The Kobe earthquake and the Renaissance of
Volunteerism in Japan (2nd Edition) (A paper presented at Colorado
College on July 13, 1999)
Overview
I am a veteran of the Kobe earthquake and
I am going to talk about three topics in my presentation. The first topic is to provide you with
an old veteran field story. And I
know from my experience, that if you know what is happening and also you know
what will happen next, you feel much more in control of your situation. I will talk about what volunteer
management is like at a time of urban mega-disaster, which incapacitated the
infrastructure of metropolitan areas in one of the most advanced industrialized
societies on the globe.
The second topic is how the earthquake
literally changed the way people constructed the reality of the society. Faced with the sudden emergence of an
extreme number of volunteers, the mass media coined the term gThe Year One of
Volunteerismh. I would argue,
however, that 1995 was not the gYear Oneh, but the gRenaissanceh of
volunteerism in Japanese society.
The third part is an attempt to provide a
historic account on socio-economic contexts where the earthquake made a great
impact upon the transformation of Japan into a country that is empowered by a
civil society. I would hope to
convey that although Japan is a non-Judeo-Christian nation, nevertheless it
shares the common language of civil society, active citizenship and community
involvement in preparation for the next millennium.
1. A veteranfs story
You have to be, and you can be,
imaginative and creative as a volunteer manager during a mega-disaster. You are flooded with literally tens and
thousands of new comers everyday, who are so eager to help the disaster
victims. At the same time, you
feel that you are hopelessly and constantly understaffed. However, the disaster or mega-disaster
is a moment when you can cash in your vulnerability and reframe it as one of
your strengths. If you have
so many people lining up at the volunteer reception table, all you have to do
is ask the first person in front of you to come around the table and sit beside
you. You will teach that person
how to register necessary information and how to direct the applicant where to
go next. During a disaster, you do
not have the luxury of volunteer training. So you have to count on the maturity and self-sufficiency of
the volunteering individuals. The
job of managing other volunteer individuals can be delegated to mature and
self-sufficient individuals.
This is the know-how of a Kobe-veteran,
which was transferred to a town called Mikuni two years after the 1995 Kobe
earthquake. A Russian oil tanker, Navotka, was wrecked in the Sea of Japan in
January 1997. 19,000 tons of crude
oil as well as the front section of the ship drifted to the coast of Mikuni
township in Fukui Prefecture. In response
to the disaster, members from the local Junior Chamber of Commerce or JC took
responsibility for disaster volunteer management. This happened thanks to suggestions made by a couple of Kobe
veterans, who dashed to the disaster site as soon as a picture of the ship
wreckage off the coast of Mikuni appeared in the National news papers and
television networks. These
veterans foresaw that there would be a flood of clean-up volunteers from all
across the country. They also
foresaw that the sheer number of volunteers would paralyze local township
officials. Just the number alone
went way beyond the capacity of local volunteer coordinators. They knew it
because they went through this once before. And they knew that volunteers could manage volunteers.
As I said at the beginning, if you know
exactly what is happening and also you know what will happen next, you feel
much more in control of the situation.
So let me share with you what we learned from the Kobe earthquake and I
am talking about only one thing.
There are phases in disaster.
Those are namely, emergency, development, and ending phases. The tasks of volunteer managers are
different at each stage. But what
was the most important is that you have to prepare for the termination of
disaster relief volunteering way before you even start it. This saves a lot of staff burnout,
confusion, and a sense of powerlessness when you terminate the disaster relief
operation.
(Next OHP: 2.
Manpower Graph)
Here is an overview. This graph illustrates the number of
relief volunteers managed by our university relief volunteer center between
January 21 to April 6, 1995. In
total, about 7,500 volunteers were managed in approximately a three-month period. This graph shows the three phases
clearly. The graph can be sliced
into three parts; the first third is the emergency phase, which is
characterized by a high manpower mobilization. About 200 volunteers on average engaged in supporting 14
evacuation shelters surrounding the university campus everyday in this
phase. The middle third slice of
the graph is the development phase.
A gradual decline of manpower mobilization characterizes this
period. The last third is the
termination phase, where you see that the manpower mobilization hit rock bottom
and remained low till the end.
I will describe each phase in a little
more detail.
(Next OHP: 3.
Emergency Phase)
The emergency phase is a time of
excitement. Peoplefs faces are all
shining and everybody was sharing a hero-like feeling. You feel good when you do the right
things or act for a cause or belief.
Compassion and empathy to the disaster victims are key driving forces
during this period. There was also
another factor that motivated our student volunteers. In everyday life, students live in a world of grole playingh
or grole takingh. In this world,
roles are already prescribed and you are expected to follow them. However, in order to help run the
evacuation shelters, each of which housed about 400 to 500 people, they could
not be grole takersh, because managers or supervisors were too busy to give
them detailed instructions of how to be a good helper in an emergency
shelter. You need to be a grole
makerh during a disaster. Once the
students started making roles of their own, they began to realize that the
rules and regulations in every day life are just the product of fellow human
beings. If so, then those rules
can be changed also by fellow human beings. This is a powerful feeling. You feel that you can be in charge of making changes in a
society. You feel connected
to the society. You feel that you
are the main stream of the society.
Compassion, empathy, and a sense of role making, those were the driving
forces during the emergency phase.
During the emergency phase, survival,
safety, and security were the main goals for relief assistance. Accordingly, providing food, relief
materials and a night watch were the three major activities that our student
volunteers engaged in. I call
these activities Instrumental Work.
Any disaster relief starts with an instrumental type of help. What comes next is Interpersonal Work. Our student volunteers organized a
childrenfs playgroup, overnight camp trips, and bath taking tours for the
elderly. Bath-taking tours were
most appreciated by the elderly because there was no gas service available for
three months. Besides, as you see
from the many Japanese tourists who come to the Banff Hot Springs, bath taking
is a national pass time for Japanese.
Those were some examples of interpersonal work that our student
volunteers improvised as they sensed the needs of the victims.
We found it effective to let the student
volunteers be involved in instrumental work first. This gave them opportunities
for rapport building with shelter residents. Rapport is the basis of any type of interpersonal
work. Therefore, once a student is
assigned to one shelter, we encouraged him or her to go back to the same
shelter for the second and the third time. In doing so, volunteers were gradually building rapport and
initiating interpersonal type of work with residents.
(Next OHP:
Development Phase)
A gradual decline of manpower
mobilization characterizes the development phase. The number of volunteers declined mainly because the city
office recovered from the initial state of shock and established channels to
provide relief materials to temporary shelters. Accordingly, we sensed that the need of the victims for
volunteers changed from material relief assistance to interpersonal care and
informational provision. Thanks to
the Instrumental work that the center provided for the preceding emergency
phase, our volunteers were already well accepted by the shelter residents. We focused our activities on children
and elderly during the development phase.
Those two were the major vulnerable populations that requested volunteer
help the most at the shelters. For
children, our volunteers started shelter-based playgroups.
For stress care for the elderly, we
started the gapple girlsh project.
One day, our center received a truck full of apples donated from
northern prefecture producers.
Those apples were sent to shelters but we found that not so many people
were keen about apples in cold school gymnasiums. We were afraid that those apples would go bad. At that time, one of our volunteers
suggested that if young co-ed students sit next to elderly and peel apples for
them, the apples would be consumed fast.
So we send apple girls to shelters. However, we learned later that day, that those Northern
apples were too hard for the elderly to eat even they were peeled. That was the end of the story. Or at least that was how I felt that
day.
The next day after the apple girls
attempt, I was called to the Kobe YMCA for a screening interview for possible
financial donations from the International Rotary Club Kobe Disaster Relief
Fund committee. I had to sell our
center activities in order to receive the donation. Now, I myself was trained as a family therapist, not as a used
car sales man. But I started explaining PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder
and how our center was so specialized in dealing with PTSD prevention by
introducing a special project team called apple girls. The committee members were so impressed
by the story of indigenous lay counselors who use apples as a means to initiate
conversation and to avoid suspicions from the elderly that thanks to the apple girlfs
story, our center received a quite sizable donation.
A few days later, however, I was shocked
to learn that the name gapple girlsh appeared at the editorial page headline of
a local Kobe newspaper. The
editorial article asserted the importance of PTSD prevention and used our gapple
girl storyh as a prime example of how it can be done by volunteers. I showed the editorial article to the
center staff volunteers suggested that we needed to start the lay counselor
project as described in the article.
The staff recruited educational psychology and social work major
students and a social work professor provided a half-day training session for
the apple girls. Thus, a few days
after the editorial article, the apple girls turned into reality. For about six weeks until the end of
March, they offered lay counseling services at each of the 14 shelters that we
supported.
Stimulated by the apple girls, a couple
of theology school professors started shelter visits carrying a coffee maker
and china cups. They called
themselves gCoffee shop Shalomh.
They practiced preventative counseling mainly to house wives and
unemployed men.
I believe now that those indigenous
helpers really alleviated the incidence of PTSD among those sheltered
people. During the development
phase of a disaster, volunteer lay counselors emphasized that disaster stress
related symptoms such as sleeplessness, irritability, jumpiness and flashbacks
were simply normal responses to an abnormal situation. The volunteers also emphasized the fact
that the victims had managed to survive.
This is because they had activated their own strength, their so called
internal and external coping resources.
This approach contrasted to volunteer professional counselors and
clinical psychologist that visited many of the same shelters. Unlike the apple girlfs case, not so
many shelter residents opted for professional services. I think that receiving professional
services means that you are admitting your own vulnerability. Well-informed lay volunteer counselors
overcame the obstacles of using outside help during the disaster.
(Next OHP: Ending Phase)
I always feel tempted to dash out to a
new disaster whenever I learn the news.
This is because of the high spirit and heroic feelings that I remember
from the emergency phase. Then, I
have a second thought and talk to myself; gDo I really want to go through the
ending phase again?h The ending
phase is characterized by a further decline of manpower. You are at the rock bottom in terms of
volunteers who are still willing to come back to work. The work at the shelter is not so
exciting as it used to be. For
example, shelter managers and residents kept requesting for night watch
volunteers till the very end of our operation. The residents felt safer in the night if they knew that
there was some one to watch over them.
In other words, not action but sheer presence was needed from a
volunteer.
Once a low volunteer turn out became a
reality, some staff volunteers at our center started feeling a sense of loss
and failure. Physical and mental
exhaustion was added to this. It
was obviously a time to quit. But
we did not know when or how to quit our center operation. Internal conflicts arose with regard to
if or when we should stop our operation.
The majority of management time and energy was spent to deal with these
conflicts. We learned that the best
way to deal with staff-to-staff conflicts was to disclose and admit the
differences in our views of relief work at full staff meetings. In retrospect, open discussions and
sometimes confrontations served as a debriefing of staff feelings. The whole staff meetings revealed the
fact that it was not particular personalities but the nature of the ending
phase itself that was causing in us a sense of loss and failure. The meetings also reminded us that the
end of the operation was near and we had to prepare for the re-entry into the
world of ordinary life, a life of role taking. I believe that discussions and sometimes open confrontations
in full staff meetings defused the conflicts.
In retrospect, a lot of management time
and energy would have been saved if we decided on the conditions for the
termination of our operation way before we started the relief volunteer
center. For example, a low
volunteer turn out could be viewed as a sign of ending rather than viewed as a
sign of failure and powerlessness.
If we knew about this during March of 1995, we could have spent the rest
of our operation time in more imaginative and creative activities than we
actually did.
(Next OHP: The
Renaissance of Volunteerism in Japan)
2. The Renaissance of Volunteerism
Now, I am going to talk about the second
topic. That is what we really
learned from the Kobe earthquake big volunteer turn out. I am going to talk about the
Renaissance of volunteerism in Japan.
I will talk about the socio-economic context in which the need of
capacity building in the voluntary sector has become a major national concern
after the Kobe earthquake.
Reuben Nelson, a Canadian Futurologist,
in his keynote speech for the 1998 World Volunteer Conference, mentioned
certain conditions that allow volunteerism to grow. He mentioned the recognition of a person as an individual
and open psychological space. The
western frontier is a good example of open space where a sense of individuality
exceeds the values of tradition, authority and regulations. At the same time, the harsh environment
of the frontier made individuals become inter-dependent. Here arises the sense of
volunteerism.
For three months after the Kobe
earthquake, we experienced a modern day frontier in a metropolitan area. Suddenly, we were put in a situation
where we could not count on the city office to take care of all or even any
public needs. The city office
itself became an earthquake victim.
We learned how hard it was to survive as an individual. That is, if you were not connected to
other people. We then learned that
people, not city officials, can respond to public needs and people can weave
public interests. Those three
months were days of no law. That
is, no law prescribed by the authority.
Instead, people became the law.
People were able to and had to govern their community during those three
months by themselves. In other
words, people exercised role making at a very large scale during this period.
Let me explain the OHP figure. This is an attempt to make sense out of
volunteerism in our daily lives.
This is a two dimensional map of social institutions. On top, you have statutory or the
government body. On the bottom,
you have non-governmental or voluntary body. From right to left, you have public interests on your right
and private interests on left. The
top right is where the government responds to public needs by collecting tax
and spending it for public interests.
If we go counter clock wise, the top left is where the government takes
care of private interests by providing a social security and social welfare
net. The next, bottom left is
where market behavior takes place.
It deals with private interests by the non-governmental business
sector. And finally, the bottom
right corner is where volunteerism, non-governmental and non-profit
organization activities, and philanthropy take place. This is the domain in which public needs are responded to by
a non-governmental voluntary sector.
That is the people-based weaving of public interests. This bottom right corner had been a
blind spot for lots of Japanese people until the Kobe earthquake.
(Next OHP: The
view of Public Interests Prior to the Earthquake)
The earthquake literally changed the way
people constructed the reality of the society. This OHP illustrates how we used to think prior to the
earthquake. Public interests were
equated to government and people were only equated to private interests. No wonder why we never thought about
volunteerism seriously. It is
because the figure contains no domain for a people based weaving of public
interests. In our constructed
reality, public needs had to be responded to by the statutory body, so that
people could concentrate all their energy for profit making.
(Next OHP:
People-based Public Interests Weaving)
The earthquake caused a shift in our view
of society, simply because the government also became a victim and its
functions were paralyzed for about three months. What happened during this time was the emergence of
volunteerism all over the earthquake disaster hit frontier. The OHP shows a quote from a volunteer
manager who ran the relief volunteer operation for the neighboring city of
Ashiya.
For many years, the government-led efforts
to promote volunteerism were very active in Japan, especially in the field of
social welfare. Each locality has
this type of social welfare oriented volunteer centers. But this volunteer leader found that gthe
government-led volunteer centers were so overwhelmed at the time of the
disaster and could not respond to the unpredictable situations.h Therefore, he himself as a volunteer
took over the leadership of managing volunteers who come to the Ashiya city
office. About a few months after
the earthquake, Prof. Noriko Tsutsui
of Ryukoku University conducted a survey of the disaster hit 10 cities
about which departments of the city office was responsible for coordinating
relief volunteers. She found that
only one city, the city of Takarazuka, delegated the relief volunteer
management to this type of government-led volunteer center. According to Prof. Tsutsuifs
survey, the responsible department for the other cities varied from the general
affairs department, personnel department, accounting department, to even the
international exchange department. By the way, the Ashiya city office responded
to her survey answering that the international exchange department was
responsible for the volunteer coordination. But as you may suspect, these arrangements were just on a
sheet of paper. The reality was
that this particular volunteer leader on the OHP took the leadership of
volunteer management for the city of Ashiya.
(Next OHP: The
1923 Tokyo Earthquake Volunteers)
I talked about the phenomenon that the
earthquake literally changed the way people constructed the reality of the
society. Suddenly emerged was the
domain of volunteerism in peoplefs reality. By now, you understand why the Japanese Mass media coined
the term gThe Year One of Volunteerismh in order to describe this sudden
emergence of a volunteer movement. I would now argue, however, that 1995 was not the gYear Oneh,
but the gRenaissanceh of volunteerism in Japanese society.
It started with one phone call from a 93
year old retired school teacher, Mr. Okura, when we were running the Kwansei
Gakuin University Relief Volunteer Center. Mr. Okura introduced himself as a victim of the 1923 Tokyo
earthquake. He was a college
student in Tokyo at the time of the disaster. He and some other people from the western part of Japan
escaped from Tokyo by boat and went to Kobe. When he arrived at the Kyobashi pier in Kobe port, Mr. Okura
was welcomed by Kwansei Gakuin University Relief volunteer center volunteers
and was given clothes, food and transportation service to a downtown Kobe
station. He asked if our current
relief activities were in any way related to the 1923 relief activities. We later learned that our university
students did organize a relief volunteer center in 1923 at the Kobe port. The center even sent a group of
volunteers to Tokyo.
In the 1920fs, the fourth Chancellor, Dr.
Bates, a Canadian Methodist Missionary, was very active and he made a
considerable moral impact upon our university students at the time. One of Dr. Batesf long lasting
contributions to Kwansei Gakuin University, was our schoolfs mission statement,
gMastery for Serviceh. This
mission statement was revived by 1995 Kobe earthquake. About 2,300 students out of the 14,000
student body were registered at our volunteer center alone during the three
month period. A cumulative total
of more than 7,500 students were involved in relief activities under our
management. I asked many who came
to the volunteer center the same question, why did you come? Almost unanimously, their answer was gMastery
for Serviceh. I was very much
impressed to learn that it was not an economic interest but a mission statement
that mobilized these many students during the crisis.
Kwansei Gakuin University was not alone
in organizing relief volunteers during the 1923 Tokyo earthquake. Students from Tokyo Imperial
University, now University of Tokyo, were very active in responding to public
need in 1923. What you see on the
OHP is a quote from the relief volunteer center leader at that time, Prof.
Izutaro Suehiro. He summarized studentsf
efforts as follows.
It is my great pleasure as an advocate for young students to observe
that those who have been often criticized for selfish conduct and Epicurean
inclinations by older generations, have united their efforts, to the point of
selflessness, and have been able to make considerable achievement in response
to public need (Suehiro, 1923).
There existed a wide array of volunteers
to help out people during the 1923 Tokyo earthquake. As a matter of fact, those Tokyo Imperial University
Students along with the dedicated assistance from Prof. Suehiro and Prof.
Shigeto Hozumi, later founded the University settlement house in a neighboring
slum district of Honjo in 1924.
This settlement house is considered to be a possible birthplace of the
modern Japanese volunteerism movement.
This is why it is not correct to name the year 1995 the gYear Oneh of
Japanese volunteerism. Then you
may ask why there was not much public consciousness about people-based public
interest weaving for the past few decades.
(Next OHP: The
Kobe Earthquake & Post-War Japanese Society)
The answer to this question can be found
in the history of Tokyo Imperial University Settlement House. I am now talking about the rejoinder to
Mr. Imada, whose Alma Mater, Tokyo University, is the basis of my third
point. In 1938, the settlement
house was banned due to the order from the then military government. In the same year, the war with China
started and the National Mobilization law was enacted. This is the beginning of what recent
economists and political commentators call gthe 1940 systemh. The 1940 system is the Japanese counter
part to that of Nazi Germany. The
system transformed Japan into a bureaucrat-controlled highly centralized
society.
Let me spend the last remaining few minutes
to describe the nature of the wartime socio-economic structure, which had been
binding peoplefs construction of reality until the 1995 earthquake. It took 50 years after the last war
until people in Japan re-discovered the existence of people-based voluntary weaving
of public interests outside of the control of governments.
(Next OHP:
Welfare State & the 1940 System)
At the onset of war with China, the
National Mobilization Law was enacted.
The spirit of this wartime emergency law was very clear. In order to execute the war against
China and later against Allied Powers, all resources and manpower had to be
tightly controlled by the state.
In 1941, the National School Ordinance
was enacted. This was the
governmentfs attempt to place the educational system tightly under state
control. The system was modeled
after that of Nazi Germany. The
name, national school was even a direct translation of Volksschule. Since
then, school has become an ideological incubator for totalitarian government
administrators of the 1940 system.
In the field of social welfare, a similar
transformation occurred. Until
1938, the state never showed much interest in charity, philanthropy or social
services. These were considered to
be in the domain of a then existing voluntary sector. However, after the Social Service Law, charity and
philanthropy came under the strict control of the state. The main thrust to this move was for
the state to take care of disabled soldiers, the wartime widows and their
children.
The transformation in economy, politics,
education, and social services dated back to the 1940fs. My point here is that this 1940 system
still survived even after the war was ended in 1945. As a matter of fact, the new post war government and
business sectors maintained the spirit of this system so that all societal
energies and resources were efficiently planned and concentrated solely for
economic recovery of the nation.
(Next OHP:
Article 89 of the Constitution)
You may wonder why it is possible for
Japan to maintain wartime socio-economic measures after the new democratic
constitution was inaugurated. In
the case of the disappearance of volunteerism for fifty years after the war,
this was possible not despite the new Constitution, but because of the new Constitution. Article 89 of the Constitution states
that gpublic money and other public equity shall not be spent or used for
charity, education of philanthropic services that are not under the state
control.h This section was
included because social services were used in order to assist the execution of
war. The occupation forces did not
wish the same thing to happen again.
Thus, the principle of the division of public and private institutions
was introduced.
Article 89 shocked many social service
administrators. This principle
threatened to force most social service institutions into chronic financial
instabilities after Japan lost most of its economic infrastructure for
industrial recovery because social service administrators could not count for
much help from the business sector.
After the occupation forces left Japan, a new interpretation of article
89 appeared. If the state cannot
support any social service institutions that are not under state control, let
those social institutions be under the state supervision. Thus special social welfare
corporations were formed. Those
corporations were strictly controlled and supervised by the state. In return, they were able to receive
government subsidies and grants to run standardized services. As a result, bureaucratsf dream of a
coherent, systematized, and standardized social welfare services were
maintained after the war. The
motive for the state control was of course different in the postwar time, but
the centralized structure to govern the system of serving public interests
remained just like old times.
More detailed discussions on the 1940
system, why and how it survived
after the introduction of the new Constitution go beyond the scope of this
presentation. But, my point here
is that the new post war government and business sectors maintained the spirit
of this system so that all societal energies and resources were efficiently
planned and concentrated solely for economic recovery of the nation.
The 1995 Kobe earthquake really changed
the mindset of Japanese people.
The earthquake created an open psychological space in post-war Japanese
society. It opened a new frontier. The social construction of reality
drastically shifted from a one dimensional public interest model to a two
dimensional model. This shift
allowed us to share the common language of civil society, active citizenship
and community involvement with the rest of the world.
The above hypothesis was supported by the
recent random sample survey that Dr. Haruo Hayashi of Kyoto University and I
conducted in March of 1999. We
sent 3,300 questionnaires to earthquake survivors asking their views of
society, family, themselves, and their relationship to individual recovery from
the disaster. 993 questionnaires were returned and responses from 623 In-Hyogo
(25.7%) and 292 Out-of-Hyogo residents (37.1%) were valid. One of the variables that we examined in
this survey was a level of civic-mindedness. Reflection on pre- to post-earthquake changes in
civic-mindedness revealed that self-governance and a solidarity orientation
increased while conformity/obedience to preexisting morality decreased. Furthermore, those who are high on the
self-governance and solidarity formation orientation scale tended to be better-adjusted
four years after the earthquake than those who were low.
(OHP:Interrelationship
of Disaster, Civic-mindedness, and Recovery)
Many lives and valuable things were lost
in the 1995 Kobe earthquake. But,
at the same time, a new reality of the society emerged as a response to this mega
disaster. This new reality
empowered people. The new reality
was consisted of two dimensions.
One dimension was a dimension of self-governance. Emerging sense of self-governance, rather
than conforming to the outside morality enabled people to think and act on his
or her own. The other dimension
was a dimension of community solidarity.
Rather than pursuing narrow self-interests, people became motivated to
solve community issues by forming coalition and pursuing a collective action. Stronger sense of self-governance
and community solidarity became a basis to promote a civil society in
Japan. It is my hope that this
trend continues into the next millennium.
All Rights Reserved. COPYRIGHT(C) 1998-2018, Shigeo TATSUKI
Department of Sociology, Doshisha University