Kenichiro Yagi had long windswept hair, a lean-jawed face and cold, black eyes. He spoke simply and was straight to the point, even if I understood him only through a translator.
Yagi is Japanese, and when I think of Japan, I remember Yagi.
Yagi used to run an Internet-based fish market in Ofunato City, a fishing center in Iwate, Japan. A quiet businessman, he made a living selling the sea’s bounty online and delivering them to customers, raking in huge margins from moneyed buyers in Tokyo and Osaka.
But the Great East Japan Earthquake, and the subsequent 40-meter high tsunami, had destroyed Yagi’s life more than a year ago.
The entire disaster, nationally grossing an unprecedented $300 billion in damages, broke the spirits of Japanese fishermen, with their livelihood ground, quite literally, to dust. With cities like Yagi’s being physically wiped off the coast, the calamity did not quite restore the natural equilibrium as calamities often do; Ofunato’s oil tanks leaked in the chaos, spilling out to sea, quickly eradicating the bay’s marine life.
Of course, Yagi spent time to grieve. Along with other broken souls, he downed his sakē, losing himself by staring at fire pits during the cold nights that followed.
But in times of despair, man could only be crushed for so long.
After his own brief grieving, Yagi organized the local fisherfolk and survivors to reconstruct their homes and revitalize the area’s once thriving industry. This was difficult, as many survivors were without jobs, without homes, and without face. It was common for them to walk around and suddenly find a loved ones’ torn clothes, or a grandchild’s toy, or a neighbor’s broken glasses, somewhere in the gravel.
But he fed them tough love. “We have to pick ourselves up,” he would exhort them, even after they had lost family, and everything else.
Somehow, although still shaky, the fisherfolk, with the sheer determination of the unfazed Yagi, slowly picked up the pieces of their lives, going out to sea every day to painstakingly clear it of oil, clean up debris, and, in small ways, to resurrect the bay’s ecosystem.
By some coincidence, rare, prized fish, fat oysters and crustaceans were found in the ruins of the marine cultivation sites. Yagi immediately posted the finds on the Internet, and, very soon, he was making three times what he made before the disaster.
When interviewed by the NHK, Yagi did not gloat about the sudden windfalls. “It’s just work,” he said in his low voice, his dark eyes not meeting the camera. “If anything counts, it’s that you’re giving people hope.”
The Japanese have, by their example, taught the world that there is no excuse to waver in the face of disaster. Even after the world’s second largest earthquake and tsunami had crippled their country, a little over a year later, the communities in the disaster-stricken areas are on an awkward, but steady recovery, rebuilding entire cities swept off the map.
For the Japanese, the rebound boils down to a sense of integrity, a sense of character: that if they did not pick themselves up, they could not stomach the fact that they would be reliant on generous government dole-outs and assistance as our country does.
But it is not sad that we are quite the opposite, quite content to leech off international aid efforts, conditional cash transfers, poor investment management, and bad debts. No, it is not sad; it is unbecoming of us, of any human with character.
This summer, being fortunate enough to be part of a national student exchange program on disaster management, I and other Filipino university students had an activity with Japanese university students, where we teamed together to think of disaster management strategies and disaster prevention procedures.
The Japanese students immediately drafted survival tips, practical drills, emergency protocols, logistical arrangements, and supply preservation techniques.
The Filipino students recommended seminars, talks, youth empowerment meets, and fundraising activities.
It is hard to get things moving here. Ours is a culture where speech is not simple; where talking, condemning, and loitering on social media takes prevalence over efficient, effective, collective action.
Some people manage to see that there is a dire need to start change in small places. Look at people like businessman Joseph Calata, who transformed his mother’s sari-sari to a P2.7 billion corporation. Look at Br. Andrew Gonzalez, who fought creaking institutions and academic revolutionaries alike to set the standard for DLSU’s research and faculty development.
Look at Sec. Mon Jimenez, whose more fun efforts have mobilized the Department of Tourism to post a 16% growth from a previously laggard tourism performance, at least for a country, which banks heavily on tourism revenue.
Nonetheless, we are spending too much time clamoring for things that do not really have any worthwhile end, contemplating without acting, babbling without putting substance to powerful words.
People are working here in this country. People are acting, and for sure we have our own Yagis: the working folk and community leaders whose perseverance despite desperation keeps this nation from falling to its knees.
Many of them and most of them cannot be read on the papers. But it is their efforts to rebuild our own society that puts the rosy numbers in the business section, and keeps foreign investors optimistic, and the quality of life from plummeting, at least in chosen parts of our country.
We have much to learn from the Japanese, and from pioneers like Kenichiro Yagi. The ironic part is that we have done many studies on this. Our academics and public intellectuals, who love to write and talk, have long devised analyses on the Filipino character, citing recommendations for development based on studies from abroad, even Japan.
But what use are dissertations?
Maybe we have to rethink the seminars, the talking, and the addiction to trivial tweets.
Maybe, like Yagi, we just have to shut up and sail out, grit our teeth, clear the ruins, and bring back gleaming oysters.
