I have never had an experience like the one I had watching NIHON CHINBOTSU: KIBO NO HITO (Japan Sinks: People of Hope). As a drama, it ought to have sunk into the sea too, but as a story, it was philosophically rich, saying a lot more with its content than with the way it told its story. The elements of the drama itself were often absurd. I kept groaning inside about the choices the production team made. It made a mass natural catastrophe look like something one could easily plan around. And yet I couldn't stop watching, couldn't stop taking notes on the real-life story the drama chose to depict.
As you may have heard, the drama depicts a scenario where the Earth, traveling the cosmos with a mind of its own, felt the need to move its tectonic plates underneath us (as we who merely inhabit its surface look on in horror), and in a way that would be catastrophic for the inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago. At least a mad scientist has told us this might happen, so if we as human beings are able to work together, we just might be able to save the millions who will otherwise be submerged under water. If that's not a big enough horror to have to confront, global warming seems to be accelerating at a dizzying pace, and while we have to account for that too, a global pandemic has just been unleashed, throwing yet another wrench into our plans for survival.
The drama focuses on a mix of government and business leaders whose dilemma is to find places for the one hundred million plus Japanese who need to emigrate. It is a fascinating idea for a story, because when we of the advanced, relatively stable countries of the world think of immigration, images of refugees of poverty, misgovernment and war come to mind, not that of the wealthy, technologically sophisticated, and well-governed. It presents a very believable scenario where the countries of the world will have to close its doors to even the healthiest and most educated people, simply because to include them would be to place an intolerable burden on one's own people. In watching this maybe not so fictional scenario play out, even I who love the Japanese people, in placing myself in the shoes of the Chinese leaders, thought hard about whether I would ever accept 5 to 10 million of its immigrants into our country, where great numbers of our own people cannot even be properly fed. And that is even before I take into consideration the extremely poor relations that have existed between our two countries for at least the past 130 years.
Any observer of Japan who wishes for the best for it and its people have to take into account its relationship with China. I have tended to do that piecemeal, but never have I considered this question from such an intriguing, philosophical angle. You might say, well, fine, this is all very abstract, Japan sinking into the sea would never happen. But is it ? As a person who partially owns property in southern Florida, I have listened to the stories with some interest about how the region will someday be submerged under water too due to global warming. So questions like these are definitely circulating within the cultural bloodstream. Furthermore, have we already forgotten about the 2011 Tohoku disaster? Let's imagine something like that at much larger scale. How would the world respond? How should it?
But practical realities aside, asking ourselves philosophical questions that have at least some basis in reality forces us to consider some important questions: (1) How is Japan being received in the world today; (2) How big of a contribution does the world think Japan has made? Should worse come to worst, is Japan a culture worth saving from annihilation? Not a far-fetched question. For one, as I write this, Gaza is being destroyed by Israel based on the idea that it deserves to be flattened. For another, when Japan was subjected to the bombing campaign of 1944-45, American planners decided to spare Kyoto. So whether or not the question of Japan sinking into the sea is a plausible scenario, the world does constantly face questions about whether some cultures ought to be spared over others.
As the question is portrayed elsewhere in the arts, the American-made disaster movies of the 1990s showed meteors wiping cities like Paris off the map, but all was good in the end because the American government led the way to preserving humanity's place on the planet. My feeling at the time of watching these fantasies play out on the screen was that I wouldn't want to live in a world where American culture supplanted French culture, with all of Paris, probably the greatest city in the world, being one of its casualties. As for Japan's place in the world, NIHON CHINBOTSU was based on a novel that was published in the 1970s when these questions were of considerable importance. Only 20 to 30 years removed from the horrific Japan-led Pacific War, the memories were still fresh for that calamity, and so the questions carried real weight. I can imagine many Asian nations of that time saying, especially China, "No thank you. Let them and their culture perish."
But what should the response be for 2021 (and today)? Do we still need to be asking these questions? Outside of political zealots, I would say the Japanese people are in very good standing with the citizens of the world, especially among the world's young. Anyone with their wits about them will understand that the Japan of the 1930s and the Japan of the 2020s are two separate entities. One can look at it metaphorically, that if the two eras of Japan had the opportunity to speak with one another through a telephone line using their commonly shared language, when the phone is turned off both sides would probably look at the other as being a little foreign and strange. What's fascinating is that the Japan of today, if this drama is any indication, still feels there is a need to atone for its past sins, has a need to gauge whether as a nation it has made up for its crimes. It doesn't really matter how you feel about this question, whether Japan has atoned or not. That the concern still exists, at least among the cultural class who make these kinds of questions reality through its uses of television, is reason enough to watch this drama so that we might meditate upon the question ourselves.
No, it is not an idle question at all. Much of the weight behind the issue of whether Japan can legitimately rearm itself militarily, can field armies abroad, rests on the question of whether this is the same Japan that brought so much devastation to Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. If it is still the same culture, then absolutely not, the peace clause in the Constitution should remain in tact. If the country has fully democratized, with the kind of institutional support that would make fascism unlikely, then by all means, Japan should return to becoming a fully legitimate nation without the peace clause restriction. NIHON CHINBOTSU is asking many questions, but surely this is at the heart of it. One of the most remarkable developments within Japan over the past 10-15 years is that at present, a majority now support rescinding the peace clause. Does this mean that Japan is free to become belligerent, free to use its military to put the scare into its Asian neighbors again as part of its diplomatic toolkit? Wrong question. I feel that the surveys reflect the Japanese nation coming to accept, and believe, that it has fully reformed itself so that it can be a trusted, legitimate player on the international stage.
In light of that, the producers of this drama's decision to paint a picture of amicability between China and Japan, through negotiation, at least, is rather remarkable. Most definitely it is a rosy-colored picture of international relations, especially as it exists between these two powers. But the fact is that if America continues to falter militarily, if losses in Afghanistan and Ukraine continue to pile up, America may not be a reliable partner and protector for Japan. At the least, it would be stupid diplomacy for Japan to treat China as the dogs of the world that must be confronted, with the kind of hatred in one's heart to be found nowadays in an American conservative of the Neoconservative stripe. We are still only talking about a television drama here. It is only a gesture. But still, I found it a remarkable one.
The drama as a drama has too many problems to count. I was baffled by its tone. A background music more suitable to an aspirational story about the striving of a business person, or of a family in turmoil finding its peace with one another, shapes the atmosphere. The bureaucrat Amami, played by the great Oguri Shun, is told by his colleagues not to overwork, to take a few days off if he has to, and he actually takes the days off. Japan might sink into the Pacific in a week or two, but I guess the priorities of the modern age are not to be challenged: one must never succumb to stress. The specially chosen, newly formed government division placed in charge of handling the impending catastrophe look so naïve and earnest it is as if they were scooped straight out of the playground sandbox. One minute they're reading manga, the next data charts on the inevitability of national destruction. I cannot imagine what casting was trying to convey by choosing these character types. Outside Oguri, and the equally great Matsuyama Kenichi and Nakamura Anne, these green and giddy bureaucrats are exactly what we DON'T want to see in Japanese leadership: people who have received degrees from university, next a series of promotions that place them in the upper echelon of society, and all without knowing anything about the world. I pray to God this cabinet is not an accurate reflection of what a young team of bureaucrats might look like today, otherwise Japan will destruct long before the tectonic plates ever move.
On the website CH-Review, where people can post their comments to any drama anonymously, Japan's conservatives seem to have come out in full force to denounce this drama. I do not feel this drama's politics were especially overbearing; naïve, perhaps, though it definitely had them. As if Japan was about to sink in actuality, not just sink as a plot device for a television drama, we can read in the comments section about the Chinese mistreatment of the Tibetan and Uyghur minorities. That Japan's excessive pandering to the Chinese Communist party is abnormal. That it is nice that the Chinese agreed to take Japanese in, but once there, they would never allow the Japanese to live in a village of their own making; the Communist Party would molest them like they have their other minorities. One commenter just wants to know, "Why is this drama so enthrall to China?" [なぜ中国をあんなに持ち上げてるの？] I'll just say that based on these kinds of comments, these viewers are taking the drama a little too literally, as if another Moses needs to appear to part the Red Sea.
On a side note, I was amused that the drama made little effort to disguise the fact that the American cable news network it depicted was CNN. But just so that no one would get the wrong idea, it became GNN. Hmm, I wonder what the "G" stood for? Grotesque? Goofy? Gynocratic? Godawful? The foreigner chosen to play the part of a GNN anchor and host looked only slightly more milquetoast than the standard CNN version, so in this respect, I would say that the low budget choices needed to depict the American media worked quite well actually in reflecting reality.
Outside of the political angle, I did find one viewer comment illuminating. Amami (Oguri Shun), the bureaucrat, has reached the very seat of Japanese power, able not only to consult with the Prime Minister directly, but able to influence him through a combination of rationality, research, passion, and foresight. He was not raised as an elite but, unusually, was able to rise up from his low social status as the son of a fisherman. Throughout the drama we see him return to his mother, now working among the fishermen herself, and as he does, we notice that he reverts to the native dialect. Is Amami a plausible character? Can the son of a fisherman rise up to the privileged position of being a primary voice inside the Prime Minister's ear? The comment reads,
小栗さんは良いパパのように演じていたけど、実際実在したら、漁師の一人息子だったらとても封建的な価値観の中で育っているだろうし、それでいて高級官僚なのだからものすごく独特な男性だろうなと思います。
Oguri portrays his bureaucrat as a good father, notes the commenter. As a man he shows selfless devotion toward his daughter. Though he is undergoing a divorce, he seems to be treating his wife as an equal, not putting up a fight against her decision, for example, to leave him for another man. This is all, shall we say, not the typical portrait of an only son born to a fisherman. In reality an Amami would be imbued with, and uphold, feudal [封建的] values. That he is not portrayed as a traditionalist makes Oguri's character a unique one. We might add that for a son of a fisherman to uphold values that are uniquely modern is highly unusual, but not improbable.
Yet another good reason why, probably, this drama managed to rankle the conservatives as something other than a drama that played it down the middle.
If I was a Japanese conservative, I wouldn't worry. After all, this drama isn't about to rewrite the nature of geopolitics as it exists today. It is about how historical irony works at its most destructive when the laws of nature and the Earth take over from humanity's belief that it can subdue and overcome both. I say study irony in all its absurdity, my friends, and do not let the social messages get you down!
[Photograph: Oguri Shun, from Episode 7 of 日本沈没ー希望のひと, Nihon Chinbotsu: Kibo no Hito]