Why shakes leave the Japanese Unshakable
Ben Macintyre - The Times, March 15 2011
"The elderly and exhausted Japanese survivor was carried by piggyback into the medical centre and gently placed in a chair. As her rescuer left the room, she struggled to her feet and bowed.
Alongside the chaos and destruction wrought by the terrible earthquake and tsunami have been scenes of heart-breaking orderliness and self-control. Japan is prostrate and fearful, but there are no reports of widespread looting, panic or hoarding. There is, as yet, very little anger directed at the Government.
Western news crews search the wreckage for images of fear and anguish, for outrage and despair, but the Japanese survivors avert their faces and cover their eyes if they weep.
This extraordinary stoicism can be summed up by the Japanese word gaman, a concept that defies easy translation but broadly means calm forbearance, perseverance and poise in the face of adverse events beyond one?s control. Gaman reflects a distinctively Japanese mentality, the direct consequence of geography and history in a country where the cycle of destruction and renewal is embedded in the national psyche. The Japanese are not earthquake-proof but, like their buildings and bridges, resilience has become inbuilt in a nation adapted to sway and bend under shocks that would shatter other societies.
Japan has known utter devastation before, and the horror of nuclear fallout, but its recovery after 1945, and the ensuing economic miracle, owed much to this uncomplaining tenacity, a collective pride in endurance, survival and reconstruction.
When the Japanese Prime Minister described Friday?s earthquake as ?our worst crisis since the war?, he was deliberately invoking gaman: ?In the past we have overcome all kinds of hardships. Each of you should accept the responsibility to overcome this crisis and try to create a new Japan.?
Gaman is part of the glue that holds Japanese society together, a way of thought instilled from an early age. It implies self-restraint, suffering in silence, denying oneself gratification and self-expression to fit in with the greater good. Originally a Buddhist term, it has come to signify self-denial, solidarity and a certain patient fatalism.
This hardiness and social cohesion enabled Japan to emerge from the devastation of world war and thrive. But the rigid order and self-abnegation that it implies are also what keeps the beleaguered ?salaryman? at his desk, toiling away with grim determination. That rigid conformity, obedience and sense of national purpose helped to propel Japan recklessly into the Second World War.
Some in the West find the Japanese aloof and unfeeling in their reaction to disaster, and assume that ?normal? human emotions are being suppressed. There is some evidence to support that view. The Kobe earthquake in 1995 that killed 6,400 people and wiped out about 2.5 per cent of Japanese GDP was greeted with gritty determination to rebuild the city. Only later did the psychological aftershocks become apparent, with higher rates of suicide and mental illness.
But to see this measured response merely as evidence of a bottled-up culture is to misunderstand how Japanese society is founded on a shared pride in recovery, and how deeply risk and response to adversity are bound up with being Japanese.
Japan lives on a psychological as well as a seismic fault line. Its founding gods were foul-tempered and ferocious. Successive earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons and volcanic eruptions have left this land with an acute sense of vulnerability, but a corresponding mental sturdiness.
Every Japanese child is brought up to expect upheaval. Disaster Preparedness Day falls on September 1, the anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 that killed 140,000. The importance of persevering and rebuilding in an uncertain natural world is reflected in traditional architecture, art and popular culture.
The cult television show Endurance (Za Gaman, in Japanese), in which contestants try to outdo one another by withstanding a gamut of unpleasant experiences, is a target of some mockery here, but it is more than mere entertainment in Japan, where physical and mental endurance are still so highly prized.
In the West, we look for reasons for natural disasters: we blame global warming, government failure or God. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, some saw biblical retribution for the ?sins? of New Orleans. The Japanese relationship to nature is different: Man is neither battling nature nor at its mercy, but part of it.
Japan is braced for nature?s violence like no other country. Every bullet train has an automatic shutdown- switch that activates when an earthquake strikes. But as events at Japan?s nuclear power plants show, safety technology has its limits. Disaster cannot always be prevented: it can only be coped with.
The Japanese are coping in ways that some find hard to relate to: with deep sadness, but without breast-beating, complaint or recrimination. It is hard to imagine any other people who, when the Earth buckles and their world collapses, form an orderly queue and wait.
The contrast is perfectly illustrated by the way the tragedy has been covered. Western reporters stand before a backdrop of utter desolation. Japanese reporters tend to find a wider view, with a standing building. They do not thrust microphones towards the homeless and bereaved, demanding to know how they ?feel?. At a moment of acute national pain, the Japanese audience does not want to intrude.
In The Remains of the Day, the British-Japanese novelist Kazuo Ishiguro brilliantly created the butler Mr Stevens, reserved, dignified, upholding the rules of correct behaviour, the epitome of British-style gaman. Such qualities may seem old-fashioned, but in quake- ravaged Japan they are a vital bulwark against even greater destruction.
Japan endures 10 per cent of the world?s seismic activity; recent days suggest that it may also be home to a disproportionate stock of the world?s fortitude. We like to think that understated resilience in a crisis is a peculiarly British trait, but today the stiff upper lip is Japanese."