Japanese Trials and Tribulations
The Japanese evince a phlegmatic national character. In that they are disciplined, through their restrained culture and their quiet religious belief, not to fuss, not to elevate their concerns to a point where they become a nuisance, an irritation to others. Quiet forbearance is the order of the social culture. The Japanese are accepting of what occurs. Drawing attention to oneself is a social faux pas, it becomes deeply embarrassing.One does not make a public display of oneself. One comports oneself modestly. And the Japanese are unfailingly courteous. Perhaps that goes a long way in explaining why there is so little relative public crime in the country. Why the streets, even at night, are safe, even and especially for women to walk alone. Perhaps it goes even deeper into the Japanese psyche; how else explain that Japanese drunks are rarely ugly in comportment?
There remains a deeply engrained atmosphere of tolerance for the uncomfortably unacceptable in Japanese society. In that the Japanese pride themselves on their ability to sustain their composure even in the face of dreadful events. The world has seen just how orderly and law-abiding the Japanese are, how few their demands, how accepting their expectations and their trust.
But a population that has suffered a succession of truly disastrous natural disasters compounded by a series of now-evident humanly-fallible errors in judgement exacerbating those disasters, sees the Japanese public angry at a low simmer. Their still-restrained anger sizzles with resentment that their corporate and political elite have been so careless.
The lack of due diligence exemplified by the hierarchy of Tokyo Electric Power Co. in its administration of the Fukushima Power Plant, and the complicity of a succession of governments in permitting the company free reign to make important decisions with respect to the safety and security of the nuclear installations rankles Japanese who are now living a nightmare of uncertainty and fear.
The inextricably close ties between government and industry, and the country's elite academic institutions led to a closed system where bureaucracy, inefficient operations, lack of adequate strategic planning and the absence of a forward-looking vision for the country's future has long been acknowledged and resented. The formula for change remains elusive.
But the misery of the triple disasters that fate and geography visited upon Japan may have awakened its population to the prospect of badly needed change. How the population reacts to that reality and communicates its expectations to their politicians is another matter entirely, as is the concomitant reaction by those very politicians.
Labels: Japan, Natural Disasters, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, April 10, 2011
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