Jim Grisanzio

An unusual sign to see in Japan. Be careful. Read the signs.

It’s disappointing (though not totally unexpected) to see the new Japanese Prime Minister so quickly insist that Japan needs nuclear power. Yoshihiko Noda comments to the Wall Street Journal (here, here) about the Japan’s nuclear reactors, the majority of which are currently down after the meltdowns at Fukushima:

“We must bring them back up as best as we can, because if we have a power shortage, it will drag down Japan’s overall economy,” Mr. Noda said. Antinuclear critics have pointed out that Japan got by without major power shortages during the peak summer season this year, even with dozens of reactors taken offline. Asked whether this meant Japan might be able to cope next summer without restarting idled plants, Mr. Noda said: “That’s absolutely impossible.”

Absolutely impossible? Really? I guess Noda feels Japan simply doesn’t have the engineering talent and the imagination to innovate its way out of using a dumb, dirty, and dangerous technology like nuclear. How’s that for leadership, eh? Actually, it reminds me very much of American leaders. Anyway, Noda says nothing else of interest in the interview. It’s also instructive to point out that the WSJ reporter didn’t challenge Noda on his “impossible” assertion. That’s also not totally unexpected. So, I guess that’s it. Party on. Everything’s fine.

It’s been six months since the March 11th Japan earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. Tens of thousands of people died in the disaster and it altered lives of many more. Best wishes to everyone who suffered and who lost loved ones that day. Hopefully, in your names, we can end nuclear power so more people will not die in the future when natural disasters occur.

They were really packing them in today. There was an accident further up line so thousands and thousands of people were dumped out at Futakotamagawa to wait. I did not want to hang out for the clean up of the accident, which is usually a suicide, only to be stuffed into a train like this an hour later on a blistering hot summer day. So, I just walked since my office at Yoga is only one stop away. Good exercise.

Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan wants Japan to “become a society which can exist without nuclear power.” Well, Japan certainly has the talent and technology to build such a society and lead the world in the effort as well. Actually doing it is another matter altogether, though. But if they did they’d really piss off some people in the process and that would be quite nice.

At the TEPCO shareholders meeting today Tokyo Electric Power executives offered another apology for their ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima. Earthquake and tsunami and the natural dangers of nuclear energy notwithstanding, the mess at Fukushima would not be nearly as bad had TEPCO been competent and this has been well documented in the Japanese and international media since March 11 (and even well beforehand). And people are not buying their propaganda (except perhaps for NHK). The New York Times attended the meeting today and documents the raw emotions of some people. One woman rushed the stage shouting “shame on you … you should all be sacked.” One elderly guy said, “Go jump into a reactor and die!” The clips on TV tonight were just as interesting with many loud outbursts. Imagine the seething anger it took to move these people to say such things in this setting. We’ve seen this before with frustrated parents lashing out at TEPCO and government officials about their brave reduction of radiation standards for children.

This anger, though justified, probably won’t change much in the short term given the history of the nuclear industry in Japan. It will take millions of people hitting the streets and adjusting their voting and buying behavior to change the industry. And it will take years. It can and should be done but the challenge is great. The nuclear industry is largely immune to angry populations. The industry owns politicians in their respective countries and their bidding is done — even though their technology is obviously faulty, expensive, and toxic; even thought they clearly don’t have the engineering skills to safely site, build, and operate reactors; even though they have absolutely no business model whatsoever without massive public support to construct their plants and insure their accidents. Nuclear energy is not viable. It should be abolished.

Japan Strains to Fix a Reactor Damaged Before Quake: New York Times: “Japan needs the nuclear fuel cycle,” he said, because supplies of fuels will not last forever. “Uranium will last less than a hundred years. Plutonium will last over a thousand.” — Toshikazu Takeda, director of the University of Fukui Research Institute of Nuclear Engineering in Japan.

That quote came at the very end of the article. It’s well worth reading the whole disturbing piece to get the context of Takeda’s brain. Personally, I think the comment is idiotic. But unfortunately it demonstrates the thinking of far too many people running nuclear power plants and their supporters in governments. It’s clear these people are the problem. They need to be replaced so better solutions to the power demands of society can be explored.

Image: Tokyo, Japan, 2009

Who needs leaders? Interesting piece from The Economist. It cites the strength of the people hit most severely by the Tohoku earthquake in March and draws the distinction between them and their counterparts in Tokyo. Hint: The national “leaders” in Tokyo don’t compare very well to those local leaders doing real work right where it counts: in the community, for the people. I’m not surprised. This characteristic isn’t exclusive to the Japanese, although a stunning number of Japanese have certainly internalized the quality completely as we’ve all seen recently. Everyone knows who the real leaders are in any group. They are obvious. They’re rarely the ones wrapped in suits sitting on TVs or in central governments talking about leading. Instead, they’re the people who do. And they do for others. They may talk to organize other people but the very essence of who they are is expressed in their doing. You can’t miss them.

Image: Tokyo, Japan, 2008

Image: Kijimadaira, Japan, 2008.

The photo of Japanese nuclear executives kneeling on the floor and apologizing to people in shelters is meaningless. Now, it would be nice to see some American execs in the same position but it really doesn’t matter. The culture that contributed to the disaster at Fukushima is based on money and any perceived respect for customers or care for local residents vulnerable to hot nuclear plants looks ridiculous in context. The New York Times talks about this at length in Culture of Complicity Tied to Stricken Nuclear Plant. Nothing in the article is particularly surprising with respect to how the nuclear industry is regulated in Japan (though it’s shocking to read the mess in such detail) but I was struck by how the Times characterized the word “culture” in the piece. They seem to imply that along with cash the Japanese culture itself contributed to the problem. As I read I kept looking for some other culture to compare against the Japanese for managing nuclear industries. Presumably, though I couldn’t believe I was coming to this conclusion, the Japanese do it wrong because they are Japanese and some other culture does it right. Right? Sure enough the writers hit on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as being distinctly different than the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. That’s the only part of the article where I laughed quite loudly.

Fortunately, there’s a ready supply of information about how the Americans regulate their industries. So I jumped over to Rolling Stone and read America’s Nuclear Nightmare, which documents at length the situation in the US and mirrors pretty much what the Times talked about in terms of regulators in collusion with the industry in Japan. Again, there is nothing especially surprising in the article other than the shock of actually reading the details of how badly the US government manages the oversight of the nuclear industry and places millions of Americans at risk of dying. But Rolling Stone just focused on regular old money as the “culture” problem (my word, not theirs) and not anything specific to being American. The article was just as interesting, too. I highly recommend both. After reading Rolling Stone, though, I really have to question the value of all the Japanese cultural focus in the Times piece. I think it gets in the way of the real problem, which seems common to all cultures when economic interests are at stake. Corruption may be expressed differently across cultures but it’s still corruption. Clearly, more transparency is needed in both systems.

Here’s an excellent article from Karel Van Wolferen about some important history between the United States, Japan, and Europe: Japan, Europe and The Dangerous Fantasy of American Leadership. Wolferen terms the relationship between the US and Japan as pathological, which is obvious to anyone looking at it in detail. Most concerning is the notion that because Japan has weak leadership and is dependent on the US, Japanese officials are missing the dramatic changes taking place in America and that will undermine the interests of not only the government in Japan but more importantly the Japanese people.

Now, many times historians and journalists focus on governments in international relations and forget the people affected in the process. Karel Van Wolferen does not make this mistake. His article is a clear warning for the Japanese people as they look to a future with — or without — the US. What happens if this pathological relationship fractures? What happens if it continues along its current path? Wolferen argues the financial/military complex in the US is no longer under the control of civilian leadership, which is a scary statement itself and in some ways parallels the state of Japan before World War II. To make matters even more disconcerting, there is another line of thinking about trends in the US, such as statements from Noam Chomsky that the US in some ways now reminds him of late Weimar Germany. Either way things can potentially get somewhat troublesome for the Japanese people who are used to decades of living under American influence. Website: Karel Van Wolferen.

Image: Kamakura Daibutsu, Japan, 2007

Some people say 43 people died as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion and some people say the number is probably closer to 980,000. Right. So much for science being scientific, which is probably the most disturbing aspect about the current Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan. For an exploration of some of the issues, see an interesting debate on Democracy Now between Helen Caldicott and George Monbiot. My own view is that science is as political as politics and always has been. You need to do your own research and be careful of those pushing agendas. The banter back and forth is helpful — and entertaining — but nothing is as valuable questioning both sides of a debate. There are never just two sides in a debate.

Here are 71 images from the Beers for Books for Tohoku event with Room to Read last night. Seven hundred people from the community came together and donated thousands of books and toys and generated over 1 million Japanese yen to help the children affected by the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant disasters on March 11th. Special thanks to Gary Bremermann and everyone who organized the event.

Since all things nuclear are raging these days — especially in Japan — I’ve been reading up on radiation exposure. What the heck. I know, I know. I shouldn’t worry too much, right? I live far enough away from the nuke plant in Fukushima and the winds will blow things out into the ocean. And besides low level radiation is not that harmful. It’s only a chest x-ray or a flight to New York, they say (and they keep saying every time more radiation is released). Right. Well, I stopped believing that bit long ago. And of course, I certainly don’t believe nuclear extremists like Ann Coulter, who says radiation is actually good for us. I wonder, will Coulter volunteer to help out at Fukushima? Probably not. Well, Ann really got under the skin of Gary Null recently. Gary is a social activist, researcher, broadcaster, and alternative health care advocate. He’s posting an ongoing series of radio programs — Fatal Fallout: The Dangers of Ionizing Radiation — citing a variety of experts questioning the notion that low level radiation is harmless. The programs are sobering to say the very least, and fortunately Coulter’s view doesn’t hold up very well.

So, since these programs didn’t cheer me up much I viewed some documentaries on Chernobyl. I figured some history would be interesting and I came across these two films: Chernobyl Heart and The Battle of Chernobyl. Utterly horrifying. Both of them. Watch them on an empty stomach, though. They are upsetting. There is great debate about how many people died as a result of Chernobyl, but the most disturbing view comes from Alexey V. Yablokov, a Russian scientists who published an English review of the literature that had been written in Slavic languages: Statement from the NY Academy of Sciences, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (pdf), press conference on C-SPAN, press release, interview. Yablokov puts the death toll from Chernobyl at about a million.

On the good side to all this, if you are not exposed to insanely high levels of radiation such as at Chernobyl, there are actually some interesting things you can do to help protect yourself from low levels of radiation by taking various nutrients. Gary Null talks about these things a lot so that’s what I’m looking into now. He has two programs ( March 18 from about the 27 minute mark and March 16 from about the 21 minute mark) where he goes over about 75 nutrients that have been known to protect against radiation. That’s comforting to know because it demonstrates we do have at least some control over our circumstances even with an out-of-control nuclear industry. This can all be very confusing, though. It’s a medical and environmental emergency, but it’s wrapped in a significant amount of power politics and that’s always a bad combination. Another option, of course, is to just relax and believe the mainstream industry experts and the governments when they say all of this is just like getting a little chest x-ray or taking a quick flight across the ocean. That would certainly be easier. Party on. Right?

Since the earthquake in Japan there has been some confusion about the Japanese media coming from people around the world. The reason, I think, is that this is the first time in a long time the world has been exposed to a flood of Japanese communications. Without disasters or political controversies, Japan is generally not really a big part of the global media conversation — certainly not like the United States and some countries in Europe. The disasters that hit Japan three weeks ago have clearly had a global effect, so people are now noticing Japan and they are noticing that things are quite different here. Surprised?

Here are some common questions I hear in social networks or from friends in the west or from my own reading and viewing of western media: “Why is the Japanese media so freaking calm about this disaster? Why don’t they go after the government more? Why don’t they go after TEPCO more? Why don’t they listen to western sources more? Why are they so lame? Do something!” I am partially sympathetic to these comments because at times I have been very critical of the Japanese media myself. That’s not necessarily saying much, though, because I’m critical of most mainstream media.

Also, the comments above are only partially accurate. Aside from the problem of translating the Japanese language into English for westerners to conveniently digest, there is still the issue that the Japanese culture is significantly different from most western cultures. Many times just translating words from one language into another is practically meaningless without a comprehensive understanding of the cultural context underlying the event being documented. So, even if you can explain what’s going on in English, a westerner may not be satisfied with the result because all the basic assumptions are all wrong. This occurs the other way around, obviously.

But even so some segments of the Japanese media are certainly a tad on the tame side, such as NHK, for example. They could stand to be more probing of the Japanese government, and they could also seek out more international experts for important global stories. But other parts of the media in Japan spin up controversies that westerners would die laughing at due to their ridiculous lack of significance. From an American perspective, political scandals in the U.S. are always larger by orders of magnitude than they are here. The U.S. media specializes in political scandal, though, so it’s not really fair to compare any media in the world to the extremism of even the mainstream media in the United States. I do miss some of the American media theater, though. It’s very entertaining and the people delivering the news at the major networks are absolutely the most talented sellers of information in the world. But over the years I’ve also come to appreciate Japanese news specifically because it lacks all the drama. Sometimes I just want information. Sometimes I actually want to make up my own mind. Sometimes I want a more subtle view.

Which brings up the final point: quality. Some people in the west who are critical of Japanese press coverage tend to think that the more loud and aggressive media they are used to is better media. American media, for example, is not subservient to power like the Japanese media, right? American media is very critical of the government, or example, right? No. Sorry. It doesn’t work that way. Don’t confuse noise and commercialism with quality. All the screaming and yelling only serves to promote a false impression of diversity and distracts from the good news being produced in the country (largely from alternative sources). The reality of the American media is far different and this has been well documented over the years. Most recently Glenn Greenwald has been really articulate about media matters in the United States, and he is well worth following closely. Here are just four references of many dozens of well-documented posts and videos from Greenwald: one, two, three, four. Or you can read Chris Hedges for an even more shocking view of the American media.

So, in the broader context, the Japanese media doesn’t seem too bad. The bottom line is this: It’s best to always be critical of where you get your news from. Many times official and mainstream sources are excellent but many times they are not. I spent over a decade in the public relations industry, and I know how easy it is to spin up a “story” in the media. Also, the exact same thing can be said about alternative sources of information, although that’s where I’m spending most of my media time these days. Study hard. That’s the only way around the problem. And study news from other cultures, too. You’d be surprised to learn just how much propaganda you’re ingesting if you only stick to media from your own cultural paradigm. Here are a few other sources to consider from around the world on Livestation. Anyway, if you want to watch some Japanese media for yourself, see NHK World right here.

Gary Bremermann is organizing a Beers for Books for Tohoku event on Sunday April 10 to benefit the kids affected by the massive earthquake and tsunami two weeks ago in northern Japan. If you can come and participate to help the many children so clearly in need that would be fantastic. Here are some images of the Beers for Books community with John Wood, founder of Room to Read. Beers for books on Twitter.