Perhaps our news should come with a health warning. A few weeks ago I wrote about the global media’s massive sensationalism in relation to the London riots and I was reminded of this again during our travels through Japan. I was asked by the owner of a guest house we had been staying at about the riots and whether we had been personally affected. The perception that the UK had been a nation burning had even reached this small village, barely 50 miles from the area of Japan that suffered the worst damage in this year’s earthquake and tsunami.
For the people in Japan outside of the affected area who did not experience personal loss life continues as before, much as it does for those in London. The world’s media has long since moved on, its thirst for disaster and statistics quenched and its attention soon diverted to the latest big drama. That is not to compare the tragedy in Japan with the disturbances in London; the two disasters belong on entirely different scales. But in both cases the impression was created around the world that a part of a country, or even the whole country itself, was brought to its knees by the respective incidents.
And yet I too was guilty of the same thoughts. I had wondered whether it was right to visit Matsushima Bay so soon after the tsunami had brought this pretty corner of northern Japan to the world’s attention. My guide book, written in 2007, had listed it as one of the three loveliest places in Japan. On the one hand I wanted to see the bay and explore the islands that make it such a popular destination for Japanese tourists. On the other hand I didn’t want to be seen as gawping at a disaster scene where such tragedy had struck only months before.
The lady from the guest house reassured us that things were pretty much normal along this part of the coast. And so it turned out. In fact, if we had spent the day at Matsushima Bay and its nearby islands without knowing that this was an area directly affected by the tsunami and earthquake, we would have had no reason to suspect anything had happened. The same went for the lively and modern city of Sendai which served as our overnight base. There was no debris, no ruined buildings, no broken roads. It all looked very ordinary apart from one thing: during the 24 hours spent in the region we saw only a handful of other tourists (all Japanese with one exception).
Of course there are parts of this coast where the signs of devastation are still there for all to see. They are not places on the tourist circuit and to make a detour to see them would have been voyeuristic. But much as the image of London and Britain was tarred by idiots looting and burning a handful of streets well away from its tourism hotspots, Japan is suffering the fall-out from a disaster that, however awful, has left no physical scars in those areas where visitors would go.
Hi Andy, It’s always a sensitive question – how long is long enough? I’ve visited Auschwitz and you’ll visit Hiroshima, as I did, and will also learn a tremendous amount about that period of history. That’s acceptable. As is Northern Ireland, Chernobyl or Bosnia. But I also visited Sri Lanka 18 months after the tsunami as part of a cricket tour which incidentally raised funds to buy a village cricket nets and gear. And learned a tremendous amount about displacement of people, rebuilding, need for visitors to spend money and how good Sri Lankans are at cricket. That was acceptable to me. Is it to others? Clearly don’t enter a disaster zone, or visit an area which is still overtly suffering. But when nothing more can be done, and recovery is under way, then it’s not gawping, it’s learning. And spending money in that area.
Thanks for sharing your experiences Steve. Given what I had heard I did wonder whether Sendai and surrounding areas would be a mess – the closer we got to the area, the more people we spoke to were able to localise exactly where the worst affected places were. I guess it’s much as those of us who live in and around London have done.
The consistent message we hear is that people need the return of tourism to bring normality -not only in terms of revenues. It’s just as it was in Thailand after 2004 and in the places you’ve listed too.
Its probably because a lot of people are still scared of the radiation from the damaged reactor.
Maybe you’re right Ken – but again, just how near to Fukushima do tourists actually go in any case? By all accounts radiation levels are pretty much normal even very close to the site. I’m happy to stake my bet on safety for a day or two if millions of people have decided to get on with their normal lives in the nearby cities. But fear is rarely based on factual information….
Unfortunately Japan is now suffering a second devastation with tourism to the country dropping dramatically since the disaster.