Japan united in the wake of disaster

On the afternoon of March 11, I was on a subway train in Tokyo. There was a scheduled lab meeting with my students, where I was supposed to introduce and discuss a paper on Wikileaks.

I am usually absorbed when reading something interesting. I was therefore only partially aware that the train had left yet another station. Suddenly, I felt a jolt. The train was decelerating rapidly. "What is happening?" I wondered. The train came to a full stop. Looking over my shoulder, I could see the station lights in the darkness of the tunnel. We had not traveled far yet.

The first thing I noticed was the continuous beep coming from somewhere. It must be one of these "stop signals," I thought. Then I realized that the train was actually shaking. The car was swaying to and fro, wobbling, and alarmingly, the swinging became worse with time.

"Earthquake," I murmured. There were three women near me, and I told them to keep calm. "It should be safer down here in the tunnel," I said reassuringly, clinging to the arm rail of the seat. The shaking of the car kept going for what seemed a very long time. When it subsided somewhat, we found ourselves looking at each other's faces.

"Let me check," I said, and connected to a news website with my mobile. "Oh, the epicenter is in Tohoku," I told the women. In Japan, information about earthquakes comes really quickly. The nation has experienced so many deadly earthquakes that the handling of information regarding the magnitude of quakes is done at lightning speed. "This seems to have been a rather big earthquake. We need to be careful," I said. The women looked at me rather intensely, as if I were the sole source of information and reassurance.

As the worst national crisis since World War II unfolds, we are going through an extraordinary transformation of the national mindset. It is an ongoing change, with no end in sight yet. Looking back, the spirit of collaboration and helping each other started at that moment, immediately after the quake hit.

The train started to move very slowly again. "We are traveling to the next station at a speed of 15 kilometers per hour," the train conductor announced. At the next station, we all got out of the cars and walked up the stairs to ground level. There I found people looking at their mobiles, checking what had happened and what was happening. I witnessed people trying to help each other, providing information, offering assistance and taking refuge from the aftershocks that rattled buildings and power cables and even cars here and there.

As we were crouching on the Tokyo streets, gigantic tsunami waves were sweeping away people, crushing houses, eradicating years of family life, friendship and love. The devastation brought by the tsunami, when it was revealed, left us gasping. Nobody living in Japan could ever forget the traumatic and arduous days that followed.

Then the nuclear crisis at Fukushima developed. In the long history of nuclear power utilization in a country traumatized by memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nightmare of a nuclear meltdown became very real for the first time.

The heroic efforts of people trying to contain the situation moved many hearts and brought tears to people's eyes. The whole spectrum of risks and vulnerabilities arising from nuclear plants dawned on people at last. Even technically oriented people, who have been more or less supportive of the government policy on nuclear energy, now had second thoughts.

As I write this essay, the outcome of the nuclear crisis is still uncertain. The death toll has shocked everybody deeply. The task of delivering food, water and energy to the afflicted areas is a daunting one. This crisis apparently does not have an easy ending. Meanwhile, a time of soul searching has already begun. Through the sudden surge of altruism and goodwill, one is beginning to see the possibility of a rebirth for Japan.

For this writer at least, everything changed on that fateful afternoon. There is no turning back. The vision of the station light that I saw through the darkness of the tunnel, in the shaking subway car, now seems to symbolize the ethos to come. Japan united.

(Profile)

Kenichiro Mogi, born in Tokyo in 1962, is a neurologist now working as a senior researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories and as a cooperating professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology graduate school. He also appears regularly on television and radio to discuss the workings of the human brain.

(Mainichi Japan) April 18, 2011