Ganbarou

The assignment this week is to find some cultural response to the earthquake and it's aftermath.
The link below is not a Japanese cultural response, rather a Canadian photographic essay.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/multimedia/pov/Japan-three-months-after-the-earthquake-and-tsunami-123642329.html

Nonetless it's magnifcent. It's amazing how Jietai, local residents, the US armed forces and volunteers have made such an amazing difference. It's really encouraging.  From what I saw of the area when I was up there in Golden Week, I know there has been phenomenal effort made.  Ganbarou Nippon, Ganbarou Tohoku, Tsunageou - let's reconnect the country....

Although on one hand I am profoundly impressed by the solidarity... I feel a discomforting unease as well..and wonder about the extent to which it is contrived.    Since when has Kanto cared about Tohoku?   Tohoku is where the day labourers come from during the winter time - trying to earn money between rice crops.  And at the same time they are an economic burden - the undeserving recipients of rice subsidies.  Tohoku dialects are used as voice overs in American movies to show the ignorant and illiterate.  People from Tohoku that come to live in Kanto try to lose their accents quickly and in many cases dare not use them in public for it marks their provincial backwardness.  At Ueno station the - marshalling place of Tohoko-ites in bygone days - Morioka's Takanobu Ishikawa's tanka describing the melancholy of their dislocation can still be read 古里 の鉛懐かしい停車場の人込みの中にそを聞きに行く 'for the sounds of my hometown // I go to hear it among the crowds of people at the train station."  。。Kanto people  take pride in not understanding Tohoku regionalisms....
Tohoku is where suicides are highest and alcoholism is greatest. Tohoku is depopulating faster than most regions in Japan ... there aren't jobs.  How many Kanto people have even been to Tohoku? Or  knew the names Kesenuma, Kamaishi, or Yamada machi before the tsunami? After all they're not nearly as appealing, or glamorous, as New York, Hawaii or Paris...

Ganbarou Tohoku

There is something else about the Ganbarou Tohoku that troubles me.... what about Ibaragi and Chiba?  There are evacuation centres in Asahi Machi, Chiba....  I've heard little about damage sustained in Ibaragi, though I presume if there are evacuation centres on the Chiba coast, they would be in Ibaragi too.... .And in Urayasu,Chiba, there has been severe damage too houses have sunk and  the liquefaction had water off for weeks....  Is Ganbarou Tohoku a way to create regional solidarity in Tohoku, while at the same time distancing it from Kanto?

Ganbarou Nippon - may the experience of the earthquake truly serve to build regional empathy and understanding.