still left in the dark about how many “amakudari” are on the board, and how much salary they are paid!
After living here for 40 years, I saw March 11th as an opportunity to give back to Japan at least some of what it has given me; a rather ambitious, if not impossible task. You will see that my story is not a success story, but a story of attempts.
We all saw many TV pictures of the Japanese behavior at its best, which drew worldwide admiration.
For many Westerners, it was something they knew they could never expect in their own cultures.
And maybe just because of this “too good to be true” factor, one is prompted to look for the backside of such heroic behavior, the negative side and motivation for such discipline, for such unselfish subordination of the individual for the good of the community.
I will mention some of the weak points of the Japanese Kanryo system (or Kanri Shakkai which means “controlled, managed, governed” society), but please do not forget that every system has its defaults, no man made system is perfect.
And please also remember, that seeing the difference does not always have to lead to the question; “which is better”!
I will talk about my personal involvement and experiences, which are NOT representative for the whole situation, but really just a very tiny, personal attempt to contribute, against the odds of not being an NPO, and having had no prior personal relations with the Tohoku area.
I hope that this might inspire some more people to turn this disaster into a chance to change Japan into an even better place, and animate a fruitful discussion and exchange of opinions at this round table.
March 11th
After the first shocks of 3.11 were over, like your selves, I had received many emails suggesting that I move back to Switzerland immediately. The world press was full with sensationalism at its best.
On the other hand, on Swiss TV, you could see interviews with Japanese living in Switzerland, who were about to return to Japan to help.
It was a very confused situation, with many Expats leaving Japan with their families, some of them never to return.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Swiss Embassy Team, who did a great job in keeping us informed, giving us the chance to fly back for free, and all the other services and information they provided.
First Call for Help
That being said, I am registered at the Swiss Embassy for voluntary help in case of a disaster. The Swiss Rescue team called me a few days after the quake. They were organizing their rescue mission trip to the Tohoku area and needed volunteers who could translate and drive.
I had already bought a sleeping bag and waited for their final call, which never came. As I still do not have a driving license, they decided not to take me.
That was not a very good start for my new career as a volunteer.
EMERGENCY HOMES
Then, a few days later, I was contacted by British friends. They were trying to offer log houses produced in Russia, as emergency homes. They asked me to help them to register with the authorities, as their partners here did not speak Japanese.
Import from Russia, getting approval to build, with earth quake “prove” tests necessary, and other regulations that are often designed to keep out imports in the first place; you can smell troubles right there already.
For a very short period, about 3 weeks, the government opened a temporary office for applications to import emergency homes. The applications had to be co-signed by a local Japanese construction partner, which was impossible to find, because they were all busy making safety assessment of houses still standing, value & damage assessments for insurance companies, and clearing rubble etc.
Finally, Mr. Sasada, a Japanese former rugby player, kindly offered to include our log houses on his application for imports from China.
Later I heard, that such applications had no chance of going through without the stamp (signature) of a local politician, which usually costs 5% of the assumed selling price.
Anyway, this “emergency” office disappeared after the application deadline, and nobody that applied ever got any feedback. Not one emergency house had been imported, and the contracts were all divided as usual amongst the big Japanese housing companies like Daiwa House, Sekisui, Mitsui Homes etc.
Some say the office was just created as a face saver, because this procedure from Kasumigaseki top down was heavily criticized after the Kobe earthquake, where it took more than 10 years to build all the emergency houses necessary.
So, I went to visit Ishinomaki and Ohshika Hanto areas myself to look for opportunities to help through establishing direct local contacts, but soon realized that the washed away coastal areas could not just be rebuilt, because these grounds have sunk sometimes up to 4 meters, and the total reconstruction would take at least 2 to 3 years for planning and safety checking.
I also had the impression that the local people were not very open to accept help from completely unknown outsiders, because this could cut them off from the flow of money expected to come through the usual, official route from Kasumigaseki to Politicians, to National Construction Companies, to Local Governments, from there eventually to local companies and finally to the public.
You can understand my growing frustration with the Japanese system. I started to look for a place to donate and build such an imported log house against all odds.
It was again through the connection with Mr. Sadada, that I found it in Kamaishi city. This city’s rugby team, The Seawaves (?) won the Championship 7 times in a row. Although much weaker now, they are still a symbol of the town.
Through their management, we found a piece of land not directly affected by the tsunami, where we could build and help a Kindergarden that was overflowing with children joining them from the destroyed areas.
Finally the contact was made, the donation agreed, and the process of designing, production, importing, transportation, getting help from local carpenters, etc. could start, and the project was finalized in July.
HELP FOR CHILDREN
A Swiss friend who started his career back in Japan some 40 years ago, was looking for children who lost one or two parents, and needed financial support. He looked for personal contact with such children and asked me if I could help.
I asked some Universities in Tokyo, if they had such students in need coming from the affected areas, but none seemed to have any list or saw any need for action.
I continued my search by contacting a university professor of the Sendai Tohoku Gakuin Daigaku, and a local elementary school teacher in Watari-Cho, near Sendai.
Both could not come back to me either with concrete name-lists of children, as these were not disclosed, and those children were supposed to be taken care of by relatives or neighbors.
Visiting a friend working at the Ministry of Education did not bring much too.
There were detailed lists of damaged buildings and missing teachers, but not of children who needed help.
I learned however, that the government was paying for the yearly school fees of such children, but not for other living expenses.
NPO organizations seemed to have the same difficulties, and so did Japanese companies and private donors. It was impossible to get name lists of the children in need.
Another acquaintance, she owns several schools in Tokyo and offered to accomodate some children in need, said that the locals were hesitant to let their children go, out of fear that they might never come back.
I started to play with the idea of creating a website, where children could announce their needs directly. And where willing donors who were looking for direct, personal contact instead of going through big aid organizations, could find them.
To protect both sides, donors and children from abuse, a filter from the schools would have been necessary. But again it was just impossible to find a school taking the extra work and responsibility.
Only if all schools would get the same treatment, would it be fair to accept, they said.
Finally, I found a private NPO organization; www.learningforall.com , who provided free education in shelters, and so had contact with the children and families outside of the official Ministry of Education hierarchy, and was ready to set up an English website.
The Role of NPO Organizations;
The terrible TV pictures of the disaster prompted a lot of donations and goodwill all over the world.
But these Aid Organizations had their problems too. In Switzerland, NPO organizations were quick to set up accounts and collect money, but without actually knowing where to send it and without having the proper organizations to distribute it meaningfully in Japan.
Glueckskette; collected quickly a lot of money, but they have a rule to distribute it only through organizations who have their main office in Switzerland. There is no such organization here.
Caritas also had not sent one cent of their collected money to Japan by end of August!
Only in September, the top managers of Caritas (Peter Zihlmann), Glueckskette (Felix Bollmann) and Red Cross (Martin Fuhrer) came to Japan themselves to assess the situation, and decided to support one big hospital project together.
Another project they were looking at to support in Kamaishi for a Children Day Care Center, did not materialize, because the locals and authorities could not agree on the new location.
This project was suggested by Guschti Sidler and a local priest, Max Enderle, a missionary for the Immensee Order for more than 60 years.
It makes one wanting to ask for detailed reports from these organizations on how the donations meant for Japan have actually been spent. And I wonder if there are such reports?
The Red Cross surely sent money to their counterpart in Japan, but they too had difficulties to make it flow into the right places.
3 months after the tsunami, almost none of the international aid already sent (or promised) to Japan had been distributed.
The present status is unknown to me, updated reports would be welcome here too.
Then there is the Japanese side, which is not used to distribute such donations.
In Japan, all government money is distributed through Kasumigaseki, and all depends on the goodwill of the central bureaucrats. This is the source of their power.
Letting the international donation money flow through other routes, could mean a challenge to that system. This maybe explains the slowness of the distribution.
Many local NPO organizations were also having difficulties finding meaningful ways to put their collected donations into action. Local governments usually focusing on Kasumigaseki, just waited, instead of taking actions into their own hands.
I felt that sometimes, because of this extreme centralization, the man power, and maybe brainpower just does not exist, or has been destroyed in the prefectures and remote communities.
Japan’s way of accepting foreign help
Lufthansa flew in 6 tons of wool blankets, all neatly wrapped and brand new. But the customs, being part of a system that finds every reason not to let imports through freely, found something, a color ingredient allowed in the EU, but not yet approved in Japan, and all the blankets had to be flown back to Europe, while it was still snowing in Tohoku.
Swiss Expat Initiatives;
Renato Pirotta, a Swiss architect working with Kume Sekkei; and lecturing at universities, managed a U$ 5 million donation project from the Malteser Orden and Caritas Austria. He offered to rebuild a home and school for orphans in Fujinosono, only to be met with severe local skepticism. He pushed it through anyhow. Congratulations, well done.
http://www.fujinosono.or.jp/top.html
Marco Amman of Hilti Japan;
A yearly children event was about to be cancelled because of limited electricity supply, but he offered to supply energy from a solar panel park he built temporarily on a nearby parking lot. This solar system is now moved to Tohoku for sustainable re-use. Well done too, bravo.
There are countless other initiatives by Victorinox, Lindt Chocolate, etc. Please visit the SCCIJ Initiatives website.
Visiting the area
Steve Yamaguchi, a construction company owner from Yamagata prefecture (ex USA) guided me through some of the areas just after the earthquake. His insight into the politics of construction or “Genecon” as its called in Japan, was a real learning experience.
We stopped at Momonoura, a small village on Ohshika Hanto peninsula, mainly living of oyster farming, only one house was still standing, an old woman came out to greet me, and asked me immediately if I was only here to take photographs.
I shyly answered that I was looking for opportunities to offer help and sustainable rebuilding.
And told her about my dream idea of making sister cities all along the coast with contributions from all over the world, every nation would try to shine like with their World Expo pavillons in Shanghai! Only that these buildings would last and become tourist attractions.
She said that their village had been annexed to the city of Ishinomaki, and that all help was going there, and everything was decided there, and that no official had come to visit them during the first month after their village was completely destroyed.
There were many many villages like that along the coast of Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate. They could have been an opportunity for Prof. Claude Siegenthaler’s initiative for sustainable reconstruction technology support for Tohoku, a joint effort by ETH Zurich, Hosei and the UN University in Japan.
I tried further to find local contacts where such new technology could be applied. But it was difficult to approach local governments or communities without more concrete proposals and concrete donation offers. I am afraid I was not much of help there and got the feeling, that concrete money donations had priority over technology and know-how offers.
But the symposium at this Hosei University on October the 5th gave this long-term initiative a big boost. How far the Japanese are ready to accept foreign know-how has to be seen though.
They are often very proud of their culture and do not see the necessity to be taught by outsiders, and often perceive their technology superior to ours.
Getting Information; Networking, Government
Again and again, getting information about communities in need, and finding communities ready to accept foreign help, and placing donations meaningfully, was very difficult.
Mostly the government was the main hurdle.
Often it was also the local culture of not letting outsiders in.
But once such local personal contacts have been established, like in my case in Kamaishi and Tono, they are long term and lasting, and have given me a new relation with the Tohoku area and a love and gratitude towards their people. I will surely visit them regularly.
CONCLUSION
What went well?
Self Defense Force (Ji-ei-tai);
Within 2 weeks, all roads were cleared for cars to pass. Helicopter ports were built with an efficiency never seen before.
But the Self Defense Teams (and the US forces) had to stay in the background, not to take the spotlight away from the Kasumigaseki bureaucrats and local governors.
In my opinion, Kasumigaseki bureaucrats are also behind the bashing prime minister Kan got for involving himself directly at the front line in Fukushima, without going through them.
The Jieitai’s delicate political position must be hard on the soldiers. But they deserve a big applause. I hope their raison d’etre will soon be cleared, and that they can be openly proud of serving their country.
Shelter provision;
The emergency shelter organization was also speedy and very good. The behavior of the people was a great help there too.
How to be better prepared next time
In a country with so many earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons and landslides etc., the creation of a civil organization with a network of direct contact and help provided between the prefectures could be of great help, as the centralized Kasumigaseki top down organization is clearly not able to handle such sudden big tasks, and their system lacks the necessary flexibility to act quickly.
I am thinking of something along the lines of the Swiss civil service, half military, with all volunteers registered and organized in groups, with tools for help readily stored, communication and leader roles in place, ready to act at any time.
There were plenty of volunteers, like never before, but they also need local help. Providing food and shelter for them brings additional organizational stress on local government.
Further more, such “unknown”, unregistered volunteers are often mistrusted and their relation with locals were not always smooth.
NPO organization’s disaster relief would also have to link into that system.
There were many newly created NPOs, for some, the final purpose might not only be help, but business and profits.
May I mention Nat Vuong, a Swiss citizen with Vietnamese origin.
Nat created an award winning website, www.ikifu.org , where all NPOs and NGOs can show their projects, and donors can target their contributions much better than before.
What did we learn;
Humans do not learn easily, habits and attachments to the “known” are normally stronger than the will to adapt to new knowledge.
Closing the whole coastlines with high (but not high enough) concrete walls did not give the protection hoped for, but made many builders involved rich!
It has to be seen how it will be rebuilt this time? The key will be how much the local communities can decide themselves and how much new know-how will be offered and explained properly.
-Many want to go back and rebuild on the same land, even though the next tsunami will come for sure. (A Swiss missionary, died of a tsunami hitting Kamaishi 110 years ago!) A major educational effort has to be made and new safer city building solutions have to be promoted more attractively.
- Emergency Home Villages (kasetsu jutaku)
The selection criteria for such villages had not taken into consideration if these people knew each other, or could develop a sense of community.
Not knowing their neighbor, isolated and cut off from free shelter aid and food supply, no job offers etc., drove many into desperation and even suicide.
Instead of giving everybody a small box with their own bath and kitchen, it would have been better to have public bath houses, public kitchen and dining facilities, where dinner tables are shared, which would naturally build community spirits.
Later, finally, community rooms were built, but they were not used immediately, lacking any incentive to go there.
Also, the location of some of these villages is far away in the mountains, with no public transportation. They are simply inaccessible without a carpool or bus service.
Rebuilding Communities;
Most importantly, this will also have to prove attractive for the young people, who are now flooding even more to the big cities. With governors and business leaders mostly over 60 years old, this will pose a major challenge.
If the reconstruction is only filling the needs of the present, rapidly aging society, an already dying community will just be rebuilt to disappear.
This huge disaster, for which no one can really be blamed, represents also a real chance to build entire villages and cities more eco friendly.
The present Japanese one family house life cycle is 27 years.
Technically, houses that last a 100 years can be built, with much better energy efficiency, with less burden on the environment.
But the housing loan system, where mortgages have to be paid back over 30 years, has also to be extended to longer terms, or this might not become affordable.
Not to mention that it is necessary to convince the housing construction industry to build houses that do not have to be rebuilt every 30 years! They must see it as a loss of future business.
More decentralized Government, deep structural changes, shifting more power (political and brain power) and responsibility to the prefectures, seems once again a must for progress!
Can Japan change from the centralized Kanryo system to a real “democratic” system?
This is the big but urgently necessary challenge for the whole of Japan, in my opinion.
There is a real danger that the area will just be forgotten, as the Tohoku represents only 3% of the total Japanese economy, and as the central government has other, bigger, more urgent national problems to solve.
| Social Issues and Trends | 16:16 | - | -