Earthquake and Cultural Values
16 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
in Japan News, U.S. and Japan Tags: ethics, Japan cultural values, Japan Earthquake, natural disaster, news, tsunami
I’ve been terrible about keeping this blog up to date, especially after all of the devastation with the tsunami and earthquakes in Japan. It’s almost surreal watching the news videos of the tsunami swallowing whole cities and the earthquake destroying buildings and homes almost effortlessly. My dream has always been to travel to Japan, and it breaks my heart that it will never be the same again.
One story I found particularly interesting among all the coverage of the past few weeks was one of my fellow classmate’s observations about the cultural values of Japan, post-natural disaster (http://www.newsy.com/videos/why-is-there-no-looting-in-japan). Her story focuses on how despite all the destruction, the people were helping each other by sharing their food, cleaning up fallen stores and essentially not stealing or looting, despite how easy it would be. It touched my heart in one clip showing a Japanese man offering his meager pot of soup to one of the American reporters talking to him, smiling humbly and persistently offering a bowl.
It made me wonder if the New Madrid fault line here in Missouri were to suddenly trigger an earthquake, would Americans do the same? The culture of the Mid-West is much different from anywhere in the US, stereotypically portrayed as honest, down-to-earth people who will wave you through the intersection even if they clearly stopped first (I won’t even get into this story, since it drives the Southern girl in my insane!). But if we were to wake up tomorrow and everything was destroyed, what would happen? Sadly, I imagine a “everyone for themselves” type of attitude, especially in a college town like Columbia. I imagine chaos well before the City could restore order. I imagine nothing like what I saw in the Newsy video.
This realization makes me want to fight even harder to travel to Japan one day, to always keep this image in the back of my mind when I interact with people or when someone asks for help. I want to embody this miraculous part of their culture, if not to respect the tradition, but to carry on and hopefully even inspire a similar sense of camaraderie among American people. If there’s one thing we can learn from this tragedy, it’s that money isn’t the answer for quick recovery. It’s unity and tolerance that will help us immediately, and humbleness and strength of will that will carry us forward to the future.
