Technoscience

Although I’ve only been living in Japan for about two months now, I’m beginning to feel comfortable here, and that I am much more a part of this community than I was before. Hopefully, though, the natives don’t feel the way I do about Tokyo and all its technological wonders - surrounded by the immense buildings, (almost) ceaseless trains and shining lights in a thriving metropolis, I feel almost invincible despite the recent disaster. No matter where I am in Tokyo, I never feel truly abandoned – even if the buildings and cars are out of reach, I can feel the presence of the city and its people around me, which creates a sort of protective bubble that I’ve never felt before. The technological advancements that have been made in this country are truly amazing to me, but I can only imagine how devastating one must feel when these objects have been taken away in dire situations such as the one that occurred on 3.11. I’ve never been to the north of Japan before, but if it contains even a quarter of Tokyo’s technology and density, I can’t imagine that anyone living there would have been prepared for such a tragedy. 

This being said, rather than prepare people for disasters, I am more inclined to believe that technology has actually made people much more vulnerable to their effects. When the constant threat of nature’s devastation is removed from a society, the people begin to forget how to work with the land, and instead devise new ways to work against it for their own benefit. It’s true that some forms of technology can help to protect, but the fact that Japan and other developed nations have used technology to further put themselves in danger (i.e. building heavily in places that are prone to disaster) has almost cancelled out all the positive effects that technology brings to society. I don’t believe that the victims of 3.11 were prepared for some disasters and not others – technology has brought us to the point where we have lost touch with nature and the variety of hardships it brings. I feel that at best we can use our technological knowledge and advancements to help repair damage that has been done, but until we regain our understanding of the land and its power, disasters in modern societies will never become preventable.

I’ve seen my share of horrific disaster movies that people seem to be so interested in, but similarly to how we cannot prevent disasters, I don’t believe that we can ever be completely mentally and emotionally prepared for them either. Seeing death and destruction on the big screen so frequently has almost desensitized me to the images – as long as I know that in reality no one was harmed, the act of viewing such images no longer brings me feelings of devastation. Seeing images and video clips revolving around the catastrophe up north, however, was sickening – even though the disaster may not be able to match something that a special effects artist could dream up, knowing that the destruction was real and that people were lost and killed evoked emotions in me that a movie never could. No matter what images are already circulating – even images from previous, real-world disasters – I don’t believe anyone could be prepared to handle the shock that comes when a disaster occurs in our present world and time. Even if another catastrophe were to occur, more lives and property and all that is real to the Japanese people would still be lost, and so the effects of the aftermath would still be just as great.

What I am really curious about is what role technology played in alerting the people before the disaster struck. From the view that I saw as a foreigner, it seems as if the disaster completely took people by surprise, and that they had no or little time to plan an escape. Given that Japan is so prone to disasters, I would think that a significant amount of time and effort would be put into researching how to predict earthquakes, tsunamis, and other similar occurrences. Perhaps doing so is much more difficult than I could imagine, but I was just surprised at how the tsunami came and devastated the land and its people so quickly and unexpectedly.