Resilient Japan Blog – Page 2

My attention continues to be drawn to Fukushima.

In many ways, Fukushima is invisible, just like the radiation which descended on it on March 11th.  In Japan, my experience has been that people’s eyes just slide over it.  As horrific as the destruction is in Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures which were devastated by the tsunami, it is easier to look at than the obliteration of Fukushima.  In Fukushima, the past is gone.  There is no going back.  There is no return to an old normal.

The news stories we see both in the world and in Japan are about those who have left Fukushima.  They are about the dangers of radiation and the penultimate danger of the spent fuel rods stored in Daiichi Four with their compromised containment field.  But I have seen few stories about the people who are staying.  Those I have seen are mostly judgmental, talking about how unfortunate it is that some people are unwilling to move on.

Actually, there is an entirely different story.  And that’s the one that holds my attention.

In recent months I’ve become irritated with the caterpillar into butterfly as the dominate metaphor used to talk about transformation.  I know it is a kind of transformation, but it is not the kind of transformation occurring in human societies.  When Argentina’s economy collapsed, when Zimbabwe unraveled into chaos, and when Japan was struck by 3.11, many things changed — but that which occurs after is constructed in large part from that which is carried forward.  It is too easy, too convenient, too romantic to think of everything simply dissolving into some sort of ooze out of which the new emerges.  Things do fall apart.  They do dissolve.  But the new emerges as people come together and co-create something new.  The old dissolves into people who combine their hopes and dreams and aspirations and work with each other to begin a new chapter.

What I think I am seeing is that in Fukushima what’s happened is overwhelming in scope and has, in many ways, eliminated any possibility of returning to what was before.  Just after reading the e-mail version of this blog, my good friend Deborah Koff-Chapin sent me a note with additional confirmation of this phenomena.  She shared a story about Chernobyl where, 25  years later, the new is being created.  Here is a whole different view of Chernobyl: http://www.more.com/chernobyl-women-nuclear-holly-morris
and a film in process: http://thebabushkasofchernobyl.com/

Why are people staying in Fukushima?  Why not all leave?  Why face the dangers and burden of radiation?

Because it is, even now, entirely beautiful.  Because of their neighbors and friends and family.  Because it is home.

And, of course, there’s the question of where one might find a safe place.  Perhaps they still exist.  I don’t know.  It is certainly more dangerous to be a young black man in the United States than it is to live in Fukushima.  Because of the winds, Tokyo doesn’t have that much air pollution, but perhaps it could be that living with the air of Shanghai or Sao Paulo or Mexico City is more dangerous for one’s health that the radiation levels in different parts of Fukushima.  I don’t mean to minimize in any way the dangers which are present there — but I wonder, how much more danger is truly present.

So people are staying and they are returning.  It was almost shocking to hear people saying we can’t go back. We can only go forward.  And we can only do so together.

When I arriving in Japan last year, three weeks after 3.11, the air was thick, heavy, subdued.  Perhaps because Japan is a collective culture the grief becomes more connected at some invisible level of spirit.  Soon after arriving I was co-hosting a group of 50 or so business people in a dialog about the future.  They arrived quietly, not sure if they wanted to be there.  Three hours later, the room was filled with excitement — waku waku — in Japanese.  I sensed into the difference — it was so great.  And as I did so, the words I heard in my heartmind were WE HAVE BEEN RELEASED FROM A FUTURE WE DID NOT WANT.

This sense of release from the past combined with seeking opportunities for the future is what is present here.  Their old lives are gone.  They know it.  So what do we create?

There’s a stereotype about people from Tohoku.  They are conservative, shy, closed to outsiders, and well, you know, rural people.  Stereotypes always have a basis in reality.  But I have to say, I’ve yet to meet anyone who looks like this stereotype.  I am sure they are out there.  Absolutely sure.  But that is such a small part of the overall picture.

They are ordinary people — truck drivers, laundresses, bartenders, dairy farmers, nurses aides, foresters and, yes, former workers at the nuclear plant — who are coming together to create a new future in a region they love.

It is just amazing.  We will learn much from them.  And we need to stand with them.

Many blessings,

Bob

I’ve just spent an incredible day in Fukushima province.  People everywhere are leading the way.  My last of four gatherings was just a little while ago.  I was in Tamura City near Koriyama with a smal group of local people.  One, displaced from a town evacuated near the reactors has found land on which to start a farming cooperative.  Another, our host, will turn the extensive property she owns after the death of her artist husband into a learning center for life.  A couple who produce a nutritious vegetable oil will redouble their efforts to help people realize it is unharmed by radiation.  Together they all say the same thing:  a new future is being born here.  We have begun a new restoration of Japan.  Ordinary people, sweet people, determined and committed people.

Driving through much of Fukushima today with my friend and host Junya Sano, we passed through the town of Itakemura.  It used to be a town of around 6000.  Now all its buildings, homes, shops and fields are vacant.  Before 3.11 it was becoming a model of sustainability with clean water and air and fertile soil.  It was leading a slow town movement, using ancient ways.  The radiation stole it all, and now the former residents say, it is stealing their minds.  Invisible pollution makes their future invisible.  Driving through it, in its bleak silence was hard on the heart.  All along the roadways we traveled we would dip into areas smaller than Itakemura where everyone was evacuated and then dip into areas still occupied.

People are learning how to co-exist, and more, with the radiation.  One story I heard was about a town that wanted to have a festival with an outside play area for their children.  Playing on the ground has become prohibited.  They spent days and days cleaning one park so that it was radiation free — now, one morning — so the children could play.  Tomorrow will be a different story.  I thought of a learning center in south Texas that partnered with Berkana for a time – Llano Grande.  When I visited there once I listened with interest as teachers organized a trip.  One of the things they took into account in their planning was who was an illegal alien and who wasn’t.  Special arrangements had to be made for the illegals.  That was just the way it was.  Others somewhere might be arguing about immigration policy, but at the community level you just work with what you have.  So it is in Fukushima.  You work with what you have.

My most amazing session of the day was in the town of Minamisoma.  It was a community of 70,000 people.  As the radiation settled more than 50,000 were forced to leave.  Gradually people have been allowed to return and now the population is around 50,000.  Part of Minamisoma is costal and there the tsunami damage has been untouched since 3.11 because of the radiation — it still looks exactly like the costal areas in Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures did in the weeks after 3.11.  But people have returned because it is their home.  They have returned to build something new together.

Early in 2012 some friends got together and decided to hold a future festival.  More than 1000 people from the community participated.  Music performances, presentations, dialogs — many different activities to engage people and invite them to think about their future together.  At the end of the day one of the organizers, a woman who runs a local laundry offered a toast:  before 3.11 we had a reputation for being quiet and just waiting for the government to do what they wanted.  Now we know we must do it ourselves.  We cannot wait for government.  We must join hands and create a future together.  And that’s what they are doing.

In June the opened a Future Center on a corner of a neighborhood.  People started to use it immediately.  Those who organized it said we don’t actually know what a Future Center is, but we know we need a place to create a future together — so we started.

The leadership circle is a delight — a truck driver, a laundress, a dairy farmer, a nurse’s aid, a bartender — ordinary people who have come together because something had to be done.  One had been evacuated from Minamisoma to a town several hours to the north.  It took her more than a year to be able to make her way home.  Another spoke of how his family has been torn apart — he and his wife want to stay here, in their home with their children.  His parents accuse him of killing his children and have moved north into Miyagi.  He thinks they will never speak again.  But these people have stepped forward because they must.  This is home.  There are dangers — but there are dangers everywhere and this is home.

They know this is long term work.  One person spoke of how we hold individual future sessions and that is good.  Things happen in them, but what we are really doing is working to gradually change the mindset of the community.  We are helping ourselves realize that we can and will create a future together.

They are just ordinary people who are working together to create a life.  With each other.  Now.

Any person, any where in the world who promotes nuclear energy should be required to come and spend a week in Fukushima.  They should be required to walk through Itakemura and experience its silent desolation. They should be required to talk with the parents who take days to make a playground radiation free for a few hours so their children can play outside again.  They should be made to look at a future made invisible and then explain to people what they will do differently and how they will solve the problems of the soft underbelly of nuclear energy — dealing with the waste.

These people are strong.  They will figure out how to live in a healthy and resilient way here in Fukushima.  They will not be swayed by people who they think know what’s best for people who live here.  It is their own future.  They know they will make it together, working with what they have.  They are amazing.

I met a soul brother of Jim Drescher today.  Jim and Margaret Drescher are stewards of Windhorse Farm in Nova Scotia Canada.  An old growth forest which has given birth to many enterprises that nurture the earth.  They know the forest gives life.  I met Masahiko Haga today.  He knows the forest gives life.  And I dedicate this little blog to the Dreschers and Haga-san.

I am in Japan finding the places in the disaster area to start Future Center work.  More on that later.  Today I was in Otsuchi in Iwate Prefecture, the northern most of the three prefectures most affected by 3.11.  In Otsuchi all the the leaders of City Government were in City Hall when the tsunami came.  They all died that day.  Two thirds of the city was destroyed.  With a population of around 20,000, more than 2,000 are living in temporary housing.  That’s just a little context.

When the tsunami hit Otsuchi on March 11, 2011, it hit with unbelievable force.  Waters 50 feet high traveling at more than 60 miles an hour.  In minutes so much was gone.  In the harbor area where Haga-san lived, of 250 fishing boats, 1 survived.  This was a community of fishers.  They cannot fish without boats.  When the last wave had come, Haga-san looked around.  Town — gone.  Fishing economy — gone.  Friends — gone.  Agriculture — gone.  He turned around and looked at the forest and surrounding hills.  And he said to himself, with the forest we can survive.

He spent most of his life as a car mechanic.  But ever since he was a child, he wanted to work in the forest.  It called to him.  Unfortunately, one could not make a good living working in the forest and he had a family to raise.  But eight years ago, when he turned 52, all his children had moved away and he asked his wife if he could learn how to work in the forest.  This journey began then.

He talked about how all his life parents in Otsuchi told there children to leave.  Go to a good university; get a degree; get a job with a good company.  They didn’t know it at the time, but when they were sending their children away, they were giving up hope.  They saw no future.

After the tsunami came, Haga-san said, everyone was the same.  Rich people, poor people, people with college degrees, people without.  We were all the same.  Many of us didn’t know each other, even though this was a small town.  But we lay on our pillows next to strangers in the emergency shelters with only candles for light.  We lay next to strangers and we began to talk about our lives.

Haga-san said that because he was strong and because his family had all survived, he was able to join the search for other survivors.  They kept finding bodies, he said, children, old people, people in the middle of their lives.  It was four days before the national guard came to help.  The first night, Haga-san was unable to sleep — he kept seeing the faces of the dead.  The second night, he was unable to sleep — he kept seeing the faces.  The third night, he couldn’t bear seeing the faces again, so he went outside to look at the many fires that were still burning.  He was without hope.  And somehow, looking into the fire, he realized he would dedicate the rest of his life to the memory of those who had died.  He would build a new future for their decedents. He would build it with them.

And it was the forest that gave him hope.  During the Tokugawa Period, Japan’s feudal age, Japan had perhaps the most advanced forestry management practices in the world.  But when the modern age arrived, those practices were discarded.  People began to cut trees and plant trees as quickly as they could.  The result has been soil erosion into the ocean, depletion of the soil, and, of course, a decrease in what can be harvested from the forest as well.  Haga-san said that we can learn from our ancestors how to live with and from the forest.  And he began to build a NonProfit Organization that would do exactly that.

The forest teaches us how to live, he said.  It can bring us a livelihood until we can fish again.  The forest can sustain us.

As I listened to Haga-san, I found myself thinking about Jim Drescher.  I told Haga-san I had a friend I hoped would come to meet him some day.  And I told him a little of the story of Windhorse Farm.  When I described the retreat space that has grown up at Windhorse, he got a big smile on his face and said — me too.  And told me of his plans to start a learning center here, on this mountainside.

Like so many others, Haga-san is a ordinary man.  He says he does this work for those who will live in 100 years.  They will see the benefit.  I challenged him.  I said, I think there is more.  I think the way you are living your life is of immediate benefit to those around here.  They see that you have found the courage to work with what you have to make a better life now.  I turned and looked at the young woman who was running a chain saw, an elder patiently showing her the way.

It is the quiet heroes like Haga-san who will invite others to create a new Japan.  They do it with actions and few words.  They live as a source of possibility.

What an honor to meet him.

Many blessings,

Bob

August 22^nd

The learning journey split into three groups – one to visit the clinic, another to visit women who have learned how to make crafts – and life — together, a third to visit a fisher village. I joined four young journeyers and two staff to visit the fisher village.

Sasaki-san’s family have worked with the ocean for many generations. On March 11^th he’d traveled to Sendai for a graduation ceremony for his son, arriving back in Kitakami in the early afternoon. Just after reaching home, the earth began to shake, more than ever before. All his life, his father and his father’s father had said, if the tsunami comes, take your boat and go to sea.

He rushed to the harbor, quickly loosening his boat. Nine others of dozens of fishers came for their boats as well. Together they started towards the open sea. They had to make it to a depth of 50 meters before the tsunami came, or they would die. Signaling each other by hand, they traveled together. They listened to their radios, hope for any news about what was happening how.

Their world was unraveling. Would they see their families again?  Would their families make it to high ground?  Would they and their boats survive the storm?

All was quiet and then their boats began to roll; the tidal wave passed underneath. Then ocean was unhappy. Rough, wild. The snow started to fall – so thick that they could no longer see each other. Cold, so cold. The radio spoke of unimaginable destruction. They could see fires. They turned on their lights so their families could see them. If their families were alive.

We heard their stories as we sat around a table and learned from them how to work with the wakame – seaweed – harvested that morning and prepare it for market.  One grandmother, a huge welcoming smile, said she had been sitting at tables like this one for 40 years.  Later we had a had a feast from the sea – crab, shrimp, seaweeds, scallops. A bounty. We sat in a small fish factory, newly built since the tsunami. What was the story of this village, Jusanhama?  How had they stayed community?

One woman said it was the hope we could start again that held us together. Another man said we had the boats. We could still fish. And another said, we still had the sea. The first 100 days were very hard. A struggle each year to find food and water and clothes and warmth. A not knowing each day about what would come next. The young volunteers started to arrive and they had so much enthusiasm, she said. They had come to help us; we couldn’t give up hope.

We had lunch with six families and asked how they had managed to make their way forward. We had each other, they said. There were 40 families here before. Now there are fifteen. We found a place where temporary housing for our community could be built and we cleared the land. We went to government and said we have to stay together to rebuild our lives. We have prepared the ground, we said to government, please build our temporary housing here.

They stayed together. They’re family, Yes they sometimes fight. But they need each other and they need those who have come to help. This is work we must do together. There’s a story of generations here as well. This is intergenerational work. It was the voices of their ancestors that told them to take the boats to sea. Those boats gave them a place to start. It was the presence and wholeheartedness of the young volunteers that helped them keep going. It took all of this and more to rebuild the community.

Such lovely people. Kind, proud, laughing, somber. Some have died. Others have left. Those who remain are making a life together. There is always more to do. They need permanent homes.  They need more ways to sell their products.  They need a bigger community.  But they have begun!

I’m co-hosting a learning journey for Japan for Sustainability.  We’ve brought together a small group of younger leaders to learn with and from disaster.  Let me begin these notes with a story…
That afternoon of March 11th, 2011, the young woman was rushing to the hills and came across a grandmother moving slowly. Let’s go together she said. They hurried along for a while, but slowly, so slowly. Minutes passed and the grandmother said please go ahead, save yourself; you have your whole life ahead of you; please go. With regret and a heavy heart the young woman started to run up to the mountains. The sound of the tsunami growing behind her. She turned and watched as the grandmother was caught, tossed and turned in the waves.

One of so many stories Takahashi-san shared this afternoon. This strong and humble man spoke of his life since the triple disasters. He’s the President of Maruto Suisan, a fish processing factory in Ishinomaki. He spoke with his deep grief to our group of 14 younger leaders from across Japan and around the world.

Such a time. He wondered out loud, why did I live while my friend died. Why was it he who was trapped in the car, unable to open the doors or windows, as the waters rose?  Why was he allowed only that last gasp of air before the waters closed around him?

All 76 of his employees, including his wife and son, managed to successfully evacuate to higher ground. Of course, each has stories of family and friends who were killed or physically and emotionally scarred. At the end of 2011, he had managed to build his business back to about a third of its size. They had a year-end party to celebrate their survival. Lots of good food; no alcohol; and then a circle to talk about the meaning of their lives. We are here to remember. 6000 of our 120,000 died. We are alive. Why?

The room was filled with silence as he spoke. Hard words. Grief. What about all those families in Japan that have found success?  You know, they have a nice house with new appliances and a shiny car. Their children have gotten into good schools. But are they happy?  Is this all there is to life?

I’m okay today, but sometimes it is so hard to go on. A good friend of mine thinks about suicide almost every day. But each time I would begin to give up, miraculously one of my 800 or so business partners across Japan would show up, here in Ishinomaki, just to be with me and help in whatever ways they could. More than 400 volunteers helped to shovel the 10 tons of mud out of my factory. Some days I was all alone. Just me, the mud and my grief.

So we make fish products again. Not as many as before. Some of the other factory owners are angry with me because I measure the radiation. They say it is better not to see. But do you know, 67 years after the Atomic Bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, 4000 new patients when this year to the A Bomb Red Cross Hospital there?  Sixty-seven years. What have we done?

It’s the young people like you who are making a difference here. You come with your energy and commitment and makes older people like me have hope. How can we work together to build a different future, one that is not based on consuming things but is based on being in relationship?

I was struck, in many ways about how Takehashi-san is an ordinary man. Like Miori-san who met earlier in the day who started Ishinomaki Kitchen. Women who now live in temporary housing come there and cook together, building community with each other and those who come for nourishment. What makes them, special? They are able to stand in their grief and despair and find that next step. Ordinary. Special. Words which describe aliveness.

There are so many stories. So many tales of grief and of hope. What’s changed?  Everything. Nothing. Everything again. I sit here on a hillside in Ogatsu as our little community comes alive. A lovely spot. What’s changed?  At one level there is the urge to get back to “normal.”  But normal is gone. This village numbered 4000 and now has perhaps six hundred. The junior high, where the wise principle told the children to run into the hills, is destroyed. He walked the hills for a week to find all the children. They are alive. The school is gone.

What’s changed?  Everything. Everywhere. My host father, now 84, says the same thing from his home in Kyoto, 500 miles away. The age of things is done. We must begin an age of relationship and happiness. But what is happiness and how do we find it now?

We listen, and then we are silent. We listen some more. Perhaps sometimes it is our turn to speak. We listen to each other and try to find our way. We hope questions more than answers.

What will happen here in this land that is another home to me?  Will we fall asleep again. Will we get caught up in our old lives which weren’t working all that well before?  Will we try to buy happiness?  Or lash out at each other in our sadness and bewilderment and anger?

I don’t think so. Something new is being born. It is both fragile and strong. It is life.

Dear Friends,

I’ve been away from Japan for almost two months and will return in a couple of weeks.  I’ve got something delightful to share.

We just learned that our proposal to Give2Asia to establish a Future Center for Collaborative Action in Sendai has been funded!  We still need to raise a little more than $100,000, but nearly $200,000 from G2A means this goal is within sight!

Sendai is the largest city in the triple disaster region.  We’ll be finding space there for a Future Center, hiring a full time director, and over the next two years training more than 25 people to design and host Future Sessions for Collaborative Action.

Over the next two years we’ll be working at a variety of levels of system – from starting a monthly reflection space for social innovators working in the region to working with specific local communities around their opportunities and problems.  In the coming months we’ll be looking for the starting points — the places where people are ready to make use of the form called Future Center to help them build strong relationships which in turn lead to effective collaborative action.

Our overall goal is to rekindle a culture of dialog and deliberation in the region where people turn to each other to solve tough problems and to see how to open up new opportunities in their communities and their region.  One of the things that’s exciting to me in Japan right now are the ways in which I’m seeing people individuate — standing up for what they believe — while staying connected with the collective field.  I believe this is what we need much more of, all around the world.

Our core team — Yuya Nishimura, Yuka Saionji and Bob Stilger — have worked since January to craft this venture.  We’re very excited because this makes it possible for us to create a magnet in the region — attracting people and work already underway that understands the importance of dialog.

It’s a new beginning for us and the only thing that’s certain is that this will unfold in ways we cannot anticipate.  Our work is to ground ourselves in our values and principles and to notice what is happening, working with emergence to seed a wider field of possibilities than we can imagine ourselves.

We need help with funding and we will need help with specific aspects of the work at it unfolds.

Thanks to all of you who have read and responded to my many notes over the last 18 months!

Blessings,

Bob

It’s my last night in Japan for this trip.  Tomorrow I will return home to Spokane.  For the last two weeks events have been offered all over Japan as part of Future Center Week. Tonight, about 35 people gathered to reflect on what we’ve learned during these FutureSessions across Japan.  This is the 2nd Annual Future Center Week(s).  Last year, we held 5 FutureSessions and reached, perhaps 300 people.  This year more than 70 have been organized across Japan with more than 3500 participants.  Tonight a group came together to talk about what we’ve learned.  For some, it was their first FutureSession.  For others, they’ve been to eight sessions in the last two weeks.  They were business people, local elected officials, university professors, NPO leaders, government officials — an unusual group to find in the same room, EXCEPT in a Future Session.

This is just a good way to create a new society!

I am reflecting on past, but thinking about future. There’s a lot of energy and people are very honest.  This is an opportunity for us all.

I come from Yamagata  where I work for a city council member.  I really feel the need for a way to get creativity from local people,  I was really able to feel the energy.  I really want to have future sessions in my town.  

First time for me.  Really surprised there were so many sessions already. Amazing to co-create with people in don’t know.  

For the last three years, I’ve been searching for the answer about “why do I work.”  When I joined FC last year, I saw how small my question was. FC has drawn me into a bigger world.

Usually you can’t predict the future.  In FC sessions things happen beyond people’s expectations.  We open an unknown future here.

I’m a college student.  Originally FC was a way to connect.  I live in a share house, it is comfortable and useful.  Future Session has a similar feel.

Doing FC in a corporation, people who have never connected and never used their voice are hearing each other.  We need this energy now.

Space design is my interest.  My personal experience of FC is that my brain and heart and soul connect.  When we are working here, we are actually seeing the future,  we are on a trip,a journey, to bring back what we learn.

Before encountering FC, many of my problems were soffocating me.  People who come here are a little crazy;  here we can see beyond old barriers and begin to find new things as well as people to help.  How do we turn this into a system?  I can co-create future here.

I work here – GEOC.  I was asked if we could do FC here. What has come out is very different from what I imagined.  How to make a big impact?  Some people mentioned 1000 future sessions — maybe we can do many here!

Producing a creative BA is what happens here.  Allows me to reflect back on my work. There is a combination of seriousness, chaos — perhaps some of the things needed of creative space.

Talking about future is a literal experience. I realize how few opportunities we have in our lives to talk about future. Maybe we can do it.  Given this precious opportunity to talk about the future really enriches my life.

This past week has been busy taking care of FC logistics.  What I’ve felt is the heightened energy here.  It is wonderful.  This is an opportunity to talk about society.  That opportunity is needed in the world today.  People are asking — can I join?  People have he future in them.  FC is where this energy can bring people closer to the future they want to live in.  We’re actually creating space for others.

The past two weeks I’ve participated in 8 sessions — and I don’t get bored.  I never hesitate because there is so much to receive and so much to offer.  FC is a place where each life has a meaning and a place in this world

Looking FutureSession home page alone gives me so much energy.  People are looking for the future!! The future we envision is coming from people all over Japan.

I’ve never been to one of these before.  I don’t have a strong feeling from the past.  But what I have felt here is a lot of passion.  I’ve been like surgeon in my consulting practice, cutting away. What I see here are new ways.

I have been working for a company for over 20 years.  Being here I find excitement.  I find purpose.  I find beauty.  I’m not a perfect person.  It is very difficult to find purpose and beauty in the company.  Maybe we can bring it in from here.

I don’t know why I’m here — except it is enjoyable.  I don’t think there is one answer.  

The concept of a normal life is boring.  Here I can get to what is important.  The series, the continuity of these sessions is important.

My work at the company involves creating new products.  This improves my vision and connects me to other people in a way that might change all of Japan.  Future Centers all over they  world.  The form of FC doesn’t matter.  Things can happen beyond our imagination here.

This is my third session,  I join because it is fun.  The diversity is fantastic.  Trees all have trunks and roots, but there are many, many types.  It is the diversity that makes a planet.

Today I’m traveling back from Ishinomaki to Tokyo and will return to the US on Friday.  We’ve just stopped in the City of Fukushima, which looks amazingly normal.  The destruction of radiation continues to lie heavy on my heart.

My first visit to Ishinomaki was 14 months ago, just three weeks after the tsunami.  So much is has changed.  Debris is cleared and piled up.  The piles are decreasing as it is shipped for burial to provinces throughout Japan.  So much is the same.  Because of the earthquake, the whole city sank or dropped (subsidence) a little over a meter as well as shifted a bit to the southeast.   theMost first floors of homes and shops in Ishinomaki, a city of around 175,000, are still damaged and unoccupied.  Many people are still homeless, living in temporary housing or with relatives.  Many are without jobs or livelihood.  All fish processing plants were destroyed and are being rebuilt again.  The government has decreed there will be no more residential housing near the sea where the fishing plants are.  The people are not happy with that decision.  I just discovered this blog — http://www.dannychoo.com/post/en/26208/Ishinomaki+Tsunami.html — which gives some sense of the immediate before and after.

I came to Ishinomaki on this trip with ETIC (Entrepreneurial Training for Innovative Communities).  I’ve mentioned ETIC in other blogs.  Shortly after 3.11.11, ETIC began to conceive of a Tohoku Fellows program where people in their 20s and 30s would make a 6 month to 2 year commitment to working in the region.  ETIC has continued to learn its way forward with the program and now sees the Fellows work as that of community organizers, bringing their listening first and their expertise second, as they work with people in the region to build a future together.

My work in Ishinomaki was to gather some Fellows together for an afternoon reflection session to learn from each other about their work.  I share some of what I’ve learned by working with community based organizations around the world who are working to build healthy and resilient communities.

There were common themes as we checked in.  Several spoke of how they felt lost and unclear about their lives and their purpose before 3.11.  By working with these rural people, they have each been discovering who they are.  They talked about how they have found their own personal identify and the courage to just stand up.  Yes, it has been hard work.  No, it is not always easy.  But they’ve come to respect the values and knowledge of local people in ways they would have dreamed impossible a year and a half ago.

One young man has found his work to be with the 4500 or so people who are living in temporary housing in Ofunato, one small town in Iwate Prefecture.  He speaks of how each site holds one or two hundred people who have come from many communities and villages.  They don’t know how long they will be in temporary housing. Six months?  Two years?  Impossible to tell.  They don’t know if they will be forced to move at some time to another small temporary housing settlement.

They’ve come from villages where they and their ancestors have lived in the same community for hundreds of years.  Their lives have been based on community.  Now they are cut-off and alone.  AND, they aren’t very interesting in making a temporary community with these strangers.  So they live side-by-side, alone.

My new friend, Narita-san, has a different idea.  He says, let’s make community by playing together. He thinks that it won’t work to bring people together to dialog with each other — at least not yet.  Let’s play together first.  Let’s have some laughs and shake loose our reluctance to be with others.  So that’s what he’s doing now.  Working to create festivals and play activities where people get to know each other.  It reminded me of the story of a friend of mine who was a teacher on one of the townships outside of Johannesburg during the time that apartheid was ending.  Two black factions were had been locked in fierce battle with each other for many months.  Each controlling nearly half of the township with a killing ground between.  My teacher friend found some way to get them to have a soccer match.  It was the breakthrough that led to an end of the killing.

People are working in Tohoku in all sorts of interesting ways.  They’ve found that their first job is to become really good listeners.

One of the things I suggested to them is that in the coming months we need to connect them and their work with each other in more powerful ways.  Right now their work can lead to change in individual communities.  When connected, it might lead to transformation — which is what is needed.

Blessings,

Bob

Dear Friends,

I’ve written a lot about Future Centers  over the last year because I believe they may be an important way for people in Japan to invent a new future.

We’ve just begun FutureCenter week.  A little more than a year ago it was a major effort to plan five Future Center sessions in five days.  Now, well, have a look at the  2012 Calendar.  I’ve tried to make this link to a translated image file; it may expire.  If it does, you can go to www.futuresession.net; you’ll need to view this page with a translator — like translate.google.com — to have everything pop-up in English or some other language.  Nearly 60 events are listed and the week has grown into almost a month.

People all around Japan are experimenting with this way to gather people.

This past weekend, I hosted two sessions in Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands.  Shikoku itself means “four countries;” high mountains divide this small island and in the distant past, people thought of themselves as living in separate lands.  It was a delightful two days as people dialoged with strangers about what was important in their lives.

One person offered a nuance I’d never thought about before: thinking about the future just means thinking about my happiness, I believe.  Another was very quiet as he said you know, I realize that I’ve never really thought much about the future before.  Later a third person remarked thinking about the future is really hard.  If we’re actually going to do something different, we need things like FutureCenters to help us meet and think together.  After all, I’m not likely to go up to a stranger on the street and ask her how she feels about the ways we’re taking care of our children after school, but I can do that here.

That’s a key part of what we’re doing — creating new spaces for new behaviors and actions.

Dialog is a core process for Future Centers.  Many other things are done as part of Future Center processes — building relationships, identifying needs, generating ideas, gathering data, converging on possibilities, forming new partnerships, prototyping new solutions — and we keep talking with each other about what we’re doing and what we’re learning.

I tell people here that while I hadn’t known the word Future Center until two years ago, I’ve been working with others to build Future Centers for almost 40 years.  They are the places we create to invite people to come together to envision and build a future we want.

Cheers,

Bob

Many have asked me about Fukushima. I’m far from an expert here, but I keep picking up pieces of information and perspective that I am happy to share. The way I understand this now is that we actually have three very related and completely separate issues

1. Restarting the nuclear plants,
2. Next steps in the Fukushima region for the people who live there,
3. Spent fuel rods at Daichi #4.

Restarting Nuclear Plants

All the nuclear plants in Japan are currently shut down for inspection. A number of people in Japan are opposed to bringing them back online. Others say it is necessary to bring them back online. Some argue that Japan should learn to live with less energy consumption. Others suggest that restarting the old coal-fired plants and putting solar panels on rice fields no longer in production would produce more than enough energy.

There’s certainly no consensus about what to do. Seasonally, Japan consumes the most energy in the summer months. It’s hot and humid here and the air conditioning costs are enormous. Last year there was a spirit of “we have to work together for recovery.” That spirit is more muted now. Many have “moved on.” There will be power shortages throughout the country and likely, a number of people will be hot and grumpy which will increase the call for restarting the plants. It’s all an open question.

Next Steps for Fukushima Region

I was on the train yesterday traveling through the Fukushima region. Lovely day. Sunny, puffy clouds, green everywhere, rice fields planted and growing. Looking out across the land, it is a beautiful place. So much for first impressions. There’s deep pain and uncertainty in the region. I don’t know the exact number of people who have been displaced from their homes. It’s about 300,000 for the whole disaster area. Fukushima is one of three prefectures hardest hit. To give a sense of magnitude, let’s say there are somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 living in temporary housing or with relatives.

Many of the elderly just want to go home. They say “we’re going to die anyway, we want to go home.” For the younger generation, there’s a new term: “radiation-divorce.” Many families here are still three generation families. The husband bringing his new wife into his parent’s home. The husband and his family says “we must stay, it is disloyal to leave.” The wives escape, taking the children, and move to the south of Japan or to Okinawa. At train stations and other public spots throughout Tohoku there are radiation meters. People watch them and comment: “more radiation today,” or “much less than yesterday,” but most people don’t really know what the numbers mean.

This is an agriculture region, so people are planting food again. But who will buy it? Is it safe? And what about the fish? No one knows what to do. The future is very, very, cloudy. Huge numbers of people are without jobs, the population is an older one. There’s tremendous grief which is still mostly held inside. At least with the tsunami and earthquake damage there was a place to start — mud can be shoveled, debris removed, land cleared for a possible future. The next step seems almost impossible to find in Fukushima.

Meanwhile, children show signs of radiation poisoning and people try to find a way ahead. In Japanese there’s an expression minikui — hard to look at, hard to see. Outside the region it is hard to look at Fukushima, I notice how my eyes want to slide over it. Inside the region there is no place to hide.

Daichi #4

Some people now refer to it as the most dangerous place on the planet. The most readable and comprehensive article I’ve seen on this comes from www.truthout.org. See http://bit.ly/daichi4 . Without getting into the science of it, Daichi #4 stores “spent” fuel rods which are highly radioactive. The containment system around this waste was severely compromised on 3.11. Many speculate that another earthquake of major size (bigger than the 6.0 quakes which occur with some frequency in the region) will completely break the containment field and release the radiation. Should this happen, it is possible that at least Tokyo and everything to the north would have to be evacuated. Altogether, well over 12,000,000 people.

The mainstream media in Japan, just like the media in the rest of the world is largely quiet about this issue. It’s suggested by many that it is economic pressure that enforces the silence. And there is something more as well. There’s a spirit in Japan of if we can’t do anything then why talk about it? And the truth is, there’s nothing to be done. Japan does not have the technology to fix the containment field. A high level of international cooperation would be required, and as yet there has been no loud outcry for that cooperation. There have been a few demonstrations, but most have actually been demonstrations in opposition to opening the closed nuclear plants, a move visible issue.

I come from Washington State and live 150 miles from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation which now stores much of the nuclear waste from the production of weapons grade plutonium. The atomic bombs dropped on Japan to give a message to Russia at the end of World War II were made there. I spent six years on the Governor’s Nuclear Waste Board back in the nineties. My conclusion after those years is that we simply don’t know what to do with the nuclear waste we’ve created. We don’t know. And it will be with us for 10,000 years.

Nuclear waste is the critical issue. When we speak of nuclear power as the least expensive way to get power, part of the lie is that we don’t know what to do with the waste and it is impossible to calculate the costs. At one point in the 90s, $4-5 Million dollars a day was being spent containing the waste at Hanford and planning for what do to. We were not doing clean-up, just containing and planning. It’s a mess. It’s hard. It can’t be resolved right now. Each of these three separate issues are hard ones. I have no insight into how any of these will be resolved. Meanwhile, the work day-to-day is to figure out how to support people in the region in creating the future they want, with all its uncertainties.

Just as I witnessed people in Zimbabwe getting up every morning and figuring how how to make the day work as Zimbabwe continued to fall apart, I now witness people in Fukushima just getting on with trying to figure out how to live their lives. They could use support and prayer and hope from all of us.

Blessings, Bob.