By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, March 1st, 2013 
Clifton Truman Daniel’s “A Mission of Reconciliation,” describes his recent trip to Japan, honoring the victims of the atomic bomb, ordered by his grandfather. On the first day of Daniel’s trip, Nana Yamada, the Nagasaki correspondent of Japan’s largest television network, asked Daniel whether he came to Japan to apologize.
He didn’t.
“Out of respect for the survivors and their countrymen, I would not defend the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but neither could I apologize for my grandfather or my country. After all, I have shaken the hands of dozens of WWII veterans who tell me they probably wouldn’t have survived the invasion of the Japanese main islands.”
For the remainder of his visit and in his report, Daniel worked to explain and enact this complicated stance, which I appreciate. It hit close to home. As I read his account, I thought of my father.
While Daniel’s grandfather, President Harry Truman, momentously decided to drop the bomb, my dad, Ben Goldfarb, was one of the thousands of GIs who, therefore, were not part of the invasion. For my father, this was after serving in the South Pacific for four years as a conscript (who went in as a private and out as a corporal or private, I can’t remember; he told me about repeated promotions, followed by demotions connected to fighting with an anti-Semitic officer in his unit).
My father and I generally agreed on politics, though he was probably more of a leftist. He didn’t vote for Daniel’s grandfather, but for Henry Wallace. Yet, he strongly supported President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs, not only because it saved him, but also because, he convinced himself following the commonsense of his times, the bombs in the long run saved more lives than they destroyed. I didn’t and don’t agree, but it was one of the very few issues that he really didn’t want to debate, our typical mode of communication once I was an adult. And as Daniel didn’t want to either defend or apologize . . .
Read more: The President and the Private, and the Atomic Bomb: Responding to Clifton Truman Daniel’s Mission to Japan
By Kenneth Mori McElwain, December 19th, 2012 
At the best of times, elections provide social catharsis. Voters are given the opportunity to replace an under performing government with one that promises a brighter future. In reality, though, elections are messy, relative contests. Voters are choosing not their ideal government, but rather the best of available options. In the recent House of Representatives elections (Dec 16, 2012), the Japanese electorate clearly demonstrated its disenchantment with the reigning Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), whose seat share collapsed from 48% to 12%. However, ex-DPJ supporters did not flock to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the eventual winner. Instead, they divided their ballots among a host of new or minor parties, or chose not to vote at all. As a result, the LDP dominated the election with 61% of the seats despite winning fewer absolute votes than they did in the last contest. The lopsided outcome was the product of voter disappointment with all parties, and the LDP won by default as the best of bad alternatives.
Explaining the Outcome: Disenchanted Voters
Voter disenchantment produced the LDP’s victory in two ways: declining partisanship and a collapse in voter turnout. While Japanese voters have traditionally been less partisan than in the United States or Western Europe, the ranks of “independents” have been growing since the mid-1990s. According to monthly opinion polls by the Jiji Tsushin, a Japanese wire service, close to 70% of the population declared no partisan affiliation leading up to the 2012 contest. This ratio has been increasing steadily since the last election in September 2009, suggesting that disaffection with the ruling DPJ was not translating into support for an LDP government. With so many undecided voters, twelve political parties and over 1500 candidates competed in the election. One prominent new entry was the Japan Restoration Party (JRP), led by Toru Hashimoto, the charismatic mayor of Osaka, and Shintaro Ishihara, the nationalistic governor of Tokyo. The JRP had formed in September 2012 under the banner of stronger regional governments and constitutional reform. Independent voters who rejected the status quo choice between the . . .
Read more: Japan’s Disappointment Election
By David Janes, December 5th, 2012 
Recent struggles in Northeast Asia between Japan and its neighbors South Korea and China illustrate well Robin Wagner-Pacifici’s notion of the “restlessness of events.” Current territorial disputes over the Senkaku/Daiyoutai and Takeshima/Dokdo islands, as well as the uproar over the collective memory of World War II tragedies, such as the recent flare up of debate regarding Korean sex slaves, suggest that the notion that the end date of the Pacific War was 1945 may not be accurate. In some ways, the event, the world war, is continuing, and, in recent months, it’s escalating.
Governments in Northeast Asia are engaged in the escalation, but also in attempting to diplomatically calm the ongoing conflicts. Non-governmental groups also are involved, with some egging on confrontation and others trying to settle it, and still more attempting to highlight larger long-term interests over present-day concerns. My specific interest is with those non-governmental efforts that are attempting to foster peaceful coexistence, to put a final end to the great event, WWII. Through this posting, I hope to initiate a dialogue here on Deliberately Considered about the role that civil society can play in reconciliation, or at least in de-escalating tensions.
At the “end” of the Pacific War, non-governmental groups played a significant role in transforming the people of the United States and Japan from enemies to friends through carefully crafted and well-funded educational and cultural exchange programs, funded by private philanthropies such as The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Henry Luce Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The JDR III Fund, The Asia Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Religious organizations played a role as well. All Souls Church in Washington, DC, for example, developed a program to send art supplies to elementary school children in Hiroshima as a method for achieving reconciliation. A film titled Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard has just been completed that focuses on this story. In addition, Christians in both the US and Japan raised funds to develop what today is Japan’s leading . . .
Read more: Putting World War II to “Rest?” Opening a Dialogue about Northeast Asia
By Kei Nakagawa, November 9th, 2011 
Contingency is of the essence for creativity. The Flying Seminar session with members from Shiroto no Ran (Amateur Revolt), an anti-nuclear and counter cultural social movement group from Japan, and Occupy Wall Street, I think, was not an exception. What started as a rash decision by the Shiroto no Ran to come to New York to show their support to the OWS protest and to experience the heart of the occupation first-hand took an unplanned change after a chance meeting. Through a New School effort to create the time and space for deeper and meaningful dialogue, a valuable Japanese – American encounter occurred.
I heard the news about Shiroto no Ran’s visit just a day before their arrival. During their short stay at the Liberty Square, we met and talked about OWS. From our conversations, I began to realize how difficult it was for them to actually get the opportunity to really meet and get to know the people who are most engaged in the OWS movement. The activists in Zuccotti Park were too busy and things were changing too rapidly there. I realized that there was a need for creating a space that would facilitate a dialogue between these two groups of activists. A teach-in session organized by two New School professors, Jeffrey Goldfarb and Elzbieta Matynia, not only opened a door of opportunity, but also gave a concrete structure to my vague idea. From listening to their ideas about the Flying Seminar, I realized that we could have a serious conversation between these movements from different cultures. Just two days after I proposed the event, we all met, and my sense that it could be worthwhile, proved to be correct.
As a participant in both movements, I see my contribution in creating a space for dialogue as a modest one. But on the other hand, as a researcher who is working on the Japanese 1968 movement from a transnational perspective, I am especially interested. I am fascinated how such a dialogue is now possible in . . .
Read more: Toward Sustainable Occupations by Amateurs: Reflections on the OWS – Shiroto no Ran Flying Seminar
In the wake of the trifecta of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his colleagues have donned the blue uniforms of first responders, suggesting they are working tirelessly. But despite his efforts to handle the biggest crisis in Japan since Hiroshima, Kan has not won the hearts of his countrymen, whose apprehension and distrust increases each morning when they turn on the news to learn of increasing radioactivity, the plummeting stock market, and the soaring death toll. As it turns out, blue uniforms are not enough.
History has taught us that disasters and mass emergencies can transform a mediocre politician into an inspiring leader. The 1944 San Juan earthquake in Argentina that killed more than 10,000 people, earned Juan Perón instant esteem, as well as a glamorous wife, Evita. Ten years ago, the rubble at Ground Zero in New York City transformed George W. Bush from an alleged illegitimate president to a folk hero shepherding the nation through crisis. For Kan, the challenges of Sendai have opportunities and pitfalls. But so far, Kan’s focus on the rubble has not brought the Japanese together in common purpose.
Where did Kan go wrong? To be sure, there is a Japanese cultural style, But nowadays politicians must be aware of new global expectations, which call for a man of compassion and empathy, a man of the people. Consider Wen Jiabao. Two hours after China’s 2008 Sichuan earthquake, he jumped on a plane bound for the area struck by disaster. Soon he was seen walking around in the devastated community, telling children who were buried in a half-collapsed building that “Grandpa Wen is here with you.” The politics of emotion in action. Hundreds of millions of Chinese watched Wen shedding tears, angrily slamming his cellphone at slacking officials, and hugging wailing orphans. Just as Bill Clinton, Wen realized that a politician must feel your pain. As a result, the Chinese felt sheltered instead of afraid. A few cynics have called Wen “the best actor in China,” . . .
Read more: Post-Earthquake Politics in Japan and China
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, March 26th, 2011 
This week Hannah Arendt’s notion of “past and future” has been revealed at DC. We have addressed a variety of different issues, trying to orient our future action, by thinking about our experiences. We have looked at the headlines, but also looked elsewhere and thought about different experiences to support the imagination.
I was particularly happy to receive Sergio Tavolaro’s post on President Obama’s visit to Brazil. Following cable news logic, it was a big mistake for the President to go to Brazil, given the pressing problems at home, centered on the impending budget crisis and the great debate about jobs and the deficit, and the military engagement in Libya and the growing uncertainties in North Africa and the Middle East. Yet beyond news sensation, there are important ongoing developments in the Americas, with very significant changes and challenges. Paying attention to Latin America, not only connected to drug and immigration issues, is a necessity especially when there are problems elsewhere.
Brazil is an emerging global power. Brazil and the United States have a long, sad history, marked by domination and political repression. As Brazil has emerged politically and economically, it often has defined its independence against the United States. Obama’s trip worked to change this. The highlight: the historic appreciation of the first African American President of the United States meeting the first woman President of Brazil. Tavolaro reports that there is a fascination with a shared progressive heritage, working against racism and sexism. And he notes that Obama embodied the declaration of equal partnership between nations: the President of the United States visited Brazil before he had an audience with the Brazilian leader in Washington, reversing the usual order. Using a sad past, the Brazilian population could and did imagine a hopeful future with the great American superpower to the north. This is important news for them and for us.
Karl Marx famously said “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Gary Alan Fine shows how sometimes it works the other . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Between Past and Future
While Japan is struggling to avoid the release of large doses of radioactive material from the failing reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant after the earthquake and tsunami, Chernobyl has taken a step back into the limelight. It is a typical journalistic ritual to revisit disasters after any round number of years. Think one hundred years after New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (coming soon), sixty-five years after WWII, or ten years after 9/11. Currently, while witnessing Japan’s nuclear malfunctions, we are remembering the world’s worst nuclear disaster 25 years ago. The question is what the repeated and repackaged story of Chernobyl adds to our dealings with current and future failures at nuclear power plants.
Today, a trip to Ukrainian Ground Zero is accessible to all. Journalists can simply accompany tourists on special Chernobyl tours to venture into the thirty kilometer exclusion zone (19 miles) around the former nuclear plant. The tour operators’ program describes a trip to the plant, a stop at a cooling channel to feed the fish (!), and after some sightseeing in the spooky town of Pripyat, a return to Chernobyl itself for lunch. Visitors will return home with the images of the deserted apartment buildings, the unused Ferris wheel at the moss overgrown fairground, and of course photos of the sarcophagus and the remains of the reactor complex itself. So, what have we learned?
The eerie devastation that humans caused in and around Chernobyl is hard to describe. But it is much easier to retell the unearthly story than to analyze and act upon it. I still have fresh memories of my own visit to the site – as a journalist – in December 2000. Almost fifteen years after the explosion in reactor number four on April 26, 1986, I was there to attend the final closing of the nuclear complex. Up until then, the remaining reactors had been operating to some degree, providing electricity to the area and necessary jobs for the people. In exchange for a compensation package from the West, former Ukrainian president Kuchma had agreed to a ‘premature stoppage,’ and the loss . . .
Read more: Chernobyl on My Mind
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, March 18th, 2011 
“I believe that intellectuals have played crucial roles in the making of democracy and in the ongoing practices of democratic life.” With this sentence, I opened my book Civility and Subversion. Motivating the writing of that book was a developing misinformed (to my mind) consensus that intellectuals played an important role in the democratic opposition to the Communist order, but they would be relatively unimportant for the post Communist making and running of democracy. I thought that this was a terrible mistake, and I tried to show that in the book. In short, my argument was that intellectuals play a democratic role, not when they purport to provide the answers to a society’s problems, but when they facilitate deliberate discussion. Intellectuals are talk provokers. Discussions at Deliberately Considered over the past week demonstrate my point. We have considered and opened discussion about important problems.
On Monday, Vince Carducci introduced and analyzed the photography of John Ganis, art that confronts the damage we do to our environment, showing beauty that displays destruction. Carducci observes that “Ganis describes himself as a ‘witness’ rather than an activist. And yet his subject matter and its treatment clearly indicate where the artist’s loyalties lie.” But it is the ambiguity of the work, its internal tension that provokes and doesn’t answer political questions that facilitated a discussion between Felipe Pait and Carducci, comparing the destruction of the BP oil spill with the devastation in Japan. This could inform serious discussion about my reflections on man versus nature. We are present. We have our needs. How does it look when we satisfy them? What are the consequences? I think that this reveals that the power of the witness can sometimes be more significant than that of the activist. Carducci and I have an ongoing discussion about the value of agit prop. He likes it. I abhor it. I think Ganis’ work, with Carducci’s analysis of it, as the devastation in Japan was unfolding, supports my position.
![]() DC Week in Review: Art, My Town, and Japan
By Gary Alan Fine, March 17th, 2011 
This post follows Fine’s reflections on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. –Jeff
As we begin to find ourselves numbed by the tsunami of news, videos, and twittering from Sendai, we are moving from the tragedy (which is, of course, really, really sad) to find other topics that speak to our assorted emotional needs. We are not quite done with Japan, but our tears have dried. Soap operas can’t run over an hour. (The naïve Libyan rebels didn’t realize that their reality show was in reruns. But we have scheduled prime time grief for them next week).
Like clockwork, the topic du jour is joking after disaster. Af-lac! As folklorist Bill Ellis noted in his dissection of the jocular aftermath of 9/11, “Making a Big Apple Crumble: The Role of Humor in Constructing a Global Response to Disaster,” it routinely takes about three days for the first jokes to appear. Right on schedule, Mr. Gottfried, Mr. 50 Cent, and Mr. Haley Barbour’s press secretary.
Mr. Gottfried perhaps has it the worst of all as his gig as the voice of Aflac’s duck has been washed away. The duck will be “revoiced.” Hearing such offensive poultry would be too much. Who knew that Japan was the company’s largest market? (Fill in your own joke about the meaning of Aflac in Sendai.) Rather than quacking, Mr. Gottfried tweeted. His jokes struck me as rather mild (I have a strong stomach). For instance, “My Japanese doctor advised me that to stay healthy, I need 50 million gallons of water a day.” Drum roll, please.
Mr. Gottfried might be forgiven for thinking that he could ride out the storm since he had previously gained notoriety for his 9/11 joke at a comedian’s roast for Hugh Hefner in late September 2001. He joshed that he couldn’t find a direct flight because the plane had to connect with the Empire State Building first. After his roast appearance, he became something of a folk hero among comedians. One wonders what people thought they would get when they signed up for . . .
Read more: Ducks, Docks, and Disasters: Joking about Japan
By Gary Alan Fine, March 17th, 2011 
Today, as we think about the developing catastrophe in Japan, we will consider the problem of distant suffering and the limits of human empathy with the help of Gary Alan Fine. We start in this post with Adam Smith’s reflections from his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, followed by Fine’s commentary on this classic passage. Later today, Fine will explore the odd, very human, relationship between horror, humor and the human condition. -Jeff
“Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, . . .
Read more: On Moral Sentiments in Shaky Times
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DC Week in Review: Art, My Town, and Japan