See what I mean?
Posted by ampontan on Sunday, March 13, 2011
I’VE glanced at a few American websites and their coverage of the events in Japan.
Here’s one:
(T)he (news) reader dispenses the facts with an almost eerie calmness as all hell breaks loose in the clips shown. The shots of the tsunamis sweeping through port cities looks more like a horror movie than a news broadcast.
Here’s a roundup of coverage:
“(A) streaming live feed of CNN, which has wall to wall coverage of this disaster.”
And:
“Horrific video of the tsunami that struck Japan…”
Followed by:
“(C)lick here for a continuously updated stream of images, including this incredible nighttime shot of a fireball-shaped explosion at a steel refinery in Chiba”
This site understands that Japan was prepared. Nevertheless:
(Quoting) Town of Kurihara has been completely destroyed
“If this is the same town (and judging by the map it’s in the right area), the population is in the neighborhood of 77,000.
God help them all.”
Another site’s comment: “News is breaking fast and furious…”
This fellow always seems sensible whenever I read one of his posts. These events, however, inspire him to philosophy:
“Planetary forces are so enormously powerful that attempts to control the environment must often fall a far second to simply being able to survive what Mother Nature throws in humanity’s way.”
He then offers a long quote from H.G. Wells.
“Tons of incredible and terrifying video footage taken by people on the ground is showing up online. Breaking News has linked to this video of swaying Tokyo skyscrapers and this one of a family in Sendai, Japan trying to evacuate their home. There are also breathtaking photos. This gallery from The New York Times is particularly unsettling. The Daily Mail has a collection of a number of disturbing AP photos.”
This site also corrects an English-language report that said 88,000 people were missing. At no time in Japan have I ever seen anything that suggested there were more than 1,300 or so dead and missing combined.
Do you see what I mean now? No one in Japan is behaving like this. No one in Japan is using anything remotely like this kind of language.
The Americans are only spectators, but they’re the ones indulging their emotions. The Japanese are the ones who have to deal with it, and their upper lips are stiff. Notice that one of the people I quoted thought the Japanese calmness was “eerie”. One gets the impression that the Americans are excited by all the shock and awe. I think we all know what the tone of American coverage would be like if this were a local disaster.
Meanwhile, earlier this evening on NHK, I saw a video of the tsunami hit a small town on the coast. (I missed the first bit, so I don’t know which town.) A huge mass of water filled with debris rushed through the streets, knocking down light poles and lifting houses off their foundations. The video was taken from what seemed to be a parking lot on the side of a hill looking down on the town and the small waterfront area. A group of people stood watching at the edge of the area behind a chain link fence. All the adults were quiet, and only a few children were crying. The American above would probably think they were eerie, too. There was a quick shot of one mother comforting her daughter. The woman, about 30-35, was not crying at all.
The person on the scene who filmed the video, or was accompanying the person filming the video (I’m not sure if they were part of the media) yelled, “Sugoi!” two or three times. (In this context, terrible, or horrible). Then again, he was there watching it as it happened. No one else said that, even though they were probably thinking it subliminally.
I’ve long thought that the Japanese have a more solid grasp of the brass tacks of life than do Westerners. Now I’m convinced.
UPDATE: Reader M-Bone makes the following points. I agree.
The 88,000 missing number started circulating in a number of UK newspapers. Since it is roughly the same number as the official number of people stuck in central Tokyo who “had not yet returned home”, I am guessing that these papers either screwed up the Japanese here or more likely were using machine translation.
No matter which it is, this frightening number, attributed to “Japanese officials”, is a very bad mistake.
And:
Hundreds of websites claiming 88,000 confirmed missing reported by “the official Kyodo news agency via BBC” among them ABC, Huffpost, etc. No sign of this anywhere from Kyodo in Japanese or English. BBC website has removed the claim. Some sites have changed this to 88,000 dead.
Searches for 88,000 in Japanese ONLY turn up an approximate number of Tokyo workers who could not return home…We usually joke about bad Japan reportage – this isn’t a joke…
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
RMilner said
The BBC coverage is more business-like. The lapses into emotion only occur from people they interview about their feelings.
Hinomaru said
You’re rignt Ampontan. Typical anti- Japan bias reporting making to look Japan look bad or belittle them.
What do you think happened during Hurricane Katrina.
There were policemen who abandoned their posts:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9855340/
When it got so bad, just like the Iraq war, US had to finally ask for help for their miscalculations ‘without admiting guilt’.
Even the Mexican Army crossed the border to help, which was at the time was big news on both sides of the border:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/07/katrina/main824295.shtml
It appears that Japan is doing a good job, taking into consideration the huge disaster, the largest earthquake/tsunami in mankind. I just hope PM Kan don’t screw up like the former PM Murayama during the Kobe quakes.
toadold said
http://jibtv.com/program/fullscreen.aspx
That’s the site I’ve been using for NHK coverage in English.
toadold said
Some of the things that worry me are the reports of level 4 and 5 aftershocks in some areas. Also the report that senors to detect Tsunamis have been lost.
On one hand I’m anxious to see US forces start rescue operation on the other I see the need for evaluation of a technological complex society by those who know what’s what and can read and write the language. Things like the Japanese use 50 HZ instead of 60 HZ on their grid need to be factored.
I’m also not real anxious to inflict MRE’s on the innocent unless needful.
Rick Boyett said
Kevin Cooney (aka: Tokyo Cooney) spoke about how impressed he is with the actions of his Japanese neighbors…
M-Bone said
The footage that you saw is likely from an evacuation point in Minami Sanriku. The video has made it to Youtube.
The 88,000 missing number started circulating in a number of UK newspapers. Sine it is roughly the same number as the official number of people stuck in central Tokyo who “had not yet returned home”, I am guessing that these papers either screwed up the Japanese here or more likely were using machine translation.
No matter which it is, this frightening number, attributed to “Japanese officials”, is a very bad mistake.
M-Bone said
Hundreds of websites claiming 88,000 confirmed missing reported by “the official Kyodo news agency via BBC” among them ABC, Huffpost, etc. No sign of this anywhere from Kyodo in Japanese or English. BBC website has removed the claim. Some sites have changed this to 88,000 dead.
Searches for 88,000 in Japanese ONLY turn up an approximate number of Tokyo workers who could not return home.
These types of numbers are no doubt causing tremendous heartache to people force to rely on English reportage
Mediaite is already issuing a retraction of sorts -
UPDATE: The post originally quoted from a Kyodo news report that 88,000 people were missing. It is now appearing that the number might be much, much smaller and that that number may have in fact come from a typo or mistranslation. Some news outlets are still using 88,000, but we’ve taken that figure out of this post and any other post and will await a more certain tally.
We usually joke about bad Japan reportage – this isn’t a joke, people are really feeling despair when they see this number as whatever number exists at this point is bound to rise in the coming days.
A said
I don’t know. I find the fact that they’re admittedly flooding seawater into a nuclear power plant (effectively rendering it unsalvageable; indicating, besides, highly dangerous levels of heat building up in the structure) to be sufficient cause for a certain degree of reasonable alarm or, at the very least, an active concern. I wouldn’t say passivity or indifferent ‘calm’ is necessarily appropriate especially given the Japanese government’s less than honest history with regards to nuclear incidents in the past.
Also, with all due respect to the people who have lost their lives and those who continue to suffer in this terrible tragedy, how much of the imperative to preserve an outward appearance of ‘calmness’ do you think is a product of deeply engrained social conventions as well as an attempt to maintain a ‘face’. Maybe if they focussed a little less on behaving like a good ‘Japanese’, staying eternally ‘calm’, and did panic a little and ask hard questions of their government and their corporate partners they might be able to avoid an even bigger tragedy or at least know the full extent of the risks they are and will continue to face.
Just some thoughts.
The Sanity Inspector said
Well said. No doubt there are a lot of tears being shed privately. But if this happened in say California, the first thing to arrive would be a plane load of “grief counselors”.
toadold said
The evaluations that I’m reading say it is bad but they aren’t core on the floor bad. The containment vessels are still intact, and most of the radioactivity spread has been due to the necessity of venting pressure so they could pump in water. The fuel rods are going to be shoot in a number of reactors but the pressure vessels haven’t burned through. I’ve been impressed by the fact that the tall building have held up and didn’t shed glass shards all over the place. The 11 ships the US has tasked will be helping the SDF forces and supplies get into the areas hit and cut off. I think the Ronald Reagan has to off load attack aircraft and take on helicopters when it gets within range. Hopefully the US forces won’t have to inflict the populace with too many MRE’s. Sorry I’m getting punchy from all the stories I’ve been tracking.
TonyGoalder said
I wonder how China will react if any of their citizens were killed in this tragedy. Judging by this article, I doubt they will continue to say positive things about Japanese behavior in the face of such a tragedy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12729443
An Optimist Note on Japan « The Blirg said
[...] the situation to Chernobyl, the Second World War, and whatever grim pictures they can find. Check this blog post to see what I am talking [...]
Get A Job, Son! said
I haven’t any links to share, but Kyodo News has been first (by my viewing) to report big numbers, such as the 88,000 missing, the trains and ships unaccounted for.
They have either been first and the breakers of stories, or just running beat-ups.
———
GAJS: Thanks for the note. Long time no see. Scroll down a bit and you’ll see that the 88,000 missing misinformation last week wasn’t Kyodo’s idea. (Though the numbers are getting higher.) There is only one train unaccounted for as of now, the others they just didn’t have contact with.
- A.