Section 38 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 April 14 Monday.
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To the best of my knowledge, SARS is not yet in Japan. However, I have to confess that I didn't have time to watch the TV news this morning (I was too busy ironing shirts) and, because I'm writing this on the train, I'm not able to check with the Internet. So the statement that "SARS is not yet in Japan" could be wrong. Or, even if it's right now, it could be out of date by the time I upload this diary entry this evening.

What has made me think about SARS is this morning's issue of the International Herald Tribune, as published in Japan, which has on the front page an article headlined "Fears grow that SARS risks being a pandemic". The article, by Thomas Crampton, is datelined Hong Kong, and starts like this:-

While crediting international coordination for limiting the spread of SARS, the World Health Organization warned this weekend that the disease could still cause a global epidemic.

Yesterday, when doing shopping near Yokohama station, I realized that (unusually) I was untroubled by the intensely crowded streets. I like to walk fast, and slow-moving crowds usually make me frustrated. However, yesterday I scarcely noticed the people, until it occurred to me to notice the fact that I was not noticing them.

Today, however, SARS headlines in hand, I really noticed the people as I pushed my way onto a crowded train heading for Yokohama. (Usually, my work lies in the direction of Tokyo, but today's assignment took me first to Yokohama and then further in the direction of Osaka.)

Again, the term "petri dish" occurred to me, and I noticed that not one single person anywhere in sight was wearing any kind of face mask (although, as mentioned elsewhere in this diary, wearing surgical masks in public in Japan is not uncommon, even in normal times.)

Later this morning, I thought about face masks again after I coughed uncouthly, and then had to pick a couple of pieces of exploded peanut butter sandwich from the dark fabric of my suit. If the disease does get here, then it is going to have plenty of chances to travel.

However, so far, officially, the virus is not here.

Recently, I heard a Japanese guy (who was speaking English) say that if there were SARS cases in Japan right now then the authorities might have pressured hospitals and health professionals into keeping quiet about it. But that's just one guy's opinion.

Regardless of what the authorities do or do not know, given that the SARS incubation period seems to be something on the order of two weeks, and given that there's a suggestion that people may be able to communicate the disease without being noticeably sick themselves, it's possible that SARS may be walking amongst us here in Japan right now.

Already, SARS has hit the Japanese travel industry quite hard, with a lot of people deciding not to travel overseas in the upcoming Golden Week holiday, which usually sees a mass exodus of people from Japan.

So far, I've largely stuck with English-language sources of SARS data. I haven't yet made any serious effort to follow SARS news in the Japanese language, but it has occurred to me that it might be a smart move to start picking up some vocabulary, because I may end up wanting to get my news straight from Japanese-language sources, and my Japanese is far too weak for me to do that without some preparation.

So far, however, I've taken only the tiniest of little footsteps in that direction. "SARS" in Japanese is refered to as a "shingata" virus, a "new type" virus.

"Shin" is "new," as in "Shinyokohama," meaning "New Yokohama." And "gata" is "model" or "type" as in "Ohgata kuruma," meaning (I think, from memory) "large-type car". (The "oh" is not a standard way of transliterating Japanese, but is frequently used, as here, to indicate a long "o" - today, for example, I saw it used that way on a Japanese salaryman's business card.) The word "virus" becomes something like "uirus" in Japanese, the Japanese "u" sound being substituted for the "v".

The TV stations here in Japan are refering to SARS as a "shingata uirus," and that is probably how the average Japanese person thinks about it.

Japanese TV has also talked about SARS as a kind of acute pneumonia. In Japanese, pneumonia is "haien" and "acute" is "kyusei" ("kyu" with a long "u"). In Japanese, then, SARS can be described as a kind of "kyusei haien".

That's as far as my language research has got so far, and I guess I should be ashamed of my limited effort. It's time to get my Japanese studies underway again, and I guess following the SARS news could be one way of doing that.

At this stage, I'm not much more than signboard literate - if something in Japanese is more complicated than a simple signboard, then I generally have a struggle to read it. And that, really, just isn't good enough.

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Another baby step towards Japanese competence: now back at home, I have just checked the transliteration of "virus" with the dictionary. It is "uirusu". The "uirusu" version of "virus" is the one that I am hearing on the TV news here in Japan, although the dictionary also indicates that there is an alternative pronunciation, "birusu".

The entry for "birusu" provides the combinations "birusu byo" (with a long "o") meaning "viral disease" and "birusu byo no" (with a long "o" for "byo" and a short "o" for "no") meaning "viral". (The ubiquitous "no" translates, roughly, as "of," not to be confused with the "no" of what we refer to in English as "Noh drama," which has a long "o".)

Right now I'm watching the 1700 NHK news, and it seems to be dominated by recent election results, which I take to mean that here in Japan we have not (yet) been hit by the first new global plague of the Twenty First Century.

(When I was a kid, I liked to read science fiction. I have to admit that growing up and actually living science fiction is a lot less fun.)

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Section 38 Entry 0002. Date: 2003 April 16 Wednesday.
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This morning I'm sitting on a Japanese commuter train running between Yokohama and Tokyo, counting surgical facemasks. In a car which holds upwards of a hundred people (and will be holding a lot as successive train stations add to the population), I can see three surgical face masks, which (roughly speaking) is average-normal.

Officially, as far as I know, Sars has not yet reached Japan, and the Tokyo-Yokohama area is not yet into facemask mode.

Today's International Herald Tribune, as published in Japan, is bundled - as usual - with the English-language version of The Asahi Shimbun. Quickly scanning the Asahi, I notice no Sars headlines.

No, wrong! Here's one! Page 22 - "Japan's SARS surveillance at airports less than airtight".

The article tells me a couple of things I hadn't known. First, there have been four suspected Sars cases in Japan, "but all have turned out to be false alarms". Second:-

On Tuesday, health minister Chikara Sakaguchi promised to set up an emergency response team to track infection routes and assess outbreak conditions.

Hasn't been done yet, in other words. That's hardly surprising. In Japan, institutional change tends to be measured by decades rather than by nanoseconds.

From reading the article, one gets the distinct impression that quarantine precautions at Narita airport are largely symbolic. This accords with both my own experiences of Narita and with my understanding of how Japan operates in general. Japan is very much the home of the ritual gesture.

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Section 38 Entry 0003. Date: 2003 April 17 Thursday.
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Recently, the German writer Gunter Grass published a piece in which he was rather ungracious about American behavior in Iraq. This piece appeared in print at a time when many Iraqis were celebrating their liberation from the tryanny of the (truly) evil dictator Saddam Hussein.

Read in such a context, Gunter Grass's polemic came across as ill-tempered an unmannerly. Grass says, in part:-

Disturbed and powerless, but also filled with anger, we are witnessing the moral decline of the world's only superpower, burdened by the knowledge that only one consequence of this organized madness is certain: Motivation for more terrorism is being provided, for more violence and counterviolence.

(Quote from "The Moral Decline of a Superpower," by Gunter Grass, which first appeared in April 2003.)

Read in the context of a happy victory, this is hardly an appropriate comment. In fact, in this context Grass's vitriolic critique of America seems grotesque.

Gunter Grass's poorly timed comments attracted a certain amount of criticism. Two critical letters surfaced in yesterday's International Herald Tribune (as published in Japan). One of these, from a Richard Lazzaro of Antioch, California, opens as follows:-

I read Grass's hand-wringing diatribe against the United States and coalition military action in Iraq. I read it and, yet, I don't know if he is at all aware of context on the ground.

Can Grass not see or fathom the evil that Saddam Hussein embodied now that we see the faces of the Iraqis and hear their words of happiness and thankfulness?

The letter-writer is entirely right. This is no time for citicism. The deposed dictator was truly evil and although he had (and has) his supporters, it is fair to say that the Iraqi people greeted his overthrow with rejoicing.

This, then, is a time for celebration, and for praise. In particular, the present American administration is to be praised for its adroit management of context.

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Saddam Hussein - America's pet pit bull

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Context is rather like a piece of string. You can cut it off at any point you choose and say, truthfully, "This is a piece of string."

If the context is the month of April, 2003, then the story (truthfully) is this:-

"America liberates the oppressed Iraqi people from the evil dictator Saddam Hussein."

Now let's make the piece of string a bit longer. Now the story looks like this:-

"Evil dictator attacks America's adopted child, Kuwait. America rescues Kuwait. And, later, America marches all the way to Baghdad to rescue the oppressed Iraqi people from the evil dictator Saddam Hussein, the Butcher of Baghdad, the owner-operator of rape rooms and torture chambers."

So far, so good. But, if the piece of string is lengthened yet again, then the story changes. Now it looks like this:-

"The evil dictator Saddam Hussein was losing a war against Iran. America did not want him to loose. America decided to perpetuate the rule of the Butcher of Baghdad. Given a free choice, America made sure that Saddam Hussein had what he needed to survive in a war against Iran. After that, America treated Saddam as a useful pit bull (one of the family, really) until Saddam made the mistake of biting one of America's adopted children, Kuwait. Then America gave the pit bull a beating. And, ultimately, destroyed it."

This third story is as true as the first two. All that has changed is the context.

Plainly, the American administration has done a superb job of managing context. When it comes to spin-doctoring history, the administration has shown itself to be possessed of genius. Admittedly the means used have been simple (for example, the mantric repetition of the word "evil") but the results have been, nevertheless, impressive.

By ignoring what lies rotting in the backyard of the Realpolitik Center, and by talking up the war against Iraq as a war of Good against Evil, the Washington regime has successfully fabricated a myth of untarnished American virtue, a myth which will make it possible to prosecute the next war, and then the war after next.

And, for this achievement, I hereby award the Bush Administration the Gilboskalubba Prize for 2003, in the certainty that the promise shown by the administration's achievements to date will be more than adequately fulfilled in the truly interesting times which lie ahead.

(For those of you who are not aware of His nature, Gilboskalubba - more formally known as the Great God Gilboskalubba - is the God of Carnage, the Muse of Mayhem, the Lord of the Darker Ages and the tutelary deity of this website.)

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History is boring, right? Still, from time to time one does wonder what the facts are. In the case of America's historical support for Iraq, the facts seem to be firmly documented. It seems reasonable to presume that if Saddam Hussein had not attacked Kuwait then he would still be one of America's friends, a bulwark against the menace (as America sees it) of Iran.

I have written about this elsewhere on this website in a piece about the USA and the Iran-Iraq war, a piece which also deals with America's attitude to Turkey. To provide a couple of links for anyone interested in reading documentation on America's meddling in the Iran-Iraq war, I'm reproducing part of that piece here:-

.... In a similar way, back in 1982, Iraq's Saddam Hussein was a convenient friend, so it was convenient for America (as personified by Ronald Reagan) to support America's good buddy Saddam in his war agaist Iran.

Details of the Reagan regime's support for Saddam Hussein, with the headline "1982: U.S. provides billions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians":-

www.bowlingforcolumbine.com/library/wonderful/iraq.php

This page starts:-

In 1982, the Reagan Administration removed Saddam Hussein's Iraq from the list of states supporting terrorism, despite credible information stating that Iraq was, in fact, still supporting terrorism. The decision came as Iraq was on the brink of losing its war with Iran which had begun in September 1980. At the same time, according to the 1995 sworn affidavit of Howard Teicher, a member of Reagan's National Security Council, Reagan pushed the United States directly into the Iran-Iraq war.

(If you're interested in writing a novel about how power in high places really works, the sworn affidavit of Howard Teicher looks like a good place to go for inspiration.)

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Section 38 Entry 0004. Date: 2003 April 18 Friday.
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Yesterday's International Herald Tribune carried an article by Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times about Fox News's stridently pro-American war coverage, and about the Fox effect - the way in which some other news organizations have been influenced by Fox's success, resulting in a move to a more partisan mode of journalism.

Reading this article, it occurred to me that, in a sense, a certain number of journalists and news organizations are being militarized by the war.

Furthermore, it also occurred to me that it is reasonable to assume that America itself is being militarized by war. It would be interesting to figure out some way (apart from studying journalistic trends) in which this militarization could be measured. However, so far, I can't think of any elegantly economical way of doing this.

There is no doubt in my mind that the militarization of an entire society is a bad thing. In my considered opinion, the military virtues - duty, honor, courage, obedience, loyalty and sacrifice - are best kept in the box labeled "war machine".

The military virtues are appropriate for military situations, which tend to be conceptually simple, ultimately boiling down to "let's pull together so we can kill the enemy".

But civil society is a lot more complicated, very naturally generating situations in which the interests of various groups are pulling in different directions. An example in the news right now is the case of American Airlines.

It seems that if the workers don't take pay cuts then the company will go under. A simple solution is for everyone to take pay cuts. But who takes which pay cut? The compensation of top executives is typically many multiples of that of the average worker. So should top executives take more of a pay cut? Meantime, what happens to the pension scheme? If there are going to be adjustments to the pension scheme, are lowly workers and top executives going to be treated equally? Or is the system going to be tweaked so that one faction does better than another?

In times of crisis, as when a major earthquake strikes, or an airplane flies into a skyscraper, there is generally a "one size fits all" solution. In such a situation, strong, authoritarian military-style decision making is appropriate.

Here in Japan, in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake a few years back, on the day of the disaster - and for some days thereafter - the population suffered from a lack of just such command and control. Subsequently, procedures were reviewed, and the book of rules was rewritten so that there will be a coordinated top-down response to the next big disaster.

(My understanding is that the book of rules now states that, in the aftermath of a major disaster, the Japanese prime minister automatically assumes executive authority and issues whatever orders are immediately necessary.)

But the everyday life of a civil society is neither an earthquake nor a war. It does not possess the simplicity of a disaster. Rather, it is a balancing act, a negotiated compromise between the differing needs of different factions.

It will be interesting to see how things play out in America. My impression, as a remote observer, is that America seems to be suffering from an artificially-generated sense of ongoing crisis, which is presumably leading (to a certain extent) to the militarization of America as a whole.

As mentioned above, it's not easy to figure out any elegant, economical way of measuring this militarization. But my own view is that any such trend is going to be fundamentally unhealthy for America as a whole. And, because America has such a great influence on the world at large, unhealthy, too, for the planet.

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Section 38 Entry 0005. Date: 2003 April 18 Friday.
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One Baghdad building did not burn. I heard this interesting fact tonight on NPR, National Public Radio - radio programming from the USA rebroadcast locally here in Japan in the Tokyo-Yokohama area on 810 AM, a frequency controlled by the American military.

Libraries burn. Rumsfeld smiles. Museums get looted. Rumsfeld tells us the Iraqis are free. However, American troops are ringing one key ministry in Baghdad. Which one? Why, the oil ministry. Of course ....

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Today, I tried the English-language site of the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV channel. To my surprise, it was actually working. This site was launched late in March 2003 but got off to a very bumpy start indeed. Today, however, it was working well, with the pages loading reasonably quickly. The link is english.aljazeera.net.

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Section 38 Entry 0006. Date: 2003 April 18 Friday.
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Saddam lives! Late tonight, Friday, switched on CNN, and found they were showing a video tape of Saddam Hussein, allegedly filmed nine day ago, on April 9. The CNN people, broadcasting Friday morning in America (I think - I always get confused by the International Dateline business) had just got this tape from some Middle East TV station. (Abu Dhabi TV.)

If the tape can be believed, Saddam was staging a public rally in Baghdad on the 9th, in Baghdad, in a loyalist area, even though American troops were in the city at the same time. A line from one of the Batman movies came to mind:

"Why won't he die?"

Apparently Saddam has come out on the streets to rally support. And how, you might ask, is he going to do that? Well, Donald Rumsfeld has probably been giving him a helping hand. Smiling spectator observing the broken city ... looting, burning ... not my problem ... "Stuff happens" ... got the oil wells under armed guard ... got marines around the oil ministry ....

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Section 38 Entry 0007. Date: 2003 April 19 Saturday.
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I switched on the radio this morning to see what was going on, and guess what? Now the Information Ministry is burning. The thought which went through my mind was "Hey, guys! Sort it out!" If this was happening in Washington rather than Baghdad, would the response still be so ineffectual, and so lacking in any sense of urgency?

Brief SARS update: still no sign of SARS panic here in Japan, at least not that I can see. I'm on a subway train this morning, all seats taken and some people standing, and there are only two surgical facemasks in evidence, which is about par for the course.

The other day I read a newspaper article about how people "in Asia" will react negatively if you cough. However, I've noticed a couple of public coughs in the last couple of days, one in an elevator and one on a train, and nobody seemed to react at all.

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