6 Months from the Japan Disaster – The Reality

Osaka - Sunday, September 11, 2011




It is 6 months since 3.11, the Japan Disaster of the earthquake and tsunami followed by the Fukushima Nuclear Plant Accident broke out on March 11 this year. It is also 10 year anniversary of the U.S. 9.11 WTC incident. Thus this weekend, almost all TV channels in Japan have been broadcasting special programmes about 9.11 and 3.11.



In this article, the author would like to outline the reality of the Japan disaster, focusing on the hard hit area from the tsunami.



1. What are the key numbers of the Japan disaster?



The status as of today is that over 15,000 people are dead and over 4,000 people are still missing.



The government had promised to provide temporary housing to people in need by the end of August but only 90% of the temporary housings originally planned are complete and only 83% are filled because some are built in area that is of bad access.



Removal of wreckage is 50%+ complete but this includes those of houses and building that needs to be demolished anyway. And how to dispose the wreckage is still yet to be decided.




2. How are victims without temporary housing living today?



A case of a lady living in one of the hardest hit area in Miyagi was introduced in a special programme broadcasted by NHK, a national TV company. She has a house of 3 floors (in Japan, ground floor and 2 floors in the U.K.), of which the 2 floors became flooded by the tsunami.



She first thought of start living in temporary housing but did not win the housing by lottery. Also the available temporary housings are in mountainous area, a place that are inconvenience for her who cannot drive a car; therefore, she started living in the 3rd floor of her house.



However, lifelines such as electricity and water cannot be supplied. Thus she uses battery instead of electricity, walks to the nearby city hall with a bucket to get water, and goes to a nearby hospital for toilet.



The lady has no idea when this kind of life would end.



3. How have towns been recovering that once their administration system paralyzed due to tsunami?



In another TV programme a case of a town was introduced in which 20% of the population became dead or missing from the tsunami, including the mayor and many of his staff members working in the local government. Also the local government buildings/offices were all swayed by the huge tsunami.



In such a situation, local administration function stopped completely and recovery from the disaster did not move forward at all. A manager of the local government had an extremely tough time being a pig in the middle of the administration and the general public.



It was only recently that the manager was elected as the new mayor. He is now determined to develop a recovery plan of the village by the end of the year, but the task would be not easy and execution would be less easy.



4. The author’s final thoughts



What the author is more familiar is the Kobe earthquake that occurred in 1996. She was shocked to see the devastated town that used to be really beautiful and prosperous after a few months from the earthquake. But after about 6 months the roadmap of the recovery was made and the recovery plan was implemented with relative smoothness.



That is not the case of the 3.11 Japan Disaster. It is true that the scale of the 3.11 disaster is far greater and there are multiple factors that make the recovery extremely difficult.



However, it seems to the author that the primary reason for the slow recovery is the ambiguous distinction of the roles between the national government and local government/administration.



The national government insists democracy to say that it is the responsibility of the local government to take the initiative. And the local government claim that the national government should execute stronger leadership, especially when the local government function of the local area is stopped completely.



The author agrees more to the stance of the local government. She also believes that it is because of the “gembaryoku” (strengths of the general public) of the Japanese people/victims that minimized chaos. She strongly feels that if it had been in other country there had been turmoil.



Strong “gembaryoku” and weak management/leadership in typical Japanese companies in comparison to strong management and relatively weak “gembaryoku” in many western countries is often mentioned in management and such a trend came out in this case as well, as well as the plan the author introduced in her previous article Eco-Town Development in Sendai– Recovery from the Japan Disaster.


The author sincerely would like the new Noda administration start executing stronger leadership





Resources:-

Recovery from the Japan disaster of earthquake and tsunami after 6 months is yet still very slow. Not everyone has been able to live in temporary housing. Due to the scale and multiple factors making it complicated it is difficult to compare with recover from other disasters such as the Kobe earthquake in 1996; however, and the timing of when the victims can lead their lives as they used to before the disaster is yet known. One requirement that had been lacking for the recovery is strong leadership from the national government, when “gembaryoku”, the power of the general public is strong.