LETTER FROM TOKYO

Our good friend Yukiko writes…

"After 3.11, it's as if something has changed in Japan forever although it may be only in my consciousness. The blackouts, which they execute from time to time, makes me wonder we really need to go back to that excessively well organized society in which trains come every 3 minute without delay, things are delivered the next day of order, illuminations are so elaborately beautiful, etc. etc. All that highly comfortable and convenient life was standing on the anxiety of the people who lived near the Fukushima Atomic Plant and who now are not allowed to go back to their town to look for bodies of their family.

"Today Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, the leader of a country with 58 nuclear reactors, came to Japan to discuss Fukushima Daiichi. Since 3.11 an average day of the Japanese starts with yet another unpleasant news about yet another unpleasant number about yet another radioactive substance which was detected at yet another place. What we now have is a quiet panic. A psychologist was saying on TV that a human being can react to the danger correctly, but not to the anxiety. The monster is becoming increasingly smarter and now stretching its hand to the sea, so eagerly wanting to contaminate it with the radioactive water which is constantly leaking from an unidentified place. As you so wisely pointed out when it happened, this is a global crisis and in the long run many people in the world may pause, regardless of whether they should, before eating the fish on his/her plate wondering if it's really safe."