What we learned in the Kobe earthquake

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 01:01:00 +0000

When the 1995 earthquake killed 6,000 people in Kobe, Japan, my husband and I were living there, teaching at Kobe Shoin Women's University. In the surreal, aftershock-jolted days that followed, as we picked our way around smoldering rubble and fallen overpasses to line up for food and water, we often passed an abandoned neighborhood liquor store.

With one tap on the cracked glass of the front window, any passerby could have walked off with enough alcohol to drown out the deprivations of post-quake life. The Japanese do like their booze; they even sell it in sidewalk vending machines. But no one ever touched that liquor store window. To do so would have broken the rules -- and to the Japanese, not even the violent overthrow of the rules of nature could justify deviating from social norms.

As you try to understand what life might be like in Japan right now, keep those untouched liquor bottles in mind. Disasters strip human nature to its essence, but they also reveal the ways that cultures differ. In the face of triple tragedy -- quake, tsunami, nuclear threat -- too many commentators seem to assume everyone reacts to adversity with the impatience of us average Americans.

Salon.com > Jane Harrigan

What we learned in the Kobe earthquake