Nick Drane is a graduate student studying applied linguistics here at UMB. Although he is not of Japanese descent, he spent six years (2002 through 2008) living and working in the Fukushima prefecture before returning to Boston. His wife is from Fukushima and her parents still live there.
I asked him how he was going about getting information about the various crises happening in Japan. “Mostly my in-laws, my wife’s family. They live in Fukushima city. Their about 60 miles from the Fukushima power plant.”
Fukushima City is, according to Drane, “the first place that is really intact just outside of the tsunami area. So, they’re fine, they’re living a normal life [but] conveniences are few and far between. Gasoline is hard to come by, stores open and close sporadically, but they have electricity and phone services, so I’m able to speak with them via skype. So, that’s where I’m getting most of my information, directly from them. And, the Fukushima local radio station,” another source of local news, “is broadcasting on Ustream for free. Usually they’re not broadcasting online, but just for the purpose of informing Fukushima peoples overseas, they’re broadcasting on the net. So, I’m getting a lot of information from [the Fukushima radio station] too.”
Fukushima, Drane added, while it was not effected by the tsunami, was effected by the initial quake. “So, there’s extensive quake damage, but not flood damage.
“I worked as a teacher there – the school where I taught is severely damaged. People don’t realize that the Japanese school year starts in April,” thus, many school-openings (like that of Drane’s former school) are being delayed “several weeks due to quake damage.”
Later on in the interview, Nick discussed the Fukushima prefecture specifically (since he lived in Fukushima city and his in-laws are currently living there), and the Tohoku region in which Fukushima is located. The name “Fukushima” should sound familiar, since it was the Fukushima Daiichi plant that is one of several (especially since the April 7th 7.1 quake) having critical issues, and the most publicized nuclear catastrophe. Tohoku is “the breadbasket of Japan. The food in Tokyo is produced in Tohoku. The electricity in Tokyo is produced in Fukushima. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand about this crisis – most of the power in this region is not for the residents of Fukushima, it’s for the metropolitan area.”
Because of the negative news coming out about the Fukushima power plant and the Tohoku region, “the reputation is ruined. You ask what the effect on Japan will be, it will be the reputation of this region. No one will want to buy the food from this region. But they have no choice,” as Fukushima is (according to Drane) the main producer for food in Tokyo.
I then asked him about the press coverage of the crisis, both American and Japanese specifically. “From the point of view of my in-laws, they’re frustrated because there are so many conflicting reports.” He brought up TEPCo’s (Tokyo Electric Power Company) gaff in which they said radiation was 10,000,000 times normal, when in fact it was 10,000. “Stuff like that they’re really frustrated by.”
Drane discussed a couple things he is personally frustrated by. “The governor of the Tokyo district came out with some pretty offensive comments right after the quake happened. He said, this is punishment for the greed of the modern Japanese […] The prime minister is basically absent. He’s been absent throughout this whole thing. He’s only made a couple of public appearances, and they’ve been vanilla, non-committal statements.
“People are upset just because of the inconsistency of the coverage.” He adds, “we hear one thing yesterday and another thing today. There’s just a general confusion over the message.”
As both an applied linguistics graduate student and someone with close ties to Japan, some of the language US Media has been using in relation to the crisis has been, according to Drane, “ridiculous” and incredibly generalizing. “I read reports yesterday calling the employees staying behind at the power plant ‘samurai’ and some blogs calling them ‘kamikaze.’ To me, this is like if you refer to a courageous westerner as a ‘musketeer.’ It’s just ridiculous. […] If I tried to bring up Samurai [in Japan] in conversation, people just tend to look at me like this is so outrageous.” Drane compared what he sees as a general, dated, inaccurate description to calling me a “musketeer” or a “minuteman” if I were to do something brave.
He went on to say, “I think when disaster like this happens, armchair sociologists tend to come out of the woodwork and tend to essentialize what’s happening […] they come up with the most inadequate descriptors.” He’s annoyed by people “trying to sum up what it is to be Japanese. ‘They’re a proud people’ [they say], end of story.”
Nick Drane and his wife and friends are “starting a group of people who have ties to the Tohoku region of Japan [so they can] bring Tohoku people in the US together.” Drane and others are “thinking about ways to donate to places in Fukushima directly.” He believes that “targeted, direct donations” will be helpful.