Tsunam-a-rama fails to stir the Japanese

There was much else going on in Japan to distract them away from what the rest of the world was watching - like imperial reconstruction, for example

by Jennifer Matsui <jmatsui@republic-news.org>

I was asked recently by a friend in the US how the Japanese media were covering the aftermath of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Sumatra and the resulting tsunami that had at that point already claimed 150,000 lives.

Without access to English language cable news, one would be hard pressed to find any evidence that a disaster affecting five million people worldwide had taken place. “Asia,” as this Asian nation curiously refers to its less prosperous neighbors in the south, is apparently of little interest to the region's largest economy. A recent stint in front of the TV proved just what I suspected after the first week of what appears to be a virtual media blackout on the subject of devastating tidal waves wiping out much of South Asia and East Africa's coastal regions. If the Japanese don't bleed, it doesn't lead. It's not even news.

This lack of interest on the part of the media here can be explained by a simple stroke of timing. Japanese tourists tend to arrive at resort areas later than their European counterparts at this time of year, which accounts for the relatively low death toll among them (22 confirmed dead and 236 still missing). While dead Europeans have managed to make a few headlines here, the equally dead non-tourists of the tsunami-hit regions have been swept away by a more powerful force of indifference. Compared to American cable news reporting of the disaster, which has turned it into an extended version of “Survivor” crossed with a Jerry Lewis telethon, Japan's ho-hum response comes almost as a welcome relief.

Predictably, news organizations here have given scant coverage to the tsunami's hardest hit areas beyond Phuket (where the majority of Japanese casualties took place). It didn't take long, though, to discover where all those missing Japanese camera crews were, or rather, weren't. Less than a week into the tragedy, local news teams were all out in full throttle for “Ekiden,” a live college Marathon event, which the media covers this time every year with a frenzy one normally associates with high profile assassinations. Certainly no tsunami was going to rain down on this year's parade of well-heeled runners from the nation's top universities competing for the title of most over-the-top theatrical finale to a minor league event on par with a tricycle race.

Popular entertainment here is almost always based on the notion of “gambare” (pushing the limits of one's endurance). The unique ability of the Japanese to take whatever shit is shoveled their way is routinely celebrated on game shows where contestants bear every imaginable indignity and ordeal to prove their mettle. The oft-repeated imperative “Gambatte” (a rather fiercer version of “chin up”; literally “fight”) is most often applied in the private sector where Japanese workers are routinely over-worked and praised for their dogged and unquestioning loyalty to their companies.

All this pompously-displayed loyalty to one's institution of higher learning, as “Ekiden” annually highlights, is unabashedly symbolic of the sacrifices these future corporate warriors will make for the companies who recruit their employees from among the ranks of these brand-name universities.

“Ekiden's” overly-choreographed rehashing of the oft-told Japanese tale of overcoming adversity through slavish devotion to one's feudal master has contemporary propaganda value, serving interests even beyond the boardroom, as Japan prepares to dispatch SDF troops to tourist-friendly regions for relief and humanitarian aid.

Arguably, “Ekiden” with its melodramatic storyline of triumph over rehearsed adversity, culminating in the young runners collapsing in sobs at the end of their “ordeal,”does more for the ratings than the wretched spectacle of shell-shocked survivors of a natural disaster huddled around mass graves. America's corporate media, by contrast, has become a veritable wailing wall of survivor stories with an added emphasis on the missing Swedish toddlers who have inspired the continuing flood of individual donations. Considering that Africa has yet to see a dime of the $5 billion the Bush Whitehouse has earmarked towards dealing with the AIDS epidemic, it wouldn't be too cynical to suggest that tsunami victims will be similarly overlooked when the time comes for the US to make good on their pledges.

The American media's continual focus on the "generosity" of Americans has become somewhat of a public relations coup for a White House recently stung by criticism of the president's slow and dimwitted response to the disaster. The public outpouring of sympathy in the form of charitable donations which the American media continually highlights in all its brazen hypocrisy, is ideologically consistent with the administration's condescending foreign policy and its faith based initiatives.

Japan's shameful closed-door policy on refugees, and the increasingly shrill anti-Chinese rhetoric of its more hawkish lawmakers, is consistent, at least, with the public's seeming indifference to the suffering of its tsunami-devastated neighbors. Japan's separateness from the social and political chaos of its' more heterogeneous neighbors in the South is often cited when reporting on events in the region. “Race” is a fitting word (in every sense of the term) to explain the enduring popularity of soporific events like “Ekiden,” and its role in shaping the majority consensus that Japan leads the region economically by virtue of its blandness and homogeneity. No mass graves here, unless of course, you consider the fact that Japan's Imperial army inflicted a higher death toll upon its Asian neighbors than this latest tsunami.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party's steady, behind-the-scenes shredding of the constitution and its troublesome, war-renouncing Article 9 looks as if its already paying off in spades. With this latest disaster, Prime Minister Koizumi can finally make good on his promise to put the brakes on pork barrel spending at home, while fattening the coffers of corporations eagerly anticipating a lion cub's share of the contracts to re-build the tsunami hit areas' shattered infrastructures. If luck can be defined as what happens when preparation meets opportunity, then this latest catastrophe couldn't have been better timed for the nation's ailing industrial and finance sectors. By immediately ponying up half-a-billion dollars towards reconstruction, Prime Minister Koizumi has proved himself a savvier opportunist than his petulant Washington counterpart, who initially balked at the suggestion that his initial pledge of $15 million was, to put it mildly, stingy.

America's junior partner in international crime will no doubt reap further benefits for its role in supporting the war on terror, but its eyes are no doubt on the bigger prize: re-establishing hegemony in its former colonies. SDF ground troops stationed in Samawah have proven highly ineffective at rebuilding infrastructure, so there's little reason to expect them to do more in the tsunami hit areas than secure the country's corporate investments. The Koizumi government's highly controversial decision to send 600 troops to Iraq was met with overwhelming public opposition. But under this particular banner of humanitarian aid, Japan's hawkish policy makers should have better success this time around, rallying the public around a hoisted flag to justify the aims of a re-emerging Empire unshackling itself from its constitutional restraints.

To its credit, the Japanese media tows the propaganda line of the nation's corporate and political elite less hypocritically, at least, than its American counterparts. Riding high on “Tsunam-a-rama's” ratings-boosting tales of human survival, (9-11 meets “The Littlest Mermaid”) the US media is hard at work obliterating reality with a flood of compassion. Glaringly absent from its coverage is the equally horrific unnatural disasters the US continues to inflict upon vulnerable, terror-stricken populations. This deluge of false piety will undoubtedly unleash more catastrophes in the years to come.

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