Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival Read online

  It was 2004, the year Tokyo had sent its Self Defence Forces on a reconstruction mission to Iraq in Japan’s biggest deployment of ground troops since the Second World War. The dispatch was considered unconstitutional by many. Public opinion was divided and volatile. The three ‘children of Japan’ had wound up in Iraq for humanitarian reasons, there to document, or to help alleviate, the suffering in a war that troubled them. Imai, a recent high-school graduate, had sneaked across the border from Jordan in a rented taxi. His objective was to study the effects of depleted uranium on civilians. It wasn’t a well-thought-out plan. Within hours of his arrival, when his car stopped for petrol just outside the city of Fallujah, he was bundled into another vehicle by a group of militants shouting ‘Kill the Japanese’. One held a hand-grenade to his head.

  The events of 9/11 and the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq had transformed Imai from an out-of-touch video gamer living on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido into a young man vexed by some of the world’s most pressing issues. ‘When the bombing of Afghanistan started I felt very empty and useless,’ he said of the US-led invasion of that country in 2001.6 Imai had wandered the internet in search of answers to half-formed questions. He browsed topics such as the Rwandan genocide, and the possible connection between conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the scramble for coltan metal, a blackish ore used in Japan’s then world-beating mobile phones. He felt that his generation was not interested in these moral and political questions, much less so when they involved people in far-away places. Somehow, it seemed like his duty to learn more. He knew it sounded pretentious, but he wanted to catalyse and energize his generation. That is how his cyber-odyssey led him to a real-world petrol station outside Fallujah.

  For several days, Japan had been transfixed by the fate of the hostages. Parents of the three had been on television, both in Japan and in the Arab-speaking world, to plead for their children’s lives. The young people had gone to Iraq to help the country, they said. None had supported the deployment of Japanese troops. To the fury of the Japanese government, the parents even reiterated the militants’ call for Tokyo to withdraw its ground forces. For several excruciating days, the fate of the hostages hung in the balance. Only a few weeks later, Kim Sun-il, a 33-year-old South Korean missionary, was beheaded by his Iraqi capturers. The Japanese were more fortunate. After eight days, Imai and his two fellow hostages were passed into the hands of a cleric amid rumours that Tokyo had paid a ransom to secure their release. After debriefing and a medical check-up, they were flown back to Japan. It was then that the trouble really started.

  Public opinion, or at least that reflected by the media, had turned quickly. After at first rallying in sympathy, Japan’s powerful newspapers and television channels – which tended to ply the same party line – rounded on the three hostages, blaming them for ignoring foreign office warnings to avoid Iraq and for dragging Japan into a humiliating episode. The phrase jiko sekinin, meaning ‘self-responsibility’, became the stuff of the vacuous breakfast television shows, slapstick ‘current affairs programmes’ where men dressed in pork-pie hats and young starlets called tarentos (‘talents’) pondered the issues of the day with scant concession to substance or knowledge. From the media ether, the term bubbled into common parlance, muttered over sushi counters and through the smoke and background jazz of bars. The media started demanding that the three repay the government the cost of their flight home and post-kidnap medical check-up. Did the taxpayer really have to foot the bill for these hapless do-gooders? By the time Imai and his two fellow countrymen stepped onto Japanese soil, the mood was downright hostile. The former hostages emerged from the plane, heads bowed in shame. They shuffled past placards printed with angry slogans, one of which read simply, ‘You got what you deserved.’

  The reaction was difficult to fathom. Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, gave what seemed like the more rational response. ‘I’m pleased that these Japanese citizens were willing to put themselves at risk for a greater good, for a better purpose,’ he said. ‘And the Japanese people should be very proud that they have citizens willing to do that.’7 That was not how many Japanese saw it. When I caught up with him a few weeks later, Imai was still in shock at the reaction. ‘It was a huge surprise. People were saying I needed to take responsibility for my own actions. But it sounded to me as if they were saying they wished I’d died. To my mind the meaning was, “You should have died in Iraq and come back a corpse.”’ He was inundated with hate mail. ‘When I was just walking in the street in Sapporo, sometimes people would say, “Why did you waste so much taxpayers’ money?” Twice someone punched me. That’s why I became psychologically sick. I didn’t talk so much. I wasn’t friendly. It became a serious problem, like a phobia.’

  Yoichi Funabashi, my friend at the left-leaning Asahi newspaper, said the government had manipulated the discussion through a pliant media. The three young Japanese, by offering humanitarian assistance outside the framework of Japan’s official, military-led effort, had intruded onto the government’s moral high ground, he said. In their small and shambling way, they had offered an alternative to the officially sanctioned policy of helping Iraq through the work of the Self Defence Forces. The Japanese mission was presented as a reconstruction effort, bringing water and electricity to ordinary Iraqi people. If there was good to be done, the government could handle it. A close adviser to Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister who had promised George W. Bush he would get Japanese boots on Iraqi ground, confirmed Funabashi’s suspicions. ‘The families of the hostages self-destructed by appealing for the withdrawal of the Self Defence Forces,’ he told me, adding that he suspected they were Communists. He applauded the public reaction. ‘Such stern criticism reflects the growing maturity of Japanese public opinion.’

  In their naivety, the three had stumbled into the hottest foreign policy issue of the day. But there was a broader symbolism to these youngsters’ search for meaning in life and the sharp reproach they received at the hands of their elders. Years of less-than-stirring growth over the past two decades had put paid to the certainties of pre-bubble Japan. According to the academic Yoshio Sugimoto, as many as two in five young workers were now in non-regular employment, with many part of what had come to be known as the ‘working poor’.8 Non-regular workers were less likely to receive training, making it all the harder for them to break back into steady employment.

  The upending of the old model forced a whole generation – or at least those shut outside what remained of the old employment system – to seek an alternative. Many, like Ishikawa, looked for something more fulfilling than the ‘empty affluence’ of their parents’ middle-class dream. Fetching up in Iraq, as Imai had done, was a pretty drastic alternative, to be sure. Most youngsters stopped well short of that. But, in their own way, many were testing the boundaries of how to live. Some simply worked part-time, bouncing from job to job, or worked for employment agencies that dispatched them – like so many returnable packages – to the big companies that had refused to take them on as full-timers. That gave them a certain independence and time to pursue a better work–life balance. It freed them from the onerous demands of the typical large Japanese corporation. But in the bargain, they lost both long-term career prospects and a decent salary. Some even lost their identity since that had become so tightly bound up with being a member of a corporate family. Yet, outside the system, there was a life for some. Some set up businesses, though that was perhaps less common than in the west. Some worked for non-profit organizations, the numbers of which had mushroomed since the Kobe earthquake of 1995 where so many volunteers made their mark. Still others embraced ‘slow living’. They established cooperatives or organic farms or just took it easy, dropping out like modern-day hippies. In 2003 one cigarette company caught onto this new lifestyle with the slogan ‘Slow Down, Relax Up’.9 Some local authorities tapped into the trend, declaring themselves oases of gambaranai, adherents of the almost un-J
apanese philosophy of ‘don’t try too hard’, or ‘don’t stress yourself’. Many youngsters certainly weren’t trying quite as hard as their parents. They saved on rent by living at home, spending all their money on fashion, dining, foreign travel or the pursuit of hobbies. They were enjoying Japan’s affluence – while it still lasted.

  Then there were people like Noriaki Imai. I hadn’t seen him for eight years. I wondered what had happened to him since his ordeal in Iraq and his painful homecoming. Quite coincidentally, I discovered that, now twenty-six, he had become one of the social entrepreneurs backed by ETIC, Ishikawa’s organization. He was running a non-profit group to help disadvantaged children in Japan’s second city of Osaka. I arranged to meet him in the spring of 2012, a few days after the first anniversary of the tsunami. I took an early-morning bullet train from Tokyo. Salarymen were drinking beer with their breakfast, going over papers or just sleeping as we sped past the industrial corridor that links Japan’s two biggest conurbations.

  Osaka had a completely different feel from Tokyo. It was grittier, more industrial, more casual. Young people dressed a little punkier than in the capital. People even stood on the opposite side of the escalator. Maybe it was the Manchester of Japan. Osaka had become the focus of some attention of late because it had elected a young mayor, Toru Hashimoto, who was making waves nationally. A brash politician and son of a yakuza gangster, Hashimoto – in the style of Junichiro Koizumi – had ridden the anti-political wave to become one of the country’s most talked-about politicians. Recently, he had opposed the restarting of a nuclear plant in a nearby town, claiming that the government was ignoring safety. He had won notoriety for many other things: enforcing the early closing of nightclubs, insisting the national anthem was sung in schools and cutting budgets by firing bureaucrats. In one speech, later to haunt him, he had said Japan needed leadership ‘strong enough to be called a dictatorship’ to get out of its current funk.10 His popularity even survived revelations in a weekly magazine that he had had an affair with a woman whom he got to dress up as a flight attendant during sex.11 Some people thought he was dangerous, others were energized by what they saw as his vigour. Hashimoto was a one-man Tea Party. His arrival on the scene was another sign of youthful impatience with the status quo.

  I met Imai at an izakaya, a Japanese pub where often high-quality food is served with sake, shochu spirit, beer and wine. The lighting was moody with artful use of spotlights. Jazz was playing over the speakers and, through the wooden partitions that separated the private rooms, there flowed the sound of youthful chatter lubricated by alcohol. We pressed the buzzer on our table and ordered crab, some sashimi, grilled mushrooms, a little abalone hot pot and a couple of ice-cold draught beers. As we waited for the food, Imai told me that he had been depressed for years after his return from Iraq. He felt as though his mission to speak up for Iraqi children had ended in fiasco. The hostile reaction in Japan was worse than the kidnapping ordeal itself, he said. ‘I was only kidnapped for nine days. But during those years in Japan, sometimes I felt like I wanted to die.’ He left his home town of Sapporo to study at the other end of the country, at an international university in the southern city of Oita. He kept mainly to himself. ‘Even four or five years after [Iraq] some people recognized my face,’ he said. ‘Not so much now. I’m nearly free.’ He fell silent for a bit. ‘Actually I don’t care,’ he went on. ‘This is a stressed-out society. Many people simply wanted to let off steam.’

  Looking back he had no regrets. ‘I became psychologically very strong and because of that I do my non-profit work.’ By his fourth year of university he felt better. He travelled to Zambia with a friend who was helping to build a school. He was struck by the optimism. ‘Compared to Japan I felt they had so much hope for their country. A fifth of the population is infected with HIV and the average life expectancy is just forty-six. But I sensed hope in their eyes. I came back to Japan and got on the train and everyone looked so gloomy. Here, younger people are under a lot of pressure. I felt I should do something for young kids.’

  Like Ishikawa, he had arrived via a detour, in his case selling pork and beef for a small trading company. ‘Buy cheap, sell expensive,’ he smirked. He quit in 2012 to devote himself full-time to mentoring troubled children. At one underprivileged high school he met a boy who had lived with three different fathers and whose mother had a multiple-personality disorder. The family was on income support and the boy sometimes worked at night to earn extra money. Imai was shocked things could be so bad for people in a country he still thought of as affluent. ‘These kids don’t have any self-confidence. They don’t feel as though they have a future.’ Secretly he wondered if they might not be right. ‘The population is shrinking. Poverty among young people is rising. For people with a good education, it’s invisible. But it’s a big problem. Living has become too hard.’

  I explained Furuichi’s theory that what youngsters had lost in security they had gained in freedom. At least one survey seemed to show they had never been happier, I said. ‘The future will get worse, so now is the happiest moment,’ Imai replied after giving it some thought, pleased at his own logic. ‘Some young people do feel like that. But it’s kind of fake. Feeling happy is just for now. The future is dark.’ He too worried that Japan might be living on borrowed time, slumbering on the financial cushion built up during the economic boom. How could an economy survive with so much debt, he asked? One day it had to explode, surely. ‘I don’t know when this bankruptcy will happen. Maybe we’ll be OK for three years or five years. But ten years? I don’t know.’

  Imai doubted the younger generation’s ability to bring about positive change. He had a sneaking regard for Hashimoto’s strong convictions, though he didn’t find the actual content of his ideas appealing. (Hashimoto’s popularity later imploded after he made light of the use of sex slaves by Japan’s army during the war.) Apathy was the default position, Imai said. ‘So many of them are on Facebook or Twitter. They seem to care about the Japanese future, but do they really act for Japanese policy, to change the national situation? I cannot really see it.’

  About the time we met, the anti-nuclear movement had gathered some momentum. Big crowds, including some young people, had taken to congregating outside the prime minister’s office to demand an end to nuclear power. Imai doubted it would go far. ‘Just a few people are moving, acting. But I don’t think it’s having much impact,’ he said. ‘I want to become effective at changing Japanese policies. That’s why I am doing my non-profit work. In a few years, I would like to make suggestions to the national government.’ He paused, as if digesting the implications of all he had said, looking for a way to sum it up. ‘I don’t know what they should call my generation,’ he said finally. ‘Maybe the tough generation. Certainly not the happy generation.’

  11

  From Behind the Screen

  Natsuo Kirino does not like to be called a crime writer. There is plenty of crime in her novels, but few sleuths and almost no trail of whodunit. Instead, there is sociological and psychological mining as she drills into Japan’s more rancid layers in the years after the collapse of the economic bubble. There she discovers seams of poverty, violence, rage and depravity in a society that mostly sees itself as refined and orderly. Above all, she writes about how women get by in a country where they are too often treated as second-class citizens both in the home and at work. Sometimes the survival mechanisms her fictional heroines adopt are extreme.

  In Out, a book about working-class women toiling the nightshift in a grimy boxed-lunch factory, Yayoi strangles her useless and violent husband to death. Driven to desperation she enlists three female co-workers to help her cut up, and then dispose of, the corpse. In a macabre plot development, the women soon branch out into business, helping local yakuza gangsters to spirit away evidence of their gangland slayings. The scene in which the women chop up Yayoi’s husband reads as much like a how-to manual as a dispassionate description. Kirino spar
es little detail:

  Next she used her knife to cut around the hip joints. Watching the blade slip through the layers of yellow fat, she heard Yoshie mutter that it looked ‘exactly like a broiler’. When she reached bone, she braced her foot on top of Kenji’s leg and began sawing the femur in just the same way as one would cut through a log.

  In a later novel, Tokyo Island, Kiyoko, a 43-year-old housewife, is washed up on an island with her husband when their cruise ship sinks. Kiyoko adapts to hardship more easily than her hapless husband, who soon perishes. Her resourcefulness becomes more necessary when she discovers that she is the lone female on the island along with more than two dozen Japanese and Chinese men around half her age. She skilfully plays one man against another to ensure her survival and even attempts to start a religion with herself at its centre. The book was inspired by the true story of Kazuko Higa, who found herself stranded on Anatahan island in the Marianas group with nearly thirty men at the end of the Second World War. The men refused to believe the war was over and continued to live a primitive existence. Higa escaped from the island in 1950. Kirino’s novel, which was later turned into a film, won critical acclaim for its exploration of group dynamics and a plot in which an ordinary woman was transformed into a sort of island goddess. ‘She controls the group through sex,’ Kirino told me matter-of-factly. ‘So much happens, but although the leaders constantly change, in the end she survives.’