Tag: japan

Nuclear versus fossil fuel power

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In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident Japan had gone quite literally all non-nuclear for a while. The country had switched off all of its nuclear power plants in what amounts to a knee-jerk reaction to the disaster that still is happening now and will for many more decades to come. In its place we turned back to using coal importing more than we ever had. And all of the sudden nobody in Japan cared much about climate change and global warming anymore.

The question should never have been about whether we choose nuclear or fossil fuel for our energy needs, but rather how we can reduce our energy usage in the first place. Whichever we choose to use we are still using too much energy for the good of the planet.

And now that the dust (or is that nuclear dust) has settled from Fukuyama we have turned on the nuclear tap again to quench our nuclear thirst.

Nothing ever changes, does it.

“Haruki Murakami says Japan ignoring WWII, Fukushima role”

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TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has chided his country for shirking responsibility for its World War II aggression and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in an interview published Monday.

Speaking to the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, the 65-year-old author said: “No one has taken real responsibility for the 1945 war end or the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. I feel so.” “After the war, it was eventually concluded that no one was wrong,” said Murakami of the pervasive attitude in Japan.

Japanese people have come to consider themselves as “victims” of the war, he added.

Murakami, one of Japan’s best known writers who has repeatedly been tipped as a future Nobel Literature laureate, said that it was natural for China and the Koreas to continue to feel resentment towards Japan for its wartime aggressions.

“Fundamentally, Japanese people tend not to have an idea that they were also assailants, and the tendency is getting clearer,” he said.

Japan’s lack of repentance over its behaviour in the first half of the 20th century continues to strain relations with regional neighbours.

Murakami also said Japan did not seriously pursue who was really responsible for the 2011 crisis at Fukushima – when powerful earthquake and tsunami caused a reactor meltdown and radiation leaks – choosing instead to blame the disaster on uncontrollable natural events.

“I’m afraid that it can be understood that the earthquake and tsunami were the biggest assailants and the rest of us were all victims. That’s my biggest concern.” Murakami’s latest novel “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage” was released in Europe and the United States this summer.

He lost out on this year’s Nobel to Patrick Modiano, a historical novelist who writes about France’s painful experience of Nazi occupation.

Originally from Straits Times.

Harada Tangen Roshi

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harada_tangen_roshiHere is an excellent  documentary of my master, Harada Tangen Roshi, made by zen practitioner, artist and filmmaker, Madelon Hooykaas. She practiced under him 30 years ago and made this film in 2008 or 2009.

Fukushima, 11 March 2011, 2:46pm

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The devastation
Was shocking.
Made disaster movies look
All the more unreal.

Actuality
Is meant to be infinitely
More frightening and tragic.
But the wide angle
Helicopter view
Of the (un)natural quiet gentle onslaught
Looks like a child’s play puddle
Less CGed and more muddied
The brown mass rolls across
A miniature landscape.
People are puny ants.
Cars are tiny toys.
Unaware until the very last moment
Or aware but it is too late
Everyone, everything is swept away
Reluctantly with the front.
Bridges
Are supposed to be
Over water
Not in.
Houses float down streets like boats
And boats will sit far inland like houses.
A Nuclear power station
Is not supposed to fail
And explode like a fire cracker.

Postmodern and simulating
The world is now seen
Through the colourbox
Like characters
In a soap opera
Unaffecting.
The quake, tsunami and accident
Seem to exist
Only in the images of our memories
Like some far away fictional place
Of the past or future,
And not of the suffering or joy
Of the here-and-now.

In memory of the 18,500 who died or are missing, and thoughts to the 35,000 who survived and are displaced.

 

9 August 1945, 11:02am

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We shouldn’t forget the pain and hope for a nuclear weapon free world.

8:15am, 6 August 1945.

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Sixty-seven years ago the world lost something. We continue to hope for a world without nuclear weapons.

No Nukes 2012 – Kraftwerk in Tokyo, 7 July.

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A place where Buddhism and alcohol mix?

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Having started out Buddhism from Zen Buddhism (and now with a bit of Theravada) I cannot fathom what drives some monks to think they can run a bar and still think they can still call themselves Buddhist monks. It wasn’t mentioned which sect these monks belong to but my guess is that they are from the Jodo Shin sect.

I am not against Jodo Shin sect at all but rather misinterpretations by people of what its original founders had intended.  Like all societies and their religions there will be radical offshoots. Is it okay to start a prostitution house just because you have a sympathetic ear?

A line has to be drawn somewhere and it has to be drawn with common sense even though common sense can be problematic at times.

Money blinds people to nuclear risks – pro-nuclear mayor re-elected

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Shigemi Kashiwabara, the mayor of Kaminoseki City in Yamaguchi Prefecture, has been reelected. He won his seat on a pro-nulcear platform. It is a shame that people still buy into carrots dangled in front of them. This was the first municipal election held in Japan since the Fukushima nuclear accident.

What exactly does TEPCO have to hide?

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Does submitting a three page document where only two lines are uncensored constitute a submission at all?