 Looking to the east, I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech and here we are at the one o'clock clock already only given Monday with Steve Zurcher who joins us from Kobe, Japan from Kansai Gaida University. Am I right about that Steve? I'm in my office right now. Yeah, if I took off the fake background you'd see my books and papers and disheveled office. We're happy enough. Yeah, but this is a campus picture behind me as well. This is what Kansai Gaida looks like. So you know we had an almost hurricane yesterday over the weekend I suppose and Douglas was the name and it was national news that we were in line for this. We had some terrible hurricanes before that have been disastrous. The most recent bad one was I think it was Iniki 1991 or 1992. Yeah, I remember that. This is really devastating. I think Kauai, right? It broke primarily. It broke Kauai in pieces. And you know now this one was a nothing burger. I like to say it because it didn't really affect any island and we had a lot of news about it and the media were really churning it out but really nothing happened and this happens you know in Hawaii. We had more nothing burgers than we have real storms, although that does not foreclose the possibility that in the next few months between now and December effectively between now and election day you know we will have some more weather, bad weather, extreme weather, the kind of weather you get only in climate change. And so we have to think about it and no storm can be taken lightly. On the other hand this also points out that Hawaii is really not resilient either from a you know energy point of view or from a life and safety point of view from an agricultural point of view. We really haven't worked that out at all even though we have an ongoing in fact an increasing threat of extreme weather. And I wondered if we could compare Hawaii in you know its consciousness of this issue, its sustainability and resilience against storms, its ability to come back against storms after storms with Japan. Japan has had its fair share of earthquakes. Oh yes. You had terrible time a few years ago with Fukushima and I wonder if you can give us a handle on how well Japan is prepared. Yeah, this country is at unique risk for natural disasters. It has more earthquakes than any other country in the world. So there's a built in mentality within the government and the population overall that at any given point everything could be destroyed. I mean literally everything could be destroyed. The occurrences of tsunamis is increasing just like maybe you've observed in Hawaii the season is becoming longer the intensity of these storms is increasing. In Kobe recently we had a major tsunami come through and it did significant damage to the Kansai region. It shut down the airport. Maybe you remember that. That also made international news. A ship ended up breaking loose and ramming the one bridge that ran into the Kansai airport. So there was no in and out traffic for a number of weeks and it just devastated international travel. This is pre-COVID before we've gone through that disaster. So there's a consciousness among the people among the government in terms of we will face these things like in Tokyo they have scenarios that they've already planned out. They have predicted an earthquake of a certain size and intensity will occur in the next 10 to 15 years. It's a given and the estimates are that up to 50,000 people will perish will die when that does happen. I mean this is what they're facing. I mean I give them credit for facing reality this will happen. So there is a lot of preparation and infrastructure development and a lot of planning but I've been here a long time and I'm not an expert on this. I'm hoping to bring an expert for the next show a couple of weeks someone who really understands as well. His name is Dr. Robert Eldridge. He's been on ThinkTech before but my observation is that the best plans and the best intentions kind of fall apart when the crisis actually occurs and the the worst example of this is in 1995 when Kobe had a major earthquake which devastated the city 5,000 people perished when that occurred in 1995 and the government response was abysmal. It was so bad that when the prime minister his name was Muriyama at that time he finally came to Kobe after I think three or four days. He didn't say anything at all about this. There was no official response and finally he acknowledged what happened and said we're going to try and do the best we can. When he came here you know how reserved Japanese people are. They threw vegetables at him. They were so frustrated that it was like watching a bad performance of a musical or something. Yeah so he didn't come back again. So unfortunately even though I think there's high awareness and high planning and intense investment in infrastructure to try and protect Japan against an earthquake or a hurricane or other disasters like flooding. We're experiencing flooding right now in Kyushu because the amount of rain that we're getting every year is just going up tremendously again because of climate change. This is in Japan we don't have the political issue that you have in America about the deniers so this is reported all the time. There's more rain occurring so Kyushu is trying to recover from flooding and it's kind of a mixed bag. So I don't know maybe Robert can explain more about his perspective on this when he comes on the show but my impression is that there is awareness. There is planning but when the event occurs doesn't seem to be all that effective. You know your comments remind me that the issue about you know the level of response the effectiveness of the response. It reminds me of the Black Death in 1348 or thereabouts in Europe starting in it came it came from Turkey I think and and then it came through to Sicily and then to Messina and then to Italy in general and from there it spread to France, Germany and ultimately England and it killed half the people in Europe about half the people in Europe and they didn't know what it was. They had no idea what the process of this disease was. The fact is it was a bacteria carried by a flea that was carried by rats and and they didn't know so they just didn't take the right steps. The only guy who did the right thing was the Pope. The Pope built two fires in his chambers and he would stay close to the fires. Rats don't like fires. He saved himself. What can I say? But anyway not to not to dwell on that. What is very interesting is in the social aspect the first reaction people had was to try to help each other. You know the we're all in this together trope. We're going to work together to save each other but as in each place that that the the Black Plague you know happened you had the same phenomenon. After a while people didn't didn't say that. They didn't say we're all in this together. It's every man for himself. Right and and they lost that that certain morality that that ethic about protecting your neighbor. That was so interesting and so I think it's part of a human condition but when you're really in in distress maybe you don't care so much about your neighbor and it's a test of humanity. Yeah well let me give you an example from my own personal life. I was in New York for 9-11 believe it or not. My brother-in-law got married that the Saturday before 9-11 before that Tuesday and I was scheduled to fly out on United Airlines from Newark to San Francisco on the flight after United I think it was 93 the one that was hijacked. I was there so we were in the hotel we're getting ready to go to the airport and then the towers came down. It was so interesting Jay to observe New Yorkers who have a reputation for being individualistic and you know kind of rough right you know that's that's the right reputation that's not been my experience by the way in New York but anyway after that disaster occurred the community sense just exploded and there was so much bonding going on at least over that short period of time after 9-11 because we were stuck there until Friday before they remember they stopped all flights when that occurred so we were there and I figured I would give blood you know I would donate because there was a call on media and I went to the local gym I had to wait eight hours to give blood because there were so many people there who felt the same sense of responsibility or commitment to try and help people who were so you know I don't know how long that lasted in New York but at least through that initial few days New York came together in a way that I could not believe was it was touching I remember it yeah it was do you remember that yeah I do remember I just happened to be there and observe that now getting to this point about community now COVID obviously is another disaster that we're all trying to respond to and America of course has failed miserably in terms of responding to it in a in a responsible way whereas in Asia pretty much uniformly if you take a look at all the different countries this is reflecting on the article that you sent me Jay from Frankching the death rates in the Asian countries are so much lower I mean it just doesn't even compare so in the United States it's over 450 per million that have died because of COVID right and in Japan it's eight in some countries it's below one in Asia and this gets back to your point about community in Asia maybe because of the Confucian history there's a sense of greater commitment to the community and during a crisis like we're in right now in Japan even though the government leadership has been haphazard and really inconsistent I from my own opinion it hasn't been that much better than the United States frankly but the sense of community commitment to try and prevent something that is a threat to all and modifying individuals behaviors for the benefit of the good of all is something that's fundamental to Asian cultures so the example that I've given before is mask wearing it is not mandated in this country the obvious I mean the government's recommending the people do it but it's not mandated but you get on the train like I did yesterday there's not a single person on the train not wearing a mask if you got on the train without a mask it would be like you're they're naked or something it's just socially unacceptable everyone recognizes that they have to make this effort you know whether it's effective or not you can debate but anyway people believe it and the government believes it so there's 100 compliance with that aspect of trying to protect all of us here in Japan from the influence of this deadly disease and it's working it's working across a cultural background to it I mean in Japan if you have a regular I mean this is pre-covid PC if you don't mind pre-covid okay in Japan if you had a cold you'd wear the mask yes and if you want to see the people on the street who have colds look for the people who have masks on and they're not doing this for themselves they're doing it for you they're doing it for the community this has been yeah this has been a cultural point for hundreds of years I think in Japan yes yeah there's a long history of mask wearing and you're absolutely right Jay when I got here when I was a student I was 19 years old and I noticed people were wearing masks and my natural thought as an American was that oh they must think that I'm sick and they're protecting themselves against me or other people as I learned about the culture I realized no they're sick and they're protecting the other people from spreading the disease that they have to others it's exactly the opposite of what I assumed based on my American cultural upbringing so yeah at any given point especially during the spring maybe 40 percent of people are wearing masks to protect others others are wearing masks because of allergies that's a big issue in Japan but now even if you're not sick you don't know that for sure because you could be asymptomatic so it's a hundred percent coverage in any place that I've gone now where there's a significant group of people it's a hundred percent compliance with this it's just I'm still even after being here so long amazed to observe this and in America you know my own home country people feel it's it's a you're impinging on my freedom you're my constitutional right I have a constitutional right to affect you yeah I don't remember basically just being written in the constitution is there is is that one of the amendments that I missed I think you must have missed that one I know I did I mean it's really it's really awful it's so you know forget about the constitution it's immoral it's unethical it is uh it's indecent for some reason I'm not going to wear a mask even though I know that you are going to get what I have and you could die but anyway can you read the numbers out that Frank Cheng included really important numbers for the U.S. and for the various uh what are you talking about the chopstick countries yeah that's right so let's see in Taiwan where the ethnicity ethnicity of people is basically the same as mainland China they've reported 0.3 deaths per million people Singapore is five Thailand is 0.8 so less than one Vietnam as of this writing zero no deaths whatsoever United States 451 United Kingdom 674 deaths per million Spain 608 France 462 Canada 235 Germany 110 it's remarkable what a huge difference now there are random factors to this and one thing I've read is that in general the health of Japanese people is better they're they're lighter generally their diet is higher quality so there's the Japanese researchers have looked at maybe there's a distinction between the overall level of health between Japan and the United States and that may be a factor but you cannot I think get away from this cultural influence the sense of we are part of a community and therefore in a crisis we need to protect all members it's not just about me and what I want to do and whether I feel comfortable wearing a mask or I don't feel comfortable wearing a mask and frankly this is my own opinion the fact that Trump politicized this that caused more American deaths you know he's a criminal in my opinion in that sense that he politicized face masks and had people say oh I'm going to because I love Trump not wear masks that caused a greater spread of the disease so any that's my own personal opinion that's well I'll tell you you know this this show will be posted you know on YouTube and YouTube has it has comments and people you know watch the show they'll watch this show from all around the country and they'll leave comments and I can guarantee you Steve there'll be people who will criticize us and who will call us names for suggesting that wearing a mask is better even if Trump doesn't support it because they support Trump and I what how do you argue with these numbers well the question is whether people know these numbers this is frank ching you know writing in hong kong in taiwan what have you um you know for american publications and also local publications there that may have been affected by the new security law in hong kong but right great columnists have been doing it for a long time and uh this this article is really uh an important article so my question to you is the people in japan do they they have some awareness of the comparison of the the chopstick country numbers and the american they know i i am put in the awkward position and i think all of us americans that are living in japan of trying to defend the indefensible people japanese people will ask me what is going wrong with your country why is it a joke why are the death rates so high you guys have the most resources you should be a leader you know it should be much lower the number of infections and the number of deaths uh i i don't have an answer for that frankly so yes the japanese people are very aware of what's going on in the united states and what the results are i mean they watch cnn and uh because cnn is here in japan especially in the hotels and so forth so uh in japanese people tend to watch very closely they're very aware of politics sometimes my wife brings up issues about what's going on in japan that i'm surprised she knows about but she hears it on an hk which is the national news agency she also listens to some alternative news sources so she'll she'll tell me oh yeah trump finally wore a mask a couple days ago how do you know that and so there's a high awareness of what the united states is struggling with right now and basically the conclusion is that the country is incompetent it's kind of they feel about trump do they think that his reelection would benefit japan uh either on foreign policy or in some other way oh jay you you are the master of segway's so yeah that's another thing i wanted to talk about um and that is who would be better for japan trump or biden uh there's been a number of articles that have appeared in the national press about this and it is honestly it's kind of a mixed bag um there's a little bit of thinking it's better to deal with the devil that you know as opposed to the devil that you don't know so after three and a half years japan even though they recognize that trump has done several things that have not been in the benefit of japan for example immediately withdrawing from the tpp the trans-pacific partnership that was one of the first things trump did when he became president because it was a bad deal right and that significantly damaged the the organization itself which japan was a major advocate of frankly because america asked them under the obama administration to take a lead role and also uh with north korea so abe the prime minister had been making north korea the bogeyman because he's trying to change the japanese constitution and make uh japan's military able to attack rather than just defend the macArthur built into the japanese constitution that japan can only defend which abe feels is is a restriction on japanese uh political action and military action and you can argue the pros and cons on that but in the middle of abe demonizing north korea guess who goes to north korea and says oh yeah kim jong-un he's my friend we're building a partnership here so abe's done several things i'm sorry trump has done several things to kind of upset the the table here the card here but there are some people who feel like yeah we understand trump his pluses and minuses abe's invested a lot in the relationship so biden coming on board represents a little bit of a mystery and therefore is unknown and therefore maybe there's some who would feel well let let's hope that trump wins the biden's approach to asia will be significantly different from trump you know trump is kind of haphazard he just does what he wants there's no coherent strategy whatsoever uh and biden probably will go back to the obama you know pivot to asia and work collaboratively with countries to try and for example contain the influence of china which i think democrats and republicans both agree and certainly the japanese government and leadership also agreed that china is a significant threat on many fronts in terms of military power and economic power so there is i think there'll be greater collaboration within the asia-pacific region which i think would in the long run benefit japan but not everybody in japan would recognize that they'd rather have trump because we know what trump is we understand what trump is now after three and a half years what would you say that most people in in japan would would would favor biden or trump oh that's a good question let me let me do some research on that i don't i haven't seen any polls on that but my own personal guess would be because of covet uh trump's reputation is terrible i mean how could he be how could he be the president and let this disaster happen to united states when there's certainly models of behavior a government action which are much much better in asia to take a look at and so forth so i think probably biden would be favored usually i think when clinton and trump were running most japanese people because clinton's awareness was quite high because of bill being the president before and the fact that she had been a senator and secretary of state so i think most japanese at that point favored clinton and when trump won the country went into a semi-state of shock as we all did but uh japan i remember when he was elected the japanese people were just who is this guy how could he win how could he beat hillary clinton why did america elect this guy that we don't even know who he is and all he's done has been on tv he's he's good with access hollywood and all that maybe plays into it but uh okay we have a question i want to ask you oh yeah there's a chat great and do you think that america's patriotism is the most dangerous thing to america right now do you think that america's patriotism is the most dangerous thing to america right now that's a hard question make of it what you will yeah if you if you mean by patriotism nationalism exceptionalism maybe i think as a as an expat a long-term expat i have this emotional and kind of psychological distance now from my own home country i'm still an american and i you know i love my country and i feel connected to it but it does give me the perspective to look at american activity and the fact that we think that we're so special and that uh you know we dominated things for so long i think it blinds us to what's going on in the world and i think a good example of that is the rise of china i think just recently america's beginning to recognize that china is an economic powerhouse and becoming a military powerhouse as well and america needs to recognize that it's not just an american world any longer i mean there are many political scientists who are saying it's it's china's turn now you know china will not the american century anymore yeah so that takes us to the last question i want to put to you which is a good segue from what we've been talking about yes it's the article you and i have shared uh which raises the question of what the chinese people think about biden versus trump uh whether um they they favor one over the over and who is it and who would be better uh for the relationship and for china yeah this this is an important question also for japan because japan is caught between the middle the united states and china um politically japan's allegiance and alliances to the united states and it's been that way for decades economically however china is japan's number one trading partner and has been that for many many many years so this tension that exists between the united states and china deeply affects japan so this is becoming a political issue in in america now i trump is using china and biden is using china in their national campaigns so the question of who would china want as a president and i did take a look at an article from the atlantic magazine so i think the perception generally by maybe most of the viewers of this uh this webcast would be that uh china does not want trump because trump is potentially stronger but the reality is if you look over the last three and a half years china's rise has significantly increased under the trump administration because trump's policies have been inconsistent when it comes to china sometimes he verbally attacks them other times he protects them like in hong kong he's been very accommodating of what's going on right there and has not made any significant statements about preventing china uh from doing what they're doing in hong kong or other activities as well so i did this article quote some officials from china and their preference seems to be that they would prefer trump to stay in office so we want trump to be reelected we'd be glad to see this happen the president's tweet makes him easy to read and thus the best choice in an opponent for negotiations another quote from one of the newspapers in china they wish for his re-election because trump makes america eccentric and therefore hateful for the rest of the world and it makes it you help to promote unity in china he added that chinese netizens call you i'm going to mispronounce this i'm sorry for chinese speakers here jong guo j-i-n-g-u-o which means trump is helping to construct china so they view him as the best leader of america in order for them to accomplish their own political and military goals whereas biden what might be more of a challenge because biden would adopt a more consensus approach to containing china biden for example would probably have the america enter into tpp you know he might do that right away and that would the whole purpose of the tpp was to try and contain the economic influence of china and trump withdrew from that and therefore strengthened china's own economic initiatives so that's why china at least at some levels seems to think trump would be better for their own benefit than a biden presidency yeah i mean herrington that is that trump is a failed president under him the country fails and china would love to see you know the country fail because it can fill the vacuum it can it can become all all the more powerful that's exactly the point that they're making here it's there's a lack of leadership in fact it's actually a negative trump is lowering the regard and reputation of america through covet withdrawing from the who of threatening to withdraw from nato he's done so many of these things withdrawing from the tpp so it creates this opportunity for china to fill the void it's it's not china's so good at what they're doing it's that we're so bad right now and that china can expand without resistance it's it's like maus the art of war let the other guy fall on his sword let him let him let him fail by himself and you move in you fill the vacuum yeah if your opponent is screwing up if your opponent is screwing up don't get in his way and that's i think how china views the trump administration right now i would prefer a second term but anyway this morning i was reading that that's becoming less and less likely i know people are afraid because hillary was predicted to win before and biden's now being predicted to win again but the numbers seem to be pretty compelling that it's looking like we'll have a biden administration starting next year from your lips to god's ears well thank you very much steve it's always great oh always my pleasure jay looking forward to talking to you again in a couple of weeks stay safe and be well thank you