Day For Prayer

It is the day for prayer. People in Japan on Monday gave silent prayers for the victims on 2:46 p.m., the precise time the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred two years ago. The quake marked a turning point of Japan, on which the nation became skeptical to their belief in eternal growth of society and to a civilization heavily relied on material sufficiency. After the two years from the disaster, the psychological distance between devastated region and Tokyo grew longer than ever. While sufferers require self-determination, the government never gave up their discretional power over reconstruction policy. This centralized state has learned nothing about democracy from the once-in-millennium disaster.

According to the report of Tokyo Shimbun, it has been confirmed that the quake and tsunami took 15,881 lives, and other 2,554 were lost related to the disaster, such as deaths at shelter, including 789 who died in relation to the accident of nuclear power plant in Fukushima. The number of people who lost their house to live amounted to 315,196. It is fair to say that the crisis is still ongoing in Japan.

In the process of reconstruction, the struggle for money loomed as a main problem. The government of Japan stresses its effort to help people who lost their home. Before the second annual commemoration of the disaster, it released new plan for broadening the way of using governmental subsidy. It was, however, not sufficient for local governments that have a number of people who were not applicable to the support. For example, the government money can go to a resident whose house war totally destroyed by tsunami, while an owner whose house was half destroyed would not be helped by the subsidy. This kind of money shortage creates inequality between house owners.

Moreover, the national government forces local governments a huge amount of paper works to request the subsidy. In spite of receiving helping hands from other local governments all over Japan, city governments in devastated region have common problems of mental disease of office workers, because they are too busy. In some cases, helping workers commit suicide with desperation of overwork.

In the constitutional system of Japan, sovereign power resides with the people. The money collected by the national government in the name of reconstruction tax should be distributed according to the request of the people, on whom the sovereignty is vested. It is not the national government that determines the use of helping money, but the local government that knows well about the need of suffered people. What we have seen in these two years was cruelty of the government tormenting suffered people.