The rude Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Ichiro Fujisaki, the Japanese ambassador to the united states, reminded me of the time the regal (Akio) Toyoda went up against the proverbial Torquemada, his tormentors on the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. (Here) No words of condolence did Blitzer offer to the Japanese gentleman for the calamity his country and people have endured. Instead, Wolf hammered Fujisaki about the possibility of “another Chernobyl,” a meltdown, at one of the Fukushima’s Daiichi nuclear power reactors.

The March 11, magnitude 8.9 earthquake had damaged the Fukushima 1 power station. BBC reports more reliably and with greater detail that a big explosion on Saturday had caused “the cooling system to fail at the No 3 reactor and the fuel rods inside had been exposed.” (HERE) Wolf finally explained that the “tsunami had put that whole power plant basically under water, and killed its coolant capabilities.” (Transcripts) Fujisaki reiterated that, “We do not see evidence of a meltdown at this time,” and that his government had already evacuated the people, First from a three kilometer radius, then 10, and finally 20 kilometers radius. “We are taking as most cautious measures and we’re trying to evacuate people so that accident will not really affect people,” Fujisaki explained.

CNN further reported, via the Kyoto News Agency (the official Japanese news agency), that “9,500 people are unaccounted for. We cannot confirm that they are all deaths but know for a fact that 9,500 are missing.” A far smaller, magnitude 7.0. seismic event in Haiti, which CNN keeps invoking, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and the place is still in ruins, despite the rescue efforts of Hollywood actor Sean Penn. (And it’s not just the building codes, as our media’s analysis would have it.) Blitzer wanted to know if Japan could cope with its reactors without the US! The Chutzpah! How many working reactors does the US have?

Fujisaki assured him with the utmost politeness that “we are now coping with this issue ourselves. But, of course, there could be some consultation with other countries. But for the moment, because it’s just happening now, we are doing — working on ourselves.”

Wolf seemed shocked that a tremor and attendant tsunami that generated 30- to 50 foot tall walls of water that crashed onto Japan’s north-east coast had left some 6 million households without electricity. The ambassador assured Wolf that the number was down to 2.5 million. If that is correct, it is remarkable. Wolf and CNN hardly breathed a word about the biggest windstorm to have hit Washington and Oregon in decades. In 2006, “at least a million residents in the Pacific Northwest were stranded without power for days, in primitive conditions, befitting a Third World country.” Is Wolf unaware that, with Katrina, the US had established the gold standard for government ineptitude in a disaster? We in the Pacific North West are due for what Japan has just endured. We call it “The Big One.” The Japanese have responded calmly. I’d feel far safer in a disaster if at the helm were people who were driven by national and personal pride to put their best foot forward, and to stay stoical and soldier on.

Japan will be okay. It’s a highly civilized, advanced society.

When Wolf repeated, incredulously, “No looting? No looting; are you sure?”, one of CNN’s foreign correspondents, a Japanese woman (you guessed, her story is nowhere to be found on CNN’s website), proudly recounted how crime-free Japan is; how people pull together, yet are propelled forward by individual agency and initiative; how honest the average individual is; how, if you lose your wallet, you’ll likely find it at the nearest police station.

My husband, who traveled there recently, found the Japanese he collaborated with remarkably polite, refined, and respectful of experience and skill (whereas here in the US we idolize the average hubristic Millennial).

Japan is not a very “diverse” society, you know. Actually, it’s a homogeneous country. And as Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam discovered, but tried his best not to divulge, “In diverse communities, people ‘hunker down’: they withdraw, have fewer ‘friends and confidants,’ distrust their neighbors regardless of the color of their skin, expect the worst from local leaders, volunteer and carpool less, give less to charity, and ‘agitate for social reform more,’ with little hope of success. They also huddle in front of the television. Activism alternates with escapism, unhappiness with ennui.” …

UPDATE I: I have just posted this comment on Facebook, where the blog post seems to have struck a chord: “You all seem to have picked up on the incredible chauvinism with which our elites treat The Other—unless this Other is an illegal immigrant criminal, or some knuckles-dragging atavist. Do you think this has to do with the comfort those who have little awareness of their own motivation derive from patronizing lesser individuals? Underachievers make us feel good about ourselves. The latter are easier to ‘help.'”

UPDATE II: With respect to “individual agency” and the attempt to do your best—values Japanese society upholds— Sean related the following: exiting the train station that takes you from Tokyo airport to the down down area, he flagged a taxicab. The driver could not speak a word of English, which makes him not that different from the cabdrivers you hail on American soil. With two exceptions: the first being that the driver was in his own, Japanese-speaking country. The second was the way he proceeded. This gentleman overcame the language barrier thus: Unable to decipher the note my husband had handed him in English as to his destination, Sean’s Japanese cabby existed his vehicle, leaving Sean in it ALONE, and stopped a near by policeman. The latter explained to the cabby where the client (Sean) was headed. A confident cabby got into the cab he had abandoned to look for a cop, and drove my husband to his destination. This kind of experience was repeated throughout his trip: agency, efficiency, occupational pride, politeness.

In a word: a traditional society, the kind this American historian believes thwarts progress.