With this Letter to the Editor below, I begin my first blog. My travels began many years before, from Ohio to Old Scotland, my much-loved land of kippers and marmalade, for a year studying geology at red-robed 15th cen. St. Andrews Univ. on the North Sea. My wanderings later took me to Taiwan/Hongkong for a unique 2 year-introduction to that part of the northeast Asian family. And eventually to Japan, the land of sushi, for 20 years of work in human rights. And now full circle, thanks to loved ones, I am most happily and gratefully settled here in God's own Nova Scotia, Canada, New Scotland, enjoying this morning's breakfast with some of a Scottish neighbor's ‘Dark Whiskey Marmalade’. Though half a world and years away from my Northeast Asia, she too is close to my heart and life-style, as I tend my Japanese Antique and Woodblock Print Gallery and, on occasion, make sushi. And so, if you stumble on this blog, I hope you can find some flavours you enjoy--salty or sweet, east or west, sushi or marmalade--among these rambling notes of this wandering monk.
Shocking Canadian lessons from Japan’s Disaster
I have personally known the anxiety the Japanese live with daily, the fear of an impending and inevitable earthquake under your feet, wondering what to do if “The Big One” happens this very moment....
Now it has happened. And since 7:00 AM March 11, when my dog woke me up suddenly here far away in Nova Scotia as if himself sensing the earthquake, I have watched with awe at the capacity of the Japanese people to deal with such a crisis on their vulnerable islands, my home for 20 years.
After leaving Japan, it took me a few years to overcome my acquired fear of Japan’s quakes and then to relax in the safety and beauty of living in Canada, in western Nova Scotia on the shores of St. Mary's Bay.
Those Japanese who survived the earthquake and tsunami are now experiencing unique and even more disturbing types of after-shocks---man-made ones both immoral and political. These after-shocks are the on-going revelations of lies and coverups by their government about the true dangers of Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors, specifically regarding the Fukushima disaster (e.g. failed tests just weeks before the quake--hidden, uncorrected) and its real impact on people’s health.
The 126 million human beings who populate Japan today have been culturally conditioned to believe and obey their government. And Japan’s post-war political leaders have, by and large, taken full advantage of this. These politicians follow a similar philosophy to that of the founder of the U.S. Neo-Con Movement, Leo Strauss of the Univ. of Chicago, who taught that the need for perpetual deception of a nation’s people by its leaders is crucial because citizens need to be led by powerful rulers to tell them what is good for them.
Japan’s disaster has shocked my peaceful Nova Scotia life, awakening in me new fears based on two facts that I had so far chosen to ignore: First, I, along with 150,000 other citizens, live within 80 km. of the old, ailing Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, straight across the beautiful Bay of Fundy, well within the death or disfigurement zone both of Chernobyl and--when the truth be finally told--of Fukushima.
Secondly, Prime Minister Harper, just 12 hours before Linda Keen was scheduled to appear before a Commons committee in Ottawa, fired and banished Ms. Keen, the head of Canada’s nuclear safety watchdog, for refusing to start up a nuclear reactor she deemed unsafe.
Suddenly Japan doesn’t seem so distant and my Canada doesn’t seem so safe. And I’m wondering---as the Japanese are wondering about their leaders---who the Harper government is actually servicing by such actions as firing my nuclear watchdog? Certainly not you and me who elected them in our democratic system, a democracy which itself suddenly doesn’t seem so secure.
Once again as in my Japan days, I feel the ground shifting under my feet. And I don’t like it one bit.
japanesewoodblockprints.ca
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