Why charity doesn’t work for Japanese

The mismatch of charity is becoming serious.
As time passes since 311, though some people are already forgetting Fukushima disaster, some people are passionately making projects to help out Japanese, on the assumption that they want to evacuate.

However, most of the projects are facing the same problem that nobody applies for it.
There are several types of the charity projects.

1. Hosting Japanese family for a few months.
2. Hosting Japanese children for a few months.
3. Giving web service for Japanese people, such as forum or video sharing platform.

Project leaders guess if it’s because they are foreigners, Japanese people might be scared, or if it’s because of the lack of advertisement etc..
However, none of them is right.


What do Japanese want to do ? It’s “transporting their life style with 100% security”, not “restarting a new life”.

They are wanting to transport

+ Furniture and electric appliances
+ Car and hopefully house
+ Job
+ School

Because they underestimate / ignore the potential of living in the new world, such as meeting new people, giving new environment to their children etc.. they overestimate the cost of evacuating.

Actually if they try to transport their entire life to out of Japan, it would cost hundreds of million yen. They want a job before leaving or want enough money to live until they find a job.
They also want visa for the stability of life.
Unfortunately, there is no charity project which can offer jobs, money and visa even for one family.

Currently about 10,000 people evacuated to Okinawa. Most of them are mothers with children. Their husbands/fathers are working in Tokyo. Why don’t they jump out abroad ? Because even if they go abroad, they will have to come back to Japan in 3 months when tourist visa expires and the conservative Japanese society will not accept people who have once left Japan for evacuation. It would be really difficult for them to be employed again. What’s more, none of the radiation problems would have been improved by then. Considering the financial problem and the security of their children, they can’t make a huge leap easily. Because it’s very difficult, they try to ignore the fact. They don’t want to evacuate, so they don’t apply for the charity offers.

To make the immigration easier, numbers of people need to move as a community. Even if it’s difficult for individuals, number makes it easier. If they collect petition like they have been doing since last year, they might make a country give them the status of radiation refugee. Why they don’t work as community ?
One of the reasons why Japanese community doesn’t move is their sense of responsibility. Now most of the communities and companies are killing people by tying them up, but none of them helps people evacuate in the opposite way, which is very unbalanced.
It’s because those communities are locked in the bigger community “society” and their sense of responsibility makes it look like betrayal to leave the society.

To analyze this behavior of Japanese people, you need to understand what the “responsibility” stands for in Japanese culture.
It contains 2 meanings.

1. Don’t be hurt
2. Don’t hurt anyone

Japanese meaning of responsibility is slightly different from the one in a dictionary. Most of Japanese people don’t recognize it either.
In Japanese society, it is the highest valued not to cause any conflict. The meaning of responsibility therefore is defined in social context. It actually has nothing to do with benefit or efficiency.

However, trying to be responsibility is a very unique trait ofJapanese.
When being responsible means manufacturing high quality industrial products, it helps Japan grow in second industry like in 60s or 70s.

Japanese culture works like an individual’s mind. They have smooth and responsible face for others, but inside, they are in agony being tortured by themselves. Japanese mind-set is just like the one of a person with self-injurious behavior. Like a person who bites their nails, scratches their skin, pull off their hair, drinks till losing consciousness, sometimes looks like a civilized gentleman at work, Japanese act politely but they abuse themselves behind. It’s represented anywhere.
Criticizing their own culture is the proof of education and intelligence. Wherever they go, they can’t help comparing themselves to other people. Though they are very sensitive for the feedback of others, they love to hurt themselves.

This self-injurious behavior is making Japanese people more careless for radiation and reluctant to save themselves.

The sense of responsibility and the self-injurious behavior are like front and back, both are connected to each other, and they are in proportion. The more responsibility he is, the more self-abusive he is whether it’s a community or an individual. This is one of the reasons why Japan has high suicide rate.
It explains why men don’t evacuate. As above, there are numerous numbers of risks to evacuate, money, job, career, education of the children etc.. but rationally thinking, death is the worst risk. However, most of them don’t evacuate from Tokyo etc. They think they don’t want to evacuate. That’s because they are always pressured to be “responsible”. Deceiving themselves feeling fear and ignoring radiation is their way of self-abusing.
Like the patient of self-injurious behavior feel some kind of pleasure when they cut their body, those responsible people feel somewhat pleasure by exposing themselves to radiation. It is sometimes the sense of heroism, content feeling of hard working, self-devotion, or self-pity. Not to mention, it can be woman / wife/ mother or community / company too. The more they lose, the more pleasure they feel.

This is why commuting trains are still full of salary man in the morning, and there is black substance on the ground.
There are 2 types of evacuation. One is the individual evacuation, and the other is the evacuation in the community. Individual evacuation is very costly if they try to transport their life style in Japan, and is very risky if they try to rebuild their new life style which is not the taste of Japanese. Probably it’s beyond what charity can do. Therefore they need to evacuate as community. The larger the community is, the easier it would be. It would be the best if they make a country admit the status of radiation refugee. Number is power.
However, as individuals hesitate to evacuate, communities / companies do hesitate. So far, none of the Japanese company has tried to move with their employees. It’s from the self-abusive culture as the shadow of their being responsible.
Responsibility has the very emotional meaning in Japan. Now that evacuation can be seen as betrayal, they are required to be more “responsible”. Japanese government is provoking the sense of unity. It makes them more recognize “responsibility” .
Because the self-abusive attitude is in proportion with being responsible, they are even feeling pleasure to kill themselves by radiation, which makes them want not to evacuate.
No matter how much you pull their hands from the outside, they won’t come out anymore. Now the sense of unity, self-injurious behavior and group mind are all having synergistic effect. They need a psychological shock.



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