Leaks in All the Wrong Places

Why the Japanese public has good reason to distrust official information.

BY CHRISTIAN CARYL | MARCH 14, 2011

As I was trolling through coverage of the Japanese earthquake disaster, I came across a revealing vox pop. A man named Takayuki Sato was talking to Reuters in Fukushima, the town that's home to the nuclear power plant damaged by the quake and the ensuing tsunami. "What they're saying on the news is that even if you're exposed, it's only about one-fourth of the level of getting a stomach X-ray," said Sato. "If it was really bad, I don't think they would cover it, so I guess it will probably be all right."

Let's parse that for a second. Sato was saying that he was reassured that the problems at the stricken reactors aren't all that bad because the government doled out a teaspoon of information -- whereas a total blackout would mean that something really scary is going on. Doesn't exactly sound like a vote of confidence in the Japanese government or media, does it?

What's more, I suspect that Sato, in his pronounced skepticism, is actually speaking for most his compatriots. (This assumption is based on my own experience as a foreign correspondent in Japan, where I lived from 2004 to 2009.) That ordinary Japanese citizens might have grounds to question official utterances was borne out early in this latest nuclear crisis. The first explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant occurred at 3:46 p.m. on Saturday, March 12, but Japan's government didn't officially confirm the event for another two hours. And it was only five hours after the explosion that Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano finally announced that the containment vessel remained intact and that a major release of radioactive material had been avoided -- not that he provided much in the way of concrete data.

That prompted a spike of criticism in the media. Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's leading daily papers, quoted a senior lawmaker of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan to this effect: "Every time they repeated 'stay calm' without giving concrete data, anxiety increased." The paper ran a headline that said, simply enough, "Crisis Management Is Incoherent" and assailed the government for taking its time to disclose information. "The way the government provided information is questionable," the Yomiuri Shimbun said in one of its editorials. That's pretty harsh language by Japanese standards.

History offers ample grounds for cynicism, I'm afraid. Back in 2007, when another earthquake triggered the shutdown of reactors at the world's largest nuclear complex in Kashiwazaki on Japan's west coast, it took Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) -- the same company responsible for the reactor in Fukushima -- a good nine hours to notify local authorities that there was a problem, prompting some harsh criticism from leading Japanese politicians. And that was just one in a long history of coverups, major and minor, by the Japanese nuclear industry.

Many Japanese still have grim memories of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, when the government took days to ramp up a proper response to the disaster and compounded its problems by poor coordination and scanty information about what was happening. Many Japanese still have bitter memories of the three days it took the government to approve the dispatch of foreign rescue teams equipped with special rubble-sniffing dogs.

Getty Images

 SUBJECTS: NUKES, DISASTERS, JAPAN, EAST ASIA
 

Christian Caryl, a former Newsweek bureau chief in Tokyo, is the Washington chief editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

ODYSSEY8

1:23 PM ET

March 15, 2011

The Japanese government is still trying to "save face"

Based on what I have read and observed so far, it is clear to me that the Japanese government is not giving full disclosure to the Japanese people.

On the surface, it could be argued that they are trying to minimize widespread panic, and perhaps that is a partial factor for their not being more forthcoming. However, I also believe that the Japanese government is still trying to "save face" in a situation where frankly saving face is just not possible. Far more energy should be placed on saving as many people as possible who are in the danger zone of this impending disaster.

The Japanese government already has made the mistake of putting profit over people by building a nuclear power plant in a highly earthquake-prone area. They should not compound that mistake by withholding information from their citizens that could make the difference between life and death for many of their people.

 

XTIANGODLOKI

5:02 PM ET

March 15, 2011

Japanese culture is one thing, but Kan is incompetent

The author is very right that obfuscation is a key theme in Japanese culture. When I am in Japan, I am told that if someone asks me "how are you" I am supposed to be respond "great" even if I don't feel so great. Harmony is a big thing there and straight talk is often considered to be rude.

That said, the current Japanese PM Kan is simply incompetent. Politically speaking this is his big chance. For the last 5 decades the rightwing LDP had held power in Japan. Though DPJ has finally rose to power, its politicians clearly are not competent enough to handle Japan's politics. As the result, Hatoyama resigned as PM before his term was over, and Kan will likely to resign too. To demonstrate his leadership, Kan asked the board members of the nuke power company to gather in front of TV and publically rebuked them over the recent explosions following the earthquake. Of course, the power company does have its own share of blame but you figured that Kan would first work with the power company to secure the situation first before start blaming.