GLOBAL EVENTS & LEADERSHIP COURSE ASSIGNMENT

JAPAN DISASTER IN A CONFLICT-AVERSE CULTURE

Foreign nuclear experts, the Japanese news media and an increasingly angry Japanese public are frustrated by government and power company officials failure to communicate efficiently about the nuclear crisis as a result of the recent Tohoku earthquake. Pointing to conflicting reports, they suspect officials of withholding crucial information about the risks posed by the ravaged Daiichi plant.

Leadership in Crisis

Never has postwar Japan needed strong, assertive leadership more. With earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis striking in rapid succession, Japans leaders need skills they are not trained to have: rallying the public, improvising solutions and cooperating with powerful bureaucracies.

An examination by Reuters of Japan's effort to contain its escalating nuclear disaster reveals a series of missteps, bad luck and desperate improvisation. "They might have been prepared for an earthquake. They might have been prepared for a tsunami. They might have been prepared for a nuclear emergency, but it was unlikely that they were prepared for all three," said Ellen Vancko, an electric power expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

There are some analysts which opine that the government was doing its best in a difficult and rapidly changing situation. Top government spokesman Yukio Edano has done a relatively good job, experts said, giving frequent televised briefings, using easy-to-understand terms to give the latest information, though initially he sometimes appeared behind the curve. Prime Minister Naoto Kan appeared in a televised news briefing to urge people living up to 30 km

(19 miles) from the reactor to stay indoors. The Bank of Japan pumped in total 23 trillion yen into the jittery financial system to stabilize the economy.

Unlike how the Soviet authorities handled the Chernobyl crisis in 1986, the Japanese government has responded swiftly to each stage of the Fukushima disaster. It has rapidly evacuated citizens from the area. Aware of the dangers of both radiophobia and cavalier denial, the government has tried to convey information that directs the Japanese people to a rational response.

Nihonjinron

The term Nihonjinron means theories and discussions about the Japanese. What transpired in Japan in the midst of the disaster requires knowledge and understanding of the Japanese people and their core traditional values.

The less-than-straight talk and seemingly lack of information provided by the government and Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) is rooted in a conflict-averse culture that avoids direct references to unpleasantness. In the only nation that has endured an atomic bomb attack; acute sensitivity about radiation sickness may be motivating public officials to try to contain panic and to perform political damage control. The Government and Tepco try to disclose only what they think is necessary, while the media, which has an anti-nuclear tendency, acts hysterically, which leads the government and Tepco to not offer more information.

What emerges from this triple disaster is a country that has begun to question some of its oldest values. Japanese have long revered the country's bureaucratic competence, especially when it is contrasted with its political dysfunction. Japan has also proudly often chosen to go its own way and turn down outside assistance. The Japanese are conspicuously nationalistic,

displaying a conceptual and procedural hostility to any mode of analysis which might be seen to derive from external, non-Japanese sources. Had they sought assistance from the international circuit much earlier, the nuclear crisis may have been better managed.

Since the feudal eras, Japanese political leaders faced a major problem in reconciling the goals of community survival and the welfare and self-respect of individuals in an environment of extreme scarcity. Contemporary Japanese politics show a strong consciousness of equality, and even traditional communities, such as rural villages, were often egalitarian rather than hierarchical. In addressing the nation, Emperor Akihito used colloquial Japanese terms that stressed equality, rather than the formal, hierarchy-laden language of his predecessors. It is probably the strong sense of equality that makes the entire decision making process even harder.

Whats Ahead for Now?

Kan now plans to sound out the opposition on joining a grand coalition to handle reconstruction policy. A grand coalition has significant disadvantages, including the possibility that it might end up so totally unworkable that it cannot accomplish anything. Even if the grand coalition does not materialize, the opposition parties now are under stronger pressure to cooperate with the government.

A new Era Rising Nationalism and Neo-conservatism

In the midst of this crisis, the citizens of Japan will need to rise up and call for a more responsible and assertive government which will no longer leave much of its foreign policy to the United States and handling of its domestic affairs to powerful bureaucrats. Many youngergeneration Japanese find that Japan has been asleep for a long time and that its time they wake up to reality. The Japanese needs a new vision or face the decline of their nation.

REFERENCES

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