The Quake: previously

Recently, working on the quake of 1923 that hit Tokyo area in Japan on September 1, I’ve been reading some documents compiled by local governing bodies shortly after the quake. One document dealing with the problem of Korean labourers was obviously written in the wake of frenzied attacks on the Koreans by frightened people in the immediate aftermath of the quake. Those who had lost their homes, livelihoods and loved ones simply believed in unsubstantiated rumours about a large number of Korean workers attacking, robbing and raping people and decided to defend themselves. It is a fair guess that the social research divison of the City of Osaka Council investigated into causes of such atrocity (it is said that up to 2,000 might have been killed) examining actual conditions those Koreans were in.

The document is amazing in its frankness. They do not hesitate to call those Korean workers ‘under-cultured’ or ‘of low intelligence’ as a matter of fact way. No, they add, we’re not saying that Koreans in general are stupid. It’s just that it is the rustic types from the poorest parts of rural, agricultural communities of Korea that wish to come to Japan in search of better material life. We sympathise with them. 

But imagine there had been Wikileaks back then, leaking some excerpts from this one. An Egyptian or Libyan style uprising would have followed in Korea in protest, which had just been colonized by Japan. So politically incorrect and racist by our standard, but, one must wonder, was this the kind of language normally used in the early twentieth century?

At best, the document is patronising. It does point out that the widely held prejudice against the Koreans by the Japanese public was unjust and racist. Instead, people should feel sorry for the plight of the Koreans, whose background, oppressed by abusive landowners back home, fostered their rather coarse existence.

The document was written in support of a policy to promote assimilation of the Korean migrants. One researcher said to them something like, ‘You’ve got a crappy job. You’re descriminated against and treated like a slave. Your have no family here. Do you want to go home?’ Obviously one Korean answered, ‘I’ve got a crappy job back home and treated harshly anyway. If so, I’d be better off in this brightly-lit city of Osaka.’ Also the researchers noted that they were too busy and tired even to resent Japan’s colonization of their country. If they could be taught Japanese ways, improve their Japanese and integrate into Japanese society as fully respected members, then, both the good Japanese public and the poor Koreans could live happily side-by-side.

What to make of this document? Maybe they were trying to say that there was nothing racist or imperialist about the policy of assimilation, which was really about pragmatic solution to one problem Japan’s high policy produced internally. (They even state that what they recommended was the most compassionate course.) 

This document was published, ironically, when anti-Japanese (together with anti-Chinese and anti-Korean, but especially anti-Japanese) protests were flaring up in the US in 1924. A law limiting immigration from Asia to the state of California was passed. While the Japanese newspapers angrily denounced it as a racist insult, Japanese diplomats admitted in private that they could not complain as they were treating the Koreans in exactly the same way.

Such was the world before WW2. The consolation this time, in the wake of the 3.11 quake in Tohoku, Japan, is that no panic or violence followed. Or, were we lucky that the quake hit sparsely populated regions? (Even so, more than 20,000 have been killed. This tells you how catastrophic this latest quake really was!) 

The 3.11 Quake

I live in Kanagawa, Japan, which is, about 200-300 miles from the epicentre of the quake of March 11th. This is how it went where I live.

Friday, March 11th, 2011:

1330 (JST) ish: I noticed some birds flying in an unusual pattern overhead. Wondering what they were up to, it still didn't even occur to me that something really bad might be around the corner.

1445: my flat has an automated quake alarm system, which went off. A voice message says there will be a quake soon.

1448: turned on the TV to get info. There was a huge earthquake in Tohoku (literally means northeast or north and east) District at 1446. Multiple tsunami warnings issued. Then electricity was cut.

1449: felt the first jolt, then sustained, slow swaying, which lasted for several minutes. I think there were two separate waves or more. The whole building and the ground felt like moving, almost like in a small ship in the middle of a storm. Not a violent shaking you'd get near the epicentre. Mercifully, no damage in my flat. Just when I thought it stopped, it started shaking again. I realised that this quake occurred somewhere far away but must be really, really big.

The whole afternoon: the blackout continues. I was getting some info from my mobile phone, but soon the network was down. I got some e-mails from my friends but cannot make any phone calls. Fearing for water supply, we filled up PET bottles, bowls and anything that could be filled with water. After the sunset it was pitched dark all over town, there is nothing to do but sit tight and wait.

2035 (approx.): power came back on. Finally watched the TV to learn the devastation caused by the tsunami waves. The damage from the quake itself was modest but the tsunami utterly destroyed coastal towns and communities. Began to receive more phone calls and e-mails from concerned friends.

2035-0100: we were glued to the TV, shocked by the scale of devastation. At this point, the death toll was still 40+. Of course the Japanese TV tend to be cautious, only reporting figures that had been confirmed. Electricity in my area was on now but all public transport was shut down. No train, no bus, nothing, except now precious taxis. Consequently, in and around Tokyo, tens of thousands of people were stranded in offices and wherever they were. Many were forced to walk home for hours. Some had not choice but to stay in their offices, school gyms and even train stations. I could hear commotion coming from a nearby train station. I suppose the station staff were trying to help the stranded people. Overnight, they emptied most convenience marts.

Saturday, March 12th

0700-0900: we were lucky to be at home at the time of the quake. At least we had a good night's sleep. Well, actually interrupted many times as there were numerous aftershocks, setting off the alarm system each time. By 0900 in the morning of the 13th, some trains began running. Desperate people go home finally.

0900-1130: I saw some shops open and rushed there to buy food. the timing of the quake was bad, as we usually shop in Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings, our stock of food was minimal. Already many people at supermarkets and queues were forming very rapidly. But they were orderly, there was no panic.

1200-1600: the death toll began to rise. Now they are talking about hundreds. On the next day, it wd be thousands.

1630-midnight: the meltdown of a nuclear plant feared. Lots of speculation by the media was going on, but finally, the government issued a statement saying that the meltdown was avoided.

0700: woke up to find out that there was another crisis in the nuclear plant looming....

A déjà vu or what? While watching the image of tens of thousands of Egyptians demonstrating in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez City is fascinating, this is nothing new. Well at least any Ptolemy kings or Roman governors of Egypt would find their country practically unchanged after 2000 years. In the Hellenic and Roman periods, demonstrations and street violence was quite common in Egypt. Especially what was happening in Alexandria in Roman times is well documented.

Of course, the nature of chaos in street in Egypt is different. Or, is it? It seems that one thing remains constant: Egypt still does not have a mature and functioning democracy and street demonstration is the only way people could express their political will, just as in Roman Alexandria.

The Roman Empire was no democracy. The very concept of democracy had not yet been established in political process of the Mediterranean world, save Athen’s attempt at full participatory democratic system for a brief period. But such a system can work only in a small community of free citizens. In a more cosmopolitan and complex world of Hellenism and Roman imperialism, democracy was unthinkable. It just would not work.

As the Roman world matured, economy became more complex and society diverse. Several political groups, bound by common or similar interests formed spontaneously, but they didn’t have what we might call ideology so they did not articulate their purposes in a language we can understand. Religion provided a sense of identity. There was a roughly four-way split inside Egyptian society: imperial Orthodox Church, representing the people who were gaining real power in the Empire; Egypt’s own brand of Christianity, which represented the native inhabitants of Egypt and would become Coptic Church; the Jews, made up of the intellectuals and international traders who considered themselves above the rest of the common folk; the Pagans, descendants of the earlier Roman aristocracy and a dying breed.

These people fought on streets of Alexandria, trying to gain dominance over city’s politics. This was a time when there was no such thing as election; therefore, they tried to win power by violence. But this was the closest thing they got to a democracy. No matter how despicable the whole thing might have looked to the intellectuals who wrote down some notable incidents, people simply didn’t have any other recourse to get their voices heard.

Sometimes, this street violence got really nasty. One incident recorded by writers of the day was the murder of Hypatia, a pagan philosopher and scientist. She was a highly educated upper class lady. Her father is Theon, a mathematician. She was unwittingly caught up in political struggle in Alexandria. She was probably killed because of her strong political influence over Alexandrians across social divide. She was respected as a well bred intellectual and someone with dignity. As such she was an obstacle to some low born politicians and religious leaders who were trying to intimidate the governor of Egypt. One day, a bunch of these people finally snapped, ambushed Hypatia on the street and murdered her.

At the beginning of 2010, I saw the film Agora (amazingly, Rachel Weiz the Mummy girl as Hypatia), which depicted this incident. Historical films are usually not very accurate as far as facts go, but, as for Hypatia’s murder, facts are rather obscure anyway. But the film had a clear message that bigotry and religious fanaticism stifled humanitarian and scientific advances (apparently, what Hypatia was about to discover was buried in history, until Johannes Kepler finally got it 1200 years later). The film missed the point of unique political development in Roman Egypt and that the street violence was a result of the lack of political system to provide a means of popular expression. What might look like fanaticism to us did not necessarily mean a dysfunctional society.

In this sense, Egypt hasn’t changed much. People there still cannot express their views freely. Apart from the chosen few, most people live in poverty. Yet Egyptian society has become much more complex and diverse than either the British administrators in the colonial days or the Egyptian ruling elite after Nasser’s revolution have ever envisaged. It is no longer a simple country of farmers living of the riches of the Nile and the Bedouins selling stuff for $1 apiece to tourists.

Plus international environment surrounding Egypt and new communication technology changed people dynamic a lot. We don’t know exactly how participants of mob violence were motivated, but the ancient Egyptians appeared to be less timid compared with the Egyptians today. Perhaps that’s due to differences between the loose imperial system of Rome and Mubarak’s regime.

In any case, what we are seeing is almighty helpful for us who study history of ancient and medieval Rome. The contemporary chroniclers described mob violence as a despicable degeneration of civilization, shaking the foundation of Roman civilisation from its roots; yet, what was happening is more of a case of people who were denied access to political process suddenly finding a way to put their demands and exert pressure on the power elite. Again, the film is wrong. The violence of Alexandria in the late fourth century did not signal the fall of Rome. Yet surely society was changing, and unless politics changes accordingly, what we might have is a cataclysmic upheaval, which, if handled badly, could lead to the collapse of half the domain you have. Rome survived the fifth century, but it lost the capital, City of Rome, to the Goths; in two centuries, Egypt itself was lost to the Arabs. After that, the Roman Empire was no longer a cosmopolitan empire that Caesar and Octavian had founded. You might call it a Roman state, and western historians perhaps righty dismiss it and insist that Rome ‘fell’ in 476CE. We can only hope that the ilk of the Al Qaeda would not play the role of the prophet Muhammad himself when the Arab world itself collapsed under the weight of popular anger.