The death of trust 信任的消亡

Japan after the 3/11 disaster
311灾难之后的日本

The death of trust
信任的消亡

Last year’s triple disaster—earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown—has shattered Japanese faith in many of the country’s institutions
去年的三重灾难－地震、海啸和核灾难－彻底粉碎了日本人对许多国家机构的信任

Mar 10th 2012 | KORIYAMA, RIKUZENTAKATA AND TOKYO | from the print edition

 

ON MARCH 11th, the first anniversary of the day that turned her world upside down, 13-year-old Wakana Yokoyama will be performing a rice-planting dance for her fellow villagers. It will be a happy occasion, because she will be with old school friends she rarely sees any more. But it will be tinged with sadness, too; because although there are still villagers, there is no longer a village.

3月11日对于13岁的横山若菜来说，是那场让她的世界天翻地覆的灾难的一周年纪念日。那天她将为其他村民表演插秧舞蹈。那会是一个快乐的盛会，因为她将会见到再也不会有多少机会碰面的老同学们。但这一天也是掺杂着悲哀的，因为虽然很多村民还在，村子却已经不在了。

On that bitterly cold day a year ago Ukedo (pictured above) took the full force of the tsunami. It killed about 180 of the village’s 1,800 residents, including two of Wakana’s grandparents. Some might have been saved, but when the first of three reactor buildings at the nearby Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant blew up, the authorities’ focus shifted to evacuating the living rather than searching for survivors. Wakana, her family and thousands of others were ordered to drive to evacuation shelters which, although farther away, were directly in the path of the plant’s plume of radioactivity.

一年前那个寒冷刺骨的日子，请户村（文首照片）受到了海啸的正面袭击。村中1800名居民内有180人遇难，若菜的祖父母和外祖父母中就有两人丧生。一些村民本来是可以得救的，但是在附近的福岛一号核电站内的三座反应堆建筑物中的第一座爆炸之后，当局的注意力就从搜寻幸存者转移到了疏散居民上。若菜一家和几千名其他村民一起被勒令转移到疏散避难所。这些避难所虽然距离核电站更远，但却直接位于核电站发散出来的放射性烟雾的所经之路上。

Wakana now lives in Koriyama, a city 60km west of Fukushima Dai-ichi. She attends a new school without any of her old classmates, and may go outside for only three hours a day because of lingering radiation. As time slips by, it is harder to stay in touch with others from Ukedo, where she grew up breathing the salt smell of the Pacific coast. But her eyes light up as she talks about the folk dances she performs, which are hundreds of years old. Keeping alive the traditions of a village she may never live in again is a strange responsibility for a child, but it is one she understands.

若菜现在住在福岛一号核电站西边60公里处的郡山市。她现在在一所新学校上课，校内没有一个老同学，而且因为残留的辐射她每天最多只能在室外呆三个小时。她是在请户村里呼吸着太平洋海岸的盐味长大的，但现在和村子里其他人的联系也随着时间的过去越来越难维持。不过当她谈起自己表演的那已经有几百年历史的民族舞蹈时，她的眼睛亮了起来。对于一个孩子来说，把自己可能永远都不会再次居住的村子里的传统文化保留下来是一种很奇怪的责任，但是她理解这种责任。

The more edifying part of the story of Japan’s response to the disasters of 3/11, as it is known, is one of individual burdens borne, of traditions reinvigorated and of communal self-reliance. It is not the whole story. A whopping ￥14.3 trillion ($175 billion) has been approved in four extra central-government budgets for recovery from a disaster that killed more than 19,000 people and made about 325,000 homeless. The government’s Reconstruction Agency, which co-ordinates the way ministries spend money for rebuilding towns and villages, did not open its doors until February 10th, 11 months after the disaster.

日本应对311灾难的故事中较闪亮的部份是个人对于苦难的承受，被复兴的传统以及各个社区的自力更生。但这些并不是故事的全貌。中央政府已批准拨发四项额外预算用于灾后重建，总计143万亿日元（1750亿美元）之巨。这场灾害总共造成了超过1万9千人丧命，大约32万5千人无家可归。日本政府设立灾后重建局来负责协调各个部门怎么使用这些拨款重建城镇和乡村。但是该重建局直到2月10日才开始正式运作，这已经是灾后11个月了。

So those dislodged from their homes have been thrown back on their own resources. Their response is part of what Hakuhodo, one of Japan’s two foremost advertising agencies, dubs “Operation Me”: a growing embrace of autonomy in a country that has traditionally operated through a subtle form of groupthink, with challenges to authority well hidden.

这么一来那些无家可归者只好自己想办法了。他们的应灾方式是日本两大广告业巨头之一的博报堂称为“我之行动”的一部份：在一个传统上是通过微妙的集体思考方式行动，且民众对当局的质疑都隐藏得很好的国家里，越来越多人开始拥护自主的原则。

Thanks in large part to the spirit of self-help, a lot of the more obvious damage was cleared up quickly. Immediately after March 11th the tsunami-hit coastline looked like a Dali painting, strewn with the skeletons of buildings, crumpled vehicles and overturned ships; now there are neat roads and traffic lights. But the sunken roads are still liable to flood, and there are almost no houses or shops. The sheer expanse of the emptiness is shocking.

很大程度上要多亏了这种自助精神，灾害造成的一些较明显的破坏被迅速地清理干净了。3月11日刚过的时候，整条受到海啸打击的海岸线看上去就像是一副达利的油画，充斥着建筑物的骨架，压扁的汽车和翻转的轮船。现在这些地方都已有整齐的公路和红绿灯。但是下陷的道路还是很容易被水淹没，而且附近几乎没有什么房子或商店。整个地方巨大的空旷感让人触目惊心。

Operation Us
行动代号“我们”

The public cannot fail to notice the contrast between official sluggishness and the emboldened efforts of people doing things for each other. For nuclear evacuees, government health checks have been sporadic—Wakana has undergone only one full-body scan, almost a year afterwards—but citizens’ groups have increased their monitoring of nuclear evacuees for thyroid cancer and other problems. Charities have led the way in decontaminating radiation hotspots. An anti-nuclear network called the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre has streamed Fukushima-related news conferences live on the internet since March 11th, bypassing the self-censoring filter of the mainstream media.

官方的拖沓和民间大胆的互助行动形成了鲜明对比，公众把这一切都看在眼里。政府为那些因为核问题而被疏散的人们所做的健康检查是零零碎碎的。若菜只做过一次全身扫描，还是在灾后将近一年才做的。而一些民众自发团体已经加强了它们对疏散者的健康检测，包括对甲状腺癌和其它疾病的检查。慈善机构也带头对辐射热点进行去污染。一个名为“公民核信息中心”的反核组织避开了主流媒体的自我审查过滤，从3月11日开始就一直把和福岛相关的新闻发布会同步在网上现场直播。

In the tsunami-ravaged regions, volunteers have crowded back to the furusato, or home towns, their parents abandoned years ago. This has been vital in places like Rikuzentakata, a fishing port three hours’ drive north of Fukushima, which was almost obliterated. It lost 2,200 people to the wave, about 10% of its population, including 100 municipal workers, about a third of the total payroll. It needs all the manpower it can get. Yet for all the solidarity, many of the volunteers, like the communities themselves, are disappointed with the results.

在受到海啸破坏的地区，一些志愿者重新聚集在他们的父母多年前就已离开的祖籍村镇里。这对于一些地方帮助很大，例如位于福岛以北三个小时车程，在灾难中几乎被全毁的渔港城市陆前高田市。该城市有2200人丧生于海浪中，相当于其城市人口的大约10%。其中包括100名市政府员工，占市政府全部员工的大约三分之一。现在该市迫切需要人力。但是尽管存在这么多同舟共济的精神，很多志愿者和当地的一些社区本身对于重建的进展还是感到非常失望。

One official at an aid organisation in the Rikuzentakata area says that the recovery has been plagued by tatewari, the “stove-pipe” thinking of the individual bureaucracies. For instance, in rescuing the fishing industry, the first dose of aid went via the fisheries ministry to the trawlermen; ice-makers, without whom the catch rots, fell under a different ministry and got nothing. “Even after the disaster, the ministries put their own interests ahead of the victims,” says the official. Without non-profit organisations, many victims of the disaster would have fallen through the gaps. “The local NGOs are getting more and more power,” says the official. “This is self-sufficiency, since the government and ministries do not do much of the work.”

陆前高田市的一名援助机构官员认为灾后复苏工作受到一种叫作“纵割”的现象困扰。“纵割”是指各个官僚机构不懂变通的“烟囱式”狭窄思维方式。例如，为了拯救渔业，第一笔经济援助通过渔业部被送到渔民的手中，但是没有制冰业者的话渔民捕到的鱼只有腐烂的份，而制冰业者属于另外一个政府部门管辖，最后没有获得援助。该官员说：“即使在灾难之后，各个政府部门还是把自己的利益放在受灾者之前。”如果没有一些非营利组织，很多受灾者将会被遗忘。这位官员也说：“地方非政府组织的权力正在逐渐增加。政府和其部门不做事，地方只好自给自足了。”

And there is much work to do. The tsunami left an estimated 22.5m tonnes of debris scattered across Japan’s north-east coast—the equivalent of possibly 20 years of municipal waste. Only 6% of it has been permanently disposed of (see map). Massive mountains of carefully sorted tyres, planks and other detritus rise like burial mounds along the coastline, lapped by a now gentle sea. Much of the farmland is contaminated with sea water; it will take several years for the salt to be washed out. In Rikuzentakata, as in many places, very little rebuilding has begun, other than rows of temporary houses that have commandeered school playing fields. The faint traces of concrete foundations in the earth are a poignant reminder of the town that has been lost.

要做的事其实很多。海啸过后，日本东北沿岸散布有估计2250万吨的残垣碎瓦，相当于大约20年份的城市废弃物。到目前为止只有6%已被永久移除了（见地图）。在海岸边经过仔细分类的轮胎，木板和其它废料堆成一座座的小山，就像是被现在那平静的大海包围的坟堆一样。大片的农地被海水污染了，田里的盐分需要几年的时间才能被慢慢冲淡。陆前高田市和很多其它地方一样，除了一排排占用了学校操场的暂住屋之外，重建几乎都还没有开始。在地上隐约可以看见露出来的混凝土地基边角，唤醒人们对于这里曾存在过的城镇的惨痛回忆。

 

Disillusion with government is not just felt in the north-east. It spreads throughout Japan, and has origins that go much further back than last year. Something similar was at play when, in 2009, voters ended almost 55 years of uninterrupted rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and subsequently fell out of love with the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) that replaced it. But since March 11th the disillusion has grown a lot stronger. In an annual study released in January, Edelman, a public-relations firm, found that the Japanese people’s trust in their national institutions, which had long been flat, had plummeted: it now hovers just above that seen in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The nuclear accident clobbered faith in government officials and power companies. Trust in the media also dived. Even municipal authorities are now openly distrustful of the central government. Three mayors of towns near the Fukushima plant boycotted a meeting with government ministers in February about burying radioactive soil. “The government lies all the time,” said one.

对于政府的幻灭感并不只局限于东北地区。整个日本都遍布这种感觉，其源头可以追朔到比去年大地震更早的时候。2009年，选民把连续在日本执政将近55年的自由民主党（LDP）推下了台，之后却又对取代它的日本民主党（DPJ）支持甚微。这正体现了民众对政府的极度失望。不过3月11日之后，这种幻灭感大幅度地增强了。爱德曼公关公司1月发表的一篇年度报告内指出日本人对政府机构的信任度长久以来一直居平，但在去年猛然下跌。现在日本人对政府的信任度大致处于比俄罗斯人对弗拉基米尔·普京政府的信任感仅略高一线的地步。核事故彻底击沉了民众对政府官员和电力公司的信任。他们对于媒体的信任度也大幅下滑了。甚至很多地方政府现在也公开表示不信任中央政府。2月福岛发电站附近城镇的市长们和一些政府部长会晤，以讨论放射性土壤的掩埋问题。有三名市长拒绝参加这一会议。其中一人表示：“政府一直都在撒谎”。

Ask Yoshihiko Noda, the prime minister, about the breakdown of trust and he admits there is a perception that the government’s response has been slow. He points to the temporary housing and numerous reconstruction budgets as evidence that the government has in fact “rolled up its sleeves”. The ruling and opposition parties, he says, have worked “shoulder-to-shoulder” to help victims.

日本首相野田佳彦在被问到这个信任崩坏问题时承认民间有一种普遍感觉认为政府的反应过慢。但他指出暂住房的建造和大量重建预算是政府已“卷起袖子做事”的实证。他认为执政党和在野党在帮助受难者这点上是在“并肩”努力的。

Visit the stricken north-east, however, and a different story emerges. Political bickering in Tokyo delayed reconstruction efforts for at least three months, say local officials. For a while the LDP refused even to meet the prime minister in person, in effect obstructing relief efforts in the hope of forcing a snap election. The DPJ was rife with internal tensions that forced out the prime minister of the time, Naoto Kan.

但是，如果你去受灾的东北地区走一走，你就会发现一个不同的故事。地方官员指出，东京的政治争议将重建工作至少推迟了三个月。很长一段时间内自由民主党甚至都不愿面见首相，这等于阻碍了救灾工作，其背后的动机在于自由民主党希望能迫使日本民主党提前进行选举。另一方面，日本民主党内部也充满了各种派别冲突，这些冲突最终把灾难发生时的在任首相菅直人逼下了台。

Mr Noda says, appealingly, that it is up to the local communities to decide how the reconstruction money is spent. But projects must fall into one of 40 predetermined categories; the funds are doled out in tranches over time; and the reconstruction agency’s policy and guidance manuals run to more than 130 pages. Outdated rules persist. For instance, Rikuzentakata was unable to build a supermarket because of zoning laws aimed at protecting small shopkeepers. As many small shops were engulfed by the sea, coddling them is hardly a pressing matter. What counts is having somewhere to shop. Many rules thwart the recovery, says Futoshi Toba, the beleaguered mayor.

野田首相说重建资金要怎么使用决定权在于地方社区，这听上去很不错。但是所有的重建项目必须划入事先决定好的40个类别中的一类，而且资金是分批慢慢拨放的，另外重建局的政策和指导手册超过130页。很多过时的规章依然有效。例如，陆前高田市无法建造超市，因为分区法规旨在保护小型商贩。现在很多小型商店都已被海浪吞没，照顾他们的利益根本不是当务之急，最重要的是人们有地方买东西。该市倍受困扰的市长刀羽太指出，很多规章制度都在妨碍重建工作。

Although people feel anger and frustration towards Tokyo, they know they still depend on it. They doubt their overstretched local authorities are up to the task, and want wise policymaking support from the central government of the sort that, for good or ill, used to be a hallmark of the Japanese state. There is a feeling that they are getting little attention, and that what they do get is from second-rate civil servants—the top brass being too self-important to leave Tokyo.

虽然人们对东京政府感到愤怒及无奈，他们心里很清楚自己还得指望它。地方政府已经是超负荷运作了，人们很怀疑其是否有能力完成重建。人们也希望中央政府能重拾明智的政策制定来支援灾区。这种政策制定，不管结果好坏，过去曾是日本国家行政的标志。现在在灾区也存在一种感觉，认为中央并没有对其提供足够的关注，关注灾区的似乎都是一些次级公务员，高级官员似乎自视过高，不愿离开东京。

As for the mainstream political parties, almost everyone in the affected areas sees them as part of the problem. Even now, Mr Noda’s political priority has little to do with the tsunami: it is the consumption tax, which he wants to raise to prevent a financial meltdown. Once again, the spectre of parliamentary upheaval looms. If Mr Noda’s government is forced to call a general election on the issue, as the opposition is demanding, progress in the north-east may once again grind to a halt.

至于主流政党嘛，灾区几乎所有人都把他们看成是问题的一部份。就算是现在，野田首相在政治上最优先的议题是和海啸没什么关系的消费税。他希望通过提高消费税来防止金融危机。议会可能将再一次发生巨变。如果野田的政府为了通过这个议题而被迫对在野党让步，提前进行大选，那么东北地区的重建进度将会再一次停摆。

The fire last time
昨日之事，今日之师

As acute as these criticisms are, they pale beside the damage that the nuclear crisis has done to people’s faith in authority. Mr Noda says, rather blithely, that “everyone has to share the pain of responsibility” for what happened at Fukushima. Indeed, much of society, excluding an anti-nuclear fringe, happily accepted the “safety myth” that enabled Japan to cram 54 nuclear reactors on one of the world’s most earthquake-prone archipelagos.

虽然这些关于重建的批评非常尖锐，但是和核危机造成的信任破产比起来简直是小巫见大巫了。野田首相曾无甚顾忌地说：在福岛事件问题上，“所有人都必须负责。”确实，在事件发生前，除了反核的边缘组织外整个日本社会似乎都开心地接受了一个“安全神话”，该神话让日本这个世界上地震最频发的群岛国家在国内挤进了整整54个核反应堆。

But if people bought the myth, it was because successive LDP governments, ministries, big-business lobbies, media barons and university professors sold it to them. Accidents such as Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 caused barely a flicker of hesitation over the building of more nuclear plants in Japan. For years, safety breaches were covered up and regulators looked the other way. They gave a virtual free hand to powerful regional monopolies like Tepco, the firm that operated Fukushima Dai-ichi.

但是如果说公众不应该错信这个神话，那么推销这个神话的恰恰是前后几届的自由民主党政府、各个政府部门、大企业游说团、媒体大亨以及大学教授。日本建立更多核电站的决心丝毫没有受到1979年宾夕法尼亚州的三里岛事件以及1986年的切尔诺贝利事件影响。多年以来，核电站掩盖安全违规，而核能监查机构则对其避而不见。这么一来，一些强大的垄断企业在业内几乎可以肆无忌惮。运作福岛一号发电站的东京电力公司就是一个很好的例子。

Within hours of the blackout that left that plant without the power to cool its reactors, it became clear that there was no comprehensive disaster-management plan. Mr Kan, the prime minister at the time, had to improvise, which often involved yelling at regulators and Tepco executives. Mistrust between the DPJ and Tepco, which had long supported the rival LDP, made matters worse. So did Mr Kan’s despair at the civil servants around him, many of whom came from the elite University of Tokyo. Mr Kan, who attended the more practical Tokyo Institute of Technology, appears to have found them so unbearable that he appointed his own kitchen cabinet of crisis advisers, some of them friends from university days.

让发电厂失去电源，无法给反应堆降温的停电发生之后仅仅几小时，东京电力完全缺乏全面灾难管理计划这一点就浮出了水面。当时的日本总理菅直人被迫要随机应变，很多时候只能对监查人员和东京电力的总裁怒吼。当政的日本民主党和长期以来支持其对手自由民主党的东京电力公司之间互不信任，这让问题进一步恶化。菅首相也对自己身边的公务员应变能力之差感到绝望，这也让问题变得更糟。这些公务员中有很多来自于东京的精英大学。菅首相本身就读的是相对较注重实用的东京工业大学。他似乎完全无法忍受身边官员的处理方式，以致自己委任了一个由灾害顾问组成的厨房内阁，其中一些成员是他大学时代的朋友。

One of those advisers, Hiroshi Tasaka, a former nuclear scientist who served Mr Kan from a few weeks after the disaster, says it was a matter of “luck” that things did not get far worse. A worst-case scenario suggested that parts of Tokyo itself might have had to be evacuated. At the darkest moment, after a third meltdown and a third hydrogen explosion, Tepco prepared to pull out its employees. Only a life-risking effort by 70 brave workers brought things back from the brink.

这些顾问中有一位田坂广智，以前是核科学家，他在灾难发生后几周开始就一直辅助菅首相。他认为这次事件没有发生可怕得多的后果完全只是“侥幸”。分析显示最坏情况下东京本身一部份地区的居民可能会需要疏散。在最黑暗的时刻，当第三座反应堆融化，发生第三起氢气爆炸之后，东京电力公司曾准备要让自己的员工全部退出工厂。全靠70名勇敢的员工不顾生命危险才把局势稳定了下来。

Mr Tasaka fears lessons have not been learned. If there were another disaster tomorrow, the prime minister still could not call on specially trained experts or employ the full legal powers to cope with it, for example by ordering evacuations. A full review of how to reform regulatory structures is awaiting the conclusion of a string of investigative committees. Given the uncertainties, it is little wonder that 52 of the country’s 54 nuclear reactors are now off-line—their power replaced by old thermal plants working at full capacity.

田坂害怕人们还是没有学到教训。如果明天突然再发生一起灾难，首相还是不能召集有特种资历的专家团队，也不能完全行驶法律权力－例如下令疏散－来处理灾害。如何改革监查机构的完整审核现在还在等待一系列调查委员会的结论。面对种种不确定性，日本的54个核反应堆中有52个现在处于关闭状态也就不足为奇了。现在很多陈旧的火力发电站正在全力运作，以弥补这些核电站提供的电能。

Sounds of silence
寂静之声

Possibly the most sensitive source of popular disquiet relates to information on radiation. This was partly held back to avoid causing panic. In some instances that may have been justified—though experts like Tatsuhiko Kodama, head of the Radioisotope Centre at the University of Tokyo, say there was no excuse for the bogus assurances that there was no risk to public health. “What makes me most angry is the censorship,” he says.

公众不满的来源中最敏感的可能是关于核辐射信息的。这些信息迟迟不向公众透露有一部分原因是为了防止恐慌。在一些地区这么做也许是有道理的，不过东京大学放射性同位素中心的负责人儿玉龙彦等一些专家认为当局谎称公众健康没有风险这一点是不可原谅的。他说：“让我最为愤怒的是对核泄漏新闻的审查”。

The information that ministries had on the spread of radioactive fallout in the early days of the crisis was not shared with Mr Kan, nor, just as important, with the families of children like Wakana Yokoyama, who were evacuated to areas of even greater danger. Greenpeace, an environmental group, accuses the government of changing its standards on acceptable levels of radiation with no thought for the varying degrees of risk they pose to children and pregnant women. Hospitals were also evacuated, causing many doctors and nurses to leave the area—and therefore making it more difficult to conduct regular radiation checks on children.

政府部门在灾难初发时获得的关于放射尘扩散的信息并没有提供给菅首相过目，更重要的是，这些信息也没有传达给横山若菜一家那样被疏散到更危险地区、且家中还有儿童的家庭。环境组织“绿色和平”谴责了日本政府，指出其调节可接受辐射水平标准而没有考虑到辐射对儿童及孕妇的影响可能不同。医院也被疏散，造成很多医生和护士离开灾区，这使得对儿童进行定期辐射检查变得更为困难。

 
One year old, too
我也一岁了

Disenchanted as they may be with all this, the Japanese have mostly avoided noisy expressions of protest, other than a spate of anti-nuclear demonstrations. But if Mr Noda calls a snap election over the consumption tax, voters may well start to cast around for alternatives to the DPJ and LDP. In the past year the outspoken pro-business mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto, has caught national attention, and has launched a political party that might field candidates in an election. Mr Hashimoto’s rise is not a direct reaction to the tsunami; his support is mostly in the west of the country. But if his party enters national politics, it is likely to cause upheaval. Some worry that his slick style could veer towards shallow populism. Voters may not much mind; he represents change.

虽然这一切都让人寒心，除了几处反核游行以外，日本人基本上还是没有诉诸以喧闹的示威。但是如果野田首相因为消费税而进行提前大选，选民很有可能会开始寻找自由民主党和日本民主党以外的人选。过去一年里，直言不讳的大阪市市长桥下彻获得了全国各地的关注，他组织了自己的政党，可能在下次大选中会派出几位候选人。桥下的崛起和海啸并不直接相关。支持他的选民大多居于日本的西部。但是如果他的政党进入国家政治，这很有可能引发巨变。有的人担心他那圆滑的态度可能会偏向肤浅的民粹主义。选民可不介意，他代表了改变。

The culture of suspicion could have dire consequences. Japan’s enormous debts are propped up by its citizens’ willingness to buy government bonds. If they stop doing so, who else will? And if a lack of trust keeps the nuclear power plants shut down for lack of convincing regulatory reforms, industrial firms, already squeezed by a strong yen, may accelerate their move out of Japan. Elections or no, the political class needs to be much more serious about restoring the trust it has lost.

怀疑文化的生根可能会产生巨大的负面影响。日本巨大的国债是由其国民心甘情愿购买政府债券才得以支撑的。一旦这种购买停止，其他还有谁会买日本的国债呢？另外如果信任的匮乏导致很多核电站在没有可信的监查改革之前一直保持关闭，那么已经受到日元升值冲击的企业可能会加快脚步离开日本。不管进不进行大选，政治阶级必须正视这个问题，努力重塑民众失去的信心。

In this it might learn from Japan’s businesses, which—as the public has noted— have weathered the crisis much better. Large manufacturers agreed to change their operating hours to balance their energy use, and sent teams of engineers to restore supply chains quickly. A government survey showed that there was almost no long-term loss of business from firms switching suppliers after the disruption.

在这一点上政界可以向日本商界学习。公众注意到日本的商界在处理灾难时表现得比政治家们好多了。大型制造商同意改变其运作时间，来平衡电力使用，同时也派出大批工程师尽快重整供应链。一份政府调查显示在灾难发生之后切换供应商的企业几乎没有什么长期损失。

Toyota, the biggest car company, has tapped into the self-help mood by announcing plans to construct its own power plants at a newly built factory in the north-eastern region of Tohoku, which it will feed into the grid to help the local community in the event of power cuts. It is deeply worried about a stable supply of energy because of the closure of nuclear power plants. “We call it self-defence,” says Shinichi Sasaki, its executive vice-president. Aeon, Japan’s largest supermarket chain, has set itself much tougher safety standards than the government’s to ensure that food is radiation-free. It is conducting its own checks.

世界最大汽车公司丰田就很好地利用人们自助的心态，宣布计划在东北地区一间新建的工厂内建造自己的发电厂。一旦周边社区发生断电，这间电厂可以和供电网接通提供帮助。丰田目前因为核电厂的关闭对于电能的稳定供应深表担心。其执行副主席佐佐木真一提到：“我们管这叫自我保护”。日本最大的连锁超市企业永旺超市给自己设下了比政府更为严格的辐射标准来确保其贩售的食物是无辐射的。现在永旺在自己进行辐射检测。

With greater self-reliance may come a new vitality. One of the most pressing needs of the country is a revival of the entrepreneurial spirit that emerged after the second world war. If Japan is to phase out nuclear energy, it will need to pour copious human, intellectual and financial capital into new sources of power, while also breaking up the monopolies that dominate the industry today. A willingness to consider politicians from outside the mainstream may bring fresh air into Japan’s stuffy politics. And any hints that people are prepared to challenge authority, however quietly, may press more of the elderly men who run Japanese companies to let a younger generation take charge.

随着自立更生态度的加深，日本可能会出现一种新的活力。日本当务之急在于重新唤醒其在二战之后萌发的创业精神。如果日本要逐步淘汰核能，，它就需要在新能源的开发上投入大量的人力、智力和财力资本，同时也要打破今天主宰着工业的垄断性企业。愿意考虑选举主流政党之外的政治家上台可能会在日本陈腐的政坛上吹起一阵清风。而且人们一旦流露出准备挑战权威的精神，不管这种精神表现得多么含蓄，都会迫使更多管理日本企业的老人们把权力转交给年轻一代。

One sign of change is that a few prominent businessmen have bankrolled their own inquiry into the Fukushima disaster. Under their auspices a new think-tank, the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, has gathered leading figures from media, business and technology and produced evidence of what went wrong. In a land where seniority reigns, Koichi Kitazawa, the panel’s chairman, notes that the younger experts were able to solicit much better information than their elders.

有一个迹象说明改变正在发生。几个著名的企业家联合自掏腰包对福岛事件进行调查。在他们的资助下，一个名为“日本再建基金会”的智囊组织已经收集了来自媒体，企业和技术的权威性数据，并提出证据说明这次灾难中的问题。该调查委员会的主席北泽宏一发现：在这个以年资论上下的国家里，年轻的专家们收集到的信息质量居然比年长者找到的要高很多。

Change in Japan is usually visible only with hindsight. The mood, as one disenchanted civil servant puts it, recalls the moment before the end of the second world war when many Japanese soldiers and civilians realised the generals were leading their country to disaster, but dared not speak out. The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident have been the biggest shock to Japan since those dreadful days. But if the people find a voice, there may yet be hope of revival.

日本的改变往往要在事后回首才能看清。正如一位对政府失望的公务员所说，现在日本公众的心情让人回想起二战结束之前，很多日本军人和平民意识到军官们在把他们的国家领向灾难，却不敢说出这种看法的心情。去年的地震、海啸和核事故是那些可怕的日子之后日本遭受的最大打击。但是如果人们可以找到代表自己的声音，那么复苏的希望依然存在。