NATURAL disasters reveal much of our weaknesses and frailties. Our failings in great moments of crisis may prove to be turning points in history. The Japanese have this proverb about bending adversity and transforming bad fortune into good.
The Japanese never cease to fascinate us. For one, they have developed a national consciousness on disasters — both by default and by design. They have learnt, internalised and practised their geography — a geography that is hostile, and certainly not enviable, especially from how Malaysia sees the world.
Malaysia is beginning to see that geographically and geologically, its comfort zone is slowly being drawn away from the placid. What we have learnt from our Geography textbooks are beginning to change.
But what happened to Japan? We take Japan for granted, in the same way we perceive our climate. I found David Pilling’s insights in his book Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival (2014) very relevant to how we have responded, and will have to respond, to disasters.
Pilling, who was Asia editor and Tokyo bureau chief for the Financial Times, had lived in Japan as a foreign correspondent from 2001 to 2008. In his book, he created a portrait of a “stubbornly resistant nation” with a history of overcoming successive waves of adversity from would-be Mongolian invasions to repeated natural disasters.
Bending Adversity reminds me of another work published 70 years ago to comprehend Japanese society — anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), a text for an anthropology course I attended in the mid-1980s.
Both books were written under totally different conditions — the latter was to understand and predict the behaviour of the Japanese, and much of that shaped American thinking of Japan. The former, a portrait of contemporary Japan, changing and adapting in ways that are often invisible to the outside world.
Pilling knows too well the power of history and how it relates to the present, and it is certainly true for Japan, as in other nations, where “history and tradition are ubiquitous, peeping from behind endless concrete of what can seem one of the most relentlessly modern urban landscapes on earth.”
He covered the tsunami and earthquake of March 2011. From interviews and contemporaneous accounts, he constructed what went on in the terrifying moments right after the tsunami struck Rikuzentakata, a fishing town of some 23,000 residents in Iwate prefecture. There are also his impressions of a nearby town in the days, weeks and months after the disaster.
Japan has long been “primed for adversity”. Our fascination with Japan is silent on the idea of Japanese resilience viz such events. Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and typhoons are not just events and catastrophes in Japan. It is also Japan’s culture and history. It also dominates as an idea.
Some 350 years ago, the residents of Rikuzentakata, for example, planted trees in the hope of providing their homes and farms with some protection from the wind, the salt and the sea. That began in 1666. In the first seven years of their endeavour, 18,000 pines were planted. Subsequent generations added to the natural barrier. In modern times, the 70,000 pines became a tourist attraction. Today’s landscape evolved out of the desire to mitigate disaster.
In fact, there is a culture innovation in the midst of myths, narratives and disasters. In earlier years, the Japanese believe that earthquakes were caused by Onamazu, a giant catfish on whose back the Japanese islands were said to rest. The story goes that the catfish was pinned beneath the mud by a mammoth slab of rock held in place by the powerful Shinto god of the earth, Kashima.
But, when Kashima let down his guard, Onamazu would twist free and thrash about, causing the earth to heave and shake. In 1854 there was an earthquake, causing damage from Kyushu to Tokyo. Within days, woodblock prints of catfish went on sale in Tokyo. I am sure we have seen constant reminders of tsunamis — that frequently follow large earthquakes in Japan — in Japanese visuals and images.
In the last few days, we have learnt that Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, and much of the region across the peninsula’s main range sit on ancient fault line zones.
The general perception that Malaysia, especially the peninsula, is safe, no longer holds true. The common image of a tsunami may not be one anymore — as seen in the likes of “a great arched wave, curling its watery fingers over the land.” It is dreadful. In Rikuzentakata on the day of March 11 four years ago, the only thing that could be done was to flee.
The recent quake in Sabah has continued to spur much thought on our preparedness. In the aftermath of the 2014 floods, several initiatives by Malaysian universities were made to mitigate natural disasters in the country.
Apart from improving our early warning system, and other technical and structural measures, we should also develop an efficient communication and response system.
But, in the long term, the nation has to cultivate a national consciousness on natural disasters, a sort of an overarching policy. And this would augur well in the face of adversity.
The writer is a professor at the Department of Management and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Seri Iskandar, Perak