Present Crisis

It was seven years ago when I learned that Lebanon still has about 500 thousand Palestinian refugees. As a Japanese, I felt relieved being born in well-developed and peaceful country. Japan now has 320 thousand displaced people inside, who don’t have their own houses to live, most of them cannot find appropriate job. They are sufferers of the Great Northeast Japan Earthquake two years ago. With the mishandling of last administration and possible misdirection of policies by current administration, they are likely to be ignored. Violating against human rights standard, Japan is not safe place anymore. Crisis has not left.

It is hard for old people to live through one winter season in a temporary house equipped by the national government. Rooms are too cold to sleep. A number of people sleep in futon directly laid on the floor. Walls have no insulation which protects a room from outer coldness. Living in small rooms, most residents have both physical and mental difficulty. Since young people have more chance to find a place where they can start new life, most residents living in those temporary houses are old men and woman. This can be under “the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living” which the constitution of Japan guarantees to the nation.

The government of Japan, just after the disaster occurred, made a basic plan to build permanent houses for them in two years, because there has been a law that people suffered from natural disaster can live in temporary houses for two years, and after that period they need to move to other places. This time the magnitude of the disaster was too big to be assumed. Although the government extended the period from two years to three years, there is no plan for accepting all sufferers into new houses. I don’t know whether bureaucrats in Tokyo think that they want sufferers to be free from anxieties, the biggest question is how long do they have to live in that small cold houses?

Most people fled from Miyagi and Iwate districts can assume rebuilding their hometowns devastated from great tsunami. But a half of displaced people, approximately 160 thousand, cannot. Although they have their own houses, they cannot return to them, because their hometowns are contaminated by radioactive materials emitted from broken nuclear power plants. Now the government is on the way to clean up their towns. But the current cleaning plan is for FY2012 and 2013. There is no plan for 2014 and after.

New LDP administration puts the first priority on the reconstruction. But the plan is mainly to increase public enterprises, which would cultivate LDP’s political basis. We don’t hear from them about determination for reviewing old laws and encourage bureaucrats to work for the sufferers. Politicians and bureaucrats argue that they are dong their best, leaving the anxiety of sufferers behind.