Ochugen, 2011

With this year speeding by, it's already time for Japan's
mid-summer observance, ochugen.

And it was only last month—three months after the Tohoku region earthquake and tsunami—that Japanese authorities issued some admission of the seriousness of the nuclear plant meltdown.

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail interviewed a former nuclear industry executive on the horrifying possibilities inherent in "the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind."

Japan's reliance on nuclear power is a sad irony of history, for a country where civilians in two cities were victims of the world's first atomic bombs.

This spring, a number of elderly engineers volunteered for a likely "suicide mission"

That is not at all how the volunteers regard their plan, although the idea does inspire the obvious comparison to the country's World War II suicide pilots. But in the words of the volunteer group's co-founder, "My generation, the old generation, promoted the nuclear plants. If we don't take responsibility, who will?"

Reuters posted this report on the Japanese nuclear industry's past and present use of "throwaway workers" for the dangerous work of post-accident clean-ups. These are foreigners (including Americans), and homeless Japanese day laborers, the latter recruited mainly from the Kamagisaki section of Osaka.

The story really hits home, considering the widespread desperation created by economic conditions and the shredding of safety nets.

And having lived near Osaka, I've heard the story that Kamagaski, the city's skid row, is omitted from official maps so that general Japanese society can presume it does not exist.

The Reuters piece includes an unsettling look at a dying consumer culture momentarily revived—

In Iwaki, a town south of the Fukushima plant once known for a splashy Hawaiian-themed resort, the souvenir stands and coffee shops are closed or losing money. The drinking spots known as "snacks" are starting to come back as workers far from home seek the company of bar girls.

"It's becoming like an army base," said Shukuko Kuzumi, 63, who runs a cake shop across from the main rail station. "There are workers who come here knowing what the work is like, but I think there are many who don't."

In some ways, the problem is one of digging out from prosperity. On the extreme end of the scale is lethality of the non-degradable nuclear material; at some lower point is the overall amount of stuff there is in a consumer culture.

Photo: Jake Price

Wes Cheek posted words and pictures from a wrecked gas station—

This JA [company] gas station... had just opened last September. This is its last day in business. It sits just back from a cove, next to a river. The landscape is barren... it is a wasteland. The [wind] blows and the birds cry and cars are in the water and trains hang from bridges. This is where the tragic shifts to the unreal...

JA provided this machine, from Kyoto, that is pedaled to draw gas up from the ground. I went ahead and bought gas from them because, why wouldn't you? Again, people didn't just lose their jobs, they lost the places where there were to go to work in. Will there ever be a gas station here again?

Even without the nuclear disaster, this part of Japan would be awash in a staggering amount of everyday toxic materials, like the components and liquids inside cars wrecked by the tsunami, and left lying around or washed into the water.

In comparison, Japan's rebuilding after WWII somehow seems easy: with so much of the country leveled then, perhaps it was a matter of clearing rubble and just starting from the ground up.

And a reading of history suggests that, despite the hardships of post-war daily life, much of a war-weary population felt hopeful at the prospect of life in a freer and more democratic environment.

This March in the U.S., our millionaire rabble-rousing right-wing pundits sneered: Japan thinks it's so green for inventing the Prius and caring about recycling, and look what that got it.

But by early summer, our Midwest [where The Real Americans live] had water at the gates of nuclear plants built on flood plains—making real the threat of a Fukushima of our own.

By no means is sacrificing safety—to coziness among corporate, political, and regulatory entities—something that happens only in Japan.

Political ranting aside, the idea of survivors needing to rebuild their lives has been reminding me of a Japanese World War II survivor.

Her name was Ayako Miyawaki. Beginning by recycling the rags that were an available post-war material, she went on to create some very appealing art.

More about her life and work to follow...