Japan Takes Nuclear Crisis in Stride

The Super Hidachi Limited Express No. 53 headed north from Tokyo on Friday night to the heart of Japan’s nuclear country, the first run since the line was halted a day earlier in the wake of the country’s most serious nuclear accident.

The train was packed, and most passengers didn’t seem particularly interested in the headlines that blared from every major evening paper about the potentially lethal nuclear reaction that had occurred near their homes. Passengers seemed more intent on their manga, the comic books popular with young and old.

“Of course I have fear, but there is no alternate energy if we stop nuclear power,” said Hidenori Takagi, 22, a law student returning to his home about 10 miles from the contaminated nuclear fuel processing plant. “If I keep thinking the worst, there’d be no end to my worries.”

Indeed, the most common reaction among many interviewed Friday in Japan’s capital was more shoganai--”It cannot be helped”--than panic.

The complacency in the capital of this nation, which depends on nuclear power for 30% of its electrical energy, stood in marked contrast to the reaction in the United States, where there was much anxiety about a possible catastrophe in the making. Some U.S. executives feared that their Tokyo-based expatriates might have been exposed to radiation and would need help getting on a flight out of Tokyo amid an imagined mass exodus by the Japanese: One U.S. firm immediately booked a return ticket for an executive visiting Tokyo.

But there was hardly any sign of flight among Japanese in the capital.

“The only people I’ve heard talk about it are gaijin [foreigners],” said Chris Mangelsdorf, an American engineer at a U.S. semiconductor firm that employs a mostly Japanese staff of about 80 workers. “The Japanese just go about their day as if nothing had happened. Do they think that because they’re outside [the area temporarily cordoned off by the government] that they’re safe?”

On the other hand, Mangelsdorf noted, if a heavy rain or snowstorm is forecast, “the office is buzzing, people cluster anxiously around the windows fretting over their commute and listening to the radio for the latest detail.”

Sure, most Japanese were at least somewhat concerned about news that the area outside a contaminated nuclear fuel processing plant in Tokaimura, about 80 miles northeast of here, had recorded radiation 4,000 times higher than normal levels just after the accident. And they griped that the government had been slow in managing the crisis and implementing safety precautions that could have averted the bungled fuel-loading operation that sparked the crisis.

At her mother’s urging, Hiroko Numata fled with her 4-year-old son on the first train from her home in Mito, about seven miles from the fuel processing plant, to her parents’ house in Tokyo. Apparently, few others had the same idea: The train arriving from the region Friday was less crowded than usual.

“There wasn’t a tense feeling” after the government announced Friday that residents near the plant could leave their homes, Numata said. “People were driving cars and walking around the town.”

Even her husband stayed put: He had to teach after-school cram classes.

Katsuhisa Kobayashi, 57, who had been in South Korea on a three-day business trip, said he called home near the plant every few hours to see how his wife and mother were doing while the area was cordoned off. Tests showed that they suffered no radiation poisoning.

Is he worried? He laughed. “No. My place is six miles away.” And what about the wind, which was blowing south, or possible contamination of the water supply? “We’ll just drink beer, shochu [Japanese liquor] and sake,” he quipped.

For the most part, residents said they wouldn’t--or couldn’t--do much to change the situation. This deep-seated conformity and complacency may be one reason why more hasn’t been done to tighten up Japan’s accident-prone nuclear industry, which has suffered several serious accidents during the past few years.

Changing elected officials isn’t the answer, said bureaucrat Kozuimi Kasunori, who spends weekdays in Tokyo and then returns to his home about 10 miles from the JCO Co. uranium-processing plant.

“So we have to be patient,” he said. “As a Japanese, I live in the safest country in the world [in terms of crime], so a little patience is necessary.”

Japan has a history of anxiety toward nuclear radiation issues because it was the target of two atomic bombs dropped by U.S. forces in 1945 near the end of World War II. The country has an active movement against nuclear weapons but only small opposition to nuclear power.

There have been some local complaints and lawsuits against the nuclear power industry in the past. One small town gained fame for doing the unheard of: vetoing construction of a nuclear plant. But more typically, protests amounted to more whimper than bang. So too with the inertia in tackling any number of other social problems, from schoolgirl prostitution to pornography.

With nuclear power in particular, many residents seemed to rather accept that hazards are a necessary evil when it comes to producing nuclear power, than insist through protests, campaigns and elections that strict controls be enacted and enforced.

“Electricity is more important than danger,” said Shigehiro Yokoyama, who cleans the trains when they arrive in Tokyo’s Ueno Station.

Retiree Shinichi Kumagai, 63, railed about how terrible and scary the nuclear accident had been, as he ate sushi and downed a beer. Would electing different leaders change anything? he is asked. “People don’t consider elections as judgment day, but rather they are more like popularity contests.”

The retired telegraph company worker blamed what he branded the “senility of peace.” Japanese have become complacent because “there are no disturbances in life. You can get whatever you want pretty easily. People including myself should be thinking of changing the government seriously, but I myself may be too content with my lifestyle.”

In East Timor, for example, Japan contributes only money for international peacekeeping forces and doesn’t participate in the risky operation, he said. The U.N. sent peacekeepers to East Timor last month after the territory’s vote in August for independence from Indonesia sparked killings by anti-independence militias.

Nevertheless, Kumagai believes that Japan is missing something.

“The human being is an animal too, and animals should fight for something and gain something,” he said. “Unlike people in other countries, Japanese are not fighting for anything.”