It's March.
Spring is around the corner and the cherry blossoms are beginning to bloom. Supermarket shelves are empty of bread, milk and eggs, as well as canned goods and instant noodles--anything that would last a while and is packaged properly is gone. The stock market has collapsed and even the best of companies have seen their values cut in half. Everyone is afraid to go outside. Most of us think we will get sick, and perhaps even die.
Sound familiar? This was the scene in March of 2011 in Tokyo. At that time I think most of the city's 38 million were convinced we were facing The End of the World as We Know It. We lived in fear of the nuclear fallout from Fukushima, and the constant aftershocks from the magnitude 9.0 earthquake frayed our nerves. In the year following this life-changing event we endured 82 aftershocks over magnitude 6.0, more powerful than the 5.8 that struck Washington, D.C. and Virginia amid a lot of media attention in the same year. In total there were 5,200 aftershocks in 14 months. Japan's food supply was shut down and supermarket shelves were empty. The Japanese stock market collapsed and even the most rock-solid companies like Toyota saw 40% drops in their share prices.
If you want to say, "But this time it's different," I grant you this point because a pandemic is a more widespread threat than a "near-certain" nuclear fallout that didn't live up to our worst fears, but I believe that there are still some lessons we can learn from Japan's experience.
Lesson One: King Solomon
According to legend King Solomon requested of his wisest courtesan a magic ring: "If a sad man wears it, he would become happy and if a happy man wears it, he would become sad." The ring's inscription said: "This, too, shall pass."
March turned to April, April to May. Through most of it we lived in fear. The bright lights of Tokyo and other cities remained dark as 35% of Japan's electricity production was shut down due to the shuttering of ALL nuclear plants in the country despite the unlikelihood of lightning striking twice. We imagined a second major earthquake hitting the Hamaoka Plant Southwest of Tokyo, where prevailing winds blow towards the capital rather than out to sea as was the case with Fukushima. Every other week, as things seemed to be slowly moving towards containment at Fukushima, there would be a setback, and another leak detected. We all thought we would get radiation poisoning. We lived in fear and we lived in darkness, for the better part of two years.
Slowly, but surely we began to accept that some exposure was inevitable and we began to emerge from our shells. The long-term ramifications of higher cancer rates and disease still remain to be seen, but life slowly returned to the cities.
Life in Japan has been different since then. We've learned to save power, ditching our suits and ties for "business casual" attire in the hot summers, and wearing extra layers even to the office in winter. We maintain earthquake kits and supplies, and extra medication, as we know what supply-line disruption can look like. New waterfront development has changed dramatically to account for tsunami risk. We will one day forget these lessons, too, but for now they remain in our memories.
Lesson Two: The Golden Rule
"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." So states the Second Commandment, which has come to secularly be known around the world as "The Golden Rule."
I will never forget the evening of March 11, 2011. Hours after the disaster had struck, with all transportation lines in Tokyo offline, we all walked home together, clockwise around the Imperial Palace in the heart of Tokyo: a 3-mile-circumference centre of the spiderweb of arterial roads that lead from there to the different districts of the city. Hundreds of thousands of people walked in orderly fashion, together, as one. Outside the convenience store on the ground floor of my apartment building, I saw an enormous queue of people waiting in orderly fashion for their turn to go in and purchase necessary items. We had already been warned that with the transportation networks down that supply lines were in jeopardy. Yet instead of hoarding, everyone took just one carton of milk, one loaf of bread, one pack of eggs before ceding to the next person and continuing on their walk home.
Indeed in Japan we saw almost no hoarding whatsoever and no looting at all. We trusted in each other and in the Government to fix supply lines as soon as possible. When shelves were empty, it was not from hoarding, but rather from a supply-side disruption.
Much of the West, it seems, has seen people preparing for the apocalypse and over-stocking on supplies. People buying years' worth of toilet paper, dozens of ketchup bottles and cans of soup and leaving nothing for their neighbours despite Government assurances that there is plenty of food to go around. We could all take a page out of the Japanese experience on this one.
Ama Divers, Ise © 2020 George Nobechi
Lesson Three: Mind Matters
With a pandemic at the top of our list of concerns, our physical health is constantly on our minds. But do not neglect your mental health, which is equally as important.
The author Richard Bach wrote: "Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't."
Chances are something bad is going to happen to us, if it hasn't already: the death of a friend, a relative, the loss of income, or unemployment, the untimely destruction of a retirement nest-egg, the cancellation of an important life event, like a wedding or an award or exhibition, promises made that were not kept, even claustrophobia or cabin fever from extended isolation.
According to one study, suicide rates in evacuated areas of Fukushima increased.
(Source)
Don't neglect your mental health: spend some time outside each day, even if only in your own backyard or on your balcony. Continue or start therapy sessions with a counselor through video. Or simply call a friend if you don't have the money for such things. Meditate, practice yoga, exercise when you can and turn off the TV; especially break the cycle of watching the non-stop news channels all day. Watch the news once a day at a specific time instead. Put down the phone with its constant news alerts. Opt instead for reading engaging novels and poetry books. Listen to uplifting music or take up new hobbies or dust off old favourites.
And check in on your friends more often. They may be silently suffering and feel too embarrassed to reach out for help.
Lesson Four: To Grow You Need Roots
Back when I was still in my "wandering" days, without a place to call home back in 2015, Keith Carter and I were in Italy and he told me as we sat in the parlor of an old Tuscan villa (paraphrasing): "Creativity, like a plant, needs nurturing. Journeying all the time is good to a point, but at some stage you need to put down roots. You need roots to nourish your creativity."
Many of us have been subconsciously operating in the modern ethos of compressed time: our phones, our communication media, and our propensity to travel has us constantly on the go, receiving news in 140 character clips and 15 second videos. Until this period of postponed events and self-quarantining I can't think of the last time I had so much time to stay at home. I think it was when I was eight years old and contracted mycoplasma, a strain of bacterial pneumonia that kept me home from school for three weeks.
This week I've put together a project list and hung it on my wall where I can see it every day. Some are new photography projects that are related to my work, but others involve simple things like finally reading that book I once bought but I left sitting on the shelf, or pulling out that cookbook that I never tried any recipes from, or even learning what "transcendental meditation" is about and looking into it, even if I decide it's not for me.
I have a list of people to whom I owe "thank you letters" and e-mail replies that go back years. I even have photos of friends and their families that I promised to edit and send years ago that are sitting in the archives. There's so much that I can do. And all the while, I can learn and acquire new skills to be able to apply to my career when things pick back up again.
Boys at the Kanto Festival, Akita © 2020 George Nobechi
Lesson Five: We Still Have Agency
The final note I will leave you with is that it is very easy at this time to look at external factors and think: "woe is me" and that bad things happen to good people and you're a good person but you could not overcome the bad things that are happening.
We are still agents in this story and have something to contribute. Go out there and create or innovate. See if you can reinvent yourself and think outside of the box. Over the page jump you will see one of my new innovations. This revamped newsletter is also a new creation.
As photographers in particular, we have a unique ability to capture this era in a dynamic way. Each of us has our own vision, our own voice and we have the skills and tools to express it. Not every project needs to save the world, and not every photograph needs to express feelings of isolation or looming Armageddon. If you now have time to find renewed beauty in your everyday life, then embrace it. One thing that came out of the aftermath of Fukushima was that it defined a new era of photography in Japan, spurring contemporary artists to go out and make something new to express the feelings that welled up in our post-2011 world. Similarly, I'm excited to see what new work and new innovations emerge from our "Reset 2020."
Finally, the last lesson from Japan that can be shared with the world is that we can't go it alone. In 2011, when the tsunami-damaged Sendai Airport, lifeline to the stricken Tohoku Region reopened, it was an American forces cargo plane that landed first with troops and supplies. A great cheer went up at the sight on live TV across Japan. It became the start of "Operation Tomodachi" (Operation Friends). And Japan will never forget the help it received from the US, Taiwan, and countless other nations around the world. Yes, we may be closing our borders across the globe, but the reality is that the horse has already bolted long before we are shutting our barn doors. Our way forward through this is to cooperate and help each other.
Please stay safe and healthy.
This blog entry was showcased in our March 2020 Newsletter. For more content please subscribe by filling out this form.
March 22, 2020
Tokyo Skyline at Night © 2020 George Nobechi