What to do in the face of danger? Maybe nothing

Updated April 01, 2011 12:31:52

All of Japan is living under a cloud. A fearful cloud of unseen, unfelt, unknowable radioactive particles.

As they drag their broken fishing nets out of the sea, pick up a few muddied photographs from a pile of rubble, crush their cars and boats and houses down to disposable form, they are afraid of what might be happening in the nuclear reactor in Fukushima.

A lot has been made of a particular phenomenon in Japan. I don't know what the situation is now, but for a long time when people were diagnosed with terminal cancer their families didn't tell them about it. They thought they would lose hope and die more quickly.

That approach to terminal illness was criticised in the West as being passive. And it's true, there are many situations in Japan where a passive response is forthcoming. I am reminded of a time, living in Tokyo, when I asked some people what I should do if I were in a Subway and there was a major earthquake. They looked at me for a while and then replied "Maybe nothing".

It took me some time to understand why I should do nothing. Because there is really nothing to do. It is possible to run, or hide under something. But there is no real way to know what is going to help you until the situation occurs. And most likely is the possibility that nothing is going to help you if things are that bad.

The nuclear reactor is sending up clouds of radioactivity and life goes on. Some people make a grab for bottled water or baby formula. Those are the kinds of practical things one can do. En masse they represent panic, but most likely they are simply small acts of common sense compounded into large numbers. I hear that Californians are taking iodine tablets, but there has been no word of this here so far. I hear that my town has started taking readings of radioactivity, but that will matter little. If the radioactivity should climb very high, what could we do about it? Where could we go, and what would we do there anyway?

I felt the earthquakes, I went to my door and opened it. I stood in the doorway, knowing that there might be problems if it grew more violent, and those problems were both inside and outside the house. In an earthquake it is not only your house that falls down, it is the house next door as well. In a tsunami you survive most often by being lucky enough not to be close to it.

Things are looking very bleak on the news, there is little reassurance that the problem will soon be under control. I'm sure that many people are moving the more vulnerable members of their families away. But most people, given the choice, even the choice of remaining close to the radioactivity, would choose to stay. It is not passivity. It is because that is where they have always been, and dislocation is in many ways more difficult than this cloud of radiation.

It's not true that people in Japan are resistant to change. Nor is it true that they resist moving away from difficulty. But I believe that they are less willing to loosen bonds and connections than we are in Australia. They will go to another place or make a change if there are enough of these bonds and connections to maintain some kind of line from one point to the next.

People in the areas afflicted by tsunami would prefer to be given temporary housing in the areas they live in, surrounded by friends and neighbours they have known for a long time. But there is a scarcity of land to do this, as most areas that could have been used were hit by the tsunami. Land further inland is often mountainous, land for temporary housing has to be found and procured and this takes time. So there are now plans to relocate entire villages to different prefectures, and each person is consulted about whether they prefer to be housed with people they know.

This is not a short-term problem. Temporary housing will accommodate these people for up to two years. The accommodation is rent-free; a way to simply care for them while they get back on their own feet. There are government subsidies for those with no income, and there are grants for restarting businesses. Everything will be done to ensure that at the end of two years, anyone who could get back up will find a way to do so.

For the people living around the nuclear reactor, the situation is different. They cannot know if the problem is going to get smaller or bigger. Should the problem get bigger, they will need to relocate permanently. Should the problem get smaller they will need to make a choice. So their problem is two-fold; the current problem of finding a place to spend an indefinite time in, and the secondary possibility of this being the end of the lives they have been living.

For those of us who are neither displaced by tsunami or by the nuclear power plant, the wait is very different. We go on with our lives. Those lives might become more dangerous, and there is little we can do about that. Should the reactor become extremely poisonous, radiation will hit all parts of Japan, nobody will be free of it. But there are limits to how far you can go to get away from it. Not just limits of geography, limits of opportunity.

The foreign press is mostly gone now, off to newer problems and more exciting stories. Even the foreign population has dwindled, now waiting in their home countries for news. For those of us left in Japan there is little we can do. Maybe nothing.

Lehan Winifred Ramsay is an Australian artist and writer who has lived in Japan for 20 years.

Topics: disasters-and-accidents, earthquake, nuclear-accident, community-and-society

First posted April 01, 2011 12:31:50