A Quake and a Community in Japan

(Today’s post is the first in a series designed to teach vocabulary, social studies concepts, and current events–all in the same lesson or homework exercise.)
　
INTRODUCTION

How does anyone survive the painful loss of loved ones, neighbors, friends? That question is important–since understanding the resilience of survivors, their psychological strengths and coping mechanisms--is one of the keys to understanding how to assist them in moving on after a major catastrophe.

An even more important question arises when we consider the shredding of the social fabric of so many communities in Japan: How does a community survive–how does it reconstituting itself--after devastation that, even on Japan’s tsunami-prone northeastern coast, is unprecedented?

Survivors in the small village of Hadenya spent days waiting for relief–until finally a helicopter arrived. It was only then that they learned how far the devastation extended up and down the coast. In the meantime, however, they had formed an impromptu community with a simple government. Fortunately, the mayor, Osamu Abe, had survived and he was able to take on a leadership role. Seeing that many people were too stunned to act, he simply assigned tasks–whatever needed doing: finding and preparing food, gathering firewood, searching for water and fuel, setting up tents and sanitation facilities, and even opening a makeshift clinic.

Martin Fackler’s account of how people in the Hadenya refugee center went about re-establishing a sense of community–when it was much too early to begin re-building their homes and the town’s infrastructure–provides insight into very elementary social processes (1). He attributes their success to a deep-seated communal orientation (part of the traditional Japanese worldview) as well as to a cultural propensity for orderliness and "perfectionism." An astute mayor, who could motivate the still stunned or less-forthcoming into doing their part, should be given credit, too (as Fackler does, by describing his strategies).

If possible read and discuss Fackler’s article in a social studies class–for its sociological concepts--as much as for its current events content. The article puts these concepts into a particular setting, where students can observe their relevance to the basic needs and survival of individuals as part of a social group. Here are some broad questions for discussion (choose or adapt to suit the level of your class–terms appearing in the article in bold type):

• When a natural disaster wipes out much of the physical AND the social structure of a community, how do people respond?
• (Note the student Shohei Miura’s frank admission: "I never imagined we would get so desperate, but everybody had to do such jobs in order to survive."
• How does the pre-disaster balance of individualistic versus communal values shape survivors’ responses?
• To what extent is the "spontaneous" appearance of leaders and followers–of social hierarchy-a reflection of prior experience?
• How might prior participation in group activities predispose survivors to "self-organize" after a disaster? (For example, Mr. Abe explained that most people in the refugee center had been used to working together during local religious festivals.)
• Why is a division of labor according to gender likely to re-emerge so readily in a refugee center?
• What is an extended family? How might ties of kinship (extending as far as "shirt-tail" relatives") help people cope or bring them together under dire circumstances such as those faced by the survivors? (Perhaps asking students about family reunions or whether there is a genealogist in their family will help them with the meaning of this concept.)
• Is the reporter observing continuity here from Japan’s deep past? And how could a historian establish that such continuity is present or authentic?
• How and why do human beings live in social groups that, over time, have become increasingly complex?

Encourage students to think empathetically by asking "What would you do?" questions. Thinking from "inside the box" of a contemporary or historic set of circumstances requires imagination (as well as content). It is part of critical thinking, essential to understanding human behavior and thus the processes of history. How would people in your community react to loss on this scale? How would survivors organize themselves? Who might take a leadership role? Would some people think only of themselves (and their immediate families)? Would bonds of extended family relationships and neighborliness help to bring people together to create an impromptu "new" community of survivors? What other factors might come into play?

For Americans, the Katrina catastrophe in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast provides another horrific instance of a natural disaster to think about . How was the American response to Katrina similar to or different from how people (including the government) are coping in Japan? If we can identify differences, can we explain these by referencing the strong (perhaps even rampant?) individualistic strain in American society.

Typically, Americans are more individualistic than their Japanese counterparts. Yet, we can stress this contrast too much, so that we treat American individualism and Japanese communalism as two poles with a yawning abyss between them. This naturally results in the unfair stereotyping of individuals belonging to both societies. In reality, throughout human history, within any society, both individualistic and communal tendencies have existed within a jumbled bag of values. And those salient values, however loudly trumpeted, will only partly explain the behavior of any member of a particular society. Thus, in very communally-oriented societies there will be some people who behave more individualistically. This is partly a matter of inherent psychological traits (despite their being tempered by culturally-dominant social constraints and sanctions).

From today’s perspective the influence of modernization and--for both the US and Japan, an economically developed and affluent economy–represent vectors of change upon more traditional values. In the case of Japan, there is the generation of young people "dismissed by its elders as selfish materialists." As a recent college graduate explained, "Before the earthquake, I thought about myself and what I can do for my new company. But now I think what I can do for all of society" (2). So it seems that the quake’s societal impact may work itself out in cities and regions far from its epicenter, perhaps in a partial recovery of lost communal values.

I found myself rather at home when reading about the survivors of Hadenya, probably because I grew up in a small rural community, where ties of kinship and neighborliness were just part of ordinary living. Then, when I read Andrew Higgins description of how the dairy-farming Okubo family was carrying on–milking their cows even though most of the milk had to be dumped–I slipped easily into their shoes. As a dairy-farmer’s daughter I had some sense of their predicament, their anxiety, their so wanting to do right by their herd. This is a reminder that a historian’s capacity for imagination and empathy is not unrelated to her life experience.

ACTIVITIES

READ/DISCUSS: Print out the Fackler article for a guided-discussion of the key concepts: social structure, communal values, hierarchy, gender, division of labor, extended family. If possible, use definitions from your students’ textbooks. Or, you might send students’ to the web to look for alternative definitions.

EXTEND the discussion using one of the additional articles listed under Resources. I strongly recommend Ken Belson, "New to Work" because it reveals how Japan’s affluent, often more individualistic youth are responding.

USE the excerpts from the article (providing more info orally from the full article, as needed) to teach both the key concepts and additional vocabulary items (see Resources). These passages are short enough to fall under any reasonable "fair use" standard–so feel free to duplicate this section. I’ve put some extra material suggestions in the Teaching Notes following the excerpts.

WORD SEARCH: At the web site of a major newspaper search one of the vocabulary words to discover other news stories where it appears. This will help students grasp the meaning and connotation of the word–as they observe its use in a variety of contexts. This exercise will turn out more satisfactorily with certain words. I tried it with COLOSSAL, with good results, for these papers: New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian (UK), Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg, South Africa). Limit the search to a week, 30 days, or 60 days. Students can print the results and do an analysis of the topics or select articles on current events to read and summarize (with inclusion of the vocabulary item).

KEY CONCEPTS and VOCABULARY

RE-ORGANIZING A DEVASTATED COMMUNITY IN JAPAN

These excerpts are from Martin Fackler, "Severed from the World, Villagers Survive on Tight Bonds and To-Do Lists." New York Times (March 24, 2011); New York Times (March 23, 2011): http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/asia/24isolated.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=japan%20fackler%20hadenya&st=cse

1) The colossal wave that swept away this tiny fishing hamlet also washed out nearby bridges, phone lines and cellphone service, leaving survivors shivering and dazed and completely cut off at a hilltop community center.

2) The ability of the people of Hadenya to survive by banding together in a way so exemplary of Japan’s communal spirit and organizing abilities is a story being repeated day to day across the ravaged northern coastline, where the deadly earthquake and tsunami left survivors fending for themselves in isolated pockets.

3) Almost as soon as the waters receded ... they began dividing tasks along gender lines, with women boiling water and preparing food, while men went scavenging for firewood and gasoline. Within days, they said, they had re-established a complex community, with a hierarchy and division of labor, in which members were assigned daily tasks.

4) Refugee centers like this one in Hadenya exhibit a proud cooperative spirit, and also a keen desire to maintain japan’s tidy perfectionism. Along the hallways, boxes of supplies lie stacked in orderly rows. The toilets are immaculate.

5) Residents credited the close proximity of high hills, and years of annual tsunami drills, with keeping the number of missing and presumed dead down to about two dozen.

6) The helicopters finally came because the group assigned messengers to make the arduous hike across mountainsides to reach the main town of Minamisanriku, of which Hadenya is a part.

7) The mayor, Jin Sato, said that most shelters had spontaneously organized in much the same way.

8) He [the mayor] said the town had originally planned to put people into housing as quickly as possible. Now, he thought it best to keep these organizations intact, to help people adapt to new and different living environments. "They are like extended families," Mr. Sato said, "They provide support and comfort."

Teaching Notes

COLOSSAL: Stories all over the media describe the wave or tsunami and its devastation as "colossal" so help students to grasp this adjective’s visual connotation.

• Here’s another example: "Gripping her husband’s arm against the wind, Ms. Nagasawa, a calligraphy teacher, stood on a muddy plain that had been a forested neighborhood before a colossal tsunami tore it away" (3).
• ASK: What is the origin of this word? If students know about Colossus, one of the X-Men heroes in the Marvel Comics series, use this to take them back to the Colossus of Rhodes.
• DRAW: Ask students to draw a picture to remind them of meaning of this word. For example, a large somewhat anthropomorphic wave about to hit beach–with a small village, homes, fishing boats tethered to dock–with COLOSSAL written across "body" of the wave. This figure could resemble the comic book character.
• SEARCH: Find recent usages of this word (see ACTIVITIES above) and analyze the topics of the articles in which it appears.
• If students do the WORD SEARCH activity, ask them to comment on its usage. Do they think is being overused? Which examples seem more appropriate than others? ASK students to complete this sentence: "I would use this word when writing about ..."

EXEMPLARY: Be sure that students understand how example (noun) and exemplary are related–but also stress that "If X is exemplary, it is an outstanding example." Also that its connotation is "deserving imitation" (actually, a sub-definition).

FEND: This verb can be transitive or intransitive (each with its own meaning) so you could use it to teach the difference between transitive and intransitive. It is the intransitive verb that is being used here. Merriam Webster’s two definitions for the intransitive suggest that when the 2^nd of these applies, its connotation is often influenced by the 1^st definition.  "Fending for yourself requires finding what you need to get by but often you have to struggle to obtain it." So the sound similarityof fend/find is an easy mnemonic.

RECEDE: This is the verb that goes with the noun recession. You can take it from there. Is the Great Recession really receding? Receding too slowly?

PERFECTIONISM: Integrate this into the discussion of Japanese values and cultural traits. Give examples in local or popular culture. Any perfectionists in the class?

IMMACULATE: How is the prefix im- [a form of in-] related to the Latin root word? It means NOT–just as it does in impossible. The Latin root is maculatus (stained), so the literal meaning of immaculate is "not stained."

PROXIMITY: Point out how the phrase "close proximity of high hills" provides its own context clue, reinforced by the rest of the sentence. Ask students to use proximity in sentences about local landmarks, geographic features, their own spatial relationship to windows in the classroom, etc.

ARDUOUS: As for local examples of "difficult to travel over terrain." Point out that the 2^nd definition ("hard to climb: steep") fits extremely well with "high hills" and "mountainsides"–making it an excellent choice. But teach the 1^st definition, too-- by asking: What arduous tasks are assigned at school or at home?

SPONTANEOUSLY: Students will almost certainly know this word but might need some help imagining the spontaneity of the self-organization processes described in the article.

INTACT: "Leave it untouched, don’t take it apart (parts could get lost)–so it will remain intact." The survivors had put together these organizations (we might say that in a sense "they owned them"). Why take them apart when you can’t be sure that what replaces them will be as effective? Examples of the usage include intact buildings (physical objects) and intact relationships (for example, a marriage, a friendship).

RESOURCES

Azuma, Hiroki. "For a Change, Proud to be Japanese." New York Times (March 16, 2011): http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/opinion/17azuma.html?scp=1&sq=hiroki%20azuma&st=cse

Belson, Ken. "Panic and Heroism Greeted Crisis at Japan Nuclear Plant." New York Times (March 31, 2011): http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E4D61530F932A05750C0A9679D8B63&scp=12&sq=ken+belson+japan&st=nyt

Belson, Ken (and others). "New to Work, Young Inherit Japan's Crises." New York Times (April 4, 2011): http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800EEDC1330F932A35757C0A9679D8B63&scp=11&sq=ken+belson+japan&st=nyt

Fackler, Martin. "Severed from the World, Villagers Survive on Tight Bonds and To-Do Lists." New York Times (March 23, 2011): http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/asia/24isolated.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=japan%20fackler%20hadenya&st=cse

Fackler, Martin. "City, Destroyed and Yet Hopeful, Begins to Move On." 
New York Times (April 10, 2011):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/world/asia/11grief.html?scp=5&sq=minamisoma%20radiation&st=cse

Higgins, Andrew. "Peace of Mind, Livelihood Gone as Japanese City Withers in Shadow of Nuclear Plant." Washington Post (April 4, 2011): http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/peace-of-mind-livelihood-gone-for-japanese-dairy-farmers-near-evacuation-zone/2011/04/01/AFxieedC_story.html
　
New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
The Guardian (UK): http://www.guaridan.co.uk/
Mail & Guardian: (Johannesburg): http://mg.co.za/
　
Short, handy list of major newspapers in English from around the world at Arts & Letters Daily: http://www.aldaily.com/

Colossus of Rhodes

"The Colossus of Rhodes." The Museum of Unnatural Mystery:
http://www.unmuseum.org/colrhode.htm

• Student friendly text connects Statue of Liberty to the Colossus of Rhodes–with an illustration suitable for the classroom (Middle School and up)

Definition of colossus (with synonyms/antonyms): http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colossus

Definition of colossal: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colossal?show=0&t=1302805949


Other Definitions

Definition of exemplary (see esp. 2b and related synonyms): http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exemplary

Definition of fend (intransitive verb): http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fend?show=0&t=1302806987

Definition of proximity (consider also its synoyms): http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proximity?show=0&t=1302808231

Definition of arduous (two, closely related definitions): http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arduous

Definition of intact: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intact?show=0&t=1302808921

NOTES

1) Martin Fackler, "Severed from the World, Villagers Survive on Tight Bonds and To-Do Lists" (see Resources).　

2) Ken Belson (and others), "New to Work, Young Inherit Japan's Crises" (see Resources).

3) Martin Fackler, "City, Destroyed and Yet Hopeful, Begins to Move On" (see Resources).