An excerpt from a thoughtful article by Kojin Karatani:

In the ruins of postwar Japan, people reflected upon the path the country had taken in modern times. Standing against the Western powers, modern Japan strived to achieve the status of a great military power. The shattering of this dream in the nation's defeat led to another goal, to become a great economic power. The ultimate collapse of this ambition has been brought into sharp relief by the recent earthquake. Even without the earthquake, it was fated for destruction. In truth, it is not the Japanese economy alone that is failing. In the early 1970s, global capitalism entered a period of serious recession, and since then it has been unable to overcome the decline in the general rate of profit. Capital has sought a way out of this decline through global financial investment and by extending industrial investment into what had formerly been "third world" regions. The collapse of the former strategy has been exposed by the so-called Lehman shock. Meanwhile, the accelerated development of countries such as China, India, and Brazil, continues. Yet such accelerated growth cannot last long. It is inevitable that wages will rise and a limit on consumption be reached.

For this reason, global capitalism will no doubt become unsustainable in 20 or 30 years. The end of capitalism, however, is not the end of human life. Even without capitalist economic development or competition, people are able to live. Or rather, it is only then that people will, for the first time, truly be able to live. Of course, the capitalist economy will not simply come to an end. Resisting such an outcome, the great powers will no doubt continue to fight over natural resources and markets. Yet I believe that the Japanese should never again choose such a path. Without the recent earthquake, Japan would no doubt have continued its hollow struggle for great power status, but such a dream is now unthinkable and should be abandoned. It is not Japan's demise that the earthquake has produced, but rather the possibility of its rebirth. It may be that only amid the ruins can people gain the courage to stride down a new path.

It is well worth reading Karatani's article in its entirety, as he also has some interesting observations as to how the much less severe 1995 Kobe earthquake served the purposes of neoliberalism. If one does so, one hears the echo of left alternatives to the postwar military and economic alignment of Japan with the US, an alignment that provoked intense political conflict during the 1950s and 1960s, as addressed in my 2007 review of Shohei Imamura's daring documentary, A History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess. Some of Nagisa Oshima's films engage this subject as well, especially Three Resurrected Drunkards, which is available on DVD. Unfortunately, his 1960 film, Night and Fog in Japan, a film that indicts the autocratic practices of the student left as being responsible for its failure to prevent the approval of the US-Japan Security Pact, the treaty that memorialized the subordination of Japan to the US, remains unavailable. In many of his writings and interviews from this period, as translated in Cinema, Censorship, and the State, Oshima express his hostility to the Vietnam War and the use of US military facilities in Japan to conduct it. He also integrates the history of Japanese imperialism in Korea within this context as well.

Labels: American Empire, Earthquake, Japan, Korea, Neoliberalism

UPDATE 1: Having grown up among Japanese Americans in Northern California, I find these stories to be especially heartwrending:

The devastating impact of the Japanese earthquake on the country's ageing population was exposed on Thursday as dozens of elderly people were confirmed dead in hospitals and residential homes as heating fuel and medicine ran out.

In one particularly shocking incident, Japan's self-defence force discovered 128 elderly people abandoned by medical staff at a hospital six miles from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Most of them were comatose and 14 died shortly afterwards. Eleven others were reported dead at a retirement home in Kesennuma because of freezing temperatures, six days after 47 of their fellow residents were killed in the tsunami. The surviving residents of the retirement home in Kesennuma were described by its owner, Morimitsu Inawashida, as alone and under high stress. He said fuel for their kerosene heaters was running out.

And, it's not much better for children, either:

The very young too were suffering. Save the Children on Thursday reached Ishinomaki, Nobiru and Onagawa, north of Sendai, and reported children living in miserable conditions. There were some terrible scenes, in some places like Onagawa there was nothing left, said Ian Woolverton, who led the mission. In other places like Ishinomaki we found children in evacuation centres huddled around kerosene lamps.

The charity said they met Kazuki Seto, eight, at an evacuation centre not far from Sendai. He told them: We are really worried about the nuclear power plants. We are very afraid of nuclear radiation. That's why we don't play outside. Another, Yasu Hiro, 10, added: We know about the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we are very scared. It makes us really worry. If it explodes it is going to be terrible.

INITIAL POST: Beyond the refusal of people to make deliveries to areas adjancent to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, there is the tragic possibility of social ostracism for a new generation of people exposed to radiation:

For Japanese, the desperation has an added dimension: Already the name Fukushima is laden with something beyond the fear of damaged health.

The Japanese survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki lived the rest of their lives with the stigma of having been exposed to radiation, a stain that years never erased. Known as Hibakushas, they are formally recognized by the government if they lived within proximity of the blasts, and receive a special medical allowance.

But the designation also led to them being ostracized by other Japanese, who feared wrongly that the contamination was contagious or could be hereditary. The result was that many survivors of the bombings, and even their children, lived ghettoized lives because of their exposure to radiation.

The prospect of a similar stigma now worries some of those in and around the Fukushima plant.

I am worried about the future, said a 65-year-old retired engineer from Sugagawa City, 30 miles from the plant, who was interviewed by phone and didn't want his name used.

There could be some rumors that the people from this area are contaminated by radiation, and that people should not get close to us.

Masuji Ibuse fictionalized the experience of the people who survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki in his acclaimed novel, Black Rain, and the great, folkloric Japanese director, Shohei Imamura, subsequently made a film based upon it. I recommend both highly. They are discomforting for both American and Japanese audiences, as they reveal not only the horrors of the bomb, but the everyday fascism embedded within the treatment of the surviving victims by many Japanese. Hopefully, the people of Japan have learned from the past, and will treat the victims of Fukushima disaster with respect and compassion.

Labels: Earthquake, Japan, Nuclear Attack

UPDATE 1: From a New York Times article about the remaining workers at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station:

They crawl through labyrinths of equipment in utter darkness pierced only by their flashlights, listening for periodic explosions as hydrogen gas escaping from crippled reactors ignites on contact with air.

They breathe through uncomfortable respirators or carry heavy oxygen tanks on their backs. They wear white, full-body jumpsuits with snug-fitting hoods that provide scant protection from the invisible radiation sleeting through their bodies.

They are the faceless 50, the unnamed operators who stayed behind. They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, to prevent full meltdowns that could throw thousands of tons of radioactive dust high into the air and imperil millions of their compatriots.

INITIAL POST: The nuclear catastrophe in Japan is beyond my capabilities to address on this blog, there's just too much happening too fast, and I lack the expertise to add much beyond what one can find at the Guardian, the New York Times and the BBC. Of course, you have to carefully sift through what you find there. There is, however, one subject that deserves emphasis, the extraordinary efforts of the Tokyo Electric Power workers to prevent full meltdowns at six Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants in northeastern Japan, meltdowns that would result in massive releases of life threatening amounts of radiation. Five workers have died, 22 others have been injured and two others are still missing.

As described yesterday in the New York Times:

The nuclear plants’ operator, Tokyo Electric Power, has declined to provide details about the workers.

But Arnold Gundersen, a consultant who worked in American plants nearly identical to the stricken Japanese ones, said it was likely that the company was calling in retirees and workers from unaffected plants for help. And perhaps for sacrifice, as well. They may also be asking for people to volunteer to receive additional exposure, he said.

People who are working close to the reactor — pumping water, or operating valves inside the secondary containment structure — would almost certainly be wearing full bodysuits and air packs, Mr. Gundersen said. But some forms of radiation can penetrate any gear.

Gamma rays and other penetrating radiation can cause cancers and other long-term illnesses or, in high amounts, near-term illness or death.

Health physicists should gauge the radiation level in the work area, and the workers would normally be told how long they can remain. There may be a health physicist who will say, You only have an hour or two to do this job, Mr. Gundersen said. Each worker would carry a dosimeter, which measures radiation exposure, and they’ll be looking at it, he added. When it hits a certain number, they should leave.

Suits and air packs are meant to keep radioactive particles off the skin and out of the lungs until the workers return to a safer area.

Workers are trained to remove the gear in a specific way to avoid leaving any particles on their skin that would result in continuing exposure.

It seems probable that we will learn of specific acts of heroism reminiscent of firefighters like Viktor Birkun at Chernobyl in 1986, even if, unlike Birkun and the firefighters, they have been supplied with protective clothing:

As the plant managers and technicians fled or frantically tried to contact Moscow, the firefighters rushed straight into the inferno. With only a cotton uniform to protect him, Mr Birkun drove his fire truck over the reactor’s metal roof, now lying on the ground, and up to 15m (50ft) from Reactor 4.

Using his bare hands he lowered the engine’s siphon into the nearest cooling pool to suck up water for his colleagues as they battled 300 fires around the complex. Within seconds he began to feel the effects of the gamma rays that were bombarding his internal organs.

He started vomiting about every 30 seconds. He grew dizzy and weak. After two hours he could not stand.

Doctors later gave him a certificate indicating that he had received 260 ber (biological equivalents of roentgen), equivalent to 1,000 years of background radiation.

But experts estimate that the radiation that he absorbed was even higher, and enough to cause acute radiation sickness (ARS).

I’m amazed he survived, Michael Repacholi, the top radiation expert at the World Health Organisation, said.

It was a hugely heroic effort, and I suspect anyone who understood how much radiation was there would never have gone in.

Twenty years on Mr Birkun knows he is lucky to be alive and living in Moscow with his wife, Nadezhda, and his daughters, Lyudmila and Valentina.

Of the 134 liquidators with a diagnosis of ARS, 28 died in 1986, including at least six firefighters. Mr Birkun, now 56, is proud of the sacrifice that his team made to reduce the cloud of smoke that spread radioactive particles across Europe and even as far as Japan.

These were the people who saved Europe, he said, fingering a black-and-white photograph of his former colleagues. If they had not done what they did, the fire would have spread to Reactors 1, 2 and 3.

One of curious aspects of the use of nuclear energy over the course of my life has been the extent to which it has transcended ideology. Initially promoted as the peaceful use of the atom, a non-military justification for research that has produced the most frighteningly destructive weapons ever known, nuclear energy has been almost universally embraced by elites. During the Cold War, capitalist countries, such as the US, the UK, Canada, France, West Germany and Japan, as well as socialist ones, like the USSR and the German Democratic Republic, embarked upon nuclear plant construction programs, often against intense grassroots opposition. Lesser developed countries of this period, such as India, Spain and South Africa also brought nuclear power plants on line, although, interestingly, Central and South American countries were laggards, with most countries building no plants, the exceptions being the more industrialized ones, such as Mexico and Brazil, who built only one. Now, even purportedly anti-imperialist countries like Iran and Venezuela have adopted plans to rely upon nuclear power for future energy supplies.

Despite difficulties with the costs of construction and operation, nuclear power has persisted, and, as a possible response to global warming, may flourish yet again, despite the catastrophe in Japan. The explanation for such persistence lies, I think, in the compatibility of nuclear power with the intertwined interests of the state and capital, regardless of the way particular states describe themselves. From the standpoint of capital, whether aggregated in capitalist or socialist societies, the construction of nuclear power plants wasadvantageous when compared with alternatives. First, they obviously required a lot of capital investment. Hence, they absorbed large concentrations of it associated with governments, corporations and, particularly, financial institutions. Gigantism had an allure for all of them, because it served the purpose of oligopolizing the accumulation of capital, the production of energy and, more covertly, the knowledge associated with scientific and economic decisions. No other energy source had the ability to facilitate this objective like nuclear power, except for those associated with hydrocarbons.

Second, the construction of such facilities was a substantial endeavor. Capital was put to use employing large numbers of workers, ranging from architects, to nuclear engineers, to attorneys, to construction workers, to steel workers, to transport workers, just to name a few. A government regulatory apparatus was required to oversee nuclear plant construction projects as well as the subsequent operation of the completed plants. Such projects participated in the acceleration of the division of labor within society, a division of labor whereby more and more specialized knowledge and expertise was created to address activities of ever increasing complexity. Workers were therefore transformed in a way so as to enhance their utility while severing common bonds of collective identity. Meanwhile, the power to influence political and economic decisions was concentrated in fewer and fewer people, not so much because only a small number of people possessed the information necessary to make them, but, instead, because only a small number of people had access to the people with supposedly sufficient information to legitimize them. Needless to say, the entire process was self-referential. Capitalism and the centralized state depended upon the proliferation of hierarchy to more firmly entrench themselves, and few things, other than the military-industrial complex and the emerging technologies of surveillance and social control, were as harmonious with this proliferation as the increased use of nuclear power.

Accordingly, for many years, nuclear projects constituted a form of economic development, a glamorous, modern form of industrialization, because they employed large numbers of people in jobs with good wages and benefits while simultaneously disempowering them and promoting even more extreme concentrations of capital and state power. It was, in effect, close to a perfect circle. Advocates for alternative energy sources therefore failed to understand that the scope and expense of these projects were actually a strong argument in their favor from the standpoint of capitalists and the proponents of the centralized state. One of the worst qualiaties that one could attribute to any energy source or policy was that the infrastructure is easy to construct and maintain, or, even more heinous, that anybody can do it, which is why conservation was usually considered an inferior alternative to investing in new supply.

Given all this, it may not be coincidental that the advent of neoliberalism, and its attendant financialization of the economies of nation states, has been accompanied by a substantial decline in nuclear power plant construction, as well as an increased emphasis upon conservation, in some parts of the world, especially the US. Having overcome the socialist and social democratic alternatives, capitalists and their allies within the state redirected the vast expenditures upon nuclear power plant construction into the development of more and more speculative financial instruments. Countries more resistant to neoliberalism, such as France and Japan, pressed forward. Some research on this subject might result in some fascinating discoveries. In any event, it appears that such construction is now seen as compatible with the globalization of investment, production, transportation and communication, given the number of countries that now publicly state that they intend to move towards nuclear energy as a power source. Or, to put it differently, we have lived through the neoliberalization of nuclear power. The fact that it is prone to catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima Daiichi in 2011 only increases its allure. As described by Naomi Klein, Greg Palast and others, the current economic order depends upon periodic turmoil, whether generated virtually in financial markets through the mendacious actions of investors, regulators and politicians, or in the real, tangible world by them in conjunction with the unpredictability of the environment, to thrive.

Hat tip to Jack Crow over at The Crow's Eye for educating me as to the heroism of Viktor Birkun and the other firefighters at Chernobyl.

Labels: American Empire, Earthquake, Japan, Neoliberalism, Nuclear Energy

From the Guardian:

For locals in Fukushima prefecture, still reeling from frequent aftershocks and clearing up after the first disaster, the prospect of another on the way in the form of nuclear meltdown was unwelcome in the extreme.

"It is frightening. You get used to living with the nuclear plants and then something like this happens. When I saw smoke from the plant, I thought, 'Uh oh'," said Kato Tomiyama, a convenience store employeet. "I couldn't believe it," said Seiko Sato, a teacher. "We need more information."

For several hours, observers feared the worst: loss of coolant inside one of the plant's six reactors had caused a dangerous build-up of heat. A second, more deadly explosion – one that would have released a vast radioactive plume over the nation – seemed a real prospect until it was announced that, although the outer structure of the 40-year-old reactor building had been blown off by the blast, the actual reactor inside had not been breached.

Disaster had been avoided – but by the narrowest of margins. It was confirmed last night that radioactive caesium, one of the elements released when overheating causes core damage, had been detected around the plant. The discovery indicates that meltdown, caused by a nuclear reaction running out of control, had indeed affected the reactor's fuel rods – although possibly only to a limited extent. The revelation did little to reassure local people.

Labels: Earthquake, Japan

For updates, go here and here and here. The situation in Japan is almost beyond comprehension, as indicated by this Guardian live blog entry:

9.01pm GMT: Kyodo news agency is reporting that four commuter trains are still unaccounted for in the Miyagi and Iwate prefectures, the coastal area of northeastern Japan that were hardest hit by the tsunami.

Now, there is increasing concern about radiation releases from the damaged Fukushiima Daichi nuclear power plant, with the evacuation area around the plant expanded from three miles to ten miles. According to an Associated Press news alert, radiation levels have surged outside the plant, and it has already been reported that radiation levels inside the control room are 1,000 times normal. The sun has risen in Japan and the scope of the destruction is becoming shockingly known.

On a more mundane note, the New York Times can't resist exploiting the situation as an opportunity to cast the US military presence in Japan, disliked by many people there, in a favorable light. The US military is, after all, first and foremost, a humanitarian institution.

Labels: Earthquake, Japan

You've probably encountered many of the same reports that I have:

Haiti's president tonight issued a desperate appeal for international aid following the earthquake that has devastated his country, as fears grew that the death toll could rise above 100,000.

René Préval said the damage caused by the magnitude 7.0 tremor was "un­imaginable" and appealed for help, describing hearing the screams of those trapped under collapsed buildings while he and his wife stepped over bodies lying in the streets.

"Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them. All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe," said Préval.

With chaotic scenes in and around the capital, Port-au-Prince, officials said it was impossible to gauge accurately the scale of the disaster, but the country's prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, told CNN that the final death toll could be well over 100,000. "I hope that is not true … But so many, so many buildings, so many neighbourhoods are totally destroyed, and some neighbourhoods we don't even see people, so I don't know where those people are."

The people of Haiti are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Here are three possibilities that have been brought to my attention by friends and family for anyone interested in making a donation to facilitate Haitian relief efforts, First, the National Nurses United:

More than 1,500 registered nurses from across the U.S. have responded in less than one day to the call by the nation’s largest organization of registered nurses for volunteers to provide assistance to residents of earthquake devastated Haiti —leading the RNs to now issue an urgent appeal for the public to support these efforts with donations of funds to support travel costs and medical supplies on their upcoming emergency nursing mission.

Press and nurses are invited to a conference call Thursday morning at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time for an overview of the efforts and their logistics, including the details on the first teams of nurses traveling to the area. Press can call in for the briefing at (866) 320-4709 using the access code 143135, or gather with local nurses and representatives in Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Miami.

The relief efforts are being coordinated by the Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN), a project of the 150,000-member National Nurses United (NNU), formed last month through the unification of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, United American Nurses and Massachusetts Nurses Association. RNRN/NNU is hoping to have nurse volunteers on the ground in Haiti within the next few days and is coordinating with Haitian nurses on the effort.

Details are still being worked out, but those able to support the efforts of these nurses can get involved via:

www.NationalNursesUnited.org to sign up to volunteer or donate

@NationalNurses on twitter or by following: #haitiRN

Call the RNRN hotline: 1-800-578-8225

Support the RNRN/NNU disaster relief effort in Haiti by sending checks c/o California Nurses Foundation, 2000 Franklin St., Oakland, CA 94612. Charitable contributions will be used to pay for travel/related costs and medical supplies for volunteer RNs on their emergency nursing mission in Haiti.

RNRN sent hundreds of nurse volunteers to the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina. RNRN has also sent volunteers to Sri Lanka after the South Asia tsunami and to help following huge Southern California wildfires. RNRN is affiliated with National Nurses United, AFL-CIO, the national union and professional association for registered nurses.

“The need for help has never been so acute. We need financial support to transport them,” said NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. “Nurses will be fundamental to the disaster relief process, to provide immediate healing and therapeutic support to the patients and families facing the devastation from this tragic earthquake,” DeMoro said.

Second, Mercy Corps:

Mercy Corps is deploying an emergency response team to the island nation.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is plagued by hunger and political instability. This disaster will drastically increase the needs of families who had little to lose in the first place.

Families need your help -- food, shelter and other supplies -- in the aftermath of the worst disaster to strike the region in years.

Mercy Corps has a long history of helping earthquake survivors meet their immediate needs and recover what they've lost. We aided families after earthquakes in Peru in 2007, China and Pakistan in 2008, and Indonesia last year.

Lastly, there is also a local (for me), Sacramento area effort, Children's Hope, founded by Leisa Faulkner. Faulkner has traveled to Haiti numerous times and raised funds to support social programs there through Children's Hope:

As you probably have seen today, a huge earthquake (7.3) has hit Haiti just 10 miles southwest of the center of Port-au-Prince (PAP). Children's Hope needs your help. Three of the major centers of our humanitarian work in Haiti are centered in PAP, are still not responsive and we are very concerned for the children and families: the boys home (St. Josephs) is located on Delmas, PAP, Sopudep School (for street children) is in PAP, and "The Lamp" free clinic is in low lying Cite Soleil, PAP. Early reports have many structures down on Delmas, the presidential palace in collapse, and the large local hospital is down. Fear of rising water may further threaten the low laying Cite Soleil, where our clinic "The Lamp" is located. I have not been successful in getting through by phone. We here are sick with worry at early reports like the one below. If you have a few dollars to spare, lives will be saved. We are sending emergency funds starting tomorrow, and then as soon as pledges come in, since the need is urgent. We also really need to raise shipping money for the supplies already donated by a local hospital here (Marshall Hospital of Placerville) to send these supplies to Haiti. If you pledge, please remember to then send the check to Children's Hope. But please pledge now, so we can get new medicines ordered now, and help on the way.

Children's Hope
3025 A Cambridge Road
Cameron Park, CA 95682

Please feel free to post contact information for any other organizations that are involved in the relief effort. Long time readers of this blog know that I'm not a big fan of the American Red Cross. There are, of course, socioeconomic dimensions to this catastrophe that should be explored, and I may do so, but, for now, humanitarian assistance is urgently required.

Labels: CNA, Earthquake, Haiti, Humanitarian Assistance

Corpses are not part of our closeted world, and certainly not several at once. Most of those I'd seen before becoming a reporter were treated with powder and rouge, dressed in their finest, displayed as much to provide "closure" to survivors as to respect the memories of the deceased.

Looking at this unvarnished business, you can't help wondering what these people must have felt at the end, their worries and passions. The woman with the beautiful long black hair, now by the fifth day starting to fall out. How she combed it, admiring herself in the mirror, careful to choose the flowered dress she wore on the last day of her life hoping a husband or lover might notice. An elderly person unidentifiable beneath a blood-soaked mattress who had hobbled as far as the front door before falling head first, blocking the stairs, cane jammed against the wall.

Most victims appeared to have died quickly, but I'm haunted by the body of one large man. By the looks of it, he had lived long enough for some good Samaritans to place him on a bed frame and fashion makeshift stretcher handles before abandoning him to save their own skin. Nearby, a store mannequin, split in half, mocked human grief with its painted smile.

Heading out of Beichuan on the steep incline up to the road, a resident back for one last look gave a wave at the wreckage. "Goodbye, my lovely hometown," he said. "My house is gone, the relatives have fled, I'll probably never see you again."

Labels: China, Earthquake

The most recent news reports place the death toll at over 71,000.

Labels: China, Earthquake