Though some Japanese are aware of the risk of radiation, they still send their own children to school and have them exposed. They make huge lists of excuses why they don’t evacuate, such as financial reason, ethical reason, cultural reason etc.. but none of them is enough to let their children killed. How do they justify themselves to stay sane ?
To understand their strange behavior, we need to understand their mentality back-ground.
Here, I’d like to explain why and how parents keep their children exposed in hotspots around Kanto area such as Chiba or Tokyo.
-Multiple standard of Japanese
Though Japan is thought to be a country of technology, Japanese is actually the people of emotion.
To justify their irrational behavior, they invented incoherent ethics and accepted variety of religions. Samurai cord, Buddhism, Shinto they all contradict each other. They even become Christian on every 12/24.
They take the “right” ethics at the “right” time and place. This is Japanese trait. (Cf. “Doublethink” in 1984 of George Orwell.)
About 90% of the people still believe Japanese government or don’t even think about radiation. 10% of the people are collecting information on the internet and they have been the victims of the 90%. The 10% blame mass media and government for their manipulation and concealment.
However, they already have plenty of information. Also, even if mass media and the government conceal everything, everyone saw 4 reactors exploded. In Chernobyl, it was only 1.
10% of the people are wanting “the last push from media or government” to help them make up their mind to evacuate, also, they say if media and the government report honestly, the 90% of the people will finally be aware of danger. However, it can be criticized to be “spoiled”. It’s their own lives. They must take all the responsibility.
Now the 10% is also becoming assailant for their own children not being able to make up their mind.
-10% remaining in hotspots with their children
After the first movement of evacuation in the summer of 2011, now most of the people remaining in Fukushima are the 90%. From Tokyo area, some of the 10% have already evacuated to western Japan too. However, some of the 10% are still remaning in Tokyo area or North Japan, and they are on the fence for about a year.
Actually, they don’t do everything to protect their children. Everything is on the side.
They blame schools not to do everything to save their students. Schools are still serving contaminated food for school lunch, even milk, have PE classes outside and even have kids search for hotspots around the school buildings. However, it’s been longer than a year. Schools don’t protect children, they should know that by now. They must know there is no incentive for school staff to work out of their manual.
The solution is obvious, which is not to let their children go to school, yet they keep complaining instead of acting.
They (10%) actually want the 90% to help them justify themselves not to take any action.
They want to be convinced by people more ignorant then themselves.
As the result, they take multiple standards. They tend to think like below..
Que sera sera (Tomorrow never knows)
Though they don’t evacuate being worried about house mortgage or car loan, they become Que sera sera all of a sudden, which is “Radiation may affect their future, but don’t know what will happen actually. Let’s stay optimistic.”. Actually, they are not optimistic. This only distracts themselves for a few minutes.
Stress-phobia
Though they pressure their own children to go to classy university or Toyota, they start hesitating “to stress” their children by talking about radiation. They suddenly think it would be too stressful for children to force them to take care about radiation.
Training
Ignoring the fact that 1 million people died in Chernobyl, they suddenly think being able to live in radioactive environment without worrying about the health risk is necessary. Instead of making a hard decision to evacuate, they impose their own children to live in the contaminated world. They even think being exposed to low level of radiation is good to make children used to the new world physically, and mentally. Especially old people and teachers tend to take this mentality and stop making effort to prevent children from being exposed.
-Think in short term
The situation gets worse when it comes to “the time scale”. Sometimes they say they don’t evacuate because they inherited the land from their ancestors, for 500 years long. They also say they can’t live longer than 1 year if they go abroad. However, they have their children call in sick on a windy day. They are content with themselves to think as if they saved their children not to let go out when the radioactive dust is flying in the air, but do not think about what to do next year. Obviously, the radiation level won’t change next year, but they don’t (try not to) think they have to do it next year, next next year, and almost forever. They only think in short run when it comes to radiation and their children.
-Compromise with 90%
By taking multiple standard, Japanese totally changed their attitude toward America after WWW2.
In the same way, the 90% and 10% are actually co-existing. Logically, 10% knows 90% is killing them, but because they don’t want to hurt each other, they take “oblivion” and victimize their own children instead.
To homogenize the society, they got unbalanced diversity inside of themselves instead. There is no religious conflict or civil war, Japanese society is optimized for mass production and mass consumption, but they have multiple standards internally. They can’t decide anything by themselves. This is one of the reasons why Japanese don’t get mad at their government like other countries would do.
-Children as social status
This is true that some of the parents don’t love their children either. Especially in eastern asian countries , social pressure means a lot, to make current generation live like their parental generation as well.
In their parental generation of 1950~1960, second industry was rising. Major part of the people worked as engineers after graduation from college or high school. Because the economy wasn’t fully knowledge-based, employment rate of women was low. Marriage was a status for women and also, men showed off their financial power by owing a family. Women were to marry in their early 20s, men were to marry in mid/late 20s. In their age, real estate was appreciating, house and land were good investment too. Because the economy was growing as well, they are having a stable retirement life.
Their children generation is living in the downward economy. Though the reason why the economy grew up in their age was not because of the high marriage rate, parental generation pressure their children to marry as well. Now the economy is knowledge-based. Women therefore want to marry in late 20s and men want to marry in 30s. The decreasing employment rate is also making women want to marry strongly.
For these social reasons, a lot of the young people married. For biological reasons and social reasons, they had babies. Therefore some of their marriages are not based on love or affection, based on financial and social reasons. Their babies are not something to genuinely love, they are token of marriage contract. This is making some parents reluctant to save their own children too.
-Frustration
Their rational part knows that they are slowly killing their own children. It frustrates them. As the result,
millions of the critics appeared on the internet. To alleviate their sense of guilty, they slash the government and mass media. It sometimes leads them to fanatically support a certain politician or journalist.
In Osaka, Hashimoto is rising as a new Japanese fascist. He’s collaborating with Ishihara, Tokyo governor, who is totally a pro-nuke. The fascists are using anti-nuke movement to obtain the support of angry 10%, but they are actually fake. Fanatic support is giving power to dangerous side.
However, it doesn’t matter because they have multiple standard.
Protesting against the government is actually fun. Government doesn’t verbally hurt them like their mother-in-law and can feel a sense of unity with other members of 10%.They are frustrated and angry, but don’t do so much for their children.
-As sacrifice
Japanese try to convince themselves instead of expressing themselves. Sometimes they even oppress their own feeling and do suicidal attempt. Now children are neglected like their feelings are oppressed.
Children are now killed by the adults for the sacrifice of social stability.
Iori Mochizuki