Lake Pontchartrain to Matsukawa-ura Bay

On the face of it, they are similar. New Orleans, USA had been under threat of serious hurricanes for over a century. The fault lines running along the Japanese coast were theorized as early as the late 1850’s and mapped by the 1920’s. In both cases, the anticipated natural disaster occurred, but its magnitude was so dramatically larger than the hypothesized event that widespread damage occurred. In both cases, the disaster was made worse by the failure of man-made structures, whether the levees of New Orleans or the nuclear facility at Fukushima.

Why, then, have the two disasters developed so differently?

My primary theory has to do with life expectancy and societal memory. The Japanese are among the longest-lived people in the world, particularly Japanese women. Also, by most measures, Japanese enjoy higher quality of life in later years, perhaps due to better diet and less obesity. In addition to these long lifetimes, the Japanese have one of the most painstakingly catalogued histories of any civilization, surpassed in historical record continuity only by the Chinese. Unlike Western Europe and the United States, where tiny, supposedly-representative snapshots of history are taught, Japanese students learn history in nearly every year of their schooling.

If one examines demographic profiles of Japan, one realizes that a surprisingly high number of Japanese probably remember the difficult years following the war. Those who are too young to remember have been told about this period by family members, in schooling, and in popular culture. The years following the war are central piece of Japanese culture, still a popular setting for novels, still a staple of political rhetoric, and even a setting for some of the most important Japanese films – perhaps most notably Kurosawa’s Tengoku to Jigoku (天国と地獄; marketed in the U.K. and America as “High and Low”). The Japanese are united by the ritual of suffering and rebuilding in a way that no other culture, except perhaps the Russians, can understand.

In short, I believe much of the difference between the Japanese disaster last week and Hurricane Katrina is the fact that this disaster fits into a familiar Japanese historical narrative. I have no doubt the Japanese will be better-equipped to deal with the aftermath of this disaster in part due to this long collective memory. Meanwhile, the American narrative centers on – to use Charlie Sheen’s favourite word – “winning” and any setbacks are generally downplayed or discussed through metaphors and euphemisms so abstract as to be meaningless.

The other difference is the approach to government and policy involvement. While a political debate quietly simmers in Japan over the future of the nuclear power industry, this is completely separate from the discussion of recovery and cleanup after the earthquake. Meanwhile, the ongoing and obvious incompetence of Michael D. Brown and the Bush administration in response to Katrina created a public perception that the United States government suffered from a more comprehensive impotence in the face of crisis. In Japan, it was almost immediately apparent which government officials would be in charge of which aspects of the crisis and these officials were quick to accept individual responsibility for problems. In America, it took years of inquiry and litigation to sort out who was doing what.

As Ed West mentioned on the Telegraph blog earlier today, there has been little or no looting in Japan – the disaster is ill-suited to stunted Western attention spans, with mourning people and smoking nuclear sites making up most of the footage. Meanwhile, Western media coverage of Katrina played well to prevailing American media appetites, quickly devolving into a reality show where middle class white CNN reporters would try to find poor black alleged looters. In Japan, one of the first responses was to deploy a nationwide network of doctors and nurses who are on-call for major emergencies. In the United States, one of the first responses was to mobilize the National Guard, an armed militia force. Whatever differences there may have been between Japan and Louisiana at the outset of these disasters, the problems in Louisiana were exacerbated by a poorly-designed and poorly-implemented policy response that served to anger and imperil citizens while embarrassing policymakers.

Yes, the Japanese could have been more transparent about the issues at the nuclear facilities. Yes, the Japanese could have done a better job coordinating international offers of aid. Yes, the Japanese could have dealt with consequent coastline problems more efficiently. Disaster relief is an area where everyone, including the Japanese, has something to learn. However, with each year that passes since Katrina, it only becomes clearer that there’s little to be learnt from America in this area.