Yesterday it was one month since March 11. This morning we were woken by warning sirens and, half asleep, tried to find our emergency bag and cover ourselves with a pillow beside the bed. It’s confusing when you’re half asleep and full of adrenaline. The epicentre of this earthquake was Chiba, close to Tokyo. Narita airport and the metro system here temporarily closed for the first time since the March 11 earthquake according to one news source, but I don’t know if that’s actually true. After the shaking we got up, bought some milk, came home and made a tea. That was quite normal. Luckily the milk came from Hokkaido; milk with suspicious origins gets left untouched by most people. The term “tainted” flashes in my brain when I see milk. That kind of flashing is probably going to get stronger. In the week after the March 11 earthquake the International Atomic Energy Agency set the danger level at the damaged Daiichi Fukushima Nuclear Reactor to a level 5 (equal with the Three Mile Island disaster), but this morning they have raised that level to seven; level seven has only been applied to one other nuclear disaster — Chernobyl. Over the past few weeks we took a lot of security from experts saying that this situation would never equal that Russian thing. Who knows. I don’t feel so worried about the nuclear situation in Tokyo just yet, but I feel extremely sorry for the expanding radius of disenfranchised fishermen and farmers around Fukushima. Their livelihoods are tainted. They’re angry at TEPCO, the company which manages the nuclear reactors, for unceasing radiation tainting their soils and waters, and for not being clearer with how bad the situation really is. They want clearer information faster; speed is a really important factor because life decisions now depend on clear and accurate information.





What makes this situation so uncomfortable is how slow everything progresses, not only information, but also the actual drama unfolding IRL. Disasters should be dramatic and violent and finally, over. But the danger up north has been continuing at a very gradual pace since the massive earthquake on March 11. Radioactive isotypes are not exploding out of containment vessels, but amassing — very slowly — in the Pacific ocean, in the soil and in the air. Men in white suits are searching for evidence of those isotypes, and when they find them more softly spoken farmers will be forced into a new line of work. I’m unhappy for those men and women. I’m angry when I really begin to think about it. They’re angry too, with TEPCO and Tokyo in general. The leaking Nuclear reactors in Fukushima never even provided power for the people in Fukushima. Now the elderly tenderers of the hinterland are suffering because Tokyo got too greedy with power.





Sometime between 384 BC-322 BC Aristotle said “Anyone can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person at the right time, and for the right purpose and in the right way – that is not within everyone’s power and that is not easy.” But what is justified anger without justified action? Surely they’re part of the same axis. But it’s difficult to say what action can really be taken, I don’t know anyone with the expertise to mend the failed nuclear reactors. I don’t know anyone with the expertise to properly manage a regional power company. All I know is that a more transparent and competent body than TEPCO needs to be overseeing this situation. All I know is what Ralph Waldo Emerson told me; “when you strike at a king, you must kill him.”





Yes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, indeed, the kings of power must be killed with one strike. I hope that strike is delivered by a humble farmer, but they’re all probably far too familiar with the realities of natures cruelties to really care much for any of this right now. Perhaps, for some, this disaster is categorically similar to a harsh winter, a too dry summer, a bad case of pestilence or diseased crops. But this time the vicissitude won’t pass so easily. This will carry on for years, even decades. And we might carry something too; a justified anger at the present with our justified fears about the future.