Disaster and Jewels

“Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.” So says the Roman philosopher Seneca. The disastrous earthquake and subsequent tsunami that visited Japan on March 11 put all Japan in shock, horror, and grief. Even after several weeks since the disaster, people in the affected regions and their friends and relatives were still in search of their missing beloved. After waves or tremors that followed the main shock of the great earthquake, the after-effects are still felt rather frequently even in the metropolitan area. Uncertainty about the future of the Fukushima nuclear power stations and the prolonged need for saving electricity, together with the inconvenience caused by the disrupted traffic and circulation, have put the people in a state of vague but deep anxiety. Out of these difficulties, however, several “jewels of wisdom” have been rediscovered, just as the victims or their relatives found several precious “family goods” or memorable things in the debris of the destroyed houses.

What are those jewels of wisdom? People realized once more that a person’s and people’s real mettle appear at a time of difficulties. Indeed, difficulty, or adversity, is a very good chance for reassessing individuals and social relations. Just as the whole world watches the Japanese reaction to the great disaster and re-estimates the Japanese “mettle,” the Japanese people themselves, glancing at the actions taken by other people and nations, have become more aware of the character of various nationalities and, above all, of the political and psychological distance from Japan. The degree and speed with which neighboring nations and people expressed great compassion towards the Japanese, despite the historically complicated background surrounding the nations of the Far East, seem to make known to the people of the Land of the Rising Sun that the East Asian community is not a phantom but a reality, though still invisible.

What is more important, however, is that the Japanese people themselves have come to know, better and deeper, their own mentality, their own strength and weakness. The attitude of the many victims in the face of the gigantic disaster and the reactions of those who watch the devastation seem to show that somewhere deep in the minds of the Japanese, a great natural disaster was “unconsciously anticipated.” They were strangely prepared for disasters, not in the physical or practical sense but in the psychological sense. Indeed, the nation has, even in the span of the last 100 years, experienced the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995. Through these historical experiences, people know the axiom that adversity is the test of strong men. People in Japan do not necessarily say it openly but they secretly believe it, as evidenced by the fact that, except for a very few, people have not tried to “exploit” the disaster, either economically or politically, for their own advantages.

“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head”
(As You Like It, William Shakespeare)

(Originally written in English on March 28, 2011.)