Since the deadly earthquake, tsunami and nuclear radiation rattled Japan in March, the country has embarked on yet another Phoenix-from-the-ashes comeback. Gradually, reconstruction and restoration of economic enterprise are underway with the trademark Japanese knack for endurance and disciplined collective effort.
Japan?s superior abilities to convalesce are again on display after the worst disaster to hit the land of the rising sun since World War II. Remarkable behavioural traits that lend hope in the best aspects of humanity emerged barely days after the triple shock. The thousands of displaced persons living in temporary shelters with minimal outside help organised themselves like neat flower rows in a garden, optimising meagre space and instituting the norm of tending to the most vulnerable. Retail outlets cut prices and vendors distributed freebies without a care for pocketbook calculations.
Around the world, when war or natural disasters forcibly displace people, ugly incidents of looting, assault and breakdown of traditional community restraints are common. In Japan, however, entrenched social capital withstood the sturm und drang of sudden dislocation and loss of loved ones, with the victims picking up the pieces in workday fashion almost without a fuss.
One of the most amazing stories of resilience in the face of adversity comes from corporate Japan, which absorbed the body blows of disruption of power supply and ?just-in-time? inventories, and swiftly restarted what it excels at?production. The New York Times documented a role model Ricoh factory close to the epicentre of the calamity, whose ceiling had caved in and the assembly line had been upended by nature?s fury. This plant is now back to full production, thanks to workers and managers who continued to work and improvise despite bereavements in their families. Task forces were autonomously set up to cope with relief delivery and sanitation. Conference rooms became overnight ?war rooms? to strategise how teams with designated emergency mandates could coordinate and reinstate status quo ante.
Traditional Japanese culture prizes wa, or strong communal identification with family, company and community at the cost of the individual. This heritage was seen to be weakening in recent decades, but the March catastrophe has reawakened the embedded priorities for social harmony and shared suffering. While collectivist value systems emphasising conformity and harmony are stifling and conservative in normal times, they can work miracles during crises.
Japan?s civilised rebound from the March tragedy is all the more stunning because of the atrophy and stagnation of its state apparatus. The dangerously cosy nexus between Japan?s nuclear regulatory authority and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which runs the perilous Fukushima nuclear complex, as well as the opaque and lethargic response of the Japanese government to the still menacing radiation threats have not impressed anyone. The recent resignation of a nuclear safety aide to Prime Minister Naoto Kan over the government?s failure to raise the bar of permissible radiation exposure to school children around the stricken atomic zone threw ample light on the top-heavy and lackadaisical state system.
Japan?s two ?lost decades? in economic vitality since the 1990s owe a great deal to chronic turnover of failed governments, and a dysfunctional and sclerotic bureaucracy. The systemic rot that has set in within the levers of the state is indeed hampering even faster and fuller recovery from the afflictions of March by widening the sharp disconnect between a proactive and moral society on one hand, and a moribund and incompetent governmental apparatus on the other hand. Japan?s morally upright people deserve a better ruling system, but their own reluctance to mobilise and organise to hold government accountable bears part of the blame.
While admirable interpersonal trust and willingness of households to keep buying public debt are engineering another stubborn turnaround, the most creative leaps in Japanese history (such as the Meiji modernisation in the late 19th century and the double-digit economic growth of the 1960s and 1970s) occurred under visionary state stewardship. Japan will bounce back yet again, but the process could be more dynamic if the political and bureaucratic class learnt lessons from their stoic people.
The author is Vice-Dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs
