The first time I set foot in Japan, I was completely floored by what I saw. Coming from a tiny, provincial city in a country considered to be a developing world, Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kyoto in Japan were scenes straight out from that Nat Geo documentary on super cities. Japan is anything but laid back from the outburst of cos-players in downtown Tokyo to an entire stretch of high rise buildings and skyscrapers. Japan is easily what you would call the first world.
Japan’s sphere of influence in the world has been incredible for a country that is only a fraction of the size of other super powers. From anime that has spilled over and has created a craze that has continued to hit fever high to technology that has been borrowed, tweaked, and transformed into something a notch better than the original, Japan is a world of possibilities. Incredible for a country that hardly has all the natural resources at its disposal.
After managing to put back its shattered pieces from the disaster that was World War II, Japan hasn’t only managed to be the dream that other nations want to live. It has also become confident in its inherent infallibility and invincibility—economically and in other aspects as well—that is, until March 9, 2011.
For many people in Japan, particularly in the northeastern coast in Honshu, it was just like any typical day. Students were scrambling off to work, a man just probably stained his favourite shirt with an early cup of coffee, and a cosplayer or two was trying to come with the life-changing decision of whether or not the tangerine wig would go well with the knee socks and the pleated skirt that came in garish yellow. To them, it was perhaps a day that was no different from any other March 9s and the students, the man, and the cos-player were just as oblivious as everyone else that within seconds, a magnitude 8.9 earthquake would reduce their homes, their lives, and the invincible image of Japan into rubbles.
As if that wasn’t enough, the monster quake heralded a 13-foot high tsunami a couple of days later that swept the eastern coast, sparing nothing in its way. Japan was literally under nature’s mercy. With the death toll reaching to hundreds and counting, there was nothing that Japan could do to protect itself from the aftershocks of Mother Nature’s doing.
The disaster that happened in Japan proved one point. That when it really comes down to it, there are no super powers in the world. There are no super countries and there really are no first world countries. No country, no matter how rich or how technology advanced can completely save itself when nature strikes.
The quake and the giant wave didn’t only shake and doused Japan. It brought the whole world back into its sensibilities that after thousands of years and a plethora of technological developments later, we are still all very vulnerable to the world that we live in and to the world that we are still seeking to understand, to tame, and to control.
This was, for the most part, a very humbling experience for the entire human race. For so long, we have prided ourselves in being able to control our milieu, to the point of convincing ourselves that there is no God and that we are the masters of our fate. The funny thing is that by the time we’ve all been already very convinced, nature just has its way to bring us to our knees and prove us wrong.
And that’s when we realize that we have truly been shaken.