I came late to the series “The Day” on Netflix, as I was in the hinterlands selling books. The form of selling was new to me: set up a table and an umbrella and give customers the thrill of actually meeting the author of the wonderful, fantastic novel Hurricane River, a fiction thriller that takes place in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. I was in Seney, just 25 miles south of the park, so it seemed like selling there might be a good idea. On the other hand, it was to be at the annual Lumberjack Fest, something known more for the beard contest, ax throwing, and the beer pavilion than for connoisseurs of literature.
Beer – huh! I saw large jugs of whiskey passing hands, so one might expect a little more than gentle buzzes from the day-drinking that began at 11:00 AM. My wife suggested through texting that I stay under my umbrella until closing at 6:00, catching people who had been made generous by alcohol, but I declined. After 4 hours of watching a small and lackluster crowd wander by on their way to the Elephant Ear tent (deep-fried bread), I had had enough. I had sold 3 books in 4 hours – that’s a 45$ take minus expenses – and it was time to head back to the cabin for a nap.
On the following day, Sunday, I made it home to Wisconsin cow country to find my wife exclaiming excitedly about the series mentioned above. “The Day” was the Japanese telling of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, taken from a long account written by the plant manager. My wife had already seen the first 3 of 8 parts and quickly briefed me on those first three. We delved into part 4 that night, with me willing to accept the value of the series while still retaining doubts. I had found that Japanese productions are so different from our own that they border on the bizarre – and often the boring. But maybe…
Alas, no such luck – at first. It was like an episode of the old Star Trek without light travel and space monsters, what with cheap production and endless talks on radiation risks. I could almost hear Captain Kirk yelling at Scotty to change the laws of physics. Boring. But then I began to see something else.
For one, over time it became clear what was at stake here. An earthquake and subsequent tsunami had damaged the nuclear plant to such an extent that it was threatening to go full nuclear. As it turned out, by the last of the series everyone expected it to go nuclear. It was out of control and the nuclear material could not be adequately cooled. It was goin’ ta blow, Captain. In an aside from the plant, we saw an expert approach the prime minister and tell him that 1/3 of Japan, including Tokyo, was about to become uninhabitable. 50 million of their 120 million citizens would have to be moved. In addition, all corporate entities were about to pull out, leaving Japan a ruined nation, worse off than after WWII because they would not have the territory to rebuild. What Japan was facing was the end of what Japan had once been and the beginning of a tortuous future of poverty and weakness.
More importantly on the minute-by-minute action of the series, I began to understand how Japanese tell stories. This truly was closer to Star Trek the Original than I had thought, but the tone was very somber on this very serious subject. What was important to the creators of the series, and I suspect to the intended Japanese audience, was the moral aspect of the reactions of the plant personnel. The event of nuclear devastation was backdrop to a celestial lesson that was being given to Japan by their amorphous god (the Zen Buddhist approach to the Supreme Will can only be explained as being amorphous. I will capitalize the word God from here on out anyway). What they were being told was this: they had built a Tower of Babble, something contrary to the Will of Heaven, and through nature, this Will had tipped it over. That was the first and foremost lesson. But Japan was gifted with many more lessons, several hundred and several million more on a smaller scale, and it is on these where the show focused.
How does one behave under the pressure of death? This is truly where character is tested. Were Man not foolish and ignorant, this would not be so. All are going to die anyway. We know this and should live our lives accordingly, adhering to the good in which our culture(s) has imbued us. We should do our duty, live selflessly for others, and not forsake dangerous or difficult tasks. These rules should be taken for granted and followed universally and flawlessly. Yet for those who live as if they are immortal, this is astonishingly difficult to do. This often includes most of us, and we cower, run and hide, and make excuses.
Not so the engineers and management at the power plant. Risking hideous death by radiation, the workers fought to stay at their posts regardless. A group of young men asked to be released, but were taught a lesson by their elders: remain steadfast and do your duty. And they did. As the disaster expanded and hope diminished, the chief in charge told his subordinates that he would die there in honor of those who already had. He was the captain who would go down with the ship. Others who may have been unsteady with this sacrifice took courage by this example. The entire series, then, revealed itself to be a morality play involving actors both powerful and humble. Of the latter, their ordinariness spoke to the viewers: this is how YOU should behave; this courage and sacrifice is what it means to be Japanese and fully human.
At the end, we are returned to the big picture: Man’s Tower of Babble. Through the words of the station chief, we are treated to his own exquisite poetry that tells of our place in the universe. Clearly, he opines, nature is God’s creation, and we should always remain subordinate to its health and its ways. Greed for power – literally, in the case of the nuclear plant – will always end in ruin. We should always remain humble before God, who has displayed himself in nature - both the nature of the natural world and in humanity’s purest self. We must be content with what is enough; we must limit our disruption of Mother (and God’s) Nature.
In the end, the plant mysteriously cools on its own accord. No one understands completely, even to this day, how this was done and Japan was saved. This is fact. Why this happened is left to our spiritual conjecture. But the lesson of the near end of a nation should be learned well, for Japan and humanity at large may not be given a second chance. Even today, the area around the plant is poisoned, and will remain so for decades. Even today, the experts are still trying to work out a plan to dispose of the irradiated materials. A solution is not guaranteed, and Fukushima stands as a warning to all who believe they can play at will with God’s creation.
As a postscript in the manager’s own writings, we learn that he contracted lung cancer within a few years after the incidence. Shortly afterward, he died from his disease at the age of 58. Staying brave and loyal to his company to the end, he blamed the stress of the situation and his smoking habit for his cancer. Of course we know better, but the lessons we must learn can only be done when carried out to the end. Once at this end and taking his last gasps, our manager left this world protecting his people and giving the young a lesson about smoking.
Still, the production is ultimately about God through nature. We are not in charge, but are instead only temporary caretakers. Like the stewards in the Parable of the Talents (Mathew, 25:14-30) we are here to invest our gifts for the love of God and our fellow man, not for our personal glorification and power. All life is imbued with ‘The Way’ which courses invisibly through all existence. In light of the Fukushima disaster, we are reminded that we must always follow this divine way in everything we do, flowing selflessly within the currents of the natural and social world. Doing anything less takes us out of our natural selves, where folly and destruction are sure to follow. In the end, not even Captain Kirk can defy the laws of God’s physics.
I came late to the series “The Day” on Netflix, as I was in the hinterlands selling books. The form of selling was new to me: set up a table and an umbrella and give customers the thrill of actually meeting the author of the wonderful, fantastic novel Hurricane River, a fiction thriller that takes place in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. I was in Seney, just 25 miles south of the park, so it seemed like selling there might be a good idea. On the other hand, it was to be at the annual Lumberjack Fest, something known more for the beard contest, ax throwing, and the beer pavilion than for connoisseurs of literature.
Beer – huh! I saw large jugs of whiskey passing hands, so one might expect a little more than gentle buzzes from the day-drinking that began at 11:00 AM. My wife suggested through texting that I stay under my umbrella until closing at 6:00, catching people who had been made generous by alcohol, but I declined. After 4 hours of watching a small and lackluster crowd wander by on their way to the Elephant Ear tent (deep-fried bread), I had had enough. I had sold 3 books in 4 hours – that’s a 45$ take minus expenses – and it was time to head back to the cabin for a nap.
On the following day, Sunday, I made it home to Wisconsin cow country to find my wife exclaiming excitedly about the series mentioned above. “The Day” was the Japanese telling of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, taken from a long account written by the plant manager. My wife had already seen the first 3 of 8 parts and quickly briefed me on those first three. We delved into part 4 that night, with me willing to accept the value of the series while still retaining doubts. I had found that Japanese productions are so different from our own that they border on the bizarre – and often the boring. But maybe…
Alas, no such luck – at first. It was like an episode of the old Star Trek without light travel and space monsters, what with cheap production and endless talks on radiation risks. I could almost hear Captain Kirk yelling at Scotty to change the laws of physics. Boring. But then I began to see something else.
For one, over time it became clear what was at stake here. An earthquake and subsequent tsunami had damaged the nuclear plant to such an extent that it was threatening to go full nuclear. As it turned out, by the last of the series everyone expected it to go nuclear. It was out of control and the nuclear material could not be adequately cooled. It was goin’ ta blow, Captain. In an aside from the plant, we saw an expert approach the prime minister and tell him that 1/3 of Japan, including Tokyo, was about to become uninhabitable. 50 million of their 120 million citizens would have to be moved. In addition, all corporate entities were about to pull out, leaving Japan a ruined nation, worse off than after WWII because they would not have the territory to rebuild. What Japan was facing was the end of what Japan had once been and the beginning of a tortuous future of poverty and weakness.
More importantly on the minute-by-minute action of the series, I began to understand how Japanese tell stories. This truly was closer to Star Trek the Original than I had thought, but the tone was very somber on this very serious subject. What was important to the creators of the series, and I suspect to the intended Japanese audience, was the moral aspect of the reactions of the plant personnel. The event of nuclear devastation was backdrop to a celestial lesson that was being given to Japan by their amorphous god (the Zen Buddhist approach to the Supreme Will can only be explained as being amorphous. I will capitalize the word God from here on out anyway). What they were being told was this: they had built a Tower of Babble, something contrary to the Will of Heaven, and through nature, this Will had tipped it over. That was the first and foremost lesson. But Japan was gifted with many more lessons, several hundred and several million more on a smaller scale, and it is on these where the show focused.
How does one behave under the pressure of death? This is truly where character is tested. Were Man not foolish and ignorant, this would not be so. All are going to die anyway. We know this and should live our lives accordingly, adhering to the good in which our culture(s) has imbued us. We should do our duty, live selflessly for others, and not forsake dangerous or difficult tasks. These rules should be taken for granted and followed universally and flawlessly. Yet for those who live as if they are immortal, this is astonishingly difficult to do. This often includes most of us, and we cower, run and hide, and make excuses.
Not so the engineers and management at the power plant. Risking hideous death by radiation, the workers fought to stay at their posts regardless. A group of young men asked to be released, but were taught a lesson by their elders: remain steadfast and do your duty. And they did. As the disaster expanded and hope diminished, the chief in charge told his subordinates that he would die there in honor of those who already had. He was the captain who would go down with the ship. Others who may have been unsteady with this sacrifice took courage by this example. The entire series, then, revealed itself to be a morality play involving actors both powerful and humble. Of the latter, their ordinariness spoke to the viewers: this is how YOU should behave; this courage and sacrifice is what it means to be Japanese and fully human.
At the end, we are returned to the big picture: Man’s Tower of Babble. Through the words of the station chief, we are treated to his own exquisite poetry that tells of our place in the universe. Clearly, he opines, nature is God’s creation, and we should always remain subordinate to its health and its ways. Greed for power – literally, in the case of the nuclear plant – will always end in ruin. We should always remain humble before God, who has displayed himself in nature - both the nature of the natural world and in humanity’s purest self. We must be content with what is enough; we must limit our disruption of Mother (and God’s) Nature.
In the end, the plant mysteriously cools on its own accord. No one understands completely, even to this day, how this was done and Japan was saved. This is fact. Why this happened is left to our spiritual conjecture. But the lesson of the near end of a nation should be learned well, for Japan and humanity at large may not be given a second chance. Even today, the area around the plant is poisoned, and will remain so for decades. Even today, the experts are still trying to work out a plan to dispose of the irradiated materials. A solution is not guaranteed, and Fukushima stands as a warning to all who believe they can play at will with God’s creation.
As a postscript in the manager’s own writings, we learn that he contracted lung cancer within a few years after the incidence. Shortly afterward, he died from his disease at the age of 58. Staying brave and loyal to his company to the end, he blamed the stress of the situation and his smoking habit for his cancer. Of course we know better, but the lessons we must learn can only be done when carried out to the end. Once at this end and taking his last gasps, our manager left this world protecting his people and giving the young a lesson about smoking.
Still, the production is ultimately about God through nature. We are not in charge, but are instead only temporary caretakers. Like the stewards in the Parable of the Talents (Mathew, 25:14-30) we are here to invest our gifts for the love of God and our fellow man, not for our personal glorification and power. All life is imbued with ‘The Way’ which courses invisibly through all existence. In light of the Fukushima disaster, we are reminded that we must always follow this divine way in everything we do, flowing selflessly within the currents of the natural and social world. Doing anything less takes us out of our natural selves, where folly and destruction are sure to follow. In the end, not even Captain Kirk can defy the laws of God’s physics.
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