New or Old Japan

It is the day of prayer. The great earthquake, unprecedented for modern civilization, and subsequent fatal accident in the First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant brought catastrophic damage on an island country located on the eastern periphery of Eurasia Continent. Although the government reiterates social resilience from the disaster, their efforts have rather been revealing serous consequences of the uproar of nature once in a millennium. Whether the nation will revive depends on which they choose, new Japan or old Japan.

The situation now is nothing but ongoing tragedy. Death toll amounted 15,884 and other 2,633 people are missed. Related deaths, caused by sickness or suicides for desperation in their evacuation, are 2,973, and still increasing. While 104,050 families are living in small and cold temporary houses, the government is providing only 2,347 permanent houses by the end of this month. The process of reconstruction is too slow to assure pursuit of happiness guaranteed by the Constitution of Japan.

City of Rikuzentakada, Iwate, decided a plan for future. Located between coast and hills, a half of its downtown, hillside area, will be raised up to forty feet from the sea level, and coast side will become a memorial park without residents. However, anger of Mayor, Futoshi Toba, goes to the national government. Bureaucrats have kept on posing a bunch of paper works to the city as in ordinary process of land development. Consequently, reconstruction process significantly delayed, causing a number of people of Rikuzentakada to give retuning home up and leave the city.

Outflow of people are more serious in Fukushima area than in Iwate or Miyagi, because process of decontamination is extremely opaque. To the announcement of Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, on Monday evening that the government would finish a highway on Fukushima coastal area by early May next year, evacuees were highly skeptical. The government intentionally misunderstands nature of problem. Problem is not how fast they can rebuild infrastructures, but how fast the government determines the place for intermediate storage facility and final solution. The reason is simple. They cannot.

All the government people want is getting back to Japan before the disaster. Their supreme priority is keeping grip on local governments, resuming nuclear reactors, and maintaining Tokyo-centralized structure of this nation. But their scenario is too vulnerable to let the country survive. Next disaster, especially a great earthquake underground of the capital area, will tear down their arbitral architecture for the future. The most precious concept the Japanese need to embrace in the time of the third anniversary is reconsider the structure of governance for building new Japan, in which people can live liberal lives free from control of arrogant and impotent government as we have seen.