The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 7 | Number 9 | Article ID 4285 | Feb 16, 2015

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Images of Suffering, Resilience and Compassion in Post 3/11Japan 3.11以後　苦難、回復力、慈しみの映像

Carolyn Stevens

Abstract

In this essay I explore the visual representationof suffering, resilience and compassion asexpressed in a Tokyo-based photographyexhibition in April 2011. An analysis of thephotographs provides an opportunity to re-examine the meaning of disaster andvictimhood, and to re-examine a society thatresponds to tragedy. Of particular note areintertextual references between the 2011exhibition and other iconic images, some ofwhich represent other historical moments ofsuffering in Japan, such as the atomic bombingsat Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Minamatapoisoning incident. Others reference ideasabout family and community. The Tokyoexhibition sheds light on how a societyexpresses collective feelings of grief, fear anddistrust after a major disaster, and how thesocio-economic and political context of acontemporary disaster can be interrogatedthrough reflection on the past.

Keywords

Japan , D isas ters , Graph ic Ar ts andPhotography, 3/11

I visited Japan in late January 2012, manymonths after the compound disaster of 11March 2011 which devastated NortheasternJapan. The effects of the disaster were stillbeing felt throughout the archipelago, asnuclear power plants were shut down one byone, and the population was entreated to saveelectricity in various ways. This photograph,taken on that trip, is of a drink dispenser. Whilenot directly representative of the immediate

disaster, it illustrates a social response to thedisaster, and an eloquent example of actionbased on empathy in the post 3/11 context. Thedrink dispenser carries a sign "setsudenchū"(currently saving electricity).

An Automated Drink Dispenser, Tokyo,stating 'Setsudenchū (currently savingelectricity); Kirin Beverage Corporation'.Photograph by Carolyn Stevens.

The term setsuden (saving electricity) is notnew to post 3/11 Japan. It has been used for

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many years to describe energy-savingtechniques and behaviours used during peakseasons of electricity use such as the height ofsummer, and/or when power stations wentthrough periodic maintenance or repair. Thep r a c t i c e o f s e t s u d e n c o n s i s t s o frecommendations such as raising thetemperature of one's air conditioner to at least29 degrees, and not using it until the externaltemperature reaches 31 to 33 degrees,1

keeping your refrigerator clean and defrosted;unplugging appliances not in use, and avoidingthe use of "sleep mode" on televisions andcomputers. Before 3/11, practising setsudenwas certainly an expression of responsiblecitizenship. It was sometimes necessary duringpeak periods of usage, especially in summerwhen air conditioners laboured overtime toensure Japan's indoor workers and consumerskept reasonably cool. After the triple disaster,however, the word took on an entirely differentmeaning. Setsuden became a pointed referenceto changed values in Japanese society.Practically speaking, 3/11 had an impact on thegreater Tokyo metropolitan area because theFukushima Power plants supplied electricpower to the area. Setsuden activities after3/11, however, were also an expression ofcollective sympathy, compassion and solidaritywith the people of the affected areas. Theinconveniences of saving electricity – such asdrinking canned coffee or tea that was notquite as hot or as cold as expected, walkingdown escalators rather than riding them, orenduring levels of air conditioning or heatingthat were not at the most comfortable – becamean expression of collective compassion.Practising setsuden in places like Tokyo was amark of respect for the much more devastatinglosses endured by their fellow citizens to thenorth. Later, setsuden came to signify astatement to the government that Japan couldmanage using less electricity (obviating theneed for so many nuclear reactors, or for anynuclear reactors). The practice of setsuden,previously seen as an "eco-" friendly or a thriftypractice, was now also an expression of civil

activism with particular reference to thehardship and suffering experienced by thepeople of the Tohoku region. Setsuden becamean everyday reference to the ongoing disaster,and therefore its practice took on specialmeaning.

On that visit to Tokyo in early 2012, the teabought from a setsudenchū automateddispenser was, however, just as hot as Ithought it needed to be, causing me to reflecton what "appropriate" energy usage should, orcould be. The setsudenchū label remained onthis machine and elsewhere in public places inJapan, as a reminder of the fragile co-existencebetween society, technology and nature, and ofthe complex relationship between people andtheir environment. How hot should a heatedroom be? How cold should a cold drink be? Thedisaster called for people to reconsider actualneeds for their energy consumption, and re-setmany of these benchmarks to more modestlevels. Escalators and air conditioners weregenerally up and running again in Tokyo by mynext visit in 2013, though I noticed in thelingering heat of the long and hot summerseason that many public places such as subwaycars and department stores did not have thesame chill that I remembered from air-conditioned summers past. Notices of setsudenmay not be as prominently displayed in publicplaces today as they were in 2011 and 2012,but the practice remains as a reference to acollective empathetic response to 3/11. Whilesetsuden results in economic savings duringtimes of economic stagnation (and this could beanother reason for the persistence of setsudenpractices), it is also true that setsudenchū signscame to be an ongoing reminder of theFukushima tragedy in the wider Tokyo area.The setsuden effort is, however, only one waythat a new sense of collective empathy hasbeen expressed since 3/11. Batson describesempathy as a complex emotion, that includes"knowing" the feelings of another; "adopting aposture" of another; "coming to feel as anotherperson feels"; "projecting oneself into another's

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situation"; "imagining how the other person isthinking or feeling"; and "imagining how onewould think and feel" given the other'ssituation.2

Because of the ongoing nature of the 3/11disaster, even when we see the setsudenchūsign months and years later, we are pulled backto that moment in time. In this essay, I look athow photography was used in the immediateaftermath of the disaster, and note how somephotographs similarly pull the viewer back toother points in time. The images presentedhere work through intertextuality. meaningthat they reference other images (which maybe a conscious choice on the part of thephotographer, or may be a connection made inthe mind of the viewer). In both explicit andaccidental inter-textuality, the viewers'knowledge of other images has an impact onthe way they receive the second image. Here Iuse the term intertextuality not so much in thedestabilising or disruptive function noted inpost-structuralist theory. Rather, I focus on theidea that the intertextuality between thesephotographs of 3/11 and others from Japan'spostwar past give the new photos further layersof meaning and resonance.

Given the richness of the media landscape inJapan, it is no surprise that photography wasused extensively by both amateur andprofessional observers of the triple disaster ofthe magnitude 9 earthquake, tsunami andnuc lear d isas ter o f 11 March 2011.Photography represents a human subjectiveexperience, an individual photographer's viewof the world which is then portrayed to andinterpreted by other viewers. Pettersson writesthat pictures and photographs "let us see whatis not there".3 In other words, the embodiedexperience of viewing a photograph "takes" theviewer to the "place" where the photographwas taken, although this is often a constructed"place", and thus considered "non-localized" byPettersson.4 In the context of the Tokyoexhibition of photographs of 3/11, I argue that

the tragedy as portrayed in Tōhoku became"non-localized". These photographs portrayed awide range of emotions in viewers, includingsorrow, fear, empathy and even the anger andfrustration that many Japanese around thecountry felt regarding their government'sdisaster management and energy policies. AsMackie has written about the viewing ofphotographs in the context of human rights,photographs can be "read in terms of theirintertextual relationship with other images andother texts",5 or as Pettersson puts it, with the"background knowledge (or belief) about thethings we see".6 In this case, the Japanesepublic, having been inundated with mediareports regarding the 3/11 disasters, had awealth of information to fill in the blanksbetween the objects seen and the experienceportrayed. I opened this essay with aphotograph that I – an amateur – took. I nowturn to a photographic exhibition which wasshown at the Zen Foto Gallery in Tokyo in April2011 and later in Melbourne, Australia in Julyof the same year.7 The photographers featuredwere both professional and amateur, and thecurator who gathered these images was skilfulin the framing of the 3/11 experience. Thephotographs could tap into a publ icunderstanding of the event, including both pastand present images of suffering in Japan. Thisessay takes as a launching point this sense ofcollective knowledge and experience.

The Exhibition

While the triple disaster was unprecedented inJapanese modern history, we can also place itin a series of tragic events in the twentiethcentury: the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake, the1945 Tokyo air raids, the 1995 Great HanshinEarthquake and the 1995 Sarin Gas Attack inTokyo. To do this, I will compare selectedphotographs from an exhibition of over 100photographs by a diverse group of 20photographers taken in the immediateaftermath of 3/11 with other iconic images ofvictimhood in Japan, especially those

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associated with the atomic bombings ofHiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and thoseaffected by the Minamata pollution incident(1950s to the present). In particular, I focus onhow the depiction of suffering works to create acompassionate collective identity. I explore howexhibitions like this allow us to observe how asociety expresses collective feelings of grief,fear and distrust after a major disaster.

As most readers would know, at 2:56 pm on 11March, 2011, there was a magnitude 9earthquake, accompanied by a tsunami that hita 500 kilometre stretch of the coast, andcaused meltdowns and three hydrogenexplosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclearplant. As of March 2014, the disasters hadclaimed 15,884 lives, with 6,148 injured and2,633 people still missing.8 Kingston wrote in2012 that the total cost of the triple disasterwas estimated at between 210 and 300 billionU.S. dollars, making it the most expensivecatastrophe in Japanese history since theSecond World War, and the most expensivenatural disaster on record.

The bulk of the Japanese public outside theaffected region learned of the "cascadingdisaster"9 through a variety of media outlets,and Internet-based social media such asTwitter, Facebook and Mixi. Many of the mediaimages circulating on news programs,YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other socialmedia depicted the immense destruction andhuman suffering experienced by residents ofthe Tōhoku region. Soon after the events, manyfelt the desire to express their condolences tothe victims of the tragedy, and to try to help inwhatever way they could. The founder anddirector of the Zen Foto Gallery, Mark Pearson,was one such individual. He quickly puttogether a photographic exhibition about amonth after the disaster, which ran from 15April to 27 April, 2011. The exhibition drew onthe work of 20 photographers, from Japan andother countr ies , and conta ined 121photographs.10 In an interview Pearson stated

that,

the goals for the show [we]re two-fold: create a sense of communitywhere feelings about the tragedycan be shared, and an opportunityto donate 50% of the gallery'sportion in sales to a worthy aidorganization.

"This is a very important historicalrecord," Pearson emphasizes. "Thescale is unimaginable for thosewho have not been there. This is away to visualize and experience itth rough the eyes o f thesephotographers." 1 1

Pearson's comment that the photographsprovide "a way to visualize and experience itthrough the eyes of these photographers"references Pettersson's discussion of "seeing –in", but with a strong sense of localisation, asthe place and time of the events were indeliblyimprinted on Japan's and the world'simaginations.

Historical References in Photographs of3/11

While any exhibition which brought togetherseveral artists would likely mean that thephotographs would be quite different from eachother due to the individual photographers'styles and methods, there were somecommonalities and recurring themes. Manyphotographs went beyond Pearson's originalgoal to represent the bleak destruction that theearthquake and tsunami had wrought on theregion as they referenced knowledge of Japan'spast . For example, there were manyphotographs featuring children's toys and otherobjects in the rubble, in a variety of children'ssettings, such as the remains of a school inMinamihama. Focusing on children as victimsstrongly communicated the intense loss

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experienced by the community, which did notjust encompass material loss, but also the lossof innocence and the future. This is shown inthese images of a primary school which hadbeen not only affected by the earthquake andtsunami but which had also then been guttedby fire. A set of photographs by Nishijima Yūjidemonstrates this. While his photographsframe the destruction from a child's point ofview, his commentary on the photograph makesintertextual references to other disasters.

Minamihama School. Photograph byNishij ima Yūji.

This picture of the Minamihama school waso r i g i n a l l y p o s t e d a l o n g w i t h t h ephotographer's comments referring toNagasaki and Hiroshima.

In the town of Minamihama,situated on the coast, fires brokeout as a third disaster after thetsunami and earthquake. The firespread rapidly and the entire townwas engulfed by flames. Inside aschool building, there was anawkward, stinking smell in the airof dead bodies and debris

combined with the smell of the sea.The scene made me think of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 1 2

This intertexual link between the 3/11 disasterand the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasakiproved to be a recurrent theme, as we will seebelow.13

Gallery attendees would also be likely to seethe similarities between these photographs andthose of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even withoutNakajima's comments. Furthermore, thecurator included a set of black and whitephotographs of 3/11 destruction that eerilyechoed the photographic history of Japan in theAsia Pacific War. Certainly the choice of blackand white gives these contemporaryphotographs a historical feel, and the grainytexture creates an impression of a print'sdisintegration over time. Stylistic presentationaside, we can also see that there aresimilarities in content as well. Due to thesesimilarities the new and old photographsconstitute a collective archive of suffering. TheNagasaki City Peace and Atomic BombMuseum,14 features many photographs in itsgalleries, and these also include images ofruined schools. The educational system formsan important backbone for many communitiesin Japan. This shared understanding of theimportant place of schools in Japanesecommunities, and the idea that children aresymbolic of the future of a society, is the basisof this intertextual understanding, and givesresonance to the later photographs.

Another intertextual reference can be seen inthe portrayal of religious objects and settings.Like schools, temples and shrines in Japan arealso important markers of collective identity.Many photographs of wrecked gravesites,temples and religious icons were featured inthe 3/11 exhibition. The religious icons indestroyed temples, or flung out of place,demonstrate not only the destruction of theland but also of important religious sites. Ablack and white photograph of a kannon

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statue,15 a doll and a stuffed animal combinessymbols of childhood with religious symbols.Much of the Buddhist imagery represents therecent deaths, as in this photograph of theofferings made by survivors.

Fallen Kannon statue. Photograph by Jake PriceNagasaki temple destroyed, WikipediaCommonsOfferings made by survivors. Photograph byClive France.

Without prior knowledge, the first twophotographs could be mistaken as those of thesame event, while Figure 4 is fully located inthe 21st century with the appearance of thepopular character Rilakkuma (in the form ofthe teddy bear of the left).16

Similarities in subject matter which enhance aninter-textual reading of the 3/11 photographscan also be seen in Sasaki's photograph of thecommunal bathing area in the KesennumaEvacuation Centre. Instead of harking back to1945, this photograph references anothertragedy in Japanese postwar history. Sasaki'sphotograph evokes an internationally-renownedphotograph by W. Eugene Smith (1918–1978),taken in Minamata in 1971. The photographshows Uemura Ryōko bathing her daughterTomoko, who had been affected by mercurypoisoning in utero.17 This photograph wasfeatured in Life magazine the following year toworldwide attention. The original photographwas striking in that it portrayed the 'normality'of a mother's love and care for a child despitetheir victimhood resulting from mercurypoisoning. Sasaki's 2011 photograph wouldstrike a particularly strong chord withcontemporary viewers, as they viewed the same

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loving interaction between a parent and childdespite unthinkable circumstances.

Evacuees at a Kesennuma shel ter ,photograph by Sasaki Kō for the New YorkTimes.

Many of the 120 photographs rely on stylisticpatterns – black and white, or over-exposedphotographs. This photograph of survivorswalking by a large ship washed ashore isdeveloped in monochrome with a deliberateover-exposure to evoke a historical sense.

Tōhoku ship, photograph by Clive France

The style of the photography also evokes an

emotional response, intensified by thereferences to the style as well as the content ofthe photographs from the 1940s to the 1970s. Iinterpret the 2011 photographs as having asense of moral weight and gravity that makethem even more meaningful to those who haveseen the older photographs. Given theworldwide attention to the atomic bombings in1945 and to the 1972 publication of Smith'sphotograph, it is not at all far-fetched to expectboth international and Japanese viewers of theexhibit to make these connections as well. Thisdemonstrates the emotional strength of theseimages in Japanese civil society's collectivememory.

The stories behind the atomic bombings, theMinamata incident and the Tōhoku TripleDisaster are all quite different, but the inter-referencing of these photographs underscoresthe immediate destructive nature of each ofthese events, followed by the lingering tragedyof contamination, either through radiation orthrough mercury poisoning.

References to Community and CollectiveAction

The photographs in the "Images of Tōhoku"exhibition showed different members of thedisaster-affected community, each portrayed indifferent ways. Aside from the historicalreferences, representations of the victims ofthe disaster referenced the larger populationthrough the portrayal of individuals in familyunits. The people portrayed in the photographswere chi ldren, spouses, parents andgrandparents, and these familial roles could betransposed into other social contexts. Japanesefamilies are not all the same, but the image of aJapanese father grieving over his missing childand wife creates emotion to which many canrelate. The destruction of a particular villagespoke to the viewers ' worry over thedestruction of any village or neighbourhood inJapan. Framing the photographs as familyportraits supplements the historical references

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– such as the bombed out schools o fMinamihama and Nagasaki, for example, or thefamily in the bath from Kesennuma and theMinamata photographs. A further layer ofintertextuality sits beside the historicalreferences if we consider the individuals andfamilies in the photographs as representative ofa community of individuals and families inwider Japanese society.

As mentioned above, photographs of childrenand children's objects were numerous in theexhibition, and they were represented in anumber of ways. The exhibition featuredpictures of children's toys in the rubble, as wellas many photographs of children playing in andaround the evacuation sites. While thedestroyed schools and scattered toys could beseen as a sorrowful representation, the latterrepresentation of child survivors at playsuggested hope for the future. There weremany photographs of adults holding babies,projecting a resilient image to a grievingpublic. The familiar scene of a mothercomforting her crying infant symbolised thehope that the community, and its sympathisingnation, could be comforted as well.

Crying Baby, photograph by Hiroshi Sato.

Personal loss was represented in photographsof solitary people, often elderly, gazing into thedistance or at photographs of lost relatives or

friends. The concentration of representations ofelderly residents in the exhibition is notsurprising as a disproportionate number ofNortheastern Japan's population is elderly.Approximately one third of the affectedresidents were over 65, which is higher thanthe national average of 23%.18

Elderly Survivor, photograph by GianniGiosue.

The framing of the elderly in these situations inthe exhibition represented an intensifiedexpression of the common fear of lonelinessand helplessness in one's later years. While thephotographs of children represented the loss ofinnocence, the photographs of the elderlyshowed another vulnerable social group placedin unthinkable conditions. This vulnerablesocial group, however, is not a rarefiedminority, but a group of people that are part offamilies around the country.

Photographs of survivors gazing at their losswere numerous in the exhibition. Personally, Ifound this photograph of a father looking forhis family very moving and it was thisphotograph that prompted me to write thisessay.

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Survivor searching for his family in aMinamisanriku evacuat ion centre.Photograph by Sasaki Kō.

I have a 5"x7" reproduction of this photograph,of better quality and finer resolution than thedigital reproductions here. In the print, thedetails are sharper, such as the trails of tearsdown the father's face as he holds up aphotograph of his wife and child between twofingers, and the familiar shiny creases of hisquilted down jacket, a ubiquitous piece ofclothing in the Japanese winter. The sharpfocus of the father against the blurredbackground of the evacuation centreaccentuates the isolation he must have felt inhis loss. The viewer is drawn into his painwordlessly and completely, for any father fromany town or city in Japan could imagine thesame light feel of a UNIQLO jacket on his armas he raised the photograph of his family in anevacuation center.

While children, parents and grandparentsrepresented a large part of the social collectiveportrayed in the exhibit, there were othergroups of people marked as typical examples ofmembers of the wider Japanese community.Another evocative representation in theexhibition were photographs of the Self-Defence Forces and other emergency workerswho provided rescue and relief services for thesurvivors. These photographs of rescue providean image of hope compared with the

photographs of destruction and loss.Immediately after the disaster, Prime MinisterKan Naoto authorised the mobilisation of up to100,000 SDF troops, including reservists.19

These images focused on the rescuers'respectful assistance and daring heroism,which contrasted with the devastating lossespictured in other photographs. These heroescould also evoke empathy for their hardship,for certainly their efforts involved both physicaland emotional sacrifice, given the enormity ofthe task and the severity of the damage toaffected areas.

The exhibi t as a whole c losed with aphotographs which suggested a furthercollective, which I have termed the observersand sympathisers. They are visible in Figure 11below, but we can think of them as implied inevery photograph in the exhibition. Theobservers and sympathisers include but are notlimited to the photographers, gallery workers,visitors to the gallery, and those viewing theexhibition online. To me, a member of this thirdgroup, one particular photograph stood out as aconcrete representation of this collectivemembership; it was not a picture of a survivoror a relief worker, but the photograph of ascreen capture of one of the many mediarepresentations that flooded Japanese andinternational media outlets very soon after thedisaster.

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Screen capture of a television broadcast onFukushima Daiichi. Photograph by MarkPearson.

Pearson's photograph powerfully cast theviewers of this disaster as a collective, as agroup who watched in horror first as thedestruction of the earthquake and tsunami wasrevealed, and later as the nuclear crisisdeveloped. This and others in the series showhow the triple disaster drew in a nation thatfelt indirectly and directly affected (in the lattercase, most clearly through the nuclearaccident) by 3/11. This photograph is especiallyevocative precisely because of its everyday,ordinary quality: a television screen as viewedby domestic and international audiences on theday of the Fukushima Daiichi explosion. Itcaptures the moment that the nation realisedthe extent and ongoing nature of the originaltragedy, and that 3/11 had ceased to be alocalised issue; it was now a national concern.20

Indeed, it was simultaneously an internationalconcern as the images were seen on television,computer and smartphone screens around theworld.

The intertextual understanding of communitywas also seen as a call to action for some.Photography was used extensively after 3/11not only to communicate the empirical realityof the disaster to a national and internationalaudience, but also to strengthen communitythrough the evocation and expression ofempathy. I suggest, then, that this communityis called to action through a variety ofactivities. In this case, the communityresponded with donations of time, goods andmoney,21 as well as activism and protest on anational scale.22 This community was notlimited to the domestic arena: privatedonations from the United States totalled overUS$30.3 million, and Taiwanese citizensdonated over US$29 million.23 The AustralianRed Cross noted in March 2012 that overAU$27 million had been passed to the Japanese

Red Cross for the Tōhoku region.24

The intertextuality of these sets of photographsprovides resonance and meaning, but the linksbetween these documented disasters alsosuggest further connections. I have chosen toinclude specific photographs from the past tounderscore the similarities between therepresentations of these disasters. Despite thedifferences between these separate historicalevents, reflection upon what Hiroshima,Nagasaki, Minamata and Fukushima have incommon causes us to re-examine what isshared by the victims of each disaster.

Of the photographs in this exhibition, theSasaki Kō photograph of the deserted streetwith the 'bright future' label is one of the morefamous inclusions. Reproduced in the New YorkTimes, it reached hundreds of thousands ofreaders internationally. The photograph alsocould be seen as a reference to a 'brighter'time, when Japan's socio-economic outlook hadnot been shadowed by extended recessions,political scandals and severe natural disasters.Viewers would 'remember' images of mainshopping streets of their own home towns inthe past, and of the 'bright future' they hadexpected for these places. As framed by Sasaki,however, Fukushima becomes a reminder thatbright expectations can be dashed by thenatural and man-made disasters.

Sasaki's photograph also presents an ironicview of the optimism generally associated withtechnology in Japan. In the Tōhoku region,government authorities, industry and somesectors of civil society seemed to believe that,in David Harvey's words, "[the] scientificdomination of nature promised freedom fromscarcity, want and the arbitrariness of naturalcalamity."25 This can be seen in projects such asthe construction of sea walls that were thoughthigh enough to protect coastal villages, andearthquake resistant features built into theaging nuclear reactors. In his essay on postwarJapan, Shun'ya Yoshimi refers to a "techno

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national" discourse in Japan which shapedidentity in the reconstruction and high growtheras. "Techno nationalism" can be defined as aprogressive, modernist belief that the nationstate is made powerful by the creation,ownership and ongoing advancement oftechnology.2 6 This is not a particularly"Japanese" phenomenon, but it is especiallyimportant in Japan because Japanese nationalidentity was restored after defeat in the AsiaPacific War through economic successesderived not from natural resources, but ratherfrom technology. Even earlier, the dramaticchanges in Japan in the late 19th and 20thcentury disrupted the supposed binary betweenthe "modern" West and the "backward" East.27

Japan's adoption of technology and its successwith its innovation bolstered its internationalstanding and allowed a middle class standardof living previously unattained in other Asiancountries. Though the nuclear industry in Japanwas already growing, the worldwide 1973 oilcrisis suggested to Japanese politicians andindustry leaders that to rely wholly on importswas unwise.28 Currently, 30% of Japan'selectricity is nuclear generated.29

The nuclear industry in Fukushima and otherparts of the country, though, is not just aboutgenerating electricity for the householdappliances that Yoshimi described. As early as1969, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saw theexistence of nuclear technology on Japanesesoil as a "technological deterrence" to othernations.30 Japan has been excluded frominternational restrictions in its handling andstoring of plutonium because of its "specialstatus as the only country in the world to havesuffered atomic bombings",31 yet these facilitiesmean that Japan could build a bomb relativelyquickly (and with the Abe cabinet's recentreinterpretation of Article 9 in June 2014,nuclear energy in Japan could soon no longerbe "peaceful"). "Nuclear villages" likeFukushima, created by partnerships betweenthe Japanese government, Japanese industryand international partners, serve to make solid

the abstract, positivist notions of techno-nationalism (and techno-internationalism) inpostwar Japan. The failure at Fukushima asframed by the photographer Sasaki Kō andothers, calls our attention to the hollowness ofthese concepts, and how techno-nationalismhas failed the people of Eastern Japan, andwider Japanese society, in a variety of ways.

Conclusion

Our gaze as viewers is focused on the subjectsand the subjectivities of those portrayed in thephotographs, and of the varied emotionsexperienced by the people of Tōhoku regionand of the Japanese public at large. Thephotographs also, however, documented thepresence of another, perhaps less visible,group: the photographers who had gathered atthe site to capture the moment, and whoseobservation of the tragedy was then passed onto the viewers of the exhibition. By looking atthese photographs, the viewers, too, vicariouslyexperienced these moments in the subjects' andthe photographers' lives. While the Tōhokudisaster was in the first place something whichhappened in Japan, the fact that the galleryowner and curator of the exhibition is aresident foreigner in Japan, and many of thephotographs were taken by overseasphotographers, suggests that the nationalsense of victimhood and compassion was feltjust as vividly by the foreign community, andarguably, by the rest of the global community.

While viewers of these photographs areunderstandably first struck by the suffering ofthe Japanese victims, and reminded oftragedies past, I would argue that theintertextual references to World War II andMinamata invite reflection on the economic andpolitical processes that contributed to all ofthese photographic representations. Theexpression of compassion today, looking backdecades or just a few years, arose in a contextstill governed by a structure that seeks tocontrol the natural environment in ways that

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benefit corporations and political parties asmuch as they are meant to enrich individuallives. This common thread links especiallyMinamata and Fukushima. In rememberingthis, we might venture a new definition ofcompassion: one that calls the viewer topositive action, rather than serving as adefence mechanism against fear and instability,or to sanitise the historical record.

Photography is immediate and unapologetic,which is one of the reasons it so effectivelycommunicates the suffering of victims. AsMackie notes, exhibitions can be "illustrative"of an incident and/or an individual's experienceof that incident, but without knowledge of thehistory of the moment, the image has littlemeaning.32 Viewed as a whole in the Zen FotoGallery, we can "infer a narrative throughlooking at the juxtaposition of images"included.33 I hope the readers of this article willtake the time to look at the Facebook gallery ofthis exhibition in its entirety to see all thephotographs and consider their own narrativesarising from this viewing: what connections canthey make from viewing the 3/11 photographsjuxtaposed against their personal cumulativeexperience? My inclusion of the setsudenchūautomated drink dispenser in this articlegestures towards this exercise: that Tokyoitessave energy in solidarity with those who arestill suffering in temporary housing in Tōhoku.Does the need for electricity surpass the needsof these residents and their land? Does theexperience of the poisoning of the land andwater around Hiroshima, Nagasaki andMinamata give us any insight into howFukushima can recover?

These photographs are also a kind of protest,which makes "visible the pain of others whohave suffered similar losses…validat[ing] thosefeelings for each other but also for the broaderpublic".34 This solidarity should not, however,crowd out the space for public reflection on therole of the national and local governments,their relationship to industry, and the use of

technology for corporate profit. When wecongratulate the public for saving energy insolidarity with those suffering in Tōhoku, canwe also reflect on the irony of the "brightfuture" that the nuclear reactors promisedthem? When we see the signs of lingeringcompassion through artistic representationsand everyday life, such as the setsdenchū sign,we need to not only reflect upon what hashappened but also ask ourselves: where tonext?

Recommended citation: Carolyn S. Stevens,"Images of Suffering, Resi l ience andCompassion in Post 3/11 Japan", The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 6, No. 9,February 16, 2015.

Author Biography

Carolyn S. Stevens is Professor of JapaneseStudies and Director of the Japanese StudiesCentre at Monash University. Her majorpublications include Japanese PopularMusic:Culture, Authenticity and Power(Routledge 2008), Disabil ity in Japan(Routledge 2013) and the co-edited volumesSound, Space and Sociality in Modern Japan(Routledge 2014) and Internationalising Japan:Discourse and Practice (Routledge 2014). Shei s cur ren t l y Ed i to r - in -Ch ie f o f theinterdisciplinary journal Japanese Studies.

Notes

1 "Natsu – Eakon wa Nando ni NattaraTsukemasuka" [In the Summer, How Hot Doesi t B e c o m e B e f o r e Y o u P u t o n t h eAirconditioning?], Yomiuri Online, 16 July 2012.Retrieved 7 January 2014.

2 C. Daniel Batson, "These Things CalledEmpathy: Eight Related but Dist inctPhenomena', in The Social Neuroscience ofEmpathy, Jean Decety and William Ickes (eds.),Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2009, pp. 3–15.

3 Mikael Pettersson, "Seeing What is Not There:

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Pictorial Experience, Imagination and Non-Localization', British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol.51, No. 3, 2011, p. 279.

4 Pettersson, "Seeing What is Not There", p.280.

5 Vera Mackie, "Putting a Face to a Name:Visualising Human Rights", Cultural StudiesReview, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2014, p. 216. Retrievedon 2 August 2014.

6 Pettersson, "Seeing What is Not There", p.287.

7 I d irect ly v iewed a select ion of thephotographs in Melbourne, and the remainingpieces on line. Readers are encouraged to lookat the exhibition online to see the works I wasnot able to include.

8 National Police Agency of Japan, 'DamageSituation and Police Countermeasureassociated with 2011 Tohoku District; of thePacific Ocean Earthquake 11 March 2014'.Retrieved on 19 March 2014.

9 Jeff Kingston, "Introduction", in Jeff Kingston(ed.) Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis inJapan, London, Routledge, 2012, p. 5.

10 For a full view of the exhibition, see "TheImages of Tohoku Exhibit". Retrieved on 23January 2014. For other materials regardingthe exhibition see 'Links for the Zen FotoGallery', retrieved on 23 January 2014.

11 La Lettre de la Photographie, "TohokuImages of a Disaster", 2011. Retrieved on 23August 2013 [please note the link is no longeravailable].

12 This comment has since been removed fromthe post, but was originally attached to thisimage. Retrieved on 23 August 2013.

13 This theme recurs in several articles in thisissue.

14 See the Nagasaki municipal website forexamples of photographs taken directly afterthe atomic bombing.

1 5 Kannon is the Japanese name of theBodhisattva, Avalokiteśvara, the Buddhist deityof mercy.

16 For an analysis of the complex meaning ofthis character, see Carolyn Stevens "Cute ButRelaxed: Ten Years of Rilakkuma in PrecariousJapan," M/C Journal, Vol. 17, No. 2. Retrievedon 22 November 2014.

17 In 1997, the Uemura family began to refusepermission to reproduce the image, citing thatthe struggle to publicise the plight of Minamatavictims was complete, and the furtherduplication of the photograph prolonged theirmourning of their daughter's death in 1977. In2001, Smith's widow released a statementagreeing with the Uemuras' request (see AileenM. Smith, 'The Photograph "Tomoko andMother in Bath". Retrieved on 23 January2014). Some have argued compassionatelyagainst the withdrawal of this masterpiece ofmodern photography (see Jim Hughes, "TomokoUemura, R.I.P", The Digital Journalist, 2000.Retrieved on 23 January 2014.

18 Alexandra Harney, "Japan's Earthquake andthe Hazards of an Aging Population", TheAtlantic, 23 March 2011. Retrieved on 20January 2014.

19 Yuki Tatsumi, "The Role of the Japan Self-Defense Forces in the Great Eastern JapanEarthquake", Stimson, 17 March 2011.Retrieved on 27 January 2014.

20 For a precedent of this transference ofnuclear issues from the local to the national,see Anna Shipilova, "From Local to NationalExperience: Has Hiroshima Become a 'Traumafor Everybody' ?", Japanese Studies, Vol. 34,No. 2, 2014, pp. 1–19.

21 For more on the volunteer movement in

APJ | JF 13 | 7 | 9

14

Tōhoku after 3/11, see Tom Gill, BrigitteSteger and David Slater (eds), Japan Copeswith Calamity: Ethnographies of theEarthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disasters ofMarch 2011, Bern, Peter Lang, 2013.

22 For more on the international response to thedisaster, see Vera Mackie, "The Rhythms ofInternationalisation in Post-Disaster Japan', inJeremy Breaden, Stacey Steele and CarolynStevens (eds.), Internationalising Japan asDiscourse and Practice, London, Routledge,2014, pp. 196-206; and Matthew Penney, 'TheVoice of Ten Million: Anti-Nuclear PetitionMovement Launched in Japan', The Asia PacificJournal, 2011, and Jennifer Robertson, "FromUniqlo to NGOs: The Problematic "Culture ofGiving" in Inter-Disaster Japan" The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 10, issue 18, no. 2.

23 The Japan Daily Press, "US #1 Donor toJapan's Earthquake Recovery, South Korea noteven Top 20", 08 April 2013. Retrieved on 27January 2014.

24 The Australian Red Cross, 'Long Road toRecovery for Japanese Disaster Survivors', 9March 2012. Retrieved on 27 January 2014.

2 5 D a v i d H a r v e y , T h e C o n d i t i o n o fPostmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of

Cultural Change, Oxford, Blackwell, 1990, p.12.

26 Shun'ya Yoshimi, '"Made in Japan": TheCultural Politics of "Home Electrification" inPostwar Japan', Media, Culture and Society,Vol. 21, 1999, p. 151.

27 Shun'ya Yoshimi, "Made in Japan", p. 151.

28 World Nuclear Association, "Nuclear Powerin Japan", 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2014.

29 ibid.

30 Norihiro Kato, "The Ambiguities of JapaneseNuclear Policy", The New York Times, 13 April,2014. Retrieved 16 July 2014.

31 Ibid.

3 2 Mackie, "Putting a Face to a Name:Visualising Human Rights", p. 221.

3 3 Mackie, "Putting a Face to a Name:Visualising Human Rights", p. 222.

3 4 Katie Keenan, "Publics and Protests:Demonstrations of Public Grief in the Wake ofTragic Events", Anthropology News, Vol. 55,Nos. 1–2, 2014, p. 8.