MANY have remarked on the dignity of the Japanese response to its worst post-war disaster in the aftermath of the 3/11 quake and tsunami.
Many governments and commentators have used it to address what they consider deficient in their societies. The American media has used Japan's speed in repairing a damaged road to Sendai to lament the dismal pace of United States roadworks. Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong has contrasted the stoic Japanese response to the 'amount of noise' Singaporeans make about sporadic floods here.
Many others have marvelled at the relative absence of looting and price gouging in Japan - a world of difference from the breakdown in social order in Haiti, New Orleans and other cities post-disasters.
There has been a wide-ranging spate of analyses worldwide of how 'All that's right with Japan is wrong with us'.
But Japan scholars say there is no DNA and rarefied explanation of why the Japanese have risen with such grace to the occasion. Rather, they attribute it to a combination of history, social conditioning and national psyche.
There are four strains behind Japan's ability to exhibit grace under extreme pressure. Understanding them, Singapore can draw lessons for its own nation-building efforts.
Strong sense of community
JAPANESE agrarian society is rooted in local communities, especially in rural areas. Farming in a mountainous, rugged country has enforced the spirit of cooperation. Dr Lam Peng Er, a Japan specialist and senior research fellow at the East Asian Institute, notes that it has been in rice farmers' self-interest to cooperate to channel irrigation and pool labour during harvesting season. What has been ingrained early is that every success - or failure - is a shared, not solitary, enterprise.
Associate Professor Hendrik Meyer-Ohle, head of Japanese Studies at National University of Singapore (NUS), notes that this communal spirit allowed the largely elderly population in the hard-hit Tohoku region to live by themselves, with help from neighbours, and without many young people around.
Most places in Japan have active neighbourhood associations - chonaikai or jichikai - for residents to interact and work together to make their community a better place.
It is customary in Japan when you move to a new neighbourhood to buy gifts for the neighbours in front and the back of you, and flanking you left and right. Usually these move-in gifts consist of hand towels, rice crackers or tea, immaculately wrapped and topped with a piece of white noshi paper inscribed with your family name.
NUS Japanese Studies Department's Associate Professor Thang Leng Leng contrasts this with Singapore, where people move so often, it is common 'not to know who your neighbours are'.
Using history to reinforce resilience
JAPANESE history is replete with examples of the country facing crises and responding as one.
Faced with the threat of Western imperialism in the late 19th century, Japan restored power in the Meiji emperor, mobilised a massive national modernisation effort, and built itself into an imperial power. At the end of World War II, it rose phoenix-like from defeat and the ashes of two atomic bombs that killed more than 140,000 by channelling its energies into industrialisation.
Natural disasters like the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake which killed more than 100,000 people around Tokyo, and the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake which flattened Kobe killing 6,000 people, have left an indelible mark of challenge and response in the Japanese psyche.
This collective consciousness of having surmounted many past difficulties perpetuates the powerful idea that 'if previous generations have done it, so can we', says Dr Lam.
On the surface, Hiroshima's and Nagasaki's many A-bomb museums and monuments memorialise the victims, but really celebrate the survivors. The Japanese understand, more than anything, that the real ordeal is living on, when all is gone.
Acute sense of crisis
IN THEIR popular culture and imagination, the Japanese are gripped by novels and movies about natural disasters.
One example is the best-selling novel Nihon Chinbotsu (Japan Sinks) in 1973, about the sinking of the country after a massive earthquake and tsunami, which spawned a box office hit in 2006.
Conscious of their vulnerability to the forces of nature, the Japanese live amid constant sirens and drills, bracing for The Big One they know will come some day.
This is because between the end of World War II and the late 1950s, the country was hit by a series of typhoons, earthquakes and other calamities, with more than 1,000 lives lost almost every year. This kick-started a comprehensive disaster prevention system, which starts from young.
Every man as hero
MANY Japan scholars reject the notion that Japan's cohesive response to the crisis is the result of nationalism. Some argue that patriotism died in 1945, when Japan lost the war and its illusions.
Japanese people's loyalties today are no longer to the greater Japan nation, but to their company and local community. Dr Lam says that the Fukushima 50 - workers who stayed on at risk of their lives to fix the damaged nuclear plant - are not there for Prime Minister Naoto Kan, or the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. They are there because they are part of a team. 'You can't abandon your team - and make it the Fukushima 49 - or you will be miserable for the rest of your life,' he says.
Heroism in the Japanese context is not an ostentatious attempt by one person to gain stardom or immortality. It is not about standing out, but standing together with your team. It is about keeping your head down, doing your job and letting others do theirs.
It is such a prosaic, everyday and achievable notion of heroism that gives Japan its remarkable powers of recovery. And where the world finds rich lessons in building character and nation.
By Susan Long
From the Straits Times
suelong@sph.com.sg
