The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 11 | Issue 52 | Number 2 | Article ID 4053 | Dec 27, 2013

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Systems of Irresponsibility and Japan’s Internal Colony　無責任の体型と日本の内国植民地

Nathan Hopson

In the wake of the March 11, 2011 earthquake,tsunami, and nuclear disaster, much has beensaid about the character of Japan, andespecially about Tōhoku and its people. In theearly weeks and months, the exceptionally goodbehavior of an overwhelming majority ofJapanese in the face of a disaster of almostunthinkable magnitude was the object of muchadmiration. Especially in the foreign press,mixed in with cringe-inducing references to the"Fukushima 50" as "nuclear samurai"-ifanything, "kamikaze" would have been themore appropriate image-the tropes of "orderly"and "law-abiding" Japanese and "stoic"residents of Tōhoku were repeated frequentlyeven by scholars whose careers are mostly builtaround combatting sloppy generalizations.Diverse voices from around the world,including those of Chinese netizens-more oftencited as a bastion of virulent anti-Japanesesentiment-were joined in approbation.Sympathy and aid poured in from around theworld, and the domestic media proudly relayedthis news to their Japanese audiences.

Fig. 1: The "Fukushima 50" as "nuclearsamurai"

It was clear immediately after the earthquakeand tsunami, however, that very few specific,actionable ideas about how to rebuild wereforthcoming, a problem exacerbated byconfirmation of reactor meltdowns andradiation leaks. Faced with the enormity of the3/11 catastrophe, many pundits and observers

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simply reheated pet theories and repeated oldideas. The immediate aftermath of disaster isoften an opportunity to repeat long-held beliefsor vague platitudes in the hope that theyremain applicable and will find new ears, andthe days after of March 11 were no exception.Old attitudes are comforting and hard toabandon; when our beliefs are shown to beineffective or obsolete it is quite common torespond by urging that their failure is theresult of insufficient application of these beliefsrather than any defect therein: "If it didn'twork, do it more until it does." A smattering ofnew ideas may quickly appear, but these areusually either shouted down or ignored. And inmany cases, these apparently new ideas areactually old ideas that had simply remainedunvoiced or unheard prior to the crisis. Newideas-at least the acceptance of new ideas-tendto come later if at all; neither philosophical nordiscursive change occur as fast as the pace ofevents.

Some saw in March 11 a chance for Japan tomake another new beginning, though thesedeclarations were almost entirely devoid ofspecif ics. The trope of "overcoming"(modernity, the West, etc.) was resurrected bytalking heads proclaiming that Japan hadentered a new era. Amongst those who saw thechance for a new beginning, some offeredhistorical precedent and analogy to prove theirpoint. Comparisons were made with pastdisasters, most often the 1923 earthquake thatdevastated the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitanarea or the physical and mental deprivation anddesolation after Japan's surrender in August1945. If the latter comparison was intended toexpress hope that out of tragedy could come anew and positive beginning, the former wasmore ambiguous. 1923 is remembered less as amoment of renewal than as one of disasterfollowed by missed opportunities for rebuilding.Analogies to 1923 and 1945 came from acrossthe political spectrum, and therefore gaveexpression to diverse political agendaspredating March 2011. Take, for example, then-

governor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintarō. Ishihara,known for his hardline nationalism andinflammatory comments, was, in this sense atleast, always an odd fit for Tokyo.2 He madethis exceptionally clear when he attributed theMarch 11 earthquake to "divine retribution"against a country and a people that had losttheir way, drowning in egoism and hedonism-acomment made only stranger by the fact thatthe governor of Tokyo seemed to be implyingthat Fukushima was a den of self-absorbeddebauchery . Th is was not , I sh iharaemphasized, Japan's true identity. Rather, itwas imperative that Japan "use the tsunami towash away egoism, to wash away the manyyears of crud built up on the hearts of theJapanese." Ishihara later (uncharacteristically)retracted this comment in the face of massivepublic outrage, but only long enough to turn itinto an entire book published later the sameyear.3 As governor of Japan's social, political,and economic capital, after 3/11 Ishiharacontinued to bemoan the social and moraldisintegration wrought by postwar economicgrowth, arguing that this catastrophe was thelong-awaited opportunity to escape from thepostwar régime.

Fig. 2: Ishihara Shintarō retracting hisremark that the 3/11 tsunami was "divineretribution"

Much of the discourse in the monthsimmediately following March 11 included an

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appeal to super-individual sources of value. ForIshihara it was the negative invocation of evil"egoism" to urge a return to collectivist values.His stance was unusual mostly in its poorwording-more than a touch ironic for such adecorated wordsmith. Concepts l ike"communality" were evoked both to mourn thegeneral loss thereof in Japanese society and toadmire the retention thereof in Tōhoku,backward seat of traditional culture and values.The common thread in these arguments wasthat both social ties and mores, and alsogovernment leadership, needed to bestrengthened. Disaster was "nationalized" bymany observers, and its victims madeexemplars of core Japanese values-whether asbearers of the national torch of Japanesecultural excellence or as the keepers of asacred flame burned low to embers amidst thegusting winds of modernization, globalization,and change.

In 1970, the US-Japan security treaty (Anpo)was renewed for a second time, signaling thefailure of progressive, antistate protest andorgan iza t ion and br ing ing s tudentdemonstrations to a close. This was also theyear of the Osaka Expo, which echoed the 1964Tokyo Olympics' message that Japan had notonly recovered politically and economicallyfrom defeat, but was once again a privilegedstar amongst the developed nations of theworld. By the end of the 1960s, Japan washome to a "well-off majority" increasinglywilling to pursue economic growth and to stayout of politics. In exchange for depoliticizingsociety, middle-class Japanese were promisedeconomic wealth and fast, stable growth. Bythe end of the millennium, the disintegration ofthe "bubble economy" and Japan's persistentfailure to rekindle economic growth had erodedconfidence in this model. In the previous threedecades, the strength of the post-1970 socialcontract that historian Oguma Eiji calls the"1970 paradigm," was based on the existenceof a stable, well-off middle-class.4 The oft-citedpolls indicating that nine of ten Japanese

considered themselves "middle-class" duringsubsequent decades are evidence of, and a keycondition for, the paradigm's success.5 Theparadigm was fraught and questioned from theoutset. After all, it was in the 1970s thatproblems of environmental pollution anddegradation, gender, minorities-ethnic Koreansand Chinese, mostly-living in Japan andessentially indistinct from "Japanese," andother issues of majority-minority powerimbalances and discrimination were alsobrought to the forefront, not infrequently bythe victims themselves. Nevertheless, overall,nonpolitical stances (nonpori) dominated-notleast because they were amply rewardedeconomically.

The obverse of the 1970 paradigm was oftenexpressed in anti-modern, anti-science, and/oranti-industrial terms. In the 1970s and 1980s,critical attitudes toward contemporarymainstream socioeconomic culture often fed aninterest in ecology, and with it a revaluation ofpremodern or non-modern cultures, includingJapan's own.6 In any case, after 3/11, thismarginal thread was revived in anti-nuclearproclamations and demonstrations. Nuclearpower was emblematic of scientific, rationaleconomic progress, and the postwar economicorder. Conveniently, there were alreadyestablished critiques of both that could bequickly and effectively mobilized when mattersat Fukushima Daiichi went sideways. Fromthere, it was but a step toward the anti-modern,anti - (Western) civi l izat ion and anti -mono the i s t i c s t ance expressed bycommentators including religion scholarNakazawa Shin'ichi and philosopher UmeharaTakeshi .7 It bears repeating that these are notnew ideas, but the adaptation of existingdogmas and creeds to new evidence.

System of Irresponsibility

Among the many ideas about Japan and aboutTōhoku that resurfaced after 3/11, two deservespecial attention. One is philosopher and critic

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Maruyama Masao's "system of irresponsibility."In the first years after Japan's surrender,Maruyama diagnosed the wartime system as acomplex "system of irresponsibility," in which"proximity to the ultimate value," i.e. theimperial institution and person, was themeasure of political legitimacy and moralauthority. The emperor, state, and society werecoterminous, meaning that affairs of state wereascribed ultimate value and infallibility, andsociety was the undifferentiated vehiclethrough which affairs of state were to becarr ied out . Mora l i ty emanated outconcentrically from the emperor. This was asystem without personal accountability, noreven the awareness of personal accountability,Maruyama argued.8 Whether Maruyama'ssweeping generalizations are accurate or not isbeside the point. His argument-that aformalized, regularized social system devoid ofpersonal accountability was a root cause ofJapan's long and destructive war and themultitude of atrocities committed during itscourse-has been applied both to Tepco's abjectfailure to prevent or stave off nuclear meltdownand to the inability of the behemoth utility andJapanese government and regulators to handlethe outcome of this failure.

The denials, cover ups, and generally grossmishandling of the nuclear disaster atFukushima Daiichi by both Tepco andsuccessive Japanese regimes have been calledsymptomatic of "everything that is wrongwith… Japan: cronyism, collusion…, corruption,weak regulation." Equally accurate, and evenmore damningly, the wartime specter ofMaruyama's "system of irresponsibility" hasbeen raised by more than one observer.9

Despite full awareness of the possibility ofprecisely the sort of catastrophe that occurredin March 2011, Tepco failed outright to takeany preventative steps. Following themeltdown, the company attempted to cover upthe scale of the disaster. More than two yearslater, the fiasco lumbers on, with tens ofthousands still displaced, clean up proceeding

at a snail's pace, radioactive pollutionworsening daily, and no end in sight. Despitethe worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl,one that released terabecquerels of radiationinto the environment, not a single indictmenthas been made at any level, and not a singlepolitician has been (directly) forced to resign.With hundreds of metric tons of radiated waterseeping daily into the ocean and groundwaterfrom leaky tanks, and total radioactive pollutionmeasured in units so large as to defycomprehension, Tepco limps along and thegovernment continues to promote Japanesenuclear power abroad as "safe," not to mentioneco-friendly, and cost-efficient despite theongoing cavalcade of catastrophic failures atFukushima Daiichi. "Each step Tepco takesseems only to produce new problems," andnowhere has the question of responsibility beensufficiently addressed.10 The fury of survivorsthat was seen in the first months after 3/11yielded almost nothing.11 Beyond the ritualremoval of Tepco's CEO and some populistmedia outrage, there has been little attempt toaddress the issue of human responsibility. Andas for the company itself, Tepco has made amockery of the concept of responsibilitythrough constant repetition of the word"sōteigai" to describe its every failure. Theword is an interesting one, denoting something"unpredictable," even when the company's owninternal documents made precisely thepredictions whose possibility is being denied.12

It is a well-chosen mantra for a well-oiledsystem of irresponsibility.

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Fig. 3: One of many books to criticizeTepco's repeated use of "sōteigai"

Tōhoku: Japan's Internal Colony

The second concept of note describes Tōhokuin its relationship to the Japanese nation-state.Historians have argued for decades thatTōhoku is Japan's "internal" or "domesticc o l o n y , " a n d t h a t t h e o s t e n s i b l e"backwardness" of the Northeast resulted frompolicy decisions by the government duringJapan's rush to modernize after the 1868 Meijicoup d'état. The exploitative character ofregional development in the Northeast wasalready recognized in the late nineteenthcentury. Though the 1881-1890 rush to lay railin Tōhoku was welcomed as the path, literallyand figuratively, to civilization and progress, afew years after the 1891 completion of theTōhoku Main Line, Nitobe Inazō bitterlydescribed the railroad as a giant "straw,"bleeding rural Japan dry to feed the hungrycities.13 Hara Katsurō's 1920 English-languagesurvey of Japanese history, the first penned bya Japanese author, offered this analysis:

The principal cause of the retardation of

progress in [Tōhoku] lies… in the fact that it isa comparatively recently exploited part of theEmpire. Since the beginning of historic times,the Japanese have pushed their settlementsmore and more toward the north, so that thepopulation in those regions has grown denserand denser. If this process had continued withthe same vigour until today, the northernprovinces might have become far morepopulous, civilised, and prosperous, than wesee them now. Unfortunately for theNorth[east], however, just at the most criticaltime in its development, the attention of thenation was compelled to turn from innercolonisation to foreign relations.14

In the early postwar years, influential historianIshimoda Shō described Tōhoku as a bleak,"backward periphery ruled by the oldest formof feudalism" and nothing more than "acolony… of the center."15 Nitobe, Hara, andIshimoda were all born in Tōhoku, so it isperhaps not difficult to understand their angerand humiliation when confronted with themaltreatment of their native region by the stateand business conglomerates (zaibatsu).

Since the 1980s, economist Okada Tomohirohas been one of the most vocal proponents oft h e v i e w t h a t T ō h o k u w a s a c o l o n ymanufactured by and for Tokyo in the Meijiperiod (1868-1912). In 1983, Okada eloquentlydescribed the economic peripheralization ofTōhoku in world-system terms, writing that"Tōhoku served as a 'domestic colony,' on theone hand providing rice and other primaryindustry products and labor for both thecapitalist market and the colonization ofHokkaidō, and on the other importing foreignrice and light industrial goods."16 The followingyear, historian Iwamoto Yoshiteru explainedthe situation as a result of the distinctlyimperialist economic modernization processthat Japan had learned from Europe and theUnited States. Iwamoto argued that fin-de-siècle "Tōhoku seemed less a dark, backwardarea than an exciting frontier. But as the

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Tokyo-Yokohama and Osaka-Kobe areasbecame industrial centers, Tōhoku wastransformed into a food supply base... AsEngland and other advanced nations had theircolonies to produce food, Japan made Tōhokuits rice producer-in other words an internalcolony."17

After 1913, a bad famine year in the Northeast,the government embarked on a number offailed "Tōhoku development" efforts. In the1910s, the major development project wasostensibly modeled on the Tennessee ValleyAuthority, but the real intent and actual effectsare amply summed up by the choice of MatsuiHaruo as head of the government's oversightagency. Matsui served simultaneously as thesecretary of the nat ional ResourcesDepartment. Under the all-encompassing aegisof "national defense," major zaibatsuappropriated the "human and materialresources" of Tōhoku for military developmentand buildup. The development of electricalpower in Tōhoku followed a similar trajectory,with the majority of electricity produced byTōhoku's eleven power plants consumed inTokyo-a precursor to the power distribution ofthe Fukushima Daiichi plant operated byTepco.18

Some of the most important postwarintellectuals working on Tōhoku have taken upthe mantle of this critique since March 2011.Intellectual historian Kawanishi Hidemichi hasborrowed the sociological concept of the"national sacrifice zone" to explain theplacement of nuclear power plants and otherdangerous or otherwise unpleasant "NIMBY"facilities in Tōhoku. This term has describedregions carved out domestically in theAmerican West and abroad in areas like theMarshall Islands to fulfill the United States'military and industrial interests with littleregard for the safety and livelihoods of localcommunities.19 "When in the past the myth ofnuclear power as 'safe, secure, and clean'" wasunassailably robust in public consciousness,

why were these facilities not constructed in themetropolises they served? The answer issimple: the Northeast is Japan's "nuclear powercolony," replied Kawanishi.20 Kawanishi is notthe first scholar to notice that Tōhoku wasbeing sacrificed for Tokyo, nor the only one todescribe this sacrifice in comparison with thatof Okinawa.21 On the eve of America's 1972return of Okinawa to Japan, historian TōyamaHideki had already identified the formerRyūkyū kingdom as the sacrifice for Japan's"national polity," and after 3/11, criticTakahashi Tetsuya drew out the parallelbetween the Northeast and Okinawa explicitlyin a book on the "system of sacrifice" thatvictimized both.22 Okinawa was, and is, made tobear the brunt of the American militarypresence; Tōhoku was, and is, made to bear thebrunt of the Japanese hunger for rice,electricity, and cheap labor.23

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Fig. 4: The inaugural issue of Tōhokugaku(1999)

Another important voice to join in this criticismis that of Akasaka Norio, a folklorist, critic, andhighly visible public intellectual often creditedas the father of "Tōhoku-ology" (Tōhokugaku).Akasaka had been the first director of theTōhoku Culture Research Center (TCRC) atYamagata's Tōhoku University of Art andDesign (TUAD) from its opening in 1999, but hewas in Tokyo when the March 11 quake hit,having left Yamagata to take a position atGakushūin University beginning in April. Afterthe disaster, Akasaka was named to thegovernment's newly established advisory panelon post-3/11 recovery, the ReconstructionDesign Council. A month after 3/11, Akasakavisited the stricken areas for the first time. Hisfirst impression, he recollects, was that to hissurprise, "Tōhoku was still a colony." Theveneer of prosperity had been washed away bythe tsunami, revealing structural prejudicealive and well amidst the wreckage andcarnage.24 The Northeast not only remained aneconomic periphery, but as Okinawa had beenmade to take on the consequences of Japan's"subordinate independence" vis-à-vis theUnited States, Tōhoku had been fashioned intoa dumping ground for the externalities ofpostwar economic growth. The justification forthis was always that American bases andJapanese reactors were "job creators" in anotherwise moribund local economy. Recallingan encounter with a Japanese anti-nuclearprotester from Okinawa who remarked that"Towns with nuclear plants and towns with[American] military bases are identical,"journalist Kang Sung noted, "The same'benefaction theory'," i.e. that whether by anexpansionist central regime or by a powerutility, colonization is for the good of the locals,"has been used to legitimize both nuclear plantlocation and colonialism."25

More than a millennium ago, the Shirakawa

area of southern Fukushima marked theboundary between the Japanese state and thenorthern territories it both feared and desired.Even after southern Tōhoku fell under thestate's sway, the toll road barrier at Shirakawawas for centuries a powerful symbolic point ofdemarcation, indicating civilization to the southand savagery to the north. "North ofShirakawa" was "Michinoku," an old name forTōhoku indicating a barbarian outland that hadnever completely assented to the court'smission civilisatrice. Even in the twentiethcentury, southerners still sometimes scoffed,"The mountains north of Shirakawa are a dimea dozen," and in the 1980s beverage giantSuntory's president, Saji Keizō, invited frenzyand boycotts in Tōhoku with very public andvitriolic comments about the allegedly dodgyracial makeup of Tōhoku's people and theconsequently low level of culture in theregion.26 The power of these abiding prejudicesand structural disparities was only too clearafter 3/11. Before March 2011, Akasaka haddeveloped a strong sense of the Northeast'sinternal diversity, coming even to seecontemporary Fukushima as culturally andeconomically more a part of the Kantō region-including Tokyo and Yokohama-than of Tōhoku.However, he remarked, the tragedies of 3/11inscribed once again an impenetrable boundaryat Shirakawa, and "Tōhoku" was once againtransformed into "Michinoku."27

Akasaka is probably only partially correct. AfterIshihara Shintarō's "divine retribution" remark,scholar-critic Tanaka Yūko fired off an angryriposte. Tanaka wrote, "Watching panickedchildren search for lost parents or husbands fortheir wives, there cannot be many people in theworld who would use the meaningless adjective'Japanese' to describe them. Their name is not'Japanese'… Never has the word 'Japan' beenmore meaningless."28 She was wrong, ofcourse: domestically, at least, the Japanesenessof victims has been emphasized more than theiruniversal humanity, repeated ad infinitum andmade a fundamental rationale for aiding them-

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as fellow Japanese and as fellow members of aneconomy shaken by disaster and threatened byfailure to get quickly back on track. Calls of"Ganbare Nippon!" ("Go Japan!") were pairedwith "Ganbare Tōhoku!" as the "Japaneseness"of the tragedy was forefronted.

Fig. 5: This emblem, pairing "GanbareNippon!" ("Go Japan!") with "GanbareTōhoku!" is emblematic of the tendency tosee 3/11 and its aftermath in nationalterms.

But as Oguma points out, the rhetoric of"national" disaster emanating from Tokyomedia outlets was at least as much theconsequence of a perceived threat to Tokyo'senvironment and economy as of a sense ofnational solidarity. If a disaster of similarmagnitude struck distant Okinawa, he writes, iti s hard to imagine the same furor orframework. Oguma also suggests that plansformulated in Tokyo to "restore" Tōhoku havemore to do with preserving a comfortableurban-rural power balance and the sense ofTōhoku as Japan's materially poor, spirituallyrich homeland than with any real concern forthe affected areas. If plans were animated bygenuine concern for the livelihood of Tōhokupeople, they would seize this opportunity toupda te the phys i ca l and economic

infrastructure rather than simply return it to itsprevious state. That previous state was-as KangSung noted-little more than a self-servingcolonial lie.29 This same distrust of Tokyo canbe seen in an email sent to Akasaka from one ofthe evacuees soon after March 11, 2011: "We[need] a 'renaissance,' not to commit the samemistakes. It would be completely meaninglessto 'restore' the idiotic way things were."30 IfOguma is correct, the message is clear:Michinoku is only Tōhoku, only part of Japan,so long as it remains in its proper place. It wasonly possible for Akasaka to see Fukushima aspart of Kantō when it was a docile colonyreliably supplying essentials to the capital. Atthe first hint of trouble, the old Shirakawabarrier slammed shut again.

What is revealed by these references to thewartime system of irresponsibility and therenewed consciousness of Tōhoku as Tokyo'ssole remaining colony? Maruyama intended hisanalysis to be limited to "ultranationalist"Japanese state and society, but in fact hisexegesis can also be read as a biting critique ofbanal, systemic, impersonal evil in toto. Thusinterpreted, Maruyama's schematic is acautionary call to vigilance and action, relevantnot only to Tōhoku, and not only to Japan. It isalso a reminder that rule of law alone is notenough to guarantee justice or prevent a slowslide into discrimination and disparity. As forthe growing understanding of Tōhoku as anabused and exploited colony, Kawanishi seemsto have put his finger on the significance of thismost astutely. By referencing the notion of"national sacrifice zones," he makes theproblem of Tōhoku both universal andcontemporary. Tōhoku (and Okinawa) are notJapanese colonies, they are colonies in a globalsystem in which the great urban metropolesand centers of power and wealth sheddangerous and dirty facilities and wasteproducts to outlying regions. Though scholarsand critics have advocated for social justicemodels transcending the Westphalian state andunconstrained by the state-driven framework of

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international law, there is more than enoughreason to doubt that the dawning recognition ofsuch affinities with other "sacrifice zones" willform the basis for transnational solidarity orglobal social movements.31

However, if this were to come to pass it wouldlend an odd credence to Inoue Hisashi's 1981novel, Kirikirijin.

Fig. 6: "Passport" to the fictional countryof Kirikiri, setting of Inoue Hisashi'sKirikirijin

Counted among the greatest works of modernJapanese satire, Inoue's dense narrativechronicles the (fictional) secession of the(fictionalized) area of southeast Iwate and

northwest Miyagi prefectures hit hardest by the2011 tsunami. The newly independent "Kirikiri"is the result of an irredentist nationalismharkening back to Tōhoku's autonomy in thetwelfth century. Upon declaring its secessionfrom Japan, the newly formed nation remodelsits economy around self-sufficiency and cuttingedge medical research and care, includingcloning, hybridization, and transplants. Insteadof the colonial structure of primary industriesproducing goods for Tokyo, Kirikiri aims for arelatively autonomous resource bloc, producingits own food, geothermal energy, etc., andacquiring cash income mainly from its medicalindustry and gold. The latter is a nod to theNortheast's history as Japan's major goldproducer in antiquity, and to the fact thatKirikiri has regained with that gold theautonomy it had bought the region before.Simultaneously, the state of Kirikiri explicitlypositions itself as part of a global substatesubaltern-most memorably by inviting athletesfrom Quebec, Botswana, and Scotland for aninternational table tennis tournament.32

Comparisons of the March 11 disaster to theGreat Kantō Earthquake of 1923 are actuallyquite useful, if only to prove the point that forall the rhetoric about new beginnings, old ideasruled the day in both cases. After the greatKantō temblor, plans to remodel Tokyo as agrand new international capital were rejectedand much of the city returned to its pre-quakestate, touched only by the top-down logic thatremade parts of central Tokyo into a capital fitfor the modern Empire. "A 'post-disasterutopia,' if one ever existed in early September1923, evaporated once attention focused onreconstruction."33 After 3/11, a few scatteredvoices suggested that this was an opportunityto completely rethink the uncontaminatedcoastal areas, but the overwhelming majority ofproposals and policies have been directedtoward restoring the pre-3/11 status quo.Regardless of the path taken, what is needed isneither reconstruction (fukkō) nor restoration(fukko). In the words of the anonymous emailer

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who railed against "meaningless [attempts] to'restore' the idiotic way things were," what isneeded is a lofty but realistic plan for"renaissance" that escapes both the system ofirresponsibility and the colonial logic of Tōhokudevelopment. Perhaps Japan's choice of theKitakami Mountain Range in southern Iwate asa candidate site for the International LinearCollider (ILC) is an indication of a realsocioeconomic renaissance to come.34 But inthe meantime the rhetoric of "reconstruction"drags irresponsibly on, as does the shamefulreality that even reconstruction is barelyproceeding and the national governmentremains uncommitted.35

Nathan Hopson is a historian of modernJapan. He is currently a postdoctoral associateat Yale University's Council on East AsianStudies, where he is completing a bookmanuscript on Japanese postwar regionalismand nationalism in global context. Forthcomingworks include "Takahashi Tomio's Phoenix:Recuperating Hiraizumi, Part 1 (1950-1971)"(Journal of Japanese Studies, 40, no. 2), and"Takahashi Tomio's Henkyō: Eastern Easts andWestern Wests" (Nichibunken Japan Review,summer 2014).

Recommended citation: Nathan Hopson,"Systems of Irresponsibility and Japan'sInternal Colony," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol.11, Issue 52, No. 2, December 30, 2013.

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Notes

1 "Banyan: Japan and the Uses of Adversity(http://www.economist.com/node/18388874),"The Economist, March 2011; "Japan'sCatastrophes : Nature Str ikes Back(http://www.economist.com/node/18398748),"The Economist, March 2011; Mari Galloway,"McGill Professors Fight Sensationalizing ofJ a p a n D i s a s t e r(http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2011/04/mcgill-professors- f ight -sensat ional iz ing-of - japan-disaster/)," McGill Daily, April 2, 2011; SuzanneGoldenberg, "The Truth about the Fukushima' N u c l e a r S a m u r a i(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/21/nuclear-samurai-fukushima-japan-reactor),'"The Guardian, March 21, 2011; Marnie Hunter,"Orderly Disaster Reaction in Line with DeepC u l t u r a l R o o t s

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(http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/12/orderly-disaster-reaction-in-line-with-deep-cultural-roots/)," CNN, March 2011; Hugh Patrick,"After the Tohoku Earthquake, Japan's NewB e g i n n i n g(http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/04/19/after - t h e - t o h o k u - e a r t h q u a k e - j a p a n s - n e w -beginning/)," East Asia Forum, April 2011;Kumiko Makihara, "A Battered Nation on theM e n d(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/11/opinion/11iht-edmakihara11.html)," The New YorkTimes, June 10, 2011, sec. Opinion; WilliamPesek, "The Japan Earthquake: The CataclysmT h i s T i m e(http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/conten t / 1 1 _ 1 3 / b 4 2 2 1 0 1 1 4 2 8 4 5 8 . h t m ) , "Businessweek.com, March 17, 2011; AbiSekimitsu, "Even Japanese Amazed by Stoicismo f D i s a s t e r - S t r u c k N o r t h(http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/03/21/idINIndia-55734620110321)," Reuters, March 21,2011; Fukushima Kaori, "Nihonjin non i n t a i z u y o s a n i s u n a o n i o d o r o k u(http://business.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/world/20120319/229941/)," Nikkei Business Online,March 21, 2012; Richard J Samuels, "3.11:Comparative and Historical Lessons(http://www.japanfocus.org/-Richard_J_-Samuels/3941)," Japan Focus, May 20, 2013.

2 Ishihara's popularity has been ascribed bysome to his bombastic nationalism, straighttalk, and willingness to "Say No," a reputationhe earned first as coauthor of The Japan ThatCan Say No, and which he parlayed into acampaign slogan in 1999: "The Tokyo That CanSay No" (to American military bases and otherperce ived in fr ingements o f Japan 'ssovereignty). "Tōkyō saisei e Ishihara-shi nij ū s e k i(http://www.geocities.co.jp/HeartLand-Icho/2066/scrap/san990412.html)." Sankei Shinbun.April 12, 1999, sec. Shuchō.

3 Ishihara Shintarō, Shin darakuron: Gayoku totenbatsu (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2011); Yomiuri

Shimbun, "Kokumin zentai no tsumi da,I sh ihara ch i j i ' t enbatsu ' ha t sugen(http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/politics/news/20110326-OYT1T00223.htm)," Yomiuri Online, March26, 2011, sec. Tokushū: Fukushima Genpatsu;"Ishihara chiji 'Tsunami wa tenbatsu, gayoku oa r a i o t o s u h i t s u y ō(http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/politics/news/20110314-OYT1T00740.htm),'" Yomiuri Online, March15, 2011.

4 Oguma Eiji, 1968, vol. 1, 2 vols. (Tokyo:Shin'yōsha, 2009).

5 D. Chiavacci, "From Class Struggle to GeneralMiddle-Class Society to Divided Society:Societal Models of Inequality in PostwarJapan," Social Science Japan Journal 11, no. 1(2008): 5.

6 Komei Sasaki, "Keynote Address: FromAffluent Foraging to Agriculture in Japan,"Senri Ethnological Studies 9 (1981): 13–15;David Hurst Thomas and Shūzō Koyama, eds.,Affluent Foragers: Pacific Coasts East andWest, Senri Ethnological Studies 9 (Osaka:National Museum of Ethnology, 1981). See alsoMasato Kataoka, "Hunting and Gathering thePast," Look Japan 43, no. 496 (1997): 39.

7 Nakazawa Shin'ichi, Nihon no daitenkan(Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2011); Umehara Takeshi andAzuma Hiroki, "Kusaki no seiki suru kuni-Kyōto," Shisō Chizu β 3 (July 17, 2012):302–324.

8 Masao Maruyama, Thought and Behavior inModern Japanese Politics (London: OxfordUniversity Press, 1969), esp. 1–24, 128.

9 Sakai Naoki, "'Musekinin no taikei' mitabi,"Gendai shisō 39, no. 7 (May 2011): 26–33; "Imam a t a m u s e k i n i n n o t a i k e i(http://www.nagasaki-np.co.jp/news/mizusora/2012/08/04094143.shtml)," Nagasaki Shimbun,August 4, 2012, sec. Mizu ya sora.

10 Martin Fackler, "Doubt Clouds Fukushima

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Effort," September 5, 2013, sec. Finance.

11 Keikakuteki hinan kuiki no jūmin ni Tōdenf u k u s h a c h ō g a s h a z a i(http://youtu.be/UBXzz7nLlcA), 2011; Tōdenshachō ga jūmin ni shazai hizamazuki atamasage (http://youtu.be/MHWI4lEdybI), 2011.

12 Justin McCurry, "Fukushima Fuel Rods MayH a v e C o m p l e t e l y M e l t e d(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/02/fukushima-fuel-rods-completely-melted)," TheGuardian, December 2, 2011; "Tōden, 'Sōteigaino tsunami' o kyōchō, genpatsu jiko de saishūh ō k o k u(http://www.asahi.com/special/10005/TKY201206200550.html)," Asahi Shimbun Digital, June21, 2012; The Official Report of The FukushimaNuclear Accident Independent InvestigationCommiss i on (Execu t i ve Summary )(http://warp.da.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/3856371/ n a i i c . g o . j p / w p -content/uploads/2012/09/NAIIC_report_lo_res10.pdf) (Tokyo: Nuclear Accident IndependentInvestigation Commission, 2012), 26–28.

13 Iwamoto Yoshiteru, "Tōhoku kaihatsu okangaeru: Uchi kara no kaihatsu / soto kara nokaihatsu," in Rekishi no naka no Tohoku: Nihonno Tohoku, Ajia no Tohoku, ed. Tohoku GakuinDaigaku Shigakka (Tokyo: Kawade ShoboShinsha, 1998), 244–246, Tōhoku kaihatsu okangaeru.

14 Katsurō Hara, An Introduction to the Historyof Japan (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1920),26–27.

15 Quoted in Kawanishi Hidemichi, "KindaiNihon keiseiki ni okeru 'Tōhokuron' no kisotekik e n k y ū(http://www.juen.ac.jp/shakai/kawanisi/research/touhoku.html)," 2001. See also KawanishiHidemichi, "'Tōhoku'-shi no imi to shatei,"Rekishigaku kenkyū no. 742 (October 2000):97.

16 Okada Tomohiro, "Nihon teikokushugi

keiseiki ni okeru Tōhoku kaihatsu kōsō (jō):(Dai ichiji) Tōhoku Shinkōkai no katsudō ochūshin ni," Keizai ronsō 131, no. 1–2 (1983):40.

17 Kabayama Kōichi, Iwamoto Yoshiteru, andYoneyama Toshinao, Taiwa: "Tōhoku" ron(Tokyo: Fukutake Shoten, 1984), 17.

18 Okada Tomohiro, "Tōhoku no chiiki kaihatsuno rekishi to aratana chiiki-zukuri," Shakaishisutemu kenkyū no. 24 (March 2012): 23. Seealso, Iwamoto Yoshiteru, Tohoku kaihatsuhyakunijūnen, Zohoban (Tokyo: Tosui Shobo,2009), 58; Akasaka Norio, Oguma Eiji, andYamauchi Akemi, "Tōhoku" saisei (Tokyo: ĪsutoPuresu, 2011), 49.

19 Mike Davis, "The Dead West: Ecocide inMarlboro Country," New Left Review no. 200(1993): 49–49; Valerie Kuletz, The TaintedDesert: Environmental Ruin in the AmericanWest (New York: Routledge, 1998); JessicaBarkas Threet, "Testing the Bomb: DisparateImpacts on Indigenous Peoples in the AmericanWest, the Marshall Islands, and in Kazakhstan,"Un ivers i t y o f Ba l t imore Journa l o fEnvironmental Law 13 (2006 2005): 29; PattyLimerick, "Fencing in the Past," DiplomaticHistory 36, no. 3 (June 2012): 505–509,doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2012.01040.x.

20 Kawanishi Hidemichi, Tōhoku o yomu (Akita:Mumyosha Shuppan, 2011), 20. Kawanishidraws from the work of Ishiyama Noriko,including "Genshiryoku hatsuden to sabetsu nosaiseisan: Minesota-shū Pureirī AirandoGenshiryoku Hatsudensho to senjūmin,"Rekishigaku kenkyū no. 884 (October 2011):48–53.

21 Kawanishi, Tōhoku o yomu, 221–222.

22 Tōyama Hideki, "Nihon kindaishi ni okeruOkinawa no ichi," Rekishigaku kenkyū (March1972): 49–55; Takahashi Tetsuya, Gisei noshisutemu: Fukushima, Okinawa (Tokyo:Shūeisha, 2012).

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2 3 Oguma Eiji, in Akasaka, Oguma, andYamauchi, "Tōhoku" saisei, 63, 91, 126–128.

24 In Ibid., 15.

25 Kang Sung, "Mainoriti to hangenpatsu 3:Shokuminchishugi to no 'sekkinsei,'" Subaru33, no. 12 (December 2011): 312–313.

26 Sam Jameson, "Closed Circles: Japan Revelsi n R e g i o n a l D i f f e r e n c e s(http://articles.latimes.com/1988-05-16/news/mn-1912_1_tohoku-region)," Los Angeles Times,May 16, 1988; Niino Naoyoshi, "Tōhoku bunkano rekishiteki fūdosei," Doboku keikakugakukenkyū, ronbunshū no. 8 (November 1990): 1.

27 Akasaka, Oguma, and Yamauchi, "Tōhoku"saisei, 68.

28 Tanaka Yūko, "Ko to shite, tomo ni ikiru tame(http://www.kinyobi.co.jp/backnum/data/fusokukei/data_fusokukei_kiji.php?no=1887)," ShūkanKinyōbi, March 25, 2011.

29 In Akasaka, Oguma, and Yamauchi, "Tōhoku"saisei, 78, 90.

30 Quoted in Sakurai Katsunobu and AkasakaNorio, "Datsu 'shokuminchi Tōhoku' taidan,"

Sunday Mainichi 90, no. 40 (September 2011):28.

31 Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking Recognition," NewLeft Review 3, no. 3 (2000); "Reframing Justicein a Global World," New Left Review 36 (2005):69.

32 Inoue Hisashi, Kirikirijin (Tokyo: Shinchosha,1981).

33 J. Charles Schencking, "Catastrophe,Opportunism, Contestation: The FracturedPolitics of Reconstructing Tokyo Following theGreat Kantô Earthquake of 1923," ModernAsian Studies 40, no. 4 (2006): 870.

34 Dennis Normile, "Japan Picks Tohoku Site forI n t e r n a t i o n a l L i n e a r C o l l i d e r(http://news.sciencemag.org/asia/2013/08/japan-picks- tohoku-s i te - internat ional - l inear-collider)," ScienceInsider, August 23, 2013.

35 Mainichi Newspapers Co., Ltd., "ShimomuraMonkashō: Kokusai linia koraidā no yūchis a k i o k u r i(http://mainichi.jp/select/news/20130920k0000m040153000c.html)," mainichi.jp, September20, 2013.