Bending Adversity written by David Pilling

The book Bending Adversity, published by David Pilling, describes how the tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear meltdown gave Japan new perspectives. David used his extensive experience to observe a region of Japan that was affected by a tsunami that killed roughly 19,000 people and brought an atomic disaster that demonstrated both Japan's political culture of extraordinary arrogance and carelessness as well as its remarkable practical resilience. A tsunami caused by a 9-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan in March of 2013 led to the displacement of thousands of people and the death of nearly 15,000 people. The tsunami that triggered the Fukushima nuclear plant also contaminated the landscape of Japan leaving it to curtail its nuclear-power system.

David Pilling, who from 2002 through 2008 was The Financial Times’s bureau chief in Tokyo, also learned of the earthquake in Beijing, in his new post. He quickly returned to Japan to report on the disaster and its consequences. Anyone familiar with Japan knows how it is celebrated as a collective and individual country. Other words like ‘ganbette’ (keep going), ‘ganbaru’ (to endure) and ‘gaman’ (plucky resolve) are also commonly used to describe the formation of Japan. The history, setbacks, and results of Japan play a central narrative role because of the constant movement that defines its past. Nevertheless, this is what created the pilling structures of David’s story because from beginning to the end, he talks about the destruction and recovery of the Tohoku region. Japan then comes in between the long record of dealing with recent politics, adversity and economics also referred to as ‘Japans lost decades’ following the 1980 boom.

Any reader, in this case, will be attracted to the ground-zero breaking disaster that took place in Japan. Pilling in this case vividly creates different sorts of destruction that took place. For instance, the earthquake itself which went for more than six minutes. Then the tsunami, which was not the single cresting “Great Wave” famous from Hokusai prints but a rise in sea level of as much as 130 feet in some ­areas. Pilling describes a multistore gymnasium where towns­people were waiting out the tsunami. Water filled the building, and more than 60 people were trapped and drowned. Pilling arrived in Tohoku in time to witness the stage where survivors walked across flattened surfaces searching for people and belongings that had disappeared. There is also a powerful sense that shows the causes of different destruction as well as the sources of damage that came from radiation. At the end of the book, Pilling returns to Tohoku and, of course, finds people defying hardship and persevering. They include a photographer friend who ­daringly makes repeated trips into the “exclusion zone” around the failed nuclear plant, to document what had happened there.

The analytical chapters between these opening and closing sections include some dutiful survey history of Japan’s long record of warily attempting to embrace, and then fearfully or resentfully backing away from, a series of outside powers. The first was China; then the colonial-era, industrialized west that had brought the rest of Asia under its control; then through the past 60-plus years, Japan’s conqueror and ally, the United States; and recently its neighbors in Asia. Most of the themes and illustrations here are familiar, from Japan’s fetish for its uniqueness.

The first, and probably the most surprising for American readers, is that after its decades of “failure” and stagnation, modern Japan is a rich, creature-comfortable, economic and technological powerhouse. China has recently passed it in total output, but with a 10-times-larger population. Japan’s economy is the third-largest in the world, the size of Britain’s and France’s economies combined. Japan’s car companies, Pilling reminds us, are “now considered the best in the world.” In almost any advanced industry, from biotechnology to electronics to aerospace, crucial components come from Japanese firms. “They talk about Japan’s decline,” a Japanese friend tells Pilling. “But there are no potholes on the street; there are good quality cars, no violence, and clean air.

Pilling also usefully follows the evolution of Japan’s contradictory impulses to integrate itself with the rest of Asia, ­especially China, and to hold itself apart. Nearly 70 years after Japanese troops were driven from China, ill will between the two countries is only rising. A long-term source of tension is the anti-­Japanese agitprop the Chinese government promotes, presumably to deflect dissatisfaction away from itself. The immediate irritant, foreshadowed in this book, has been a series of assertively nationalistic moves by the Abe administration. Japan, China, and the United States are all countries whose economies are more robust and modern than their political systems are. Japan’s version of this problem, as famously described by Karel van Wolferen in “The Enigma of Japanese Power” (1989), is the lack of any center of political accountability, or buck-stops-here person able to make decisions about Japan’s course.

Pilling explains how circumstances have changed since then, but why the judgment is still mostly correct. When he is writing from his own observation, especially about the people and places transformed by the recent calamities, Pilling is eloquent and direct. When he is summing up political, economic and social questions, his instinct seems to be to hyper-hedge, as if the criticism he feared most was any claim of an overstatement. I agree on all points. Life is complicated and contradictory, more so in Japan than other places. But the story Pilling is telling in this worthwhile book is more precise than such tics suggest.

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Pilling’s Presentation

One major theme here is how Japan defies categorization. The author convincingly argues that this is a source of strength and resilience for the Japanese, hence the book's title. To demonstrate his point, he uses the beautiful example of the Ise Shrine, often called the most sacred shrine in Japan. This Shinto shrine dates back to the third century AD, but every 20 years since its inception it is dismantled and built anew to the exact specifications. As you may have guessed, the shrine cannot be categorized as “new” or “old.” But it is safe to assume that it will virtually endure forever, or at least much longer than any usual shrine. The example can also be used to illustrate how the Japanese are comfortable with the Buddhist idea of impermanence.

How the View of History Supports or Contradicts the View Offered By Pilling

The view of history contradicts the statements offered from pilling because there was propaganda that created the imperial ambitions of Japan. They made Japan superior more than other foreign countries. It civilized mission was elevated to ideas that Japan was worth killing and dying. However, things were different because Japan’s society was able to adjust with the aim of preserving its national essence. Japan is also seen to have the capability to sustain sudden explosive changes. Also, the three years Japan went through from feudalism to emperor contradicts with the pilling theory.

Understanding History of Contemporary Japanese Society (As Presented by Pilling) The book helped me to understand the politics and economics of the country a little better, and to further clarify my thoughts on Japanese society. It is also a fascinating read that is filled with fantastic imagery. The book, especially the middle sections on economics and prime ministers, read more like a series of essays and often repeated the same details in each chapter. However, the beginning and end tied things together nicely and made the chunk in the middle more bearable.

What is learned from David pilling’s Bending Adversity

David Pilling does a great job to show the adversity that Japan overcame economically and socially throughout Japan’s history. He not only shows how Japan was able to overcome those difficulties, but explains why it mattered that they did. He writes about Japan’s ability to bend adversity in a way that invites the readers to do more research. He gives just enough information with specific situations that go along with them to allow the readers to understand parts of Japan’s economic and social history. The way he writes not only invites me as a reader to do more research to learn but gets me to think critically about Japan’s social and economic history.

Conclusion

The book as elaborated in the essay gives insight to how Japan could adapt and bend adversity in the many ways they did. His book is a great way to briefly summarize adversity Japan faced whether it was economically or socially. Although he does a great job showing adversity in Japan, the fluidity of his book could have been better. He could have made it so that the topics were more together than separated in his book. Even then it was overall, still, an easy book to read and comprehend.

Bibliography

Hoston, Germaine A. Marxism and the Crisis of Development in Prewar Japan. Princton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2014. P. 104-124

Oskin, Becky. Japan Earthquake & Tsunami of 2011: Facts and Information. New York, NY: Live Science, 2017. Retrieved from: https://www.livescience.com/39110-japan-2011-earthquake-tsunami-facts.html

Pilling, David. Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival. Totowa, NJ: Penguin Books Limited, 2014. P. 224-302

Wolferen, Karel Van. The enigma of Japanese power: people and politics in a stateless nation. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. P 164-199