A Decade Past

by Daisuke Tomiyasu

"Sister, I'm home," the little boy said loudly, as he ran through the front door, ran passed the "jizo." The jizo were the stone dieties that had been guarding the entrance to his parents home for over six years now.    

The little boy was still excited from the entrance ceremony he had attended at elementary school that day. He wanted to tell his sister all about it. But then he remembered. The stone guards were a solemn reminder that mother nature had swallowed her up and taken her with it.

Ten years have passed since that Earthquake hit Kobe. I still have a clear image of it, like it just happened only seconds ago. My ears started ringing that day and they haven't stopped yet.

At that moment, mother nature took a lot of lives. And our weakness as a modern culture perveys, thinking we can outsmart her,thinking our technology can prevent a natural disaster. As humans, we think we can control everything, that everything is about us, for us, for our community, then we think we can control it by politcal action. It is our conceit, our human fault, I think.

The planet Earth makes natural disasters for a reason. It's like it wants to shake us up, shake us off the Earth when it has had too much of us. But we don't listen, we keep using her oil in our cars and airplanes, and worse yet, we fight over it and start wars because of it.

The war in Iraq is the first war in history triggered by a Democracy, a country that calls itself democratic. The president of that country, George H.W.Bush, went down on the books as the only President of a democratic country to purpose-fully instigate a war. Does he arrogantly think that this kind of action is part of God's will?  I feel that Pres. Bush's re-election was, in part successful because it was supported and condoned by the Catholic Church. And I find this to be ironic.

I still see the vacant land in Kobe where families once lived, where they will never live again. I feel the enormity of lost lives, families, homes. I question whether peace will ever be a part of our lives again. I think peace begins within our smallest unit of community. I think peace begins at home, within our own families.

And, I think I will ask myself these questions for the rest of my life. Is peace possible when we try to obtain it by protecting our land with the loss of life? Is this really freedom? Were we protecting our freedom before the earthquake with the risk of loosing our lives?

Disasters have a way of changing our perspective, the way we feel about ourselves, think about our lives. I wonder if I will ever stop asking these questions.  I wonder if I will ever recover, ever forgive myself for not being a better man, husband, father, a better volunteer, a better writer, a better photographer.

And then again, maybe someday I will.

Now, ten years later, when I look out over the residential area, where light has been replaced with darkness, I stop to think about that. More questions fill my mind, questions about the larger picture, about what it means to live in Japan.

The Japanese constitution promises every individual,at the very least,their life will be healthy and cultural. Our modern society here in Japan includes private property as part of it's constitutional legacy, something the government didn't compensate for in the beginning. I believe that private property is a resource that contributes to the health and culture of our lives. But bureauocracy never changes until a disaster hits it. And we have a clear image of what that looks like.

As a country, Japan has not been looked on by the International world as a suitable place when it comes to disaster aid. We are a country based on citizen ownership and private property. Some fear that if a great disaster like a Kanto Earthquake were to happen, it would be unfair to set aside any aid in preparation of a catastrophic event of that magnitude. That the scenario would be hopeless anyway, so why bother? However, I have to ask too, is it possible to save Japan and recover our country and it's ecomomy from that kind of disaster? How? We already owe a huge sum of money from our past as a national debt. If we encounter another disaster, man made or natural, how will we recover, how will we be able to reconstruct our country?

During the last decade, I have witnessed Japan's ecomomic regression. I felt maybe what we as a country were lacking most was self education, self-help towards a more stable ecomonic future. But I think that our natural ability to do that has been hindered by the "machine" that encourages us to support an out of control and grandiose ecomomy. We haven't learned from our past trans-gressions, our historical loses that should have given us some insight towards building a better and stronger ecomomic future.I think the government of Japan continues to "bleed" it's citizens, expecting us to support it without every showing us any support.

After WWII, "the right to pursue happiness" was used as bait. And we were duped into thinking it was our "duty" to do this,no matter what the cost. Our country's pension plan is a good example of this scenario. The pension plan's value is not nearly enough to cover our cost of living, let alone keep the standards of cultural and health in the picture, yet they continue to tax us.

To make matters worse, they wasted a tremendous amount of money on resort developments that were never profitable and sit empty today. If we as citizens do not call this being "swindled" then we are the guilty ones, the fools. Except for those who have profited by this.

Time has changed the structure of the system. Creating a country based on idolization does not appear to be a big problem to begin with. But after the system begins to benefit only those who profit from it's manipulation, then people will begin to realize we are "victim's" of that very system.

Today, the immediate possiblity exists that this system will become part of a new constitution under mono opinion political leadership. Not unlike the evolution of the computer. At first it appeared to just be a tool, but now it rules the world like a Science Fiction movie.

Another earthquake comes to mind...Niigata. Finally one of the villages has been abandoned and I realize again, this country cannot even help itself out of the devastation.

  "Sister, I'm home..." That little boy with the bright voice will soon be all grown up. But will this country still exist as we know it today?

We must remember that Japan exists because of it's people, because of it's land.

A decade has past. Over a decade, and still people are groaning. Soon it will be half a century, then a century will have passed and the pain of all those lost lives will still be ringing in peoples ears. Because the great numbers of victims  will have lost their lives, not at the hand of Mother Nature, but by human neglect.

Daisuke Tomiyasu/ interpreted by S.J.Dortch

January 18, 2005