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Picking up the political pieces after the Tohoku disaster

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In Brief

Looked at from the outside, it's a little difficult to understand why the political leadership in Japan is now under such intense pressure about its handling of the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

The approval ratings of Prime Minister Kan's DPJ government plummeted after an initial lift and created an opportunity for enemies within his own party to challenge his leadership — a challenge he managed to fend off by declaring that the time was not right for him to resign but that he would do so later.

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Superficially at least, the Kan government appears to have done well in the face of the triple catastrophe with which Japan was confronted in March. It was quick to deploy emergency services — quite unlike during the Kobe earthquake when the Murayama government bumbled over the constitutional issues surrounding dispatch of the Japanese Self-Defence forces and seemed frozen into inaction. Japan responded readily to international offers of assistance, and worked effectively with the US military, government and non-governmental organisations in getting them into quake and tsunami devastated areas. With US military and civilian assistance, a piece of powerful pumping equipment was airlifted from Australia to help at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Japanese officials communicated to the Japanese and global publics effectively, through the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano, about developments as they unfolded. And the Kan administration represented with dignity Japan’s national plight to the world.

Measured by any reasonable international benchmark, the Japanese government and people stand tall in their response to the Tohoku crises.

There were bound to be problems under the pressure and spotlight that such an enormous catastrophe visited on Japan and its government. Both the media and (of course) the political opposition have been unrelenting in its criticism of Prime Minister Kan’s handling of the crisis. The public is less antagonistic, but support for Kan now is running at less than 30 per cent. More than 70 per cent disapprove of the way he has been dealing with the disaster. At the same time a majority of the public does not want to see Kan resign. That reflects their lack of confidence in the ability of any other DPJ leader or the LDP to do a better job.

In this week’s lead essay, Gerry Curtis, no distant observer of Japan, also laments the failure of political leadership and lost opportunities.

At one point, Curtis notes, the government couldn’t figure out how to override regulations that prohibited helicopters from dropping dry clothes, food and supplies from the air. In the emergency that Japan faced, Curtis reckons, ‘a self-confident and determined prime minister would have ordered the air drop and worried about the legal ramifications later. Or he would have asked the Diet to immediately pass a law to give him the emergency powers to do so’.

There were more serious failures in governance. As the Fukushima nuclear power plant crisis unfolded, a paralysis in decision making (chiefly a product of distrust between the political leadership and the bureaucracy) left the hapless TEPCO (the nuclear power station owner) to interpret the government’s vaguely stated will on how to control a nuclear meltdown. Fortunately, as it turned out, Masao Yoshida, the TEPCO plant manager on the ground at Fukushima, saved the day by taking matters into his own hands and disobeying his company’s interpretation of government instructions on whether to persist with seawater cooling of the damaged reactors. This incident is not idiosyncratic, but symbolic of the deeper problems of national and industrial governance in Japan that are yet to be resolved.

On reconstruction, Curtis argues, ‘Prime Minister Kan has not succeeded in convincing the public that he has a vision for Tohoku reconstruction and for Japan’s future. He should have appointed a reconstruction minister immediately and tasked him with producing a basic reconstruction plan for urgent consideration. Instead Kan created a reconstruction commission consisting of several academics with little relevant expertise. The Commission’s final report is not even due until near the end of the calendar year. Reliance on this Reconstruction Design Council will delay decisions. The report that finally emerges is certain to be a consensus document, and not offer the hard-hitting, bold and precedent-breaking approach needed’.

And, Curtis concludes, ‘Prime Minister Kan seems to have little idea about how to structure a coherent policy-making process — and he gets no help from bureaucrats who want to see him fail. He seems incapable of delegating responsibility, and the crisis spawned by the catastrophe of 11 March deprived him of the luxury of time to figure out how to develop a sensible decision making system’.

Whether the Japanese people do face, as Curtis suggests, ‘the dismal political reality that there is not likely to be a strong and effective government anytime soon, and the opportunity that the Tohoku tragedy presents to open a new and dynamic era probably will be lost’ is yet to be seen.

Certainly the resilience of the Japanese people, their competence, and order in the face of the enormous tragedy in Tohoku — a testament, as is widely recognised, to the fortitude of Japanese institutions and traditions — deserves better reward.

 

Personal Tales from Tokyo

April last year I was on a rather hectic mission in Japan for the IMF that involved travel up and down the country. Getting back to Tokyo one evening on the Toyoko Line from Yokoyama, no sooner had I made the rapid change across the platform at Naka Meguro onto the Hibya Line than I realised I’d left my computer (my life, my inadequately backed-up files of everything, plus my wallet in the side pocket!) on the overhead rack of the train pulling out of the station across the platform. I reported my loss to the station master at Roppongi (different line; different company) who took my name and details and said he’d call me back if anything could be found. Two hours later I got a call. The train had been to Tokyo and back to Yokohama, and my computer recovered, all intact; I could come to Yokohama and collect it now or have it delivered in the morning!

Two weeks ago, in Tokyo again, I took a taxi back from an unfamiliar part of Tokyo to my lodgings at Kokusai Bunka Kaikan. The taxi driver wasn’t sure of the best route (GPS system absent) and I only knew the end bit. At one point he took a wrong turn — not much of a diversion but an obvious one at the end of the journey. He refused to take any of my $40 fare, no matter how much I remonstrated, because he should have known the best way to my home. Imagine that in Melbourne or New York or anywhere, except in Tokyo!

These are only two among many stories I could tell like this.

That’s Japanese social infrastructure for you.

Peter Drysdale

2 responses to “Picking up the political pieces after the Tohoku disaster”

  1. Dear Peter,
    I think one has to put the emphasis on your word ‘superficially’ when describing how well the Kan government has handled the Tohoku crisis. Yes, unlike Kobe, a powerful coalition of the central government, foreign and local NGOs, the US military and other governments (including, notably, Australia), promptly assisted in relief efforts. And Japanese media and opposition have naturally been critical, especially at how the Fukushima melt-downs have been handled. But my sense is that this reflects their own frustration at the enormity of the crisis and the lack of options to make things better. Meanwhile, one can understand the terrible dilemma of the TEPCO bosses – tell the situation as it is and risk mass panic, or coat it with soothing words and misleadingly low radiation estimates and keep people from mass evacuation.
    As for Curtis’s view that Kan should have appointed and tasked a minister to quickly develop a reconstruction plan, I think this ignores a central and rather terrible reality – that of the incipient and very long-lasting creep of radiation through much of northern Honshu. How on earth can one draw up a plan to attract investors to re-inhabit and develop areas where radiation may poison the water, soil and crops for a very long time indeed? I don’t want to exaggerate the problem, but I think it is being underestimated, certainly by pro-nukes in Japan and for that matter, Australia. Right-wing zealots in the Australian (particularly the Murdoch) press, conservative academics and of course uranium miners, have all come out with some remarkably baseless assertions about how the Fukushima melt-downs have been contained, how it is nothing like Chernobyl, and how nuclear technology (especially in Gen III and IV reactors) is and will remain the safest way to generate electricity, and the only substitute for fossil fuel as a base-load alternative.
    I look forward to seeing the situation on the ground during a research trip I am making to Tokyo and Tohoku in October for a book due at the publisher by end of next April. I may get more insight then. Meanwhile, it is reassuring to hear from you that Tokyo train companies and Tokyo taxi drivers are still as diligently honest as I remember them.
    Regards,
    Richard Broinowski

  2. Peter, as an intermittent resident of Tokyo (I usually spend six months there every few years), I have had identical experiences as yourself including leaving my property on the overhead rack in a packed train and having it swiftly located only a few hours later and a taxi driver absolutely refusing to take payment for a fare because he had got lost en route to my destination.
    I cannot think of any place else in the world where one would experience such honesty and integrity.
    It is truly amazing and so refreshing.
    Louis.

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