Thomas A. Bass on Fukushima

MAY–JULY 2020 VOLUME 5, NUMBER 3

Emma Larkin revisits the Thammasat massacre

Peter Yeoh profiles Jeremy Tiang

Alicia Izharuddin rails against Malaysian food VOLUME 5, NUMBER 3 MAY–JULY 2020

THAILAND 3 Emma Larkin Moments of Silence: The Unforgetting of the October 6, 1976, Massacre in Bangkok, by Thongchai Winichakul

POEMS 5 Anthony Tao Coronavirus

CHINA 6 Richard Heydarian Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis, by Jiwei Ci

HONG KONG 7 David Parrish Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, by Joshua Wong (with Jason Y. Ng)

TAIWAN 8 Michael Reilly The Trouble with Taiwan: History, the United States and a Rising China, by Kerry Brown and Kalley Wu Tzu Hui

INDIA 9 Somak Ghosal The Deoliwallahs: The True Story of the 1962 Chinese-Indian Internment, by Joy Ma And Dilip D’souza

NOTEBOOK 10 Peter Guest Isolated

JAPAN 11 Thomas A. Bass Made in Japan

CAMBODIA 19 Prumsodun Ok An Illustrated History of Cambodia, by Philip Coggan

MALAYSIA 20 Carl Vadivella Belle Towards a New Malaysia? The 2018 Election and Its Aftermath, by Meredith L. Weiss And Faisal S. Hazis (editors); The Defeat of Barisan: Missed Signs or Late Surge?, by Francis E. Hutchinson and Lee Hwok Aun (editors)

SINGAPORE 21 Simon Vincent Hard at Work: Life in Singapore, by Gerard Sasges and Ng Shi Wen

SOUTH KOREA 22 Peter Tasker Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech, by Geoffrey Cain

MEMOIR 23 Martin Stuart-Fox Impermanence: An Anthropologist of Thailand and Asia, by Charles Keyes

FICTION 25 Siti Keo A New Sun Rises over the Old Land, by Suon Sorin

FICTION 26 Bryan Thao Worra Run Me to Earth, by Paul Yoon

SHORT STORY 27 Wong Yi Night-shift scenes

POETRY 28 Michael Freeman To Gather Your Leaving: Asian Diaspora Poetry, by Boey Kim Cheng, Arin Alicia Fong and Justin Chia (editors)

NEIGHBOURHOOD 29 Melody Kemp Vientiane

PROFILE 30 Peter Yeoh Jeremy Tiang

TRAVEL 32 Conner Bouchard-Roberts Carry across

FOOD 33 Alicia Izharuddin Against Malaysian food

URBAN 35 Pim Wangtechawat Very Bangkok: In the City of the Senses, by Philip Cornwel-Smith

MUSIC 36 Mina Bui Jones WOMADelaide

FILM 37 David Scott Mathieson Free Burma Rangers, by Brent Gudgel and Chris Sinclair (directors)

THE BOOKSELLER 38 Brian Chee-Shing Hioe Causeway Bay Books in Taiwan

mekongreview.com PUBLISHER & EDITOR Minh Bui Jones DEPUTY EDITOR Ben Wilson MANAGING EDITOR Robert Templer CONTRIBUTING EDITORS ko ko thett (poetry), Preeta Samarasan (fiction) DESIGN Ben Wilson WEBSITE Nicholas Lhoyd-Owen SUBSCRIPTIONS Shu Wen Chye SUB-EDITORS Allen Myers, Gareth Richards, Rhiannon Alexander COVER Elsie Herberstein ARTISTS Damien Chavanat, Charis Loke, Gianluca Costantini, Janelle Retka ADDRESS PO Box 417, Broadway, New South Wales 2037, Australia; [email protected] Mekong Review is published four times a year; next issue August

2 THAILAND The silence of 1976 Emma Larkin

THONGCHAI WINICHAKUL Moments of Silence: The Unforgetting of the October 6, 1976, Massacre in Bangkok University of Hawai‘i Press: 2020

eet Chair Guy, the subject of a black-and- white photograph taken on the morning of 6 October 1976, in Bangkok, Thailand. Though MChair Guy is smartly dressed—in a safari shirt and what appear to be matching trousers, neatly ironed—he is barefoot. The expression on his face is impossible to read: it could be anger, exhilaration or nothing more than the result of physical exertion. The camera has caught him mid-action as he leaps up and raises a metal folding chair over his head, preparing to bring it down with full force upon a dead body hanging from a tree. A crowd of onlookers form a neat semicircle around the scene, as if they are watching some kind of outdoor circus performance. Most of them are casually dressed young men; their expressions are mixed, but a number of them appear to be smiling. One small boy’s face is lit up with what looks like a broad grin of sheer delight. Clearly visible in the background are the austere facade of the Supreme Court and the golden spires of the Grand Palace. Though nearly forty-five years have passed, Thailand Thongchai Winichakul at Thammasat University in 1976 remains haunted by this image, and by Chair Guy. The attack started just before dawn that day, with It was a fast and savage bloodletting, over before thousands of students barricaded inside Thammasat, noon. More than 3,000 students were arrested one of the country’s top universities. The students had afterwards. The official death toll was forty-one, but gathered to protest the return to Thailand of General many believe it to be more than twice that. Workers for Thanom Kittikachorn, a military dictator ousted by an one of the city’s emergency rescue foundations providing earlier student-led uprising, in 1973, and now found burials for unclaimed bodies said they handled over a themselves besieged. Police blocked the main gates; hundred corpses that day. navy boats were positioned on the adjacent river. And on Sanam Luang, the royal parade ground in front of he subject of Thongchai Winichakul’s Moments the campus, right-wing groups gathered, also in their of Silence is not so much what actually happened thousands. on 6 October, but the silence that followed. There Cold War tensions were at fever pitch as the Thas never been an official investigation, and a blanket dominoes of Southeast Asia toppled to communism. In amnesty issued two years after the event absolved all the previous year, North Vietnamese troops took Saigon, perpetrators from blame. Most school textbooks make Thongchai speaking at a demonstration outside Thammasat in 1976 the Khmer Rouge declared Year Zero in Cambodia and no mention of it, and those that do gloss over it in just a the Pathet Lao abolished the monarchy in Laos. Thailand few sentences. To this day, the event remains cloaked in seized power and placed a moratorium on all news. The was battling its own communist insurgency in the mystery, poorly understood and often misremembered. photograph of Chair Guy might never have been seen hinterlands; the state was trying to prevent communist Thongchai’s revelatory memoir-cum-history charts a had the Associated Press photographer who took it, Neal infiltration and establish die-hard loyalty to the capital, chronological journey through this silence, examining Ulevich, not anticipated the clampdown. Concerned that and the crown, through groups like the Nawaphon (New, its causes, exploring its impact on individuals and authorities would confiscate the film from his camera, or Ninth, Force), which spread right-wing propaganda; a exposing the toll it has taken on the collective psyche. he left the area shortly after taking the photograph and vigilante force called Krathing Daeng (Red Gaur); and a Thongchai is not, in this instance, an impartial hurried to the AP bureau office to develop and print his network of Village Scouts active across the countryside. historian. He was a student leader in 1976 and the book pictures so they could be quickly wired out of the country. At the time of the student protest in 1976, these right- opens dramatically, in situ at Thammasat University, Later that same day, police began raiding newspaper wing groups had been summoned to the campus by with a nineteen-year-old Thongchai speaking into a offices to seize film and photographs of the event. an army radio station and were being whipped into a microphone at the back of the organiser’s stage. As police Ulevich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize the following frenzy. Broadcasters had told them that the students were stormed the grounds, it was his voice that reverberated year for his ‘photographs of disorder and brutality in the communists and that many were not even Thai but yuan around the campus, repeating, ‘Please, my police streets of Bangkok’. In Thailand, only one newspaper— (a derogatory term for Vietnamese) and nak phaendin brothers, please stop shooting.’ He was later arrested and the English-language Bangkok Post—reported the fact, (literally ‘heavy on the earth’, or something akin to scum). spent two years in prison as part of the so-called Bangkok and did so without running any of his images. During one broadcast, a presenter chanted, ‘Kill them, Eighteen, alleged ringleaders of the demonstration. The cover of Moments of Silence is illustrated with kill them, kill them …’ After his release, he completed his degree at Thammasat a line drawing of the hanging body from Ulevich’s When police charged the campus, firing pistols, M16 and then left Thailand to pursue postgraduate study in photograph, a ghostly rendition that—like the event rifles, and M79 grenade launchers, the furious crowd Australia, later moving to the United States, where he itself—is devoid of detail and visible only in outline. followed. Wounded students were dragged onto the taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Hangings, and photographs of the hangings, play a parade ground, along with the dead, and tortured. Some eventually retiring from teaching to write this book. As grimly recurring role in the story of 6 October. were doused in petrol and set alight. Others had wooden such, Moments of Silence was years in the making and is A week before the crackdown, a photograph was stakes driven through their chests. At least four bodies part of a lifelong journey to bring some kind of justice published in several newspapers showing two dead were hung from the tamarind trees that ring the Sanam to the friends he lost on that day. As he states more than men hanging from a gate. There was a gruesome Luang parade ground and beaten with whatever came to once, ‘part of my soul is in this book’. choreography to the image; the two had been hung side hand—shoes, sticks, a folding chair. By nightfall on 6 October, a military coup had by side, with their heads drooping at the same angle and

3 their swollen tongues protruding from their mouths. The men were labour activists who had been sticking up posters protesting the return of General Thanom; it was widely understood they had been hung in place by police as a warning to other protesters. The students at Thammasat were undeterred, however, and performed a defiant skit that included a mock execution. A student was posed hanging from a tree with his neck similarly angled and his tongue lolling out. When a photograph of the scene was published in newspapers the next day, it became apparent that the student who had played the hanging victim bore, on camera at least, a startling resemblance to then crown prince Vajiralongkorn. One outraged headline declared, ‘Students Hang Effigy of the Crown Prince and Trample on the Hearts of All Thais’.

act began to merge with fiction in the very first announcement of the coup group on the evening of 6 October, when the new government Fexplained that the students had come under the sway of communists and that their protest was part of a plot to bring down the kingdom and destroy the monarchy. This narrative was enforced over the following days and months by a widespread suppression of all leftist thought and opinion. Thongchai describes left-leaning newspapers and magazines being shut down by the authorities and people burning incriminating books in Thongchai (seated, far right), with fellow detainees from the 6 October massacre, at Bang Khen prison in 1977 their possession: ‘Hundreds of books, including several academic texts, were banned. Some academics and documents and autopsy reports stored at the Library took precedence over individual lives. For them, the journalists were arrested, hunted down, interrogated, of the Attorney General Office. It took years to sort enemy in 1976 was the communists, the purported and publicly denounced as communists.’ When around through the seventy-three boxes (containing more than Vietnamese aliens, or a subhuman class of beings. 3,000 students fled to join the communist insurgency 30,000 pages) that were disorganised, uncatalogued, They did not see the victims as individuals like in the jungles, the veil of silence surrounding 6 October and covered in dust. In 2016, the Documentation of themselves. This rationale implies that they did was further reinforced. October 6 (Doct6) project was launched by volunteers, not kill in rage or ignorance, and that the outcome In a chapter entitled ‘The Massacre and Unanswered on a shoestring budget, to create a digital archive of justifies the brutality as long as Thais still subscribe Questions’, Thongchai poses a series of questions, some documents, testimonies, audio and visual recordings, fanatically to the ideology of Thai-ness. of which are not only unanswered but also—in Thailand, and newspaper clippings. The group’s efforts to collect at least—unaskable. The country’s lese-majeste law information are often scuppered by the extreme Thongchai showed photographs of Chair Guy to punishes criticism of the king with a prison sentence sensitivities that continue to surround the topic. the people he interviewed, but none of them admitted of up to fifteen years; the law is broadly interpreted and Requests to interview families of the dead revealed to knowing who he was. This silence is not caused has been effective in silencing both criticism and critical that only a third of respondents were willing to be by forgetfulness. ‘Instead,’ writes Thongchai, ‘it is a analysis of the monarchy’s role in Thai history and interviewed, while another third refused. The remainder symptom of the inability to remember or forget, the society. Thongchai (whose book has not been published have so far proved untraceable. inability to articulate memories in a comprehensible in Thailand) asks to what degree the palace may have Still, even after all this time, new details are and meaningful fashion, or to depart from the past been involved in various aspects of 6 October, from the emerging. It had always been thought, for instance, that completely. I call this condition between remembering return of General Thanom to the bolstering of the right- the person in Ulevich’s photograph was the only victim and forgetting the “unforgetting”. ’ wing movement, and to the crackdown itself. But such to be hanged on 6 October, but autopsy reports revealed For now, Thailand remains trapped in this liminal is the unspeakable nature of the topic that evidence and the existence of a second victim, and Doct6 researchers realm. As Thongchai notes, ‘The unforgetting breaks fact are almost impossible to pin down. have since confirmed that four, possibly five, people out in a freaky noise piercing the normative Thai-ness Thongchai writes that atrocities like those at were hanged that day. Three of the victims have been from time to time. The October 6 memory continues to Thammasat are especially difficult to process in Thailand identified, though the person in Ulevich’s picture, and haunt. It cannot rest in peace because it has no resting because ‘they do not fit the master narrative of the on the cover of Thongchai’s book, remains unknown. place yet in public memory.’ It can exist only in scattered national saga of unity under a benevolent ruler for repositories, pieced together from old photographs and development and prosperity. They are at odds with the s more photographs of 6 October came to private memories. Yet such is the extent to which it has noble biography of the country’. In order to maintain this light—emerging from private collections, long been internalised that the horror can be evoked by just a master narrative, reconciliation is often upheld over truth hidden—Thongchai noticed that Ulevich’s fragment of Ulevich’s photograph—a folding chair hung and understanding. The result is a kind of half-truth that Aphotograph wasn’t the only one to capture Chair Guy. from a rope in an art gallery, a graffitied stencil of Chair relegates painful episodes to the shadows for the greater He spotted him in other pictures, adding newspapers to Guy on a city wall, a smiling crowd gathered around good: ‘The past is (not was) abundantly full of lies. What is a fire of burning corpses and sitting on the naked body a hanging figure in the background of a rap video. As left to the present is the normative Thai life in which fact, of a dead woman. Thongchai dubbed the man Chair Guy Thongchai writes, ‘It is present but not recognized. It fiction, fantasy, reality, role play, and real life are fused.’ and set out to identify him. is mentioned but not understood, apparent but not It wasn’t until two decades later that a proper One of the most chilling chapters of Moments of meaningful, and unforgettable but not remembered.’ commemoration of 6 October 1976 could be held. Silence, ‘Silence of the Wolf’, covers Thongchai’s efforts If Thailand ever reconciles with or integrates this In 1996, at an event initiated by Thongchai, a to trace and interview perpetrators. Not all of the people grim chapter into the national history and collective symbolic cremation at Thammasat honoured those he contacted were willing to meet him. As he explains, psyche, it will be because of brave books like Moments who had died and was followed by a two-day event ‘the silence protects them; they need not break it’. The of Silence. Though Thongchai has not yet been able to featuring video footage of 6 October and an exhibition interviews were also constrained by Thongchai’s identity identify Chair Guy, he still wonders about him: that included Ulevich’s photograph. Thousands attended, and his direct involvement in events; while it was always and it was the first time the general public were able to unlikely that he would be able to coax any unspoken Was he a trained agent provocateur who was assigned see for themselves what had actually happened in 1976. truths or grand confessions from the perpetrators, his to incite the crowd by committing those acts, or was It was, by all accounts, deeply moving and heralded the interviews inadvertently act as a reckoning of sorts—the he an ordinary person turned into a desecrator by beginning of a quiet reclaiming of history. closest any of them will come to facing up to what they events of that morning? As time went by, as decades After the 1996 commemoration, in post–Cold did that day. passed, did he regret his acts? Did he brag about War Thailand, it became possible to talk and write Thongchai interviews members of the various right- them? How did he remember what he did? I wish I more openly about 6 October as long as there was no wing groups, as well as retired soldiers, intelligence could track him down. I would like to meet him, to mention of the palace—in other words, as long as the agents and others. They remain unrepentant, justifying ask him those questions, without vengeance and with unanswerable questions remain unasked. Nonetheless, their actions by the need to protect their nation, religion the promise not to interrupt his answer. ☐ memoirs of former students and radicals were published, and king—the three ideological pillars of Thai-ness: and scholars were able to conduct more in-depth Emma Larkin lives in Thailand and is the author of research. In 2000, Thongchai gained access to police They killed for a higher purpose, for reasons that ‘Finding George Orwell in Burma’

4 POEMS Coronavirus Anthony Tao

In the Neighbourhood omphalos of all the worlds where we the trees, the purslane in pavement, the rewards exist, our vigour omnidirectional. for being who we are. Magic, we said We smiled through facemasks, On the other side, our other neighbour to ourselves, forgetting what we were afraid of. said hello with our brows, held open doors pounded on the wall. Damn him, we thought, could he not to remind each other take it up with the virus, out there? we were still here. Miss Chen the grocer was gone, back to her hometown. Of course, we knew we were being In the Heart unfair. The virus was here to stay. Old Li the barber was gone, We could sense it even now, lonely We stopped saying hello. along with his radio. Zhou the locksmith We infected with caprice, infected only left a phone number, Min absconded virus shivering in the cold, ones we love with doubt, eyes alit upon the ecstasy unfolding, with her cherished regrets, and time and everything stopped, its breath those we dislike with conviction; the Zhang family, who made flatbread, with memories of the gone, never returned: Gone fogging up our window, trying to leave which is an exacting affliction, a reminder, its mouth curled in an O, for the new year, the sign shouting Ooh-la-la. And, Bravo! afflicted as we are with the same disease; on their door read. with misunderstanding, Those of us still here avoidable if we weren’t simply ourselves; nodded knowingly, sidestepped with truth blasted out like a sneeze couriers zipping down our alleys In the Air we’d meant to keep in. We sighed on our way to Tang’s noodle shop. in bed, patted the outline of body next to us, Masks. Wearing them, The sky is nice, we grunted. The air clean. we were more aware soothed by the warm hiss of the shower. We were surrounded by kindness that barely of the other. The virus was gone, and in those early days seemed real. Our throats itched for coal we filled its vacuum with energy and humour; Our eyes locked more often, and tar. Whatever else we craved, for longer, searching for provocation, then with our sense of what is righteous, of insurrection or speaking truth gauging interest trying to infect others. In our purgatory to bureaucracy, whatever small we had learned what was meant by down to conjunctiva. bonuses we desired for ourselves We experimented with sounds, ‘human condition’, and now or ailments we nursed, of anger soughing and snuffling, we wondered what was worth celebrating. or temperatures, we did it indoors. A triumph for humanity, the news trumpeted and remembered the lessons We pulled our curtains and waited our cats and dogs had taught: while we questioned if we deserved it. until the kettle screeched, then said ears back, head tilted. We were polite We leaned away from bodies, stopped exactly what we had always wanted. holding doors. We dragged our feet to those we did not care for, widening our expressions, on office carpets, poured coffee without smelling. softening our brows We looked mockingly on those still masked, forgetting the ways we are infectious. to say we understand the feeling. But occasionally, next to a body We walked the streets like sorrowful ghosts. In the Bedroom we leaned toward, With two fingers we rubbed our chest, wondering what was missing. The virus watched, nose pressed we grimaced with yearning, against the window, but the lovers with agony and despair that we could not didn’t notice, they rolled like bonobos, shaking rip off these masks and laugh the bed. We heard through our walls, at our poor nerves aflutter. Our gazes These poems were originally published under the title which means they could hear us, too, settled on cloudshadow and withy, ‘Coronavirus in China’ in ‘Rattle’ in February shaking in ways animals can, old tiles upon rooftops and dragon wings Anthony Tao is a writer and editor in Beijing. His forgetting—forgiving—our limbs, our rippling the pale blue. We saw the ways poetry has appeared in ‘Prairie Schooner’, ‘The organs, all the ways our rococo parts we merge with the world, with the air, Cortland Review’, ‘Borderlands’, ‘Frontier’, ‘Michigan can thrash, can work toward climax, can spoil, taking into our lungs Quarterly Review’ and ‘Cha’

5 CHINA The coming anger Richard Heydarian

JIWEI CI Weber in the formative years of social sciences, and of Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama in more Harvard University Press: 2019 recent decades. In fact, there is more than a tinge of ‘inevitablism’ sprinkled throughout the book. The author n his novel The Plague, Albert Camus writes, ‘the self-consciously draws inspiration from Tocqueville’s first thing that plague brought to our town was exile’. Democracy in America (1835–40), in which the In late April at least a third of the world’s population Frenchman argued that rapid modernisation, progressive Iwere under one form of lockdown or another, with many social equalisation and an iron spirit of egalitarianism megacities falling into silence. created the conditions for a robust republican democracy. My loved ones, stretching from the shores of the In his two-volume magnum opus The Origins of Mediterranean and the Caspian Sea all the way to the Political Order (2011) and Political Order and Political west coast of the United States, are grappling with Decay (2014), Fukuyama highlights how the balance of variations of collective quarantine, under a whole host power among the ruling elite, the rising middle class of increasingly desperate governments. As for me, I’m and the broader masses shapes the destinies of not trapped in Manila, in the ever-widening shadow of only democracies but also political systems. Ci echoes president Duterte, who has been granted unprecedented broadly similar arguments in the case of China, where emergency powers in the name of fighting a pandemic he believes—openly drawing on Tocqueville’s notion whose origins lie in the very country he so admires. of equality of (social) conditions facilitating political The United Nations secretary-general António democratisation—that modern China has the ingredients Guterres has warned that the coronavirus crisis is to transition into a relatively mature and stable democracy. ‘threatening the whole of humanity—and the whole of Ci writes optimistically of a ‘China that is Damien Chavanat humanity must fight back’. Following the announcement witnessing an inexorable democratization in its ethos, of a three-week-long lockdown in the world’s second- its organization of production and consumption, its largest nation, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi structure of human interaction and familial relations; in appealed for cooperation: ‘If we are not able to manage ut how did we get here? How and why did a a word, in its entire society, as distinct from its political this pandemic in the next twenty-one days, the country relatively containable viral mutation in Wuhan, system’. In short, the Fukuyaman social balance of forces and your family will be set back by twenty-one years.’ China’s Detroit, transmogrify into an assault has tilted in favour of political liberalisation, if not fully We are experiencing a foretaste of what scientists call Bon the human species? Was it, in the words of Minxin fledged democracy. ‘existential risk’; one arms-control expert has compared Pei, China’s ‘pathological secrecy [that] hobbles the This streak of Hegelian thought inevitably becomes the pandemic to a nuclear attack. With millions of authorities’ capacity to respond quickly to epidemics’? more apparent when the author argues that infections around the world, experts have drawn our He goes on: ‘To maintain its authority, the [Chinese attention to horrific precedents—most notably the Communist Party] must keep the public convinced only a democratic political regime has a chance of Spanish flu, which a century ago killed around 50 million that everything is going according to plan. That means maintaining a legitimate and stable government in people worldwide and likely also originated from China. carrying out systemic cover-ups of scandals and the context of a democratic society. Given that it is And then there is the immense economic deficiencies that may reflect poorly upon the [CCP’s] manifestly a democratic society today, China has pain, which will ravage the informal sector, drive leadership, instead of doing what is necessary to respond.’ already taken the ... irreversible [my emphasis] first unemployment levels to new heights, and leave even the Against this gloomy backdrop, Jiwei Ci’s Democracy step, whether by design or by default. Therefore, in comfortably middle class in a state of economic panic. in China is incredibly apt yet potentially tenuous. the interest of a legitimate and stable political order, it In the words of the New York Times, we are confronting Stretching across some 400 pages, the book represents has no choice [my emphasis] but to take the second. a ‘pandemic caste system’, with ‘the rich holed up in one of the most ambitious and sweeping treatises in vacation properties; the middle class marooned at favour of democratic transformation in the world’s most Philosophically, the book’s political moderation and home with restless children; the working class on the powerful bastion of twenty-first-century totalitarianism. enlightened pragmatism builds heavily on the Kantian front lines of the economy, stretched to the limit by The author writes, with little irony, that his goal is notion of Prussian freedom—namely, that one is free the demands of work and parenting, if there is even to exercise moral and intellectual agency so long as it work to be had’. Economists are warning of a ‘Greater to make the argument not only coherent but also doesn’t directly contradict the political status quo. Hence Depression’, the largest global economic contraction in compelling. So compelling, that is, that the parties Ci’s argument in favour of CCP-driven democratisation, recent memory. Yet it’s the unfolding human tragedy concerned, including the CCP, will have no good where there is ‘the sense of being free as individuals that should command our greatest attention. reason to reject its plausibility as a prudent assessment and as members of civil society and of being citizens ‘A generation has died in just over two weeks. We’ve … of certain crisis tendencies in China’s political with a credible role in shaping the life and destiny of the never seen anything like this and it just makes you cry,’ status quo and, second, of democracy’s much-needed political community’. lamented a funeral director in the northern Italian city contribution to counteracting such tendencies. By dispensing of metaphysical, Platonic arguments in of Bergamo, the centre of Covid-19 outbreak in March. favour of the moral superiority of democracy, the book In a testament to the scale of a historic tragedy unfolding And why would the CCP even bother to listen? Well, echoes John Rawls’s practical argument in favour of at the heart of Europe, on 13 March the city’s newspaper, because of an impending ‘legitimation crisis’, Ci argues, social justice: a stable liberal order should be anchored L’Eco di Bergamo, dedicated ten pages to obituaries. which transcends questions of mere ‘performance’— on a sociologically shared and rationally defensible In short, the Covid-19 pandemic is the greatest and that is, the provision of basic order and economic conception of what would be collectively beneficial, most devastating crisis that humanity has confronted prosperity—and instead concerns a modern version even to the most vulnerable sectors of the society, from since, at the very least, World War II. Thus, a generalised of the ‘mandate of heaven’. For the author, the Xi behind ‘a veil of ignorance’. sense of panic and grief will grip large sections of Jinping administration, widely considered as the most ‘The main reason for having democracy in China is humanity in ways that defy language and transcend authoritarian and powerful since the end of the Cultural that democracy is our best bet for effectively responding existential paradigms. Revolution, has both the unique opportunity and the to current and especially impending legitimation With recent studies from China showing that the difficult task of implementing necessary democratic challenges ... likely to be the most stable and durable highly transmissible virus can extend its tentacles as far reforms lest the communist regime’s very survival be regime ... under the circumstances in which China now as 4.5 metres, even leading scientists are increasingly imperilled under the next generation of leaders. finds itself,’ Ci writes. confounded about the true nature of this planetary In a sense, Ci’s book is an heir to the long tradition But by appealing directly to the communist regime enemy. Credible mass-produced vaccines, meanwhile, of modernisation theory, starting with the panoramic in China and highlighting its supposedly centrality (and are unlikely to be rolled out until the second quarter of observations and sweeping conclusions common presupposed willingness) as the potential locomotive 2021. We are all trapped. We are all in exile. among the works of Alexis de Tocqueville and Max of political liberalisation, one could detect, perhaps

6 through a less charitable prism, none too subtle he Covid-19 pandemic is China’s Chernobyl, intimations of an ‘enlightened absolutism’ hypothesis, though more ambiguous and more destructive. HONG KONG though not as absolute as Austrian emperor Joseph II’s On the surface, China is no Soviet Union. It’s infamous dictum, ‘Everything for the people, nothing Tintegral to the global economy, responsible for almost by the people’. In Ci’s formulation, China is primed for a third of global GDP growth in recent years. In many democracy but the tortuous journey should be led by an ways, it’s immanent in the functioning of universal Rebel avowedly authoritarian regime. capitalism. Its bureaucracy, one of the world’s oldest, Meanwhile, the book also echoes a narrative has been hailed for its emphasis on competence and David Parrish common among police regimes across the Middle East, dynamism, most famously by venture capitalist Eric where the likes of former Egyptian president Hosni Li. Unlike the Soviets’ largely isolated and extractive Mubarak unabashedly imposed a social contract: iron economy, China is the world’s factory and an fist or bloody anarchy. A democratic transition without increasingly dominant player in cutting-edge industries, the CCP’s visible hand could create ‘unprecedented including artificial intelligence. JOSHUA WONG (WITH JASON Y. NG) opportunities for all separatist tendencies to suddenly So impressed are some by China’s strides in new- Unfree Speech: The Threat to Global expand and try their luck in more confident and generation technologies that the Israeli historian Democracy and Why We Must Act aggressive ways than ever before’. Moreover, there is the Yuval Noah Harari has postulated the dominance of Penguin: 2020 threat of socio-economic disintegration a la post-Soviet digital authoritarianism in the twenty-first century in Russia, where the ‘democratic transition could turn into contrast to the decisive victory of the West’s Hayekian nfree Speech is the right book at the right such a capitalist morass as to make neoliberal capitalism spontaneous organisation in the preceding century. time. For anyone who has followed the in the West look positively socialist. If we are not China is rich, prosperous and technologically advanced news from Hong Kong in recent years, this careful, this may well be the fate of China’s democratic in ways the Soviet Union never was, or could ever Ubook puts everything into perspective in a highly transition, leaving many, possibly hundreds of millions, become. accessible way. Unfree Speech also gives us useful to wonder about the point of democratic change’. Throughout the first two decades of the post–Cold insights into the mind and values of Joshua Wong, War period, China opportunistically sailed on the crest who has now been on the front line of politics emocracy in China is strongest in its ‘prudential’ of US-led economic globalisation. The upshot of this since 2011, when he was just fourteen. argument in favour of democratisation in seemingly symbiotic Sino–Western dynamic was what The book comes in three parts. The first covers China, its astute analysis of the anatomy of Joshua Cooper-Ramo termed the ‘Beijing Consensus’: Wong’s early years and success with student activist Dpolitical legitimacy, and its commendable debunking a post-ideological commitment to mercantilist win-win group Scholarism, under which he challenged the of a cottage industry of ‘political orientalism’ falsely intercourse with the world, especially the postcolonial Hong Kong government on a proposed national portraying China as essentially an authoritarian realm. It was not until the tail end of the Hu Jintao curriculum in 2011, before moving on to the ‘other’ immune to the universal appeal of republican administration, which coincided with the global Umbrella protests of 2014 which essentially shut democracy. Quite paradoxically, the book is most financial crisis and the Great Recession, that we began down the centre of Hong Kong island for seventy- convincing in its identification of immense practical to see a new assertiveness in Beijing, as the inheritor of nine days. The second part details Wong’s time in obstacles to democratic reform in contemporary China. a millennia-old imperial tradition began to carve out prison, and here we learn more about his family, The author correctly emphasises multiple structural its own global empire on the cheap. Instead of an ‘end his Christian values and his realisation that deficits, namely the absence of any independent of history’, what we soon got was President Xi Jinping’s there are layers of Hong Kong society he had not political force outside the tentacles of the communist ‘China Dream’ and hopes for a ‘great rejuvenation’ of one connected with or perhaps not even considered ruling party; the vacuum of moral agency in a highly of the world’s oldest empires-in-disguise. before his time in prison. Once Wong engages consumerist, traumatised and historically suppressed On closer examination, China is the Soviet Union, with those from different backgrounds who are society; the prospect of civilisational disintegration and but in a very specific and consequential way. Since Xi’s in prison for drugs, theft or violent offences, he destructive predation by hostile outside powers; and the ascent the country has appropriated Maoist politics, realises that there is more that connects than tightening grip of the capitalist oligarchy on the Chinese with disturbing consequences for systemic stability. In separates them. Wong’s official transition to economy. Each of these challenges is immense. particular, the purge of rivals, ostensibly on corruption adulthood is marked by his transfer from a young Surprisingly, the book is most controversial, charges, has unleashed fear and trembling, which has offenders’ institution to an adult prison on 13 and even questionable, where one expects to find its incentivised cover-ups and sycophancy. Crucially, October 2017, his twenty-first birthday—not part greatest strength and lucidity: its portrayal of the Hong China-based investigative journalists at Caixin Global of his original life plan, I suspect. Kong protests. According to Ci, ‘What the movement have revealed that scientists were instructed to destroy Wong rounds out the book with stark warnings expressed instead, above all, was many Hongkongers’ the evidence of a new SARS-like virus when it first of how the Chinese Communist Party has desire for apartness—the desire, that is, not so much to emerged. As a Wuhan-based journalist lamented, successfully spread soft and not-so-soft politics create a new (democratic) Hong Kong as to retain or ‘Everyone must understand, first of all, that this throughout the free world, how it controls Chinese restore what was once true of old Hong Kong—namely, epidemic was allowed to spread for a period of more students studying in the West and how the party is its palpable and conspicuous difference and separateness than forty days before … any decisive action [was] using its considerable financial leverage to influence from China.’ taken.’ To put the crisis into context, the journalist global agencies. Much of this will not be new to This reductionist analysis is more a portrayal of an explains, echoing Pei’s argument, ‘the main efforts many readers, but having it presented in this way ‘alternative’ point of view rather than a comprehensive undertaken by the leadership, and by provincial and city provides a stark warning to us all, and especially take on the rapidly evolving situation on the ground. governments in particular … were focused mostly not those of us who value freedom over lies and dogma. It strangely ignores a broad literature on democracy on the containment of the epidemic itself, but on the Political activism in Hong Kong, after 1997, activists such as Joshua Wong and his rebellious heirs, containment and suppression of information about the reaches back to the Article 23 protests of 2003, when who are opposing the intrusion of Chinese authoritarian disease.’ This accounts for the widespread outrage and an estimated 500,000 people took to the streets, ideology, beginning with the planned introduction of calls for press freedom across China after the death of Li causing the Hong Kong government to back down; ‘patriotic education’ into school curriculums, as well Wenliang, one of the eight ‘whistleblowers’, who exposed the 2011 national curriculum demonstrations; as Beijing’s perceived betrayal (via proxies) of its initial the true nature of the pandemic threat last year. through to the Umbrella Movement of 2014. promise for universal suffrage under the Basic Law. There is clear evidence of a systematic cover-up by Now we have the extradition-bill crisis, which has In fact, any student of political science would know Chinese authorities in the early stages of the pandemic. subsumed life in Hong Kong since June 2019, with that in its current form Hong Kong is not even what Instead of owning up, the Chinese regime is expected no end in sight. Upwards of two million people scholars such as Adam Przeworski and Larry Diamond to dig in. Eager to deflect accountability, the CCP seems have been on the streets, something approaching would see as a minimalist-procedural democracy— to have anticipated what could be the greatest torrent of a quarter of the population. The bill has gone the precisely what the protesters are asking for, among anti-China sentiments in recent memory by launching same way as Article 23 and the national curriculum, other freedoms, as they peer into an abyss of Chinese its own counter-offensive, including the bizarre claim but the protesters are emboldened and now there totalitarian rule that their parents hardly experienced or that the contagion is a US biowarfare conspiracy. are more demands—‘Five Demands, Not One Less’, even expected. In a telltale of the coming rage against Beijing, one as the slogan goes. The author correctly emphasises the depth of group in Dallas is suing the Chinese government for In other hands this could have read like a economic inequality as a potential driver of discontent, US$20 trillion in damages. We don’t know what the exact collection of pieces, but with Jason Ng’s deft touch but conversations with young protesters suggest that trajectory of the pandemic will be, given the differential it is a body of work that provides a primer for the what’s at stake is an ideational struggle, which is responses from a complex array of institutions around uninitiated and shines a light in the dark corners beyond just a bratty snobbery towards a supposedly the world, but what’s clear is that, geopolitically speaking, of Hong Kong politics for us all. ☐ unsophisticated mainland. Still, one should welcome things are going to get very ugly. ☐ Ci’s proto-Kantian take on the Hong Kong protests as an David Parrish is a former marketing executive at ‘alternative’ view from the less radicalised (if not avowedly Richard Heydarian is the author of ‘The Indo-Pacific: Penguin Random House in Hong Kong conservative) sections of the revolting city-state. Trump, China, and the New Struggle for Global Mastery’

7 TAIWAN Strait defiance Michael Reilly

KERRY BROWN AND KALLEY WU TZU HUI if rarely stated, reality for China is that the dependence The Trouble with Taiwan: History, the is mutual: Taiwanese companies have been among the United States and a Rising China biggest overseas investors in the Chinese economy, above Zed Books: 2019 all in the electronics sector. China’s largest private-sector employer is Taiwanese company Foxconn, eight of its ne of the biggest myths in contemporary top eleven exporting companies are Taiwanese, while international relations is the often repeated China’s huge instant noodle market is dominated by two and widely accepted mantra of the Chinese Taiwanese firms and its middle classes shop at Taiwanese- Ogovernment that Taiwan is part of China. It is taught in owned department stores. The book states, correctly, Chinese schools as if it were fact, and millions, indeed that Chinese investment in the Taiwanese economy billions, of foreigners accept the assertion without remains highly circumscribed but skates over the—often question. Dissenting views within China are suppressed, pernicious—impact of Chinese-owned or Chinese- and those in Taiwan who suggest otherwise are influenced media on Taiwanese politics and society. demonised by China as ‘splittists’. Hand in hand with this Brown and Wu assert that the current situation is the claim that ‘reunification’ is only a matter of time. in cross-strait relations is unsustainable. It is a view But today, reunification is further away than ever. widely shared, given the expectation that the Chinese The Trouble with Taiwan helps explain why. Kerry Communist Party will never accept de jure Taiwanese Brown and Kalley Wu Tzu Hui claim only to be updating independence, and not the less worrying for that. But and disseminating discussion of some key issues, not it is far from new. As papers in the British national to be engaging in original scholarship. But the very fact archives show, almost fifty years ago British diplomats that one of the key sites on social media for discussion were arguing that the most likely future relationship of books about Taiwan is called Books about Nerdiness, Ma Ying‑jeou’s government in 2008. Yet that DPP for Taiwan with China was a form of autonomy: ‘one without any sense of irony, shows how little published administration was far more hawkish in its position on country, two systems’ before that phrase ever became a work there is in English about Taiwan generally, despite Taiwanese independence than the present one under statement of policy. Since then, China and Taiwan have its history and its contribution to culture, not to mention Tsai Ing-wen has been. become interdependent to a degree hard to imagine its place in international relations. For this reason alone, The authors ascribe this inertia to the risk for then, but Taiwan has also become economically much this book is welcome. Chinese policymakers that any reassessment would stronger and more self-reliant. Rhetoric aside, the status At the heart of their analysis is the authors’ argument require removal or readjustment of the policy quo suits both sides, so there seems no reason why it that the democratisation of Taiwan since 1996 has framework set by Mao Zedong. But Mao himself was should not continue indefinitely. made reunification a remote and unlikely prospect. happy to change his views on Taiwan. He told Edgar The authors also rightly point to the often significant The advent of democracy on Taiwan, they argue, has Snow in 1936 that he did not consider Taiwan to be but easily overlooked cultural differences between led to the existence of two fundamentally different Chinese territory and that the Communist Party’s policy the two sides of the strait. Perhaps unwittingly, they and incompatible political systems, and by becoming a was to help it gain independence from Japanese rule, demonstrate one themselves in their constant use of democracy, ‘Taiwan has succeeded in placing perhaps only to change his mind after Chiang Kai-shek fled the word ‘reunification’, a word that finds little favour in the strongest barrier between itself and politics on the to Taipei in 1949. His early view is airbrushed from Taiwan, where the response is likely to be ‘reunification Mainland’. They helpfully, and rightly, explain that, for Chinese history, but how much of the inertia in present- with what?’ Not since the Qing dynasty has the island all the differences in their political campaign rhetoric, at day policymaking is due to his later view and how much been ruled from Beijing, while the People’s Republic of bottom there is more in their views of China that unites to the inflexibility and subservience of the Chinese China has been in existence for only seventy-one years Taiwan’s two main political parties, the Kuomintang bureaucracy? and even the Republic of China only since 1911 (in the (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), The Trouble with Taiwan is also strong in explaining brief period after World War II when the Republic of than divides them. Both rule out unification with China the psychological impact on Taiwanese of China’s China governed both the mainland and Taiwan, the seat until and unless the latter is itself democratic—and if success in denying the existence of a separate Taiwanese of government was in Nanjing). Even then, Beijing’s rule that ever happens, the question of unification will almost identity. National identity is one of our most intimate was often more nominal than real and formally extended certainly become moot. and important possessions, so fundamental to our to only a little over half of the island. But China’s rulers find this hard to grasp and sense of belonging that few of us truly understand or It’s a pity that the narrative goes only to 2019, for assiduously court politicians from the KMT while cold- appreciate what it means to have this most basic right the authors’ claim that standards of living matter more shouldering those of the DPP, whom they denounce denied. It was invoked by former British prime minister to Taiwanese voters than ‘sometimes more abstract for being ‘pro-independence’. Brown is a scholar of Theresa May when she said, ‘If you believe you are a geopolitical issues’ was arguably undermined by Tsai Chinese politics and one of the book’s strengths is its citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere’. The Ing-wen’s re-election as president in early 2020. An analysis of Beijing’s handling of Taiwan, helping explain leaders of the Soviet Union understood its power, which assessment of what this means for Beijing’s policy would why China’s leaders seem so often to get this wrong. It is why stripping someone of their citizenship was one have added to the impact of the book. argues that the PRC has created ‘a policy led as much of the most powerful weapons in their arsenal against It’s also a pity that the quality of the proofreading and by emotion as by rational choice’, something that seems dissenters. Yet, as the authors explain, Taiwanese cannot editing doesn’t match the force of the authors’ argument. destined to continue under Xi Jinping’s style of politics, cheer on their own country in international sporting Errors abound: in statistics, in terminology (super where ‘the power is more often than not in the story events, they cannot compete under their own name or conductors, instead of semiconductors, for example), being told’. The inertia in Chinese policymaking that this under their own flag at the Olympics (contrary to what in names (Annette Lee instead of Annette Lu, or Chun creates is explained well, the authors arguing that ‘there the book claims on the latter). Increasingly, they cannot Yi-lee instead of Chun-yi Lee), and the two countries seems limited evidence that analysts in the PRC are able even find their own country in the scroll-down list when are 100 miles apart, not 100 kilometres. Less haste and to properly comprehend what sort of transformations doing something as basic as booking an international greater attention to detail would have made for a better, are happening in Taiwanese society [as they] operate flight or hotel accommodation. more powerful book. Despite the blemishes, it remains within an ideological framework’. The authors are weaker, however, in their analysis an important, thought-provoking and welcome addition But placing Xi’s stance in a broader context would of the economic aspects of the complex relationship to discussion of what remains a poorly understood but have been helpful. Under Hu Jintao, for example, between Taiwan and China, their attempts to be concise major international geopolitical issue. ☐ the Chinese government was willing to engage with resulting in an at times simplistic overview. They claim the previous DPP government in Taipei, the two that the Taiwanese economy is a manifestation of the Michael Reilly is a senior fellow in the Taiwan Studies governments negotiating and agreeing most of the Chinese one, but most observers, surely, would put it Programme at Nottingham University and a former visiting groundwork for the ‘early harvest’ of direct flights the other way around. China may be Taiwan’s largest fellow at Academia Sinica in Taipei, and was the United and tourist visits that marked the early months of trade partner and export market but an uncomfortable, Kingdom’s representative to Taiwan from 2005 to 2009

8 INDIA Deoli Camp Somak Ghoshal

JOY MA AND DILIP D’SOUZA The Deoliwallahs: The True Story of the 1962 Chinese-Indian Internment Pan Macmillan India: 2020

n 18 November 1962, three days before the month-long conflict between India and China ended, the Indian army, under orders from Othe government of then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, began rounding up as many Indian citizens of Chinese ancestry as they could from all over the country. Smarting from the humiliating defeat they had suffered at the hands of the Chinese, the soldiers stormed around with a vengeance, picking up people they suspected of spying. There was no need to produce any proof of wrongdoing; it was enough simply to ‘look Chinese’ to be deemed suspicious. The exact ethnicity of the suspects did not matter, nor did their status in Supplied society. From high-profile professionals to restaurateurs to small business owners, few escaped the wrath of the government, which was smarting from its loss in the battle for the Aksai Chin region in the north. From The Deoliwallahs The army came calling at all hours, including the dead of night. Men were asked to leave with only the An identification card from Deoli Camp bare essentials, assured that they would be released soon. In some families, as the men were being led away, Deoli). By the time she turned five, the family had left months and years—of suspended life, work and education. the women and children joined them, not wanting to be the camp and were living in Calcutta—among the last In 1963, when then home minister Lal Bahadur left by themselves, fearful of what the future held. Those six families to leave Deoli in 1967. While browsing photo Shastri, who would take over as prime minister after who chose to stay behind faced mounting racial slurs albums, little Ma wondered there were no pictures of her Nehru’s death, visited Deoli, the inhabitants begged him from people they had looked upon as fellow citizens, as a baby alongside those of her older siblings. ‘We were for better living conditions. One survivor, Andy Hsieh, neighbours and friends. at the camp and we didn’t have a camera when you were remembers speaking to the minister directly. ‘ “Mr Shastri, In the end, some 3,000 Indian citizens of Chinese born,’ her mother, Effa, told her when asked. For Ma the I’m eighteen now,” I told him. “I’m supposed to be in high origin were removed from their homes in different ‘camp’ remained a thing of the past, hazy and indistinct, school … Can you do something? Can we study in the parts of the country, most of them from the eastern and until, at the age of fourteen, she experienced, for the first town during the day and come back to the Camp?” ’ northeastern states of West Bengal and Assam. They time, the raucous celebrations for the Chinese New Year Shastri promised to look into the matter on his were held in local prisons for a few days, with no clear by her community in Calcutta’s Chinatown. Puzzled return to Delhi, but nothing came of Hsieh’s request. reason given for their arrest, then transported by train about why her family never observed the holiday, Ma In the official report of the visit, the Deoliwallahs were and trucks to Deoli, a nondescript town in the western accosted her mother again. This time, her mother told living contentedly in the camp, well taken care of by the state of Rajasthan. During the long journey from one end her that their family was interned on that very day in Indian state (which gave them a pittance as monthly of the country to the other, their train stopped numerous 1963 and ‘didn’t want to celebrate it’. allowance), with no complaints whatsoever. times to pick up provisions. At each place, it was stoned Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, information about the Ma is upfront about what Deoli was to the internees: by the locals. Only much later did some of the detainees family’s time in Deoli began to come together over the learn that the compartments they were in had ‘enemy years, filling in gaps, piling detail upon detail, until the In Chinese, we refer to Deoli Camp as chap chung yin train’ scribbled on the outside, making them easy prey. past was revealed in all its horrific specificities. Apart (Hakka) or chi chung yin (Pinyin), which translates The former location of an internment camp for from the stories of her family, immediate and extended, as ‘gathered-together camp’ or ‘concentration camp’ Japanese prisoners during World War II, Deoli is an Ma began to hear those of the Chinese diaspora in the … There is simply no term for an internment camp obscure dot on the map of India. The detainees were United Kingdom, the United States and Europe. But the in Chinese, so when some people initially referred to unprepared for its arid desert climate and unfamiliar turning point came in 2012, when she was requested it, they called it a concentration camp in English. For with the local language. Most of them had spent nearly by an Indian magazine to write an article for the fiftieth the Deoli internees, it was the concentration camp. all, if not all, their lives in India. They spoke Hindi, anniversary of the Sino-Indian War. Initially reluctant to Bengali, Assamese; only a few were conversant in any of revisit those painful days, Ma was convinced by the need Quibbles over terminology aside, Deoli Camp the languages spoken in China. But just like that, one day to make the Deoli episode known to a wider public. won’t be the last of its kind, sadly, at least in India. they found themselves in Deoli, where they would spend She called her mother and asked her, once more, about Last year, the government of Prime Minister Narendra from a few weeks to several years before earning their the day their family was taken away. Their conversation Modi passed a controversial law, amid widespread reprieve. In the intervening time, after the initial disbelief ended in tears, but Ma’s article opened a floodgate. public protests, that grants citizenship to persecuted had subsided, life settled into a dystopian rhythm— Ma soon began to hear of other writers and minorities—except for Muslims—from three people fell ill and recovered, people died, babies were researchers gathering the stories of the Deoliwallahs, neighbouring countries. Alongside it is a proposal born, youngsters went without schooling for long phases. her network began to grow, and voices began to pour in for a national population register that would weed Those who were released returned to their home towns from across the world. The Deoliwallahs is faithful oral out undesirable illegal immigrants and move them to to find their dwellings gone, their businesses destroyed. history, painstakingly collected by Ma over the years and refugee camps. To qualify as citizens, these latter, most of transformed into moving narratives of loss and trauma, whom are among the most disenfranchised, would have oy Ma was born in the Deoli internment camp and interspersed with chapters on the political and social to produce identity papers they are unlikely to possess, grew up in India, before leaving for graduate school history of Sino-Indian relations, written by Dilip D’Souza. or be able to procure them legally. As of November 2019, in the United States. But years would go by until The personal testimonies are reproduced almost verbatim, in Assam alone, six such camps had held 988 of these J she confronted the truth of the circumstances of her irrespective of the inevitable overlaps. Memories recur of ‘foreigners’, among whom at least twenty-eight died. ☐ birth—or the enormity of what it meant for her family to food scarcity; of the unhygienic state of the ‘barracks’ in be marked as one of the Deoliwallahs (the people from which people were forced to live; and of those lost days, Somak Ghoshal is a journalist from Bengaluru, India

9 NOTEBOOK Isolated Peter Guest

have now taken the same photograph about three Faced with a bona fide existential threat, dozen times. In the left-hand corner is Shinjuku, employers simply don’t have the technology to towers muddled with haze, mirrored on the right respond. Japan’s present is still a 1980s vision of Ialmost exactly by Ikebukuro. In the centre, low- the future, where robots commingle with fax rise Tokyo in all its bent perspectives. Roads that machines and women are expected to dress like snake between the upper storeys; a canal suspended air hostesses for the office. above the warren of backstreets, the neon dice and So much of socially distanced Japan relies on billboards that seem to float at ground level. close contact with paperwork. Whole generations Tokyo, filmic in any weather, has been skipping have graduated from top schools to spend years channels. One day it snowed and was dark at as trainees stacking, compiling and moving paper. noon. For three days in a row, the wind blew at 30 Nothing is official unless it is printed and stamped kilometres per hour and skittered dead leaves in with red ink. Utility bills have to be paid in cash at through the window. Just once, in bright sunlight, a the 7-Eleven. maintenance worker in a mask and overalls climbed Many companies have never issued their staff up onto the water tower on the building opposite and with laptops, preferring them to remain tethered to balanced ten storeys up without a harness. Unable to their desks. Those lucky few who have succumbed to leave the apartment, this is all I can shoot. ‘teleworking’, as it is charmingly known here, tell me Self-isolation is strange, and made stranger by that they have to give their managers itemised lists of not quite knowing whether I should be in it or not. the tasks they have completed during the day. Now, I’m not sick enough to find out what I’m sick with. between absent-mindedly overfeeding their pets Japan’s policy on testing for the Covid-19 virus has and children and reading the labels on their bottles been to look away wherever it can. The threshold of spirits, they have to invent tasks furiously—all for testing is high, and I never quite met it. Even the while facing the grim reckoning that their doctors who want to test their patients say they average workday is largely vacant, composed of hour can’t get clearance. So, in the absence of a diagnosis, upon hour of meetings that felt unnecessary even I panic-bought frozen vegetables, Scotch and dry before every colleague became a potential vector of carbohydrates and sealed myself in my two-room flat Peter Guest infection. to wait for the symptoms to pass. All this together means that a shutdown here Those symptoms: shakes. When I first moved would be more profound than in London or New into the flat, there were earthquakes every few In the vacuum, life went on. On work nights York, or any other city where Netflix is the lowest weeks, small ones that made the concrete hum izakayas were still crammed, windows frosted with common denominator of collective experience. and rattled the crockery. In the absence of medical beery huff that I can only hope comes out sterilised by There the transition to teleworking is mostly advice, I turned to the Japanese seismological survey the booze. The metros emptied out on weekends, but dietary and sartorial. Here it could be epochal. No to figure out whether the vibrations were me or weekday rush hours were still rushed. When the early more staggering from izakaya to ramen-ya on the the tectonics. A fever—possibly. On day seven a spring brought out the sakura blossoms, hundreds of way to the last metro. No more paper-shuffling thermometer arrived from Amazon. It is pink and it people still laid out their picnic blankets and lounged apprenticeships. No more awkward applause tells me when I’m ovulating. Fever dreams, waking in the parks. around conference tables. The foundational at 4 a.m. gasping for air, not sure whether I’m sick Throughout, the numbers of infected people stayed elements of corporate culture, lost to the digital age or dreaming that I’m sick. When my friends and low. There is a thread of reasoning in the local media at last. colleagues check how I am, I say ‘not dead’. What that Japan has defied the exponential function because So Japan isn’t looking too hard, leading to this other answer is there? I’m not. it is culturally predisposed to social distancing and strange Schrödinger’s crisis and an uneasy calm with In Japan, we don’t know if there’s a crisis. We good hygiene. I have had it earnestly explained to me intermittent bouts of hoarding. Shops have been out haven’t checked. We won’t, until things go bad. that cultures that take their shoes off upon entering the of toilet roll for more than a month, and on the day For most of March, we were on the precipice of a house are naturally more resistant to pandemics. This my self-isolation ended, a rumour of an imminent lockdown that was always a day away. Abe Shinzo’s insistence has led to a degree of cognitive dissonance. lockdown flooded my local supermarket with government has apparently been split on when to Because Japan excels at social distancing, social weaponised pensioners sweeping the lower shelves of act. The economy has been drifting for some time, distancing is unnecessary. non-perishable goods. and the sudden end to the Chinese tour parties Some—often, but not always, foreign—pundits Towards the end of my internment—after maybe that prop up the retail and travel sectors has likely subscribe to the idea that Japan is just somehow ten days of compulsively taking photographs from pushed it into recession, helped on its way by an healthier than the slovenly West. The mythical fish diet, the balcony and arguing with my robot vacuum unpopular rise in consumption tax. That, along with the distance running. The twelfth-hour workdays in cleaner, which has developed a glitch so that it now relatively low numbers of confirmed Covid-19 cases, poorly ventilated offices. The rushed pre-made konbini erratically rearranges the furniture and ruts with the has encouraged the government to hold its course meals. The absence of paid sick leave that means bathroom scales—my symptoms subsided entirely. and keep the economy open. This state of denial or workplaces and metro carriages are normally half filled What they left behind was a kind of workaday grace meant that, while global superpowers built with bemasked and grey-faced salarymen spluttering dread, a background hum of disquiet that I can’t tent cities to house their casualties, Japan put up into their smartphones. The constant state of exhaustion shake off. banners to celebrate the imminent Olympic Games, that is still a badge of courage for lifetime straphangers. We are, finally, heading for a real lockdown. A which were always going to happen in July until On Saturday mornings, watching the battle casualties state of emergency will be declared any day, and suddenly they weren’t. stumbling back from Kabukicho, Tokyo always looks I will be back in confinement. We all will. And Even as cases started to tick up in Tokyo—14 like ground zero for something. waiting for that, I have found I’m also waiting for an million people, 500 beds set aside for Covid-19 Whether or not this mythic culture really has saved earthquake. Night after night before I go to bed, I get patients—the government held on, past the end of Tokyo, we will hopefully live to find out. More likely, it a compulsion to lift everything valuable down from the tax year, allowing companies to book what profits is what has held back a decisive response. The insularity their shelves and lay them out safely on the floor, as they could before the inevitable stock market tank. and conservatism of corporate Japan are legendary. A though I’m waiting for the punchline of this strange Yuriko Koike, the Tokyo governor, urged people to consultant here once told me that, presented with the not-quite crisis. ☐ be responsible and stay home, but she has no powers option of change or die, most of his clients would choose to declare or enforce a real lockdown. oblivion. Peter Guest is a journalist based in Tokyo

10 JAPAN Made in Japan Thomas A. Bass

ukushima is oddly tidy for all that death that lurks housed atomic refugees from Fukushima and served as contaminated areas,’ says Koide Hiroaki, a nuclear in its forested hills and emerald-green river valleys. the command centre for managing the disaster. Now physicist who has been a fierce critic of Japan’s ‘nuclear On 11 March 2011, or 3/11, as it is known in Japan, scrubbed of contaminated particles and soil, the site village’—the term used to describe the country’s pro- Fnearly 20,000 people were killed by a magnitude 9.0 was supposed to showcase what organisers were calling nuclear lobbyists and officials. ‘Staying in contaminated earthquake and tsunami that wiped out entire towns Japan’s ‘Reconstruction Olympics’. From here would areas hurts the body, but evacuation crushes the soul. and scrubbed the northeastern coast of Japan free of begin the relay race through the abandoned towns and These abandoned people have been living in anguish human habitation for up to ten kilometres inland. Even rice paddies surrounding the Daini and Daiichi reactors. every day for eight years,’ he says. before the tsunami flooded six nuclear reactors at the The torch would then head to Fukushima City, sixty-five Refugees from the Fukushima disaster were resettled Fukushima power plant, the Tohoku earthquake—the kilometres to the northwest, where the first six Olympic in prefab encampments erected in parking lots and biggest recorded in modern Japanese history—had Games in softball and baseball were to have been played. fields at the edges of inland cities away from the coast. crippled the cooling system and sent the plant careening Fukushima is ‘under control’, Prime Minister Abe The camps have been emptying since the government towards the meltdowns and explosions that would rock it Shinzo reassured the Olympic Committee in 2013. ‘Mr cut off aid to evacuees in 2017, but few people have over the next few days. One hundred and sixty thousand Abe’s “under control” remark was a lie,’ said former returned to their old homes in the exclusion zone, which people were evacuated from a nuclear exclusion zone that Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi at a press today is filled with ghost towns, abandoned store fronts, kept growing, until parts of it, downwind of the reactors, conference in 2016. Since then, charges have escalated collapsing houses, vine-covered cars and wild animals stretched nearly 100 kilometres inland. into claims that Japan bribed its way into securing nesting in the urban ruins. Nine years on, three of Fukushima’s reactors are the Olympics. The head of the Japanese Olympic Given the government’s desire to resettle the area as still so radioactively hot that the robots sent to examine Committee, who has since retired, is currently under rapidly as possible, it is not hard to visit Fukushima. The them are fried in minutes. Five thousand people indictment in France for buying the votes of African bullet train north from Tokyo to Iwaki takes about four labour daily to contain the ongoing disaster. They delegates with US$2 million laundered through a PR hours. After picking up a rented car, paranoid visitors pump cooling water into reactor cores and fuel pools, firm in Singapore. In the meantime, the cost of the 2020 worried about eating local food can drop into the while struggling to keep the damaged buildings from games—even before the added expense of delaying market in the basement of Iwaki’s biggest department collapsing. More than a billion litres of contaminated them—had ballooned to US$26.4 billion. store and stock up on rice balls and water. From there water—the equivalent of 480 Olympic-sized swimming In April 2019, Prime Minister Abe rode the bullet one drives north over a range of mountains, before pools—are stored on site in rusting tanks. Another river train from Tokyo to Koriyama City. From there he dropping down into what were once the green paddy of groundwater flows down from the mountains into was driven in a motorcade to J-Village. According to fields and pastureland of coastal Fukushima. The first the basements of the flooded reactors, where it becomes his official schedule, the prime minister ‘interacted hint that one is entering a disaster zone comes when the contaminated before leaking into the Pacific Ocean. with elementary and junior high school students’ long road crests the mountains. The big green signs along the Ringing the power plant are the police check points enough to shoot some photos. From Japan’s football highway, instead of indicating exits and local attractions, that keep people from entering areas that will be training camp, he drove nineteen kilometres north to give LED readouts for the amount of caesium-137 and radioactive for decades, if not centuries. Outside this the Fukushima power plant, where his car was waved other gamma radiation blowing up from the coast. The nuclear exclusion zone labours another army of workers through the gate and parked at the base of a viewing numbers fluctuate with activity at the power plant and in white hazmat suits. Totalling 88,000 over the years, platform. Abe mounted the platform and positioned the prevailing winds, but one is advised to travel these these are the nuclear gypsies, an itinerant labour force, himself in front of Fukushima’s reactors long enough roads as rapidly as possible, with the windows closed. often recruited by the Japanese mafia, who are hired to for another photo op. He would later describe how safe Far in the distance, one catches a glimpse of the ruined fill black vinyl garbage bags with topsoil scraped from Fukushima was, because on this, his third visit to the power plant. Crouched near the water on a shelf carved school yards and other debris gathered from around power plant, instead of wearing protective clothing and a from a rocky headland, Fukushima Daiichi’s six reactors people’s houses. This removes enough radioactive face mask, he was dressed in a suit and tie. Abe’s visit to and eight fuel storage pools are covered with construction material to allow parts of Fukushima to be declared open Fukushima lasted six minutes. cranes that look like praying mantises feeding on a for resettlement. The government has also redefined As radiation continues to leak from Fukushima delectable carcass. A line of grey steel towers runs from allowable levels of radiation exposure. In Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean and surrounding countryside, the plant up into the hills and south towards Tokyo, which prefecture, these levels are twenty times higher than any perhaps 100,000 people are still displaced from their used to light itself with energy from Fukushima. Thrown place else in the world, including the rest of Japan. The homes. The area remains an officially designated over the pylons is a black net of power lines that no longer threshold for what qualifies as nuclear waste has also nuclear exclusion zone, but the Japanese government carry power. This was once a mystical place, where atoms been raised. This is now eighty times higher. stopped paying housing subsidies to evacuees in 2017. were split to light up the night sky in Tokyo. Now it looks ‘The Japanese government has been aggressively This is part of an effort to force people back into their like the hulking wreck of a ruined civilisation. pushing the lifting of restrictions orders for abandoned towns. As the UN special rapporteur noted Running north and south from Fukushima are the contaminated municipalities in Fukushima,’ says Tilman in 2018, ‘The gradual lifting of evacuation orders has concrete seawalls that Japan built after the tsunami to Ruff, co-founder of the International Campaign to created enormous strains on people whose lives have protect itself from future earthquakes and shock waves. Abolish Nuclear Weapons, winner of the 2017 Nobel already been affected by the worst nuclear disaster in The walls stretch intermittently for 480 kilometres along Peace Prize. ‘This artificially reduces the number of this century. Many feel they are being forced to return the eastern coast of Honshu, Japan’s main island. Nine officially recognised evacuees. While attempting to to areas that are unsafe, including those with radiation metres high, the walls look like runways in an empty create a misleading illusion of return to normality, the levels above what the government previously considered airport. Down at water level, the massive revetments government is still now, nine years after the disaster, safe.’ With most of Fukushima’s refugees reclassified as block the horizon behind a grey scrim of concrete. The applying an allowable radiation annual dose limit for ‘voluntary evacuees’, the Japanese government claims walls are positioned against an invasion, but the invader, the public of 20 millisieverts. It is the only government that only 41,112 people remain displaced. in this case, is the ocean from which Japan gets much worldwide to accept such a high level so many years Japan is conducting a risky experiment with its of its food. On a coastline often lashed by tsunamis and after a nuclear disaster.’ citizens. The contest involves learning how to survive typhoons, where the Japanese used to look out to sea Before the 2020 Olympics were postponed by in an irradiated landscape. Citizen scientists, women’s and read the waves for signs of danger, now they hunker the coronavirus pandemic, the relay race marking collectives and support groups with ties to Chernobyl behind concrete walls that have failed to protect them in the opening of the games was scheduled to begin at and other nuclear exclusion zones have formed to the past and that are likely to fail again in the future. J-Village, the Japan Football Association Academy for meet the challenge. They are building home-made Dropping down into the plain surrounding the training soccer players. J-Village lies nineteen kilometres radiation detectors, developing radiation-resistant crops, power plant, one senses that something horrible has south of Fukushima Daiichi. This is Fukushima sharing news online, filing court cases and exchanging happened here. The land has been swept clear of houses, Number 1, or FI, as the complex of six nuclear reactors information around the world. schools, towns, harbours. The wave that doomed was called, to distinguish it from Fukushima Daini, ‘The government, on the grounds that an emergency Fukushima Daiichi also drowned people and animals, Fukushima Number 2, another complex of four nuclear situation prevails, has scrapped the usual regulations before sucking their bodies out to sea. Some towns were reactors built ten kilometres from J-Village. J-Village and abandoned several million people to live in destroyed completely. Others look like gap‑toothed

11 survivors that are missing some but not all of their Ionising radiation enters our bodies and food chain buildings. What the tsunami did not destroy was in a variety of ways, and, thanks to a process called subsequently doomed by the radioactive fallout from bioaccumulation, the higher an animal eats on the food Fukushima. The forced evacuations and the toxic clouds chain, the higher the concentration of radionuclides. that still waft up into the hills have left the scrubbed The effective dose of radiation required to sicken or kill plain and towns eerily quiet. No one is working the you is measured in sieverts (Sv), which is named after fields. No one is herding animals or sailing fishing boats Rolf Sievert, the Swedish physicist who first calibrated out to sea. No one is driving to town for groceries or the lethal effects of radioactive energy. A burst dose of picking up children from school. 0.75 Sv will produce nausea and a weakened immune The only signs of activity come from trucks rolling system. A dose of 10 Sv will kill you. A dose somewhere through the countryside. They are carrying black vinyl in between gives you a fifty-fifty chance of dying within bags full of irradiated refuse that is being dumped thirty days. Guidelines for workers in the nuclear in the former rice paddies and fields of Fukushima. industry limit the maximum yearly dose to 0.05 Sv or Mountains of debris have been scraped up by workers, the equivalent of five CT scans. So how many sieverts many recruited from Vietnam and the Philippines, who are currently being produced by Fukushima’s melted travel through the abandoned towns around Fukushima reactors? The latest reading from reactor No. 2 is 530 like white-suited locusts, removing topsoil, saplings, Sv per hour. This means that every hour the reactor is brush, bark and other radioactive material from areas emitting more than 10,000 times the yearly allowable being readied for resettlement. The flat-topped pyramids dose for radiation workers. With reactors this hot, of toxic waste are a temporary solution, says the Japan’s plan to scoop up Fukushima’s nuclear fuel and government, which is offering a large sum of money to dump it somewhere, which is projected to take forty any community willing to build a permanent repository. years, may not be possible. In this case, Fukushima, So far there are no takers. like Chernobyl, will have to be entombed in three giant Yuki and Eri, my two research assistants, and I drive pyramids of concrete, which will be Japan’s legacy to the past a field full of men in hazmat suits. They are scraping archaeologists of the Anthropocene. five centimetres of topsoil off a pasture whose red clay Measuring gamma radiation is useful, particularly on now looks like a nasty wound. Down at sea level, with days when the radiation climbs to dangerous levels, but a concrete wall looming over us, we thread our way these measurements are by no means a complete picture through a construction site where workers are building off. The cars parked out front are overgrown with vines of Fukushima’s toxicity. For this one needs soil samples, a white fence around a towering pile of one-tonne vinyl and creepers. The yards are untended, with perennials mass spectrometers, electron microscopes, radiographic bags. The country opens into scrubby fields swept free poking up through the weeds. Other yards, closer to the imaging and other sophisticated equipment. Radioactive of habitation, save for a couple of houses that look like centre of the city, have been scraped of topsoil. Here the isotopes from Fukushima, including caesium-134/137, something remaining after a tank battle in Flanders. houses have been power-washed and left standing on have been wafted around the world, with substantial The windows are blown out. Mouldy shoes are stored what look like clay tennis courts. A fishing boat leans levels found in California vineyards, Pacific Ocean on racks inside door frames with no doors. All the against an abandoned bowling alley. The car dealers currents and even in people’s homes and everyday furniture is gone, except for one house with a piano downtown have showrooms stocked with radioactive objects. In 2013, microparticles from Fukushima— upended in what used to be the living room. In front of cars. The clothing stores are displaying sun dresses and little glassy beads loaded with radioactive caesium and a three-storey building that was once a school, we come chinos that were in style nine years ago. The grocery uranium—were discovered in Japan when scientists on a strange sight, a half dozen oversized frogs, cast in stores are filled with food dumped off the shelves began collecting vacuum cleaner bags and automobile concrete, that are lined up like sentinels. Rising over the during the earthquake and aftershocks. The hospital is a air filters. These bags and filters, when laid on top of building, on the seaward side, is a tower that served as a looming hulk with locked doors and weeds growing in x-ray plates, lit them up with radioactive hot spots. lookout for scanning the horizon. Because their teachers the parking lot. The schoolyards have been scraped of The hot spots were bacterium-sized particles that had saw the wave coming and led everyone to high ground, topsoil, but no children have returned to play in them. been shot out of exploding reactors and travelled over the children in this school were saved. Scattered throughout the town are metal posts, Honshu Island down to Tokyo and beyond. Farther south along the coast rises a little hill with topped with LED readouts showing the amount of Fukushima prefecture is full of hot spots, and these stone steps leading up to a Shinto shrine. The shrine gamma radiation blowing through the air. On days hot spots keep moving as microparticles are washed survived the tsunami, but its stones are cracked and when the readings are high, with the wind blowing down from the mountains. A recent discovery by Shaun heaved. Moss grows in the votive niches. The coast was directly from Fukushima Daiichi, people are supposed Burnie, a senior researcher with Greenpeace, who has once covered with pilgrimage sites. The most curious to stay indoors with the windows shut. Three thousand directed radiation surveys in Fukushima since 2011, of these are the stone markers placed on the hillsides. six hundred radiation monitoring devices have been shows how dangerous the area remains. Burnie uses Dating back hundreds of years, the stones are carved installed in the towns and up in the hills behind the drones and high-tech sensors mounted on cars, but on with inscriptions that warn about tsunamis. The stones reactors. The devices read low, people say, measuring a crisp fall day in October 2019 he decided to take a are time travellers, speaking through the ages, saying, one-half to one-third what is recorded by their personal handheld radiation detector and pay a visit to J-Village. ‘Beware! The ocean has come this high and destroyed devices. Critics also say the posts are spaced too far Burnie was in the parking lot, watching a youth soccer everything in its path. Whatever you build below this apart, missing the hot spots where radiation can spike to match being played on the field and walking towards marker, it too will be destroyed.’ alarming levels. The monitoring posts are one of the few another group of children who were sitting on the tarmac Still farther along the coast one finds another strange remaining signs of an ongoing nuclear disaster, but the eating their lunch, when he began measuring radiation sight, a windowless, four-storey building with a chimney Japanese government is in the process of removing them. levels over 71 microsieverts per hour. The normal poking out of the roof. This is one of the incinerators The posts measure ionising radiation emitted reading in this area, before the Fukushima meltdown, that Japan has built every few miles up and down the primarily by caesium-137, a radioactive element that was 0.04 microsieverts per hour. Burnie’s reading, 1,775 coast. One reason why the countryside looks so empty was first observed on Earth in 1945, after the first atomic times higher than normal, meant that anyone breathing is because workers have been collecting all the ruined bomb was exploded in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto dust off the J-Village playing fields could have been houses and boats, the furniture and flotsam that was desert. The four types of radiation—alpha, beta, gamma inhaling an intensely charged radioactive particle. scattered over the landscape and burning it, regardless of and neutron—are invisible forms of matter that destroy ‘This is one of the most shocking discoveries I’ve how toxic it is, so that now the ash in these incinerators human tissue. They are distinguished by their levels of made in decades of radiation surveys,’ Burnie says. The is a concentrated mass of radioactive material. This has energy and ability to penetrate solid objects. Gamma place was crowded with ‘sports fans, family members, not stopped Japan from allowing the ash to be used in rays enter our bodies and alter genetic material by and coaches’ strolling through what was effectively a construction projects, which is one reason why people ionising, or removing electrons from atoms. Living cells toxic waste dump. Greenpeace wrote a letter alerting have recorded dangerous levels of radiation at building that are ionised will die, mutate or become cancerous. the Japanese government to ‘high levels of radioactive sites throughout the country. Hardest hit by ionising radiation are cells that are rapidly contamination and serious public health risks at We drive into Namie, a once-thriving city of 20,000. reproducing, such as those in a growing foetus. While J-Village’. Getting no reply, Burnie announced his Namie is now a ghost town of abandoned buildings gamma rays can travel through matter easily, destroying discovery at a press conference in December. Tokyo and traffic lights blinking over empty boulevards. bone marrow and internal organs, alpha particles are Electric sent workers to clean up the area, but Burnie Eight kilometres north of the power plant, the city blocked by clothing (although lethal if ingested). Beta returned to find other hot spots they had missed. The lies within Fukushima’s original twenty-kilometre particles are blocked by thin sheets of metal or plastic. Japanese government continues to claim that there are exclusion zone, which was evacuated soon after the Gamma rays are stopped by nothing short of lead shields no radiation risks in Fukushima. ‘With the exception of plant began releasing plutonium, caesium, iodine-131 or concrete barriers. Neutron rays, which are released areas deemed “difficult to return”, ’ says Reconstruction and other radioactive substances. The houses in Namie during the fission process in nuclear reactors, are large Minister Watanabe Hiromachi, using Japan’s polite are beginning to fall into the ground. Their roofs are radioactive particles that can travel many miles and pass expression for nuclear exclusion zones, ‘we have covered with white splotches where the tiles have blown through everything, including concrete and steel. decontaminated the entire area’.

12 fficials say that Fukushima is safe because These were known to have design flaws and inadequate the level of background radiation in the containments. Fuel storage pools covered with flimsy surrounding environment is no higher than metal roofs were built on top of the reactors, and when Oin New York City or Shanghai. This may be true, one of these pools exploded at reactor No. 4, a fresh but, again, one is referring only to gamma radiation, nuclear core and another three reactors’ worth of nuclear and the argument is deceptive for other reasons. The fuel were exposed to the sky. Save for a valve leaking confusion is due partly to the fact that Fukushima refers from a nearby reservoir, the pool would have run out of to three different things: a destroyed nuclear power water, ignited a fuel pool fire and forced the evacuation plant, a prefecture more than twice the size of greater of Tokyo as a massive radioactive cloud billowed from Shanghai and a capital city. Ignoring microparticles, Fukushima down to the Imperial Palace, which lies 225 hot spots, glowing reactors, toxic wastewater and other kilometres south of the reactors. inconvenient facts, the Japanese government measures We stare for a few minutes at the cranes swinging the background radiation for ‘Fukushima’ by averaging over the plant. They are shoring up the damaged the readings from all the gamma radiation detectors buildings, installing temporary tanks for holding placed outside the nuclear exclusion zone. contaminated cooling water and offloading fuel from One should also note that the background radiation a storage pool in one of the reactor buildings. Workers for New York City includes not only the cosmic radiation in hazmat suits are welding pipes and driving earth- that rains down on Earth from the heavens or trickles moving equipment through a construction site that up from radioactive rocks, but also the residue from 520 looks like the set for a sci-fi movie. This could be an nuclear bombs that were exploded mid-air during the operating room for giants, where ten-storey scalpels Cold War, mainly by the United States and Soviet Union, probe the exposed organs of a dangerous creature— but also by France and China, whose last bomb exploded maybe Godzilla—born of atomic radiation and raging in 1980. Altogether, including bombs fired underground, for revenge. This is no place to linger. Our dosimeters 2,056 nuclear weapons have been detonated. In other are spiking, and the metallic taste in my mouth is getting words, background radiation is not necessarily a natural stronger as we turn around and head back up the coast. phenomenon, nor is it necessarily good for you. If Rolf Sievert got his name on the unit for measuring Masao Yoshida hat must be admitted—very painfully—is the health effects of radiation, it was Henri Becquerel, that this was a disaster “Made in Japan”, ’ co-winner of the Nobel Prize with Pierre and Marie study of radiation exposure outside the nuclear concluded the official parliamentary Curie, who got his name on the unit for measuring total exclusion zone undercounted people’s exposure by Wreport on Fukushima. The disaster resulted from the radioactive releases. The Promethean splitting of atoms two-thirds. Doctors have left the area because the ‘ingrained conventions of Japanese culture’. This includes produces radioactive disintegrations known as hits. One government refuses to reimburse them when they deference to powerful interests, including TEPCO, hit is one becquerel, and each hit can cause damage or list radiation sickness as the cause for nose bleeds, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the disease. The current benchmark for nuclear disasters is spontaneous abortions and other ailments resulting Fukushima reactors. TEPCO ranks among the least the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4, which from ionising radiation. (The only acceptable diagnoses trusted companies in Japan. It has been fined on several released 85 quadrillion becquerels of caesium-137. are ‘radiophobia’, nervousness and stress.) The spike occasions for false reporting on inspections and repairs. Nobody knows the comparable numbers for in thyroid cancer among children in Fukushima is In 2002, one of these scandals forced the resignations Fukushima, since most of its radioactivity was dumped dismissed as a survey error, produced only because of TEPCO’s president and chairman. Fukushima was a into the Pacific Ocean. At the high end, Fukushima more children are being examined. The government has ‘man-made disaster’, said the investigating commission, released twice as much radioactivity as Chernobyl. At mounted no epidemiological study in Fukushima. It because the power plant’s design was faulty, its seawall the low end, the release was one-fifth of Chernobyl’s. has established no baseline for comparing public health defences were known to be inadequate, and the But if 85 quadrillion becquerels sounds like a large before and after the disaster, and as radioactive ash and company proved incompetent in handling the crisis. number—and indeed it is—this is only one-tenth the soil from Fukushima are spread throughout the rest ‘Across the board, the commission found ignorance amount of caesium released by nuclear bombs, which of Japan, detecting the long-term consequences of the and arrogance unforgivable for anyone or any lofted a staggering 954 quadrillion becquerels of caesium disaster becomes increasingly difficult. organization that deals with nuclear power,’ the report into the atmosphere and marked the onset of the It is in Namie that I experience my first direct concluded. ‘We found a disregard for global trends and a geological era known as the Anthropocene. encounter with radioactivity. As I get out of the car disregard for public safety.’ Another misunderstanding underlies the claim to photograph the bowling alley with the boat leaned Critics say that leaving TEPCO in charge of that Fukushima’s background radiation is safe. The against it, there is a metallic taste in my mouth, a lick containing the Fukushima disaster is like asking the background radiation in New York consists of rays of gunmetal. People undergoing radiation therapy local power company to launch a space station. TEPCO or photons that pass through the body and leave. The experience the same metallic taste; so, too, did the pilots has confessed to misleading the public about the amount radionuclides from Fukushima are not rays, but dust- who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. of radiation leaking from the plant and the progress of like particles that if inhaled or ingested can prove lethal. As we head down National Route 6 towards Fukushima the clean-up. It keeps delaying the start for emptying Throughout the area, radionuclides of caesium-137 Daiichi, road signs instruct us not to stop or get out Fukushima’s fuel pools, its strategy for dismantling the have accumulated in ditches, drainage areas, kitchen of our car, and we drive with the windows shut. This reactors is fundamentally flawed, and it has failed at gardens and schoolyards. One can walk a few steps in highway is kept open for the construction vehicles that even the most straightforward technological challenges, any direction from a safe area and stumble into a hot carry workers to the power plant. We wedge our car into such as containing the radioactive groundwater flowing spot. This is what a researcher found when he examined a stream of truck traffic and roll towards the electric from the reactors. the Azuma baseball field in Fukushima City, where cables that run up the mountains towards Tokyo. The The public learned these facts when the secret the Olympic games were scheduled to start. The field auxiliary roads to our left and right are closed with testimony of Fukushima plant manager Masao Yoshida had been scraped clean, but just outside the stadium accordion fences and guarded by men in blue uniforms. was revealed by Asahi Shimbun newspaper. Before his were patches of grass radioactive enough to qualify as a The men wear white gloves and cotton face masks, death of cancer of the oesophagus in 2013, at the age of nuclear waste site. which offer scant protection against the swirling dust fifty-eight, Yoshida had been summoned to the J-Village Seventy per cent of Fukushima consists of forests and and contaminated air. soccer training camp for twenty-eight hours of interviews mountains. This reservoir of radionuclides cannot be We stop on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Below with Japan’s parliamentary investigating committee. decontaminated. In the lowlands, the vinyl bags holding us, down on the shoreline, rise the big square boxes of Showing obvious disdain for both his TEPCO bosses and scraped-up topsoil have begun to break apart with Fukushima’s six reactors. We are parked on the alluvial Japan’s nuclear regulators, Yoshida described an alarming sprouting vegetation, and every summer, as typhoons lash terrace that was cut away to build the power plant. This train of events, many of them at odds with the official Japan’s eastern shore, dozens of bags are washed out to was the fatal mistake that doomed Fukushima from the story of what happened at Fukushima. sea. Scraping off five centimetres of soil lowers radiation beginning. General Electric, which prepared the site and At 2:46 p.m. on 11 March 2011, the day Fukushima levels, but it is not correct to call this ‘decontamination’. built the reactors, lopped twenty-five metres off a natural was destroyed, Yoshida was sitting in his office on the The process is more about managing people’s perception promontory to put the power plant near the shore. This second floor of the business building in the centre of radiation than it is a solution. Caesium-137 and required less pumping of cooling water. It was cheaper. of the site. He was looking at documents when the strontium-90 persist in the environment for hundreds The plant was built eleven metres above the ocean, with building began to shake with enough intensity that of years, and this radiation is not being recycled or a three-metre seawall. Later enlarged to six metres, this binders fell from the shelves and a TV set toppled eliminated. It is merely being moved from one place to wall was easily overtopped by the fifteen-metre wave over. Yoshida tried to dive under his desk but failed. another, and it will keep moving with the area’s winds and that washed over Fukushima on 3/11. The ground heaved under him for five minutes as the rains and ocean currents. Locating cooling pumps at the ocean’s edge and Tohoku earthquake tore a trench in the ocean floor 370 The Japanese government is taking other steps to backup generators down in the basement were other kilometres to the northeast. The quake was so massive hide the ongoing disaster. A government-sponsored mistakes. So too was buying GE’s Mark 1 reactors. that it shifted the coast of Japan 2.4 metres closer to the

13 United States and knocked the Earth 38 centimetres off from uranium and reprocessed plutonium. (The bomb centre, thereby shortening the length of the average day dropped on Nagasaki had a plutonium core.) Japan has by 1.8 microseconds. Forty-one minutes later, a wall a huge stockpile of plutonium generated by its nuclear of water travelling at the speed of sound slammed into reactors. The country has spent billions of dollars trying Japan’s northeastern coast, destroying everything in its to develop the technology to reprocess this plutonium. path as it rolled inland. Among the victims were close to Several workers have been killed and the technology 20,000 people either killed or missing and a power plant has yet to succeed, and here was the ultimate setback—a whose backup generators and cooling pumps had been MOX reactor blowing up on live TV. The government built below sea level. responded by banning images of the explosion from When Yoshida was able to walk next door to the television and joining TEPCO in forbidding use of the general office, he found a ceiling panel collapsed in the word meltdown. middle of the room. Documents were scattered over While Japanese viewers were denied a second the floor, and white dust floated in the air. Even before look, the rest of the world watched replays of reactor the tsunami arrived, he knew the plant was in trouble. No. 3 exploding. Reactor fuel and parts of the reactor The site had lost electric power. Pressure gauges showed core itself are blown through the roof, leaving the damage to the reactors’ cooling pipes. The isolation spent fuel pool on top of the building exposed to the condenser in Unit 1 had failed. The reactor was no atmosphere. Billowing overhead is a black cloud of longer being cooled, and Yoshida feared it was heading radioactive iodine, plutonium, caesium and other toxic towards the meltdown and runaway chain reaction gases. Mixed into this cloud are chunks of concrete and that would eventually blow it up. That the reactor was steel that fall back to earth, injuring eleven workers already emitting hot radioactive gases from its core was with flying debris. Out of the south-east corner of the confirmed by monitors outside the plant, which had reactor comes an intense pulse of radioactive gas. A begun recording releases approaching 12 millisieverts slow-motion replay of the event reveals that a nuclear per hour. fission chain reaction has produced a detonation shock Yoshida launched himself into a mad scramble to wave travelling at 900 metres per second, faster than the contain the disaster. He rode out the aftershocks from speed of sound. No nuclear power plant in the world can the earthquake and watched in horror as the tsunami Naoto Kan survive a detonation shock wave. Horrified spectators struck the plant. The wave flooded the diesel generators were watching radioactive gases flooding over Japan. that were temporarily powering the facility. Standing in a on TV, Kan turned to the NISA chairman who was in They were also watching the myth of nuclear safety dark office filled with dead computers, Yoshida ordered the room with him and asked, ‘What was that just now? being blown sky high. As the Asahi Shimbun would later workers into the parking lots to salvage batteries from Wasn’t that an explosion?’ The chairman had both hands write about the government’s efforts to ban these images flooded cars. When this jerry-rigged system failed to over his face. He made no reply. from TV, ‘In a nation where the government agency operate the control valves and restart the cooling pumps, At the time, TEPCO’s chairman was in China on overseeing nuclear plants and electric power companies he formed ‘a suicide squad of oldies’ and rushed them into a press junket. He was touring the reporters assigned has no qualms about hiding crisis information, the the reactor buildings. Facing lethal waves of radiation as to cover the nuclear industry on an Asian holiday. The situation can only be called hopeless’. they scrambled in the dark over waterlogged wreckage, president of TEPCO was also out of town, and, with no The following day, on 15 March, at 6:14 in the the workers tried to force open valves with their bare one ordering employees to release information to the morning, reactor No. 2 exploded. It was the most hands. Known as the Fukushima Fifty (although they prime minister, Kan was kept in the dark about what was heavily loaded of Fukushima’s reactors, with the freshest actually numbered sixty-nine, including Yoshida), the happening at Fukushima. Like other advanced industrial and largest load of radioactive fuel. Yoshida watched suicide squad stumbled through reactor buildings filled countries, Japan is covered with radiation detectors that in horror as the reactor began melting through its with a thick white mist of hydrogen and water vapour. feed into a centralised monitoring system. The system containment vessel. ‘That penetration would have The dose limit for Fukushima’s workers was raised is supposed to track wind currents and steer refugees led to enormous amounts of highly toxic radioactive from 1 millisievert, the level for the general populace, away from contaminated areas. For most of the disaster, substances, such as plutonium, uranium and americium, and 20 millisieverts, the level for nuclear workers, to the wind was blowing out to sea—a lucky break for the spewing into the living environment of humans,’ he told 100 millisieverts, and then, on 14 March, it was raised citizens of Tokyo—but when the wind swung inland, investigators. ‘Plant workers would be exposed to huge again to 250 millisieverts. This is five times the US legal blowing to the northwest, a radioactive cloud swept doses of radiation.’ The Japanese were being torched by limit for nuclear workers, but since most of the plant’s over refugees fleeing in that direction. None of this three atomic explosions—delivered not by an external dosimeters had been destroyed by the earthquake or information was delivered to Kan. enemy, but at their own hand. When the fire engine washed away by the tsunami, no one knows how much The prime minister received another rude surprise pouring water on reactor No. 2 ran out of diesel fuel, radiation these men received. The official death toll for when he learned that Fukushima No. 1 had been built ‘This was when I thought we were coming to the end,’ Fukushima workers from cancers linked to the disaster by General Electric and installed in 1971 as a turnkey said Yoshida. ‘I was the closest to death at that moment.’ currently stands at six, according to Japan’s Ministry operation—as in, ‘Here’s the key to your nuclear power Yoshida imagined he was watching a real-life of Health, Labour and Welfare. Masao Yoshida is not plant. Turn it on.’ Because the operating manual for the version of The China Syndrome. Radioactive fuel was included in this count. reactor belonged to GE, TEPCO refused to give it to the burning through its containment vessel and liquefying Yoshida called TEPCO headquarters and asked that government. Even when the manual was later released to everything in its path as it burrowed towards the centre fire engines big enough to pump water into the reactors the Japanese parliament, GE’s intellectual property rights of the Earth. After it melted through the bottom of the be sent from Tokyo. The tsunami had destroyed roads were protected by having parts of the manual blacked out. reactor and hit water below, the nuclear core exploded. and towns along the coast. The fire engines got lost. While he was dealing with the explosion at reactor Steam rose from the damaged building and radiation They suffered flat tyres and ran out of petrol. At one No. 1, Yoshida noticed that the cooling water in reactor levels at the power plant increased four-fold, indicating surreal moment TEPCO announced that it was running No. 3 was dropping precipitously. Only belatedly did he that the reactor’s suppression pool—the doughnut- out of cash and asked for donations from the public. realise that the fresh water source he had been instructed shaped tube of water meant to cool the reactor in an Suspecting that the company was lying to him about to use had dried up. Hydrogen had to be vented from emergency and capture any radioactive particles before the severity of the disaster, Naoto Kan, Japan’s prime the reactor or it, too, would explode. Hydrogen can they leaked into the atmosphere—had been breached. minister, helicoptered into Fukushima for a meeting be vented one of two ways, either from the bottom of Fourteen minutes before reactor No. 2 exploded, with Yoshida at 6:00 a.m. on the morning of 12 March. the reactor, through water, which removes most of the Prime Minister Kan had left his office and driven the Both men were engineers who had graduated from the radioactive iodine, or from the top, straight into the short distance to TEPCO’s nearby headquarters. Kan, Tokyo Institute of Technology. Kan was a mechanical, air. Having run out of water, Yoshida ordered that the who had been living in his office, had learned at 3:00 not a nuclear, engineer, but he had already discovered reactor be dry-vented, but the operation was stopped a.m. that TEPCO was planning to evacuate its workers that the head of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety by TEPCO officials in Tokyo, who feared they would be and abandon Fukushima Daiichi. ‘Abandonment Agency (NISA) was an economist who knew very blamed for irradiating the Japanese countryside. would mean the end of Japan,’ Kan wrote in his post- little about nuclear energy and nothing about nuclear At 11:01 a.m. on the morning of 14 March, as a Fukushima memoir, My Nuclear Nightmare. On entering accidents. The same was true for the other members of government spokesman was reassuring the public that TEPCO’s headquarters, he summoned the company’s Japan’s ‘nuclear village’, the powerful network of vested everything at Fukushima was under control, reactor executives into a conference room and in effect seized interests that had ringed Japan’s earthquake-prone No. 3 exploded on live TV. The split screen image— the company. ‘Abandonment is not an option,’ he told shores with nuclear reactors. government spokesman on one side, exploding reactor them. That would result in a disaster ‘two or three times At 3:56 p.m. on 12 March, a little more than twenty- on the other—showed the power plant enveloped in a the size of Chernobyl, equal to ten or twenty reactors’. five hours after the Tohoku earthquake, reactor No. 1 cloud of dust and gas that bore a terrifying resemblance ‘It would not be out of the question for a foreign exploded in a fireball of hydrogen gas that blew out the to the mushroom cloud that billowed over Nagasaki in country to come along and take our place,’ Kan said. roof and walls and began spreading radioactive material 1945. The resemblance was no mistake. Reactor No. 3 When he was later criticised for this outburst, Kan across the Pacific. As they watched the news bulletin was a MOX reactor, running on mixed oxide fuel made redoubled his attack on ‘the closed nature and secrecy

14 of the nuclear power industry, which was burdened by Japan has no tradition of investigative reporting. bureaucracy and monopolism in science … Throughout Instead, Japanese media rely on kisha clubs: reporting the entire system there reigned a spirit of servility, pools organised by big companies and government fawning, clannishness and persecution of independent agencies. Even this limited reporting was hobbled in thinkers, window dressing, and personal clan ties 2013 when Japan adopted a law protecting ‘specially between leaders.’ designated secrets’. Whistleblowers, journalists and Kan had already sketched a contingency plan bloggers who obtain information ‘illegally’ face up to ten for evacuating Tokyo and its 50 million inhabitants. years in prison. Japan, which used to rank near the top While Japan was declaring a twenty-kilometre nuclear of the World Press Freedom Index, by 2016 had fallen to exclusion zone around the Fukushima power plant, the seventy-second place. US military was instructing the100,000 soldiers and ‘A nuclear accident could cause the entire country dependents at US military bases to evacuate from within to stop functioning,’ said Kan, after becoming an ardent eighty kilometres of the plant. opponent of nuclear energy. Japan is the least likely place At 6:00 a.m. that morning, at the same time that in the world to find an energy grid powered by nuclear reactor No. 2 was blowing up, reactor No. 4 exploded reactors. Atomic bombs killed hundreds of thousands in a hydrogen fireball that blew off the roof and of Japanese in World War II. In 1954, a Japanese fishing walls, leaving the spent fuel pool at the top of the boat was accidentally irradiated by a hydrogen bomb building open to the sky. The reactor was down for exploded over Bikini atoll. Japan is rocked by more than maintenance, but its gas venting system was linked to 1,000 earthquakes a year and whipped by typhoons reactor No. 3, which was producing enough flammable that roar over its islands every summer and autumn. hydrogen to blow up both reactors. The core for unit The country has a large anti-nuclear movement, but No. 4, containing ninety tonnes of uranium, had been somehow, even after Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Lucky offloaded into the spent fuel pool. The pool already Dragon fishing boat incident, Fukushima and dozens of held 500 tonnes of fuel. In total, the fuel that was now other nuclear mishaps, protesters have not managed to on the verge of igniting in a runaway chain reaction halt Japan’s investment in nuclear power. contained 37 million curies of caesium-137—about ten The push to build nuclear reactors in Japan was times the amount released at Chernobyl. While a plume Matsutaro Shoriki aided by postwar censorship, which blocked discussion of radioactive smoke spread over Fukushima, another of atomic radiation, a PR campaign promoting ‘atoms black plume was rising from the US embassy in Tokyo, fifty-four nuclear reactors. It is Japan’s ironic fate—and for peace’, and the work of a Japanese CIA asset who which had begun burning sensitive documents and the root of its current crisis—that Kan was replaced proved remarkably effective at getting Japan to buy preparing to move south to Osaka. as prime minister by Abe Shinzo, a military hawk and nuclear technology from the United States. After World The fuel pool at reactor No. 4 was four storeys nuclear booster, who is moving to restart Japan’s nuclear War II, the US spent trillions of dollars developing above ground at the top of the building, where it was reactors and convince the world that Fukushima is open atomic bombs and loading 50,000 of them into strategic unshielded except for a metal roof. Water had to be to resettlement. bombers and onto missiles. It built a huge industrial pumped into the pool to keep it from igniting, but base devoted to mining uranium, refining and enriching Fukushima no longer had any working generators or ith J-Village freshly repainted, Japan may be it, and producing nuclear weapons that grew ever larger pumps. Emptied of water, fuel pools can catch fire in ready for the Olympics in 2021, but it is not and more lethal. Pasting a fig leaf over this arms race, runaway nuclear chain reactions that produce intense ready for the world to look too closely at the President Eisenhower, in a speech to the United Nations pulses of gamma rays and neutrons. Since the world has Wperilous state of its nuclear affairs. TEPCO is planning in 1953, proposed using ‘atoms for peace’. Technology yet to find a safe place for storing nuclear waste, most to release its billion litres of contaminated water into good at killing people would be redeployed for boiling of this waste is stored on site. Crowded with nuclear the Pacific Ocean as soon as the games are over. For water in nuclear reactors. Eisenhower’s plan would keep assemblies that are packed closer and closer to each years, the company maintained that this water had been the nuclear industrial base intact and the scientists who other, the average fuel storage pool holds the equivalent cleaned of radioactivity, save for tritium, which is water developed this technology employed. It would cement of six nuclear cores. Fukushima Daiichi had a total of soluble and thereby impossible to remove. In September alliances with client states while providing them with six reactors, three of them shut down for maintenance, 2018, TEPCO was forced to admit that its cleaning nuclear fuel and technology. It would counter Soviet and seven spent fuel pools. Fukushima Daini, the newer process had failed, and the water is actually contaminated efforts to build their own nuclear alliances, and this plant to the south, had four reactors and an equal with high levels of strontium-90 and other radioactive transfer of military technology would make certain number of fuel pools. These ten nuclear reactors had elements. Japan’s fishing industry opposes releasing the people very rich. a total capacity of 9,096 megawatts, making the plant water, and so too do Korea, China and other countries The CIA asset who proved so adept at pushing almost two and a half times larger than Chernobyl. Now that still ban the importation of food from Japan. nuclear reactors into Japan was Matsutaro Shoriki. that the fuel storage pools were also at risk, the disaster Fukushima’s storage tanks, originally intended as a Shoriki began his career as a police commissioner in had reached global proportions. short-term solution, are built out of cheap steel, which Tokyo skilled at assassinating communists and labour Yoshida gave orders to shelter in place and prepare has begun to corrode and leak. An Olympic-sized organisers. He was sacked for failing to prevent an attack to re-enter the damaged reactors. Instead, he watched swimming pool of contaminated water is added to the on Crown Prince Hirohito but rebounded with enough dumbfounded as 650 employees commandeered company site every week. It is no consolation that TEPCO has wealthy backers to buy the Yomiuri Shimbun, which buses and fled down the coast towards Tokyo. This finally acknowledged what critics have said for years. became Japan’s largest newspaper, with a circulation included all of Fukushima’s senior employees, including The water is still radioactive—at levels up to 20,000 of more than 14 million. At the end of World War II, division managers and section chiefs, and all the officials times higher than allowable safety standards—and Shoriki was imprisoned for twenty-one months as a from Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency. By 8:30 that TEPCO has no idea what to do with it. Class-A war criminal, but again he emerged as head of morning, Yoshida—abandoned by everyone except his From the day it opened, Fukushima Daiichi a media empire, which this time included Japan’s first ‘suicide squad of oldies’—had begun the last-ditch effort struggled to contain the groundwater that rushed down commercial TV station and professional baseball team. to save Fukushima’s reactors from total annihilation. from the nearby mountains and flowed through the His ultimate dream was to arm Japan with nuclear His bosses at TEPCO headquarters had instructed plant. Fukushima today is a swamp of groundwater and weapons. The first step towards this was the acquisition Yoshida not to use saltwater for cooling the reactors. The cooling water contaminated with strontium, tritium, of nuclear reactors. In 1956, the CIA enlisted Shoriki salt would corrode the containment vessels and make caesium and other radioactive particles. Engineers have and his media empire to support an ‘Atoms for Peace’ the reactors unusable, and somehow TEPCO imagined laced the site with ditches, dams, sump pumps and exhibition in Hiroshima. Hugely successful in swaying restarting the reactors at a later date. Yoshida was still drains. In 2014, TEPCO was given US$292 million in the Japanese public into supporting nuclear energy, the receiving instructions from his bosses not to cool the public funds to ring Fukushima with an underground exhibition began with a Shinto purification ceremony reactors with saltwater. He ignored them. He ordered ice wall—a supposedly impermeable barrier of frozen welcoming the atom back to Japan. Shoriki went on to the fire trucks to start pumping water from the ocean, as soil. This has had ‘limited, if any effect’, says Japan’s become a high government official and the first head of he desperately tried to cool the reactor cores before they Nuclear Regulation Authority, which is advising TEPCO Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency. melted through their containments and exploded. At the to write off its high-tech failure and get back to pumping Japan bought its first nuclear reactor from the UK same time, for fear of alarming the public, the Japanese out the water. in 1966, but by the 1970s it was buying light water government was refusing to distribute stable iodine In 2017, the Japan Institute for Economic Research reactors from GE. These were turnkey plants, designed tablets, which block radiation from being absorbed by estimated that the cost of cleaning up the plant and in the United States and assembled in Japan. The first thyroid glands. compensating people for their lost homes and livelihood of these was TEPCO’s Unit No. 1 at Fukushima, which Naoto Kan was forced to resign in August 2011. His could reach US$628 billion. Today, the cost is ticking began operating in 1971. TEPCO’s president at the time government had made too many mistakes in handling close to a trillion dollars, about one-fifth of Japan’s entire came from Fukushima. Knowledgeable about the risks the disaster. Before leaving office, he tried to pre-empt economy, making this the most expensive industrial involved in building reactors in this seismically unstable Japan’s nuclear village by shutting down the country’s accident in history. part of the world, he called his purchase of nuclear

15 technology ‘a deal with the devil’. All of Japan’s nuclear Yakuza, the mafia. The mob in Japan, like the mob in power plants would be built in similar places—coastal New York or Naples, is capable of doing good work, but areas, undeveloped and poor, despite Japan’s booming its labour record—even excluding bribes, coercion and postwar economy. kickbacks—is spotty. It skims profits by subcontracting Nuclear power demands a nuclear state: a top-down, seven layers down. It outsources to vulnerable people secretive hierarchy staffed by technocrats willing to who don’t speak Japanese, and it operates with vaunt a dangerous technology over the public interest. minimum regard for worker safety. The technocrats hide information from the public and Even TEPCO’s direct employees have suffered even from the governmental bodies meant to regulate from lax monitoring. In 2011, workers laboured for them. As soon as Japan flipped the switch on its nuclear weeks with no radiation detectors. When detectors reactors, they began suffering the radioactive leaks were issued to shift bosses, the bosses reported the and explosions that have plagued the industry from its same exposure for everyone. This ignores the fact that inception. TEPCO may be no worse than anyone else radioactive contamination is not evenly distributed. in the business, but the company’s forged documents, Near Fukushima’s reactors, one step in the wrong cover-ups and lies about nuclear accidents are exposed direction will produce readings that spike to lethal with surprising frequency. levels. The plant’s vents and smokestacks are known to Large amounts of disinformation and propaganda be particularly hot. The smokestack at reactor No. 1, a surround nuclear energy. The industry mounts a 120-metre chimney that workers are desperately trying formidable PR machine devoted to muddying the to remove before it collapses, is radiating a dose of 2 Sv issue. Nuclear energy is safe and clean, it says. Nuclear per hour. accidents are infrequent and emit small amounts In 2011, the rules on radiation levels were changed of radiation which may actually be good for you. so that schoolchildren could be exposed to the same This theory, called hormesis, posits that low levels of level of radiation as adults working in nuclear power radiation make you more fecund or long-lived. Natural plants. Anyone objecting to this twenty-fold increase, levels of background radiation vary by more than a from 1 to 20 millisieverts per year, is criticised for thousand-fold, and some people do, indeed, seek out succumbing to ‘harmful rumours’. Dissent against the radioactive waters of Ramsar or Kerala as natural Baba Tamotsu official policy is treated as a form of economic sabotage, fountains of youth. Unfortunately, the evidence confirms since talk about radiation depresses the sale of food what scientists have known ever since Nikola Tesla (Nuclear power plants often shut down during heat and other items from Fukushima and reduces tourism. burned his fingers with X-rays in 1896. No amount of waves, when rivers and lakes become too hot to cool Children are mocked for wearing protective face masks. radiation is good for you, and the greater the exposure, them.) This water is also radioactive—at low levels we Refugees from Fukushima are scorned in other parts the worse the effects. are told—but every operating reactor is a source of of Japan, and the Asahi Shimbun reports ‘widespread In a paper published in 2012, Anders Møller, at the contamination. Hundreds of thousands of people are bullying and stigmatization of evacuees’. It also describes French National Centre for Scientific Research, and still displaced from their homes as a result of nuclear the government ‘enforc[ing] an unspoken understanding Timothy Mousseau, at the University of South Carolina, disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Adding to this that those who resist discrimination by the state (by reviewed the scientific literature on hormesis. Instead human toll are premature deaths and rising cancer rates. evacuating, for example) should be punished’. Women of improving your health, low-level radiation ‘increased The storage of nuclear waste in spent fuel pools and from Fukushima are shunned as marriage partners, mutation rates, impaired immune function, increased toxic dumps is another energy-intensive suck on global for fear that their exposure to radiation will lead to incidence of disease, and increased mortality’. Mousseau resources. When one includes environmental costs, genetic mutations, and a new kind of Fukushima divorce is visiting Kerala, Bikini, Chernobyl, Fukushima government subsidies and other externalities, nuclear has emerged, men returning to the area in far greater and other hot spots to collect more data. Already a technology, far from being green, is black all the way numbers than their wives, who insist on keeping their leading researcher on the ecology and evolutionary down to its origins as a weapon of mass destruction. children as far away as possible. consequences of nuclear contamination, he expects this Nuclear research is financed by dirty money— research to flesh out in greater detail what we already weapons manufacturers and totalitarian states intent s the Fukushima reactors torched themselves know. Except for one radioactive-resistant bacterium, on stockpiling plutonium and building bombs—but it into a mess of molten steel and concrete, Deinococcus radiodurans, which is nicknamed Conan is also financed by so-called smart money. Bill Gates at burning at over 1,200 degrees Celsius, they the Bacterium and listed in the Guinness Book of World Microsoft, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, Peter Thiel at Facebook Amelted through their containment vessels, fractured the Records as the world’s toughest organism, radiation is a and dozens of other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have concrete pads below, and came to rest perhaps in the mutagen and killer of living organisms. invested in nuclear energy. They are tinkering with rivers of groundwater that flow from the alluvial terrace So why is nuclear energy currently being promoted reactor designs from the 1950s, using thorium instead of above Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean. In the official as part of the Green New Deal? Air pollution, much of uranium, for example, and rebranding these reactors as version of the story, the reactors were not destroyed by it produced by coal-burning power plants, kills about fourth generation-new-improved models. Other bright the earthquake. They were destroyed by the tsunami that 7 million people a year, including more than 1 million ideas include replacing big nuclear power plants with arrived forty-one minutes later to knock out the cooling in China and 60,000 in Europe. The yearly cost for lots of little ones scattered throughout the countryside. pumps and backup generators. Eyewitness accounts premature deaths and health care is in the trillions of Imagine nuclear submarines beached in Iowa. describe something different: reactors that were a mess dollars. Given these stark statistics, compounded by Unfortunately, even if these reactors could be shown to of broken pipes and gushing water before the tsunami global warming, rising sea levels and massive migrations work safely, none of them eliminates the problems of arrived, and radiation levels outside the plant that had in the face of famine and war, every country in the radioactive waste and accidental emissions. begun climbing to dangerous levels, again before the world—save for the United States, which in 2017 wave hit. began withdrawing from environmental treaties—has apan’s public works project in Fukushima—building Why the reactors exploded and how much radiation committed itself to finding less toxic ways to produce sea walls, ice walls, incinerators and dumps—is was released are also disputed. The official version says electricity. Nuclear power was an ageing technology described as recycling or restoring or cleaning up the lack of cooling water in the reactors produced clouds slipping into senescence, with no new nuclear power J the area, but there is no such thing when dealing with of hydrogen gas that blew out the roofs and walls at plants being built in the United States since the 1970s, atomic radiation. Six million tons of dirt have been reactors Nos. 1, 2 and 3, as well as the spent fuel pool on when the industry seized the opportunity to rebrand stuffed into vinyl bags and deposited in Fukushima’s the roof of reactor No. 4. The photographic evidence and itself as ‘green energy’. Aided by PR sleight of hand, former rice paddies. (This is more than six times larger intense pulses of radioactivity tell a different story. It was the zombie sprang back to life and re-emerged not as than the Great Pyramid of Giza.) The soil will remain not just hydrogen gas that exploded, but fissile material a producer of radioactive fallout, but as a carbon-free contaminated for thousands or even millions of years. from the nuclear reactors themselves. The microparticles energy source, jostling centre stage for a photo op The government says that Fukushima’s toxic dumps that one finds scattered around Japan are a key part of alongside wind and solar. will give way to a permanent solution by 2045, but this this story. They are bits of steel from the reactor cores, Nuclear energy is not green. The mining and date keeps slipping as TEPCO announces one delay pieces of zirconium cladding and nuclear fuel from deep enrichment of uranium are a toxic process requiring after another. In the meantime, as soil and ash from inside Fukushima Daiichi. Under a microscope, one can large amounts of fuel and energy. To reduce emissions Fukushima get spread around the country, identifying see that some of these particles are perfectly spherical. and contain the inevitable mishaps and meltdowns, the health effects of the disaster becomes increasingly Shaped like planets in outer space, they are the product nuclear reactors are enveloped in concrete, and concrete difficult. Instead of a control population and an affected of uranium atoms split in half and dusted like death stars manufacturing is a big emitter of carbon dioxide. population, the entire country is affected. over the shores of Japan. Nuclear power plants rank among the world’s greatest Only one out of every ten Fukushima workers is No one knows how much radioactivity was released thermal polluters. They require huge amounts of water employed directly by TEPCO. The rest are nuclear at Fukushima. Most of the plant’s dosimeters were swept to cool their cores, and the outflow from this process gypsies, contract employees recruited from Japan’s away in the flood or knocked offline. Readings from US has raised local water temperatures by many degrees. underclass. The biggest labour contractor in Japan is the military planes flying overhead and ships sailing offshore

16 differed dramatically from those reported by TEPCO. aba Tamotsu was the mayor of Namie, a city of The same is true for spot readings of air and soil samples 20,000 people located eight kilometres north of around the plant. Most of what we know about nuclear Fukushima, when the town was hit by the triple disasters at Chernobyl, Fukushima and elsewhere comes Bdisaster of 2011. He witnessed the earthquake and from modelling what is known as the source term. This is tsunami first hand, but it was from watching Fukushima the amount of fuel in a reactor, and one has to examine Daiichi explode on TV that he learned he had to a reactor’s core to guess how much of its source term abandon Namie. He had no instructions from Tokyo, exploded. no aid or transport. Baba and hundreds of his fellow Nine years after the disaster, no one has been able citizens loaded themselves onto school buses and fled to examine the reactor cores at Fukushima, and no one to the northwest—directly downwind of Fukushima’s even knows where they are located. The scant evidence radioactive plume. reported so far is troubling. The cores are not melted ‘I feel pain in my heart but also rage over the poor into solid lumps of uranium mixed with molten concrete actions of the government,’ Baba told researchers from and steel. Instead, they are scattered in a mess of hot the University of California at Los Angeles, who visited particles and other debris. After Chernobyl exploded him soon after his return to Namie in 2017. ‘It’s not nice in 1986, the reactor was entombed in a concrete language but I still think it was an act of murder. What sarcophagus. Designed to last a hundred years, it lasted were they thinking when it came to the people’s dignity thirty, before a new US$2 billion shield was installed in and lives? I doubt that they even thought about our 2018. TEPCO rejects all talk of building a concrete tomb existence.’ over Fukushima. It plans instead to remove the nuclear Baba and his band of atomic refugees settled into debris and dump it off site, but so far, as the robots get gymnasiums and other temporary shelters as the fried on their suicide missions and radiation continues radioactive cloud kept forcing them westward. Finally, leaking into the surrounding air and water, every step in they came to rest in prefab metal shelters measured by this process has failed. the size of how many tatami sleeping mats they held. Nuclear energy began its life in secret as a weapon In Baba’s case it was four mats. He lived here for six of war. Wilfred Burchett, the first reporter to visit years, until the government declared parts of Namie Hiroshima after the attack, wrote that people were Tomoko and Takemori Kobayashi open for resettlement. In April 2017, before his death dying from an ‘atomic plague’. The existence of radiation the following year, Baba led a handful of older people sickness was denied by the US government, which For the past twenty years, Anders Møller and back to their ruined city, where they found palm civets moved to expel Burchett from Japan and throw a tight Timothy Mousseau have led research teams studying the and monkeys nesting in the abandoned houses and wild net of censorship around Hiroshima. If it were not only birds and other animal populations around Chernobyl boars roaming the streets. blast and heat, but also an ‘atomic plague’ that killed and now around Fukushima. ‘Every rock we turn over ‘I used to be an advocate of nuclear power. I regret people, the US feared that its new bomb would be we find damage,’ says Mousseau. The fruit trees at it deeply,’ Baba told the UCLA researchers. He choked labelled as a chemical weapon, which had been banned Chernobyl stopped seeding after 1986. The pine trees up and then broke into tears during the interview. He after the gas attacks of World War I. are bushes, ravaged by mutations. Mousseau and Møller, confessed to failing the people of Japan because he, It was not until five years after the bombing of in over a hundred published papers, have documented like other government officials, had believed in the Hiroshima that the US began studying the medical that prolonged exposure to low-level radiation increases ‘safety myth’ of Japan’s nuclear superiority. The idea effects of atomic radiation. It created the Atomic Bomb genetic mutations in animal populations and produces that Fukushima was safe for resettlement was another Casualty Commission (ABCC), a ghoulish enterprise developmental abnormalities, including albinism, small myth. A mere 1–2 per cent of Namie’s former citizens devoted to collecting the corpses of dead hibakusha brain size, tumours, cataracts, lowered sperm count, followed Baba back to their ruined city. Everyone (‘bomb-affected people’), estimating their proximity reduced fertility, and even behavioural abnormalities else would now be labelled a ‘voluntary evacuee’ and to the nuclear blast and computing dose rates for the that affect bird calls and mating rituals. bumped from the rolls. effects of atomic radiation. The ABCC had a ‘no aid’ The effects on humans are no more benign. In This was a ‘human-made disaster’, Baba said, policy that prevented it from offering medical care. Its northern Ukraine and Belarus, neural tube birth defects agreeing with the official governmental report on work was limited to computing how much radiation are six times higher than the European norm. There is a Fukushima. TEPCO had been warned that its seawall was required for cell death, cancer, sterility and spike in the number of thyroid cancers and babies born was inadequate. Company engineers were planning to other debilitating effects. These calculations underlie with small brains or no brains at all. enlarge the wall when they were stopped as a cost-saving today’s recommendations for limiting radiation ‘The layers of toxicity and their interactions are measure. ‘We know … that it was possible for TEPCO exposure. Originally measured in REMs, which stands too complex to sort out,’ Mousseau says. ‘Researchers to anticipate a giant tsunami,’ Baba said. ‘Seismologists for ‘Roentgen equivalent man’, these dose rates are throw up their hands in despair.’ He reports: ‘UN brought in by TEPCO had already warned them of calibrated for the average adult male. The ABCC missed agents work to minimize the story of a public health such a possibility in 2008 or 2009 … You can’t call this the first five, most lethal years of contamination. It disaster. They serve their client states, and these an example of expecting the unexpected, since a giant began monitoring the incidence of cancer only in are the major nuclear powers. In the 1990s these tsunami had in fact been anticipated. 1988. It undercounted the death toll and miscalculated countries were facing big lawsuits from the people ‘The piping of the cooling system had already people’s position in relation to the blast, but apart from harmed during the development and testing of nuclear been cracked and damaged by the earthquake before these limitations, two facts about radiation sickness are weapons.’ So everything was done to lowball the the tsunami hit,’ Baba said. ‘If so, the reactors would generally accepted by experts in the field. There is no number of deaths and malignant health effects from have been heating up even before the tsunami arrived, threshold below which nuclear radiation is safe, and nuclear disasters. because cooling water had not been getting to the exposure to low doses can kill you as effectively as high ‘Forty-five million curies of radioactive iodine reactor core through the damaged pipes … This was doses, although at a slower rate. were released at Chernobyl,’ Mousseau says. ‘Twenty definitely human error, there is no doubt about it.’ The ABCC, under a different name, is still in billion curies of radioactive iodine were released from Baba had been back in Namie for three months when business studying the survivors of nuclear fallout. It testing nuclear weapons by the US and Soviet Union he was interviewed. ‘I don’t have any neighbours, so I continues to tally the effects of radiation in producing alone. Global fallout spread mostly in the northern have no one to talk to,’ he told the UCLA researchers. cancers, cardiovascular and thyroid diseases, and other hemisphere. In the same decades rates of cancers, mainly ‘I can’t assign monetary value to what we’ve lost, but genetic effects that are passed from one generation to childhood cancers, once a medical rarity, increased I never thought that I would end up having such a the next. Radiation affects women and children more in the northern hemisphere. So too did birth defects, miserable life.’ than men. Suppressed fertility and birth defects are fertility problems, and thyroid, and paediatric cancers, TEPCO offered to pay Baba 100,000 yen (less than other legacies. The US government denied the existence which continue to rise. Male sperm counts since 1945 US$1,000) for his ‘mental anguish’. The sum was based on of radiation sickness and tried for years to limit have dropped in half.’ payouts for auto injury claims. ‘I was furious, wondering reporting on it. A strict censorship regime, preventing The most alarming medical news from Fukushima what the hell they were talking about,’ he said. any discussion of the bomb and its effects, was slapped concerns the incidence of thyroid cancer in children. A His eyes filled with tears again when he was asked on Japan, and the legacy of this regime persists today. rare disease with a normal incidence of one in a million, to describe what it was like to return home after living Settlers began returning to Hiroshima within a year of in Fukushima prefecture its rate has skyrocketed to one for six years in a refugee camp. ‘There used be about the city being bombed. Chernobyl and Fukushima will in 2,000. Critics dismiss this as a ‘screening effect’ and six hundred houses and buildings along the ocean, but not be so lucky. Soon after it was attacked, a typhoon claim the cancer surgery on close to 300 children was they were all swept away by the tsunami. When I saw scrubbed Hiroshima of radioactive particles. The nuclear unnecessary. ‘This is not true,’ says Dr Shinichi Suzuki, the aftermath, I knew something incredibly awful had isotopes at Fukushima are more long-lived, and the at the Fukushima Medical University and former head happened. Actually, I couldn’t even look at the ocean summer typhoons have the opposite effect, bringing of the survey team. ‘The cancers that have been treated for about a year and a half after the tsunami. I was just loads of contaminated soil down from the mountains up to now are too serious and aggressive to explain away so scared.’ He also avoided looking at workers from and redepositing it along the coast. with arguments like the “screening effect”. ’ TEPCO. The sight of them made him too angry.

17 ight kilometres north of Namie, in Odaka, an a small gift shop. This samurai territory is known for its ‘The official government centres have lots or rules,’ area known for its samurai forts and temples, horses, and she also owns a stable for rescued animals. Kobayashi says. ‘One family can bring one thing, usually Mrs Tomoko Kobayashi runs a ryokan, a country Like other livestock in the exclusion zone, her horses what they are growing as a crop. But we measure food Einn that was inherited from her grandmother and her have been marked with a white brand, to keep people from supermarkets. We measure berries and mushrooms mother. Mrs Kobayashi and her husband, Takenori, from eating the meat. foraged from the mountains. We measure everything.’ who had been living in an eight-tatami-mat shelter, Outside the Kobayashis’ refurbished inn, the rest He has found fish and reindeer meat imported from were among the first people to move back to Odaka of Odaka suffers from nine years of neglect. The train Finland that is still highly contaminated by Chernobyl when the area was reopened to settlement in July 2016. station is surrounded by hundreds of bicycles rusted into fallout. ‘We have a very stringent limit for contamination They gutted the interior of their ryokan, washed down place, and many shops are closed and abandoned. But here in Japan,’ he says. ‘This is set at 100 becquerels per everything reusable, planted flowers along the road the town also shows signs of coming back to life, with a kilogram, which is far lower than what is allowed in between their hotel and the train station and declared new social centre for residents, a silk-weaving shop and Europe.’ Kobayashi has measured European foodstuffs Odaka, with its horse farms and long tradition of silk a shopfront incubator for new businesses. On rotating with 500 or 600 becquerels per kilogram. If Europe weaving and samurai festivals, open for business. days of the week, chefs cook meals in noodle shops and after Chernobyl had not raised its allowable levels of Not believing anything they were told by the restaurants that are starting to reopen, with long lines contamination, the continent would produce very little government about radiation levels in the area and in front of them and people arriving early, before the edible food. ongoing emissions from the power plant, they took food runs out. The town has even attracted an artist and This is not to say that Japan has been spared from one more important step. With money raised by a TV magazine publisher, who landed here after walking the its own high levels of contamination. ‘I bought a telethon and equipment donated from Germany, they entire Tohoku coastline and deciding that this was the mushroom from the Aizu farmer’s market that measured opened their own radiation testing lab. They organised best place to settle. 3,000 becquerels per kilogram,’ Kobayashi says. He was hundreds of volunteers to canvass the surrounding area, It is sumo season while I am visiting the Kobayashis, also surprised to find that mushroom contamination measuring and mapping its radiation. They collected the final round of the year-long tournament. After eating increased in 2015. Perhaps due to heavy rains or information from around the world on what crops his meals, Mr Kobayashi slips into a neighbouring room unannounced releases from the Fukushima power plant, to grow in nuclear exclusion zones. And they began to watch the non-stop coverage of large men slapping it rose to 11,000 becquerels per kilogram, making regular visits to Chernobyl to learn from their their thighs and tossing each other out of Shinto-blessed ‘This has to make you wonder if the government colleagues with thirty more years of experience of how arenas. He knows all the athletes and team songs and rice- is making a mistake allowing people to resettle in to live in irradiated landscapes. ‘You measure everything scattering rituals, which come at cherry blossom time and contaminated areas,’ says Hideki Jinno, the head of an and keep measuring,’ says Mr Kobayashi, a retired mark the onset of spring. This is Mr K’s final break before NGO in southern Japan, who is visiting the Kobayashis. labour negotiator. ‘That’s the most important lesson we the summer rush of activity starts in earnest. Jinno reports that his group of concerned citizens used have learned from Chernobyl.’ On the day that I am invited to visit him at his to donate money and travel yearly to help people in Walking into the Kobayashis’ inn is like entering a laboratory, we drive a few kilometres north from Chernobyl, before they realised they should do the space capsule in orbit. You kick off your shoes at the Odaka to Minamisoma, a coastal city of 70,000 people same thing for the victims of Fukushima. He and the front door, glide over a varnished wooden floor and that became briefly famous when the mayor went Kobayashis are planning their next trip to Chernobyl, slide open a panelled door that leads into the big room on YouTube in March 2011 to say that the Japanese which they have already visited several times. What where the Kobayashis and their guests eat their meals. government had abandoned him and his fellow citizens, lessons have they learned about how to live in irradiated In the centre of the room is a long table for dining and sending no food or water or other desperately needed landscapes? It is the mushrooms and berries and wild discussions. At one end is a TV screen and media centre. aid. We drive through a suburban sprawl of low-rise animals and foods foraged from the mountains that carry At the other end is an open kitchen with a big stove buildings before parking in front of what could be a the most lethal loads of contamination, and no one should covered in simmering pots. Wooden booths line the liquor store or dry cleaner, except for a sign over the eat these foods, or any food grown in contaminated areas, far side of the room. This is where the paying guest are door identifying this as the Todokedori Radiation without taking it to a lab to be tested. served their meals. Everyone else—a continually shifting Testing Center, which is named for the cheerful bird in Next to the map-lined room at Kobayashi’s lab is crew of volunteers, interns, family members and visitors its logo. a smaller room full of dosimeters, spectrometers and from various NGOs—eats the common meal, served We walk past buckets of contaminated soil that have other specialised gear for measuring radiation. One from a clay pot and bowls set in the middle of the table. been left on the front porch , waiting to be tested, and of these German-donated machines costs US$15,000. One of the wooden booths near the kitchen serves as walk into a large room that looks like a cross between This is where Kobayashi and his volunteers are about Mrs Kobayashi’s desk. This consists of a towering pile of a college classroom and a day-care centre. Three men to spend long hours looking at the summer crops and books and papers organised in geological strata. In other in open-necked polo shirts work at computers next other food people are hoping to eat. Testing everything, words, there is no organisation, save for Mrs K’s ability to a woman who has brought her child to play on trusting nothing, except for the readouts from radiation to reach into the Pleistocene and pull out exactly the the floor. Other people are tacking maps to the walls. detectors: is this what our future looks like? A day- document she is looking for. Beside sampling soil and food, Mr Kobayashi organises care centre full of radiation maps and equipment for The walls of Mrs Kobayashi’s inn are lined with teams of volunteers who walk the forests and fields of monitoring our contaminated Earth? ☐ photos showing the volunteers and interns who have Fukushima every six months, compiling surveys of come to scrub down the ryokan, cook the meals and radiological contamination and producing these maps do other work around town, as refugees and even a few that show low-dose areas in blue and contaminated Illustrations by Gianluca Costantini new settlers from elsewhere in Japan have begun moving areas in red. This work would normally be done by back to the area. Along with planting the flowers in front governmental agencies, but all the public radiation Thomas A. Bass, an investigative reporter who teaches of the train station, Mrs Kobayashi hands out pamphlets, testing centres in Fukushima have been closed. journalism at the State University of New York at Albany, books and even collections of poetry to inquiring ‘Immediately after 2011, we had eight centres like this is the author of seven books, including ‘The Spy Who visitors. She hosts guests for three meals a day and runs one,’ he says, ‘but now we are the only one left. Loved Us’ and ‘Censorship in Vietnam’

Colin Cotterill Yimericks

NOVEMBER 2015 VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1

Soth Polin The anarchist

Mario Del Pero Marginal countries Since our first issue, in November 2015, Mekong Review has been publishing Christina Firpo Stolen children some of the sharpest literary writing on and from Asia.

The international travel restrictions and lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic have had a devastating impact on our business. Thus, in this trying time, we are launching a Patreon campaign to keep us going.

If you are in a position to help, please visit patreon.com/mekongreview

18 CAMBODIA His history Prumsodun Ok

PHILIP COGGAN Khmer Reamker, where tep apsar—also denoted with An Illustrated History of Cambodia condensed meanings as neang tep suor srei—assist Sita in John Beaufoy Publishing: 2019 birth on Indra’s orders. Lastly, the inept notion that these tevoda could not be apsara because the former wear skirts and the latter or anyone who frequents the few English-language wear short pantaloons (kbin) reveals a lack of rootedness bookshops in Phnom Penh, Philip Coggan is in locality. A friend visiting Myanmar—our neighbours a familiar moniker in their limited Cambodia who share much custom and history—remarked that Fsections. The author ‘fell in love with Asia on his first visit the men would roll up their long longyis ‘into short kbin’ to Bali, and has been traveling and living in the region when they played soccer. They did not become different since’. His experiences working in the NGO sector and as beings due to their manner of dress, but merely assumed a freelance journalist inspired his fascination for his host an active role and dimensionality. Furthermore, there country, spurring him to produce titles such as Shiny are certain cases, such as at the temple-mountain Objects of Desire: A Novel of Cambodia and Spirit Worlds: of Bakheng, where the larger female ‘doorkeepers’ Cambodia, the Buddha and the Naga. His latest offering is mentioned by Coggan are dressed exactly the same as An Illustrated History of Cambodia. the dancing female figures carved directly above them. In an interview on Cambodia News English, the This might feel like frivolous nitpicking to some. author says, ‘I started writing out of a wish to share WikiCommons However, this disconnect embodies the legacy of what I’ve learned about Cambodia … It’s a book for violence in which colonial powers created rifts and the layman (and woman). I’ve aimed it to be readable, ruptures out of nothing, separating peoples and races not too detailed, but accurate and up to date.’ The the people in oral culture for centuries, Preah Thaong’s through ‘science’, carving vague and arbitrary borders to resulting 208-page work, full of illustrations, paintings, name can be translated as Sacred Gold. gain power and manipulate our people and resources. photographs and maps, printed on nice paper and Coggan’s limitations concerning Khmer, Sanskrit and The French did this by pitting the genius Khmer of organised into six sections, explores 10,000 years of Pali—and the culture and history associated with these Angkor against the degenerate Cambodgiennes in Cambodia’s history beginning with the Stone Age. As a languages—become apparent when he criticises the the fields (a 1928 National Geographic article, citing Cambodian, my experience of An Illustrated History of French for referring to Khmer ministers as ‘mandarins Cambodia connoisseur George Groslier, reifies this Cambodia was one of mixed feelings and questions. … under the misapprehension that Cambodian officials racism). Thai nationalists do it by pitting the ancient These complications begin on the very first page in could be compared to the professional bureaucracy Khom, a major source and foundation of their royal ‘Defining Cambodia’, where Coggan suggests that ‘the of the Vietnamese state they had just conquered’. This language, arts, customs and culture, against the kings of Angkor probably took their name’ from the statement is made without knowledge that ‘mandarin’ backwards Khamen of present-day Cambodia. Kamboja, an Indo-Iranian tribe considered ‘savages … is derived from the Sanskrit mantrī, the word Khmers Their words should live as a testament to history, but distant barbarians on the edges of the Indian world’. used and use in our court, out of the orbit of Sinicised what happens when they are resurfaced, brought back There is no evidence that ancient Khmers considered Vietnamese culture. This lack of understanding is to life and reused without analysis and criticality? What these peoples as the progenitors of our civilisation. attested further in a caption in which he writes: ‘Devatas, will readers unfamiliar with Khmer history or Cambodia In fact, the Khmer explanation for the Sanskrit minor goddesses who act as celestial door keepers. Their come to think and carry with them? More importantly, name Kamvujadeśa, or Kambujadeśa—as contemporary descendants, the tevodas, still serve the same function.’ what of the young, impressionable Khmers in Cambodia Kampuchea was inscribed by our ancestors—is kambu Devatā, the romanisation in Sanskrit IAST, and tevoda, and the diaspora, scrounging for every piece of knowledge (gold), ja (born), and deśa (land), together meaning ‘land the English romanisation according to the Khmer pertaining to their sense of home and identity? born of gold’. One quick search in Samdech Chuon Nath’s accent, is the same word and concept, spelled only one Ironically, Coggan’s tendency to highlight oddities dictionary, available online in Khmer, will reveal this. way in Khmer (ទេវ㾶). and trivia—why is it important to know that King This etymology is significant as it is synonymous These minor misinterpretations reveal an immense Harsvarman III was crowned ‘the same year that with the Suvarnabhumi of Indian myth, legend and blind spot in Coggan’s lens and understanding, which William the Conqueror invaded England’?—hearkens history. Famed for its riches, the destination of many looks at and upon Cambodia solely through non-Khmer back in tone to the colonial travel writings and ancient Indian merchants and bodhisattva of lore, scholars and texts. If unchecked and unbalanced, this adventure films produced during early European and Suvarnabhumi was in fact mentioned in Khmer can propagate and canonise misinformation as truth, American encounters with Cambodia. These curiosities, epigraphy, describing King Isanavarman I in the seventh perpetuating colonialist attitudes and imperialist perhaps drawn forth to attempt a popular, entertaining century CE as the ‘King of Kings, who rules over narratives of Cambodia as fractured, unwholesome and accessibility, sometimes appear cherry-picked, creating a [Suvarnabhumi] until the sea, which is the border, while broken. sense of superficiality and exotica. the kings in the neighbouring states honour his order to For example, Khmer people often call the heavenly What is the difference in devotion, depth and their heads’. beauties carved at Angkor Wat tevoda, apsara or tep distance between love and enthusiasm? What is the Now, the concept of Suvarnabhumi is not without apsar, the last two names referring to their roles as responsibility of writers, of producers of culture, whose its modern nationalist and political dilemmas. Some celestial dancers. There are some non-native scholars work can be galvanised as truth, myth, guide and weapon scholars therefore urge reading the inscription with and lay folk, however, perhaps citing Sappho Marchal’s in the present and future? How can we be approachable caution, stating that the king merely meant the ‘golden Khmer Costumes and Ornaments, who condescendingly and accessible while being sharp and precise, our mud lands’ of his domain. This, however, is academic and scoff at the latter identifications as Khmer ignorance, as rich and beautiful as our lotus blossom rising towards institutional neurosis that leaves no room for the art, asserting they can only be tevoda due to their clarity, illumination and enlightenment? poetry and genius of ancient composers and scribes, iconography, regalia and size. An Illustrated History of Cambodia, with its reliance who could and would have possessed the skill and desire This is contrary to the fact that tevoda denotes on others’ work and its author’s lack of deep connection to use layered, multiple meanings in their words. both male and female deities in Khmer culture, and is and expertise, is historiography as usual. Ignoring the King Isanavarman I rules over the golden lands, sometimes interchangeable with deva (god) in Khmer ever present and ever telling embodiments of reality the precious earth of Suvarnabhumi. This nation literature. Furthermore, it ignores the fact that heaven such as food, dance, language and literature—culling is also known as Kambujadeśa. The sage Kambu and earth mirror each other in the Khmer conception; a linear political drama solely from written English Svayambhuva—‘Kambu the Spontaneously Born’, or the dancing ladies of the human palace, who serve the sources—it fails to capture the culture, spirit, ethos more directly, ‘Spontaneously Born Gold’—from whom king, are reflections of the dancing servants of the gods and narratives of the people and land it attempts to Kambujadeśa takes its name, is tied to Preah Thaong, in heaven. Technically, both can be described using the circumscribe, define and contain. ☐ another mythical ancestor. Although synonymous with Old Khmer phrase knum vrah rapam, which can mean the Brahmin Kaundinya who marries the naga princess ‘slaves of the sacred dance’ or ‘dancer-slaves of the gods’. Prumsodun Ok is founding artistic director of the dance Soma, whose story has survived and evolved among Further unity of being and identity lies in the Middle company Prumsodun Ok & NATYARASA

19 MALAYSIA Coalition division Carl Vadivella Belle

MEREDITH L. WEISS AND picture, in September 2016 Shafie Apdal, former UMNO concerns revolve around preservation of traditional FAISAL S. HAZIS (EDITORS) deputy president, formed Warisan, which allied with cultural values, guarantees of individual rights and the Towards a New Malaysia? PH. It was agreed that in the event of a PH victory, the advancement of an inclusive democratic state. In 2018 The 2018 Election and Its Aftermath nonagenarian Mahathir would become prime minister an estimated 93 per cent of Chinese supported PH. NUS Press: 2020 and, after a specified period, would hand over the Ananthar Raman Govindasamy provides an leadership to his former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim. This overview of voting patterns of the Indian community. FRANCIS E. HUTCHINSON AND arrangement was based on the twin assumptions that He outlines the rise of the Hindu Rights Action Force LEE HWOK AUN (EDITORS) Anwar (with whom Mahathir had reconciled) would be in 2007 but underplays its influence in turning Indians Defeat of Barisan Nasional: Missed Signs or Late Surge? freed from jail and receive a royal pardon. against BN in the catalytic 2008 election. While Najib ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute: 2019 The coalition won the 2018 election. However, within identified Indian concerns as a BN priority, the measures eighteen months PH had unravelled. From the outset introduced did not reach their intended targets. Indian n 9 May 2018 Malaysia elected a new PH found it impossible to fulfil the perhaps unrealistic concerns included lack of economic opportunities, government, the Pakatan Harapan (PH, expectations its victory had aroused. Promised corruption and the country’s leadership. An estimated Coalition of Hope), defeating the ruling economic reforms were stymied by the parlous financial 82 per cent of the Indian electorate voted for PH. Ocoalition, the United Malays National Organisation situation bequeathed by the defeated BN government. Chapters devoted to state issues focus on five key (UMNO) dominated by the Barisan Nasional (BN) The overall economy remained sluggish, wages stagnated states: Sarawak, Sabah, Kelantan, Johor and Selangor. coalition, which together with its predecessor, the and the value of the ringgit declined. Legal reform The East Malaysian states, Sabah and Sarawak, have long Alliance coalition, had ruled Malaysia since independence stalled, and repressive legislation remained on the statute been regarded as BN ‘fixed deposit’ states, and indeed in 1957. PH secured 48 per cent of the popular vote and books. In the meantime, UMNO and PAS, playing upon following the 2013 election it was representation from 118 of the 222 parliamentary seats, BN 34 per cent and populist fears that both the Malay ‘race’ and the sanctity these states that allowed BN to retain power. In both the seventy-nine seats, Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) 17 per of Islam were endangered by a putatively Chinese- devolution of state powers created resentment against cent and eighteen seats and Warisan 2 per cent and eight dominated government, mobilised Malay support. the central administration. In Sarawak voters swung to seats. Voter turnout totalled 82 per cent of the electorate, In the end tensions between the Anwar and Azmin PH, and in Sabah Warisan proved pivotal. the second highest in Malaysian history. Ali factions of PKR, brought to a head by the issue of Kelantan, a ‘Malay belt’ state, has traditionally been Malaysia is a complex nation, both ethnically and leadership succession, led to talks between the Azmin far more religiously conservative than the remainder of regionally diverse. The population consists of Malays faction and UMNO, the defection of key members of Malaysia. Despite allegations, later substantiated, of PAS (55 per cent), Chinese (23 per cent), Indians (7 per PPBM, the resignation of Mahathir and the installation receiving considerable sums of money from UMNO, cent) and others (15 per cent). In regional terms, the of Muhyiddin Yassin as prime minister. PAS won the majority of the parliamentary seats and so-called Malay belt states on the east and northwest of While the 2018 election results have been widely swept the state legislature. the peninsula tend to be considerably more conservative interpreted as a defeat of a deeply corrupt government Johor, long regarded as a BN stronghold, and despite than the west coast and southern states. The East centred upon the person of Najib, both books make clear the open intervention of the royal house, was won Malaysian states, Sabah and Sarawak, less developed that this narrative has obscured other structural and by PH. Dominant issues included Najib’s increasing than those of West Malaysia, often vote on local rather social factors. unpopularity, FELDA mismanagement and the than national issues. Although the administration had delivered a robust appointment of local politician Muhyidden Yassin as Towards a New Malaysia? and Defeat of Barisan economy, economic discontent was a primary factor chairman of Johor PH. In Selangor PH built upon the Nasional examine the Malaysian election from a range in BN’s defeat. This was fuelled by rising costs and popular and efficient PH state government. of perspectives, covering much common ground but the imposition of a 6 per cent goods-and-services tax. Since the racial riots of May 1969 and the subsequent differing in certain key aspects. Both books trace Other issues included the 1MDB scandal and concern imposition of a Malay political and cultural agenda, the development of PH, analyse patterns of voter about the scale of projected Chinese investment. performative Islam has largely displaced adat (or behaviour, election issues and campaign strategies. East Malaysians were perturbed by issues affecting traditional Malay custom) as the defining characteristic Commentaries are supported by an impressive array devolution of state powers and the development gaps of ‘Malayness’ and is increasingly deployed as an of tables, charts and graphs. However, both overlook between Bornean states and those of the peninsula. instrument of inter- and intra-ethnic control. Towards topics of importance. Neither work discusses voting a New Malaysia? traces the rise of political Islam in patterns among the Orang Asli (native people), and he May 2018 election revealed deep divisions Malaysia and its increasingly assertive and combative Towards a New Malaysia? omits any dedicated analysis within the Malay electorate, both between the trajectory and analyses the deeper issues behind the of the Indian electorate. Defeat of Barisan Nasional so-called ‘Malay belt’ states and the remainder election of the PH government. inexplicably neglects any detailed exploration of the Tof the peninsula, where PH won a number of Malay Despite earlier noted omissions, these books, increasingly central role of political Islam. And neither majority seats. However, PH’s victory was on the back taken together, provide a detailed account of the book mentions developments on the night of the of a minority Malay vote. Ironically, the first past the events that led to the defeat of a long-installed and election, namely the crucial reassurances of public order post system of voting, often used to UMNO’s advantage, increasingly corrupt and authoritarian regime. As such, issued by key security personnel once it became obvious tended to favour PH candidates. they document an important milestone in Malaysia’s that PH had prevailed (thus ensuring that there would Serina Rahman’s study of rural Malays, who history. But both also reveal that, despite sixty years be no repetition of the racial violence of 1969), or the comprise 30 per cent of the total electorate, revealed that of nation building, Malaysia remains fragmented civilian blockade that prevented the flight into exile of voters strongly tended to support ‘those who maintained by a myriad of particularistic ethnic and religious defeated Najib Abdul Razak and his wife Rosmah. the ethnocentric discourse of Malay rights, Islamic impulses. In this context it is apposite to refer to the Both books describe the initial formation of the PH supremacy, and the longevity of royal houses’. In their cautionary observations of Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid coalition in September 2015, consisting of the rather examination of urban Malays, Adib Zalkapli and Wan and Che Hamdan Che Mohd Razali, who warned that uneasy alliance of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR, People’s Saiful Wan Jan’s examination of urban Malays shows that a single election would not erase years of inculcated Justice Party), the Democratic Action Party (DAP), and the Islamic/Malay agenda remained the central priority scaremongering, and that the 2018 election had thrown Amanah Negara (National Trust Party, or Amanah), in their worldview. Their continued traditional respect into sharp relief a contested national identity, namely made up of ‘progressives’ who in June 2015 splintered for political leaders meant that UMNO corruption between advocates of an ‘inclusive civic nation’ and from an increasingly intransigent PAS. These parties were and graft were not major issues. However, many were proponents of a narrow ‘ethnocracy driven by identity later joined by a new Malay-based political party, Parti worried by the rising cost of living, and members of the politics’. The fall of the PH government has resulted, in Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM, United Indigenous Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) land the short term at least, in the triumph of the latter. ☐ Party), largely composed of erstwhile members of schemes were disinclined to vote for UMNO. UMNO disaffected by the 1MDB scandal, and headed Ngu Ik Tien and Lee Hwok’s examination of Carl Vadivella Belle is the author of ‘Tragic Orphans: by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad Chinese voters reveals an electorate that since 2008 has Indians in Malaysia’ and ‘Thaipusam in Malaysia: A (1981–2003). To complicate the already complex become increasingly disillusioned with BN. Chinese Hindu Festival in the Tamil Diaspora’

20 SINGAPORE This working life Simon Vincent

GERARD SASGES AND NG SHI WEN elaborating on, the ethnic tensions in work and Hard at Work: Life in Singapore economic relations in Singapore. In this regard, Hard at NUS Press: 2019 Work fills a vacuum in the country’s inequality debate that has been reignited in the last few years. Notably, the writer of the foreword is Teo You Yenn, t first, the announcement sounded like music the author of This Is What Inequality Looks Like. In her to my ears. After months of consternation over much lauded book, Teo chose not to dwell on race, seeing my retired father stepping out of the even though she acknowledged later that her publishers Away of speeding e-scooters and vexation over reading ‘strong-armed’ her into writing that Malays were over- mounting reports of collisions with pedestrians, I was represented in her field work. relieved to hear that the government would be banning It is not hard, though, to point out social and personal mobility devices (PMDs) from footpaths. political structures that make race an undeniable factor Strangely, though, the ban came into effect overnight in class relations. Social welfare and aid, for instance, are on 5 November 2019, despite several prior occasions in channelled through racially delineated self-help groups which officeholders insisted on the necessity of PMDs as in Singapore. part of ‘active mobility’ plans. The interviewees of Hard at Work candidly point to The announcement then provoked another sound: such structures. Take the police officer who references the collective anguish of food delivery drivers working this rarely discussed, but widely known and felt issue: for Deliveroo, GrabFood and Foodpanda, who had come Ng Shi Wen Malays are absent from certain positions of national to rely on these devices for their livelihoods and who security. ‘Officially it wouldn’t be called discrimination, number around 7,000. but they rather use the broad term of policy,’ he says, In just a week, the number of drivers at one MP’s ‘they’ being a seemingly amorphous term for the police meet-the-people session swelled from thirty to 300, as about the relentless need to compete, survive and, if force or the powers that be. scenes of drivers urging that the ban be revoked went possible, thrive. A motorcycle mechanic who is his own The government hesitates in assigning Malays to viral online. ‘We are human, not dog ah eh. We got boss, for instance, works twelve-hour shifts, taking a high-ranking positions of national security, especially in mouths to feed, man,’ one driver said. half-day off only on Sundays. the army, the navy and the air force, because of the risk While the drivers had not assembled at Hong ‘You see ah, once got family, you must think what to ascribed to Singapore’s proximity to Muslim-majority Lim Park, the one space allocated by the state for eat! Haha! Must be responsible. Survive lah. That’s why countries. Meaning that Malays might hold allegiances demonstrations, it was clear that what was unfolding at ah, work, work, work every time, until Sunday also I still to their religion above the nation. void decks and community centres was indeed a protest. open shop. Until I go for holiday only one time a year,’ In her foreword, Teo writes that ordinary people, With that, whatever thoughts I had of PMD drivers he says. unlike academics, have no qualms in referring to ethnic, as a nuisance on footpaths were refocused on ordinary The candour and colloquial tones reflect the decision religious and national differences. workers now struggling to get by, as distinct from the of the student interviewers and editors Gerard Sasges One of the first steps in articulating and addressing errant drivers who were behind the nearly 300 cases of and Ng Shi Wen to leave out commentary and, as much inequality might very well be seeing our unified struggle accident in 2018. as possible, let the workers speak for themselves. against dehumanising competition in the workplace. Pedestrians and delivery riders were simply reacting In the resulting monologues, pathos is an undeniable However, if we avoid addressing social systems that, by in their own ways to a larger policy, in this case, the theme. An ice-cream uncle, the local term for those who their very logic, stratify us, we might be lost to the true Active Mobility Bill, which was passed in 2017 to park their cart-laden motorcycles along footpaths to sell distance that needs to be bridged. legalise the use of bicycles and PMDs on public paths. ice cream, laments declining profits and the physical toll On 30 November last year, a few weeks after the Pedestrians bemoaned the lack of safety on footpaths, of standing. PMD fracas, I attended a forum on housing in which and workers in the gig economy had simply filled the ‘But no choice, don’t like, also need to work,’ he says, the speakers advocated improving security of tenancy demand for food delivery that was created by the law. before ending his interview on this fatalistic note: ‘I got for the economically vulnerable who make up the gig Fast forward to April 2020, when thousands of nothing much to look forward to lah. Just waiting to economy. coronavirus cases in foreign worker dormitories shine a die! Nothing much that I’m interested in. People are also In making this point, the economist Yeoh Lam light on the cramped and unsanitary living conditions changing. It’s so different from kampung days.’ Keong spoke of the formation of an ossified underclass, of those who build the infrastructure of this nation. A twenty-three-year-old undergraduate and before citing the PMD incident. ‘You can see the Migrant rights groups, after years of advocating better academic ghostwriter has turned the paper chase for uncomfortable racial composition of that underclass.’ dormitory regulation, are validated in a country that is academic qualifications to his own benefit. Charging I had noticed this, too, but never expected anyone inhospitable to activism. wealthy foreigners and locals ‘who are desperate to get to point out that Malays (he did not name the race Whom in this often considered cosmopolitan a good grade’ S$250 for 2,500 words of essay writing, he specifically, but it was obvious) made up most of the nation do we imagine as the marginalised? What if we, has worked out this justification for his shady enterprise: demographic. Yeoh highlighted a social crisis that needs the perpetually overworked in Singapore, could see ‘In Singapore, the tuition we’ve received just because to be redressed. ourselves more closely reflected in each other? Would our parents could pay for it, all the extra advantages we be more attuned to the toil of the most economically we had that other kids may not have had, it’s all part fter the PMD ban, I was able to accompany my vulnerable? of a whole industry. And as long as you have a system father on errands with renewed peace of mind. These were the questions Hard at Work: Life in like that, you will have wealthy elites who will game the There were no grating honks, sirens or revving Singapore, a collection of interviews with sixty workers, system at the expense of others.’ Amotors to signal the passage of e-scooters. from a range of occupations and cultural backgrounds, Race and ethnicity are also repeatedly brought up Since home isolation measures began in April to raised. As the title suggests, the foregrounding theme is by interviewees to express their varied lots. A Chinese curb the spread of the coronavirus, food delivery—now the universality of work as lived experience. national who works as a student care teacher says most only through motorcycles and bicycles—has become an Singaporeans do not like people from her country. Yet essential service. ingaporeans work longer hours than most of their this sits uneasily with her later comment that ‘between The streets are quieter than ever, but eerier, as the peers in developed countries. One recent estimate the Malays and Chinese, we feel that Malays are very quarantining of foreign workers brings construction by office access control company Kisi puts the lazy’. The stereotype of the lazy Malay, propagated since projects to a halt and to the fore their marginalisation Snumber, which includes commuting time, at nearly colonial times, seems to have translated, in this case at from Singapore’s rapid development. ☐ forty-five hours per week. least, across nationalities. It is unsurprising then that many of the interviewees It is a testament to the intellectual honesty of Simon Vincent is a journalist and the author of ‘The talk, with varying degrees of resignation and humour, the editors that they do not shun presenting, if not Naysayer’s Book Club: 26 Singaporeans You Need to Know’

21 SOUTH KOREA Family co. Peter Tasker

GEOFFREY CAIN Samsung, meaning ‘three stars’, as a kind of homage to ‘I tried to learn from them anything that might be Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Mitsubishi, which means ‘three diamonds’. of use,’ he wrote in his memoirs. ‘I would often secretly Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech In 1950, Lee visited war-battered Japan, where he bring in Japanese experts on Saturday and have them Penguin: 2020 viewed fifty factories and business sites and was bowled teach my engineers overnight.’ over by the resilience and work ethic of the Japanese just He would have had no problem in communicating a few years after their shattering defeat. with them. Like his father, Lee Kun-hee was a graduate amsung is everywhere these days. On towering ‘The Japanese steadfastly valued loyalty and prioritized of Waseda University and a fluent Japanese speaker. Jay screens in New York’s Times Square, partnering the cosmic self over the individual and the public over the Y. Lee, the founder’s grandson and current boss, studied with leading edge designers at London Fashion private,’ he wrote later. ‘The Japanese capacity for unity at Harvard Business School, but also has an MBA SWeek, unveiling its latest foldable phone. Even at the and diligent work comes from that patriotism.’ from Keio University, the rival of Waseda, and is also a Oscars, where the granddaughter of Samsung’s founder In line with Japanese human resource practices, Japanese speaker. was on stage celebrating the multiple triumphs of the he prized loyal, lifelong generalists as employees and Through its formative years and into this century, film Parasite, which she produced. reportedly sat in on 100,000 recruitment interviews. For Samsung has always had top-level Japanese advisers Samsung used to model itself on Sony. Today, the ‘Samsung man’, Cain notes, ‘company was family whose opinions were taken very seriously, such as though, Samsung’s stock market value is over three times and family was company.’ Stamina-sapping group industrial designer Tameo Fukuda. Presumably, some the size of its former exemplar’s, and its one serious rival activities, such as forty-eight-hour hikes, were used to of them facilitated the unofficial transfer of intellectual is Apple. How and why did this happen? Geoffrey Cain’s build physical and mental toughness. There are obvious property that Lee Kun-hee mentioned above. well-researched and often highly entertaining account parallels with the ethos of Japanese salarymen, the hard- How did a company which had so much in common offers plenty of clues to the rise of this extraordinary charging corporate samurai on whose labours Japan’s with corporate Japan succeed so spectacularly when its entity, which bestrides the world of twenty-first-century economic miracle was based. Japanese rivals have floundered? In a sense, Samsung’s high-tech while staying true to its East Asian roots. Lee was a frequent visitor to Japan and was to marry success is a tribute to the Japanese business model, ‘Fuck Steve. He’s dead and we were right. Samsung a Japanese woman, as other members of the dynasty yet there is one very significant difference between was right.’ So declared a US marketing executive at have subsequently done. It was from his favoured corporate Japan and Samsung: the ownership structure. Samsung in 2017. Jobs had mocked Samsung’s large- Hotel Okura that he issued the ‘Tokyo Declaration’ in After World War II, the US occupation authorities screen phones when they first appeared, but years later 1983, committing Samsung to becoming a major force dissolved Japan’s zaibatsu industrial groups on the Apple launched its own series of similar phones. The in semiconductors. Lee Kun-hee, his third son and dubious grounds that they had been largely responsible greater frustration was that Apple, via the charisma of eventual successor, visited Japan to meet semiconductor for the rise of militarism. In the early postwar period, Steve Jobs, had created an image of creativity that helped experts nearly every week. the zaibatsu coalesced again, but with one crucial it secure higher prices and higher profits while casting difference. The founding families were no longer there. Samsung as copycats. Instead, the companies developed an intricate network The reality was more complex. It was not Apple of cross-shareholdings that protected managements that first launched the smart phone, but Blackberry. from outside pressure. Jobs borrowed liberally from Sony and even Panasonic. The Defeat of Barisan Japan’s postwar system of capitalism without Samsung has been the trailblazer in foldable phones Nasional: Missed Signs or capitalists meant that financially nobody had ‘skin in the and phones equipped for 5G, the next-generation Late Surge? game’. Ultimately that led to complacency and strategic network that will enable full-length movies to be Francis E Hutchinson and Lee inertia—even at Sony once Akio Morita, the charismatic downloaded in seconds. Hwok Aun, editors founder, was gone. No salaryman CEO could issue Teams of engineers can be innovative, as well The results of Malaysia’s Lee Kun-hee’s radical challenge to his staff: ‘Change 14th General Elections of as Californian hipsters. Samsung’s recipe is gaseon, May 2018 were unexpected everything, except your wife and children’. the Korean version of the Japanese kaizen, meaning and transformative. Against As Cain makes clear, Samsung is a controversial continual improvement, which is often associated with conventional wisdom, the presence in South Korea. Samsung Electronics alone newly reconfigured opposition Toyota. grouping Pakatan Harapan accounts for some 25 per cent of total stock market Though best known to the public for its smart (PH) decisively defeated the capitalisation. Any organisation that big and wealthy phones and large-screen TVs, Samsung is also a huge incumbent Barisan Nasional is bound to become a political actor. Cain describes (BN), ending six decades of uninterrupted dominant one- producer of flash memory chips and touch screens. One party rule. This analytical work is complemented by personal heated street confrontations between anti-Samsung of its most important customers for these items is none narratives from a selection of GE-14 participants. demonstrators (mostly young and left-leaning) and other than Apple—from whose perspective Samsung is Soft cover US$29.90 978-981-4843-89-8 509 pp 2019 Samsung supporters (mainly older and conservative). a crucial supplier. The two competitors are, in the words Attitudes to Samsung, as with attitudes towards Japan— of one of Cain’s sources, ‘joined at the hip’. the two are intimately connected—express a larger Apple is so astonishingly profitable because it is a The Indonesia-Malaysia fracture in South Korean society. ‘platform company’ that focuses on software and design. Dispute Concerning Samsung has certainly been involved in its fair share Sovereignty over Sipadan Production is outsourced to enormous job shops such as and Ligitan Islands: Historical of scandals. Jay Y. Lee, the effective leader of the chaebol, Taiwan’s Foxconn (aka Hon Hai). The other members of Antecedents and the did jail time after being found guilty of corruption in the ‘FAANG’ group (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, International Court of Justice 2017. Yet when South Korea’s leftist president took a Google) of companies that dominate the high-tech Judgment delegation of businessmen to meet North Korean dictator landscape are newly minted internet companies. D S Ranjit Singh Kim Jong-un in September 2018, prominent among their Samsung, by contrast, was founded eighty years ago. In 2002, ASEAN made history number was the recently released Jay Y. Lee. A South when two of its founder A traditional manufacturer with 310,000 employees members—Indonesia and Korean business delegation without Samsung would be worldwide, three times as many as Apple, it has a Malaysia—amicably settled a like Barcelona football team without Lionel Messi. corporate culture that is rooted in its origins. dispute over the ownership of the Today Samsung dominates its sector as Japan’s two Bornean islands of Sipadan and Ligitan by accepting the electronic behemoths were once expected to do. In amsung is a chaebol. Written with the same jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which ruled the Darwinian world of high tech, it flies the flag for in favour of Malaysia. The case at once assumed great significance characters as the Japanese zaibatsu, the word as a beacon of hope for the region which is plagued by numerous old-fashioned engineer-led manufacturing—and for old- means ‘industrial group’. Its founder, B.C. Lee, disruptive territorial disputes. fashioned dynastic capitalism. It may not be cool and it Swas educated at Waseda University in Tokyo, as were Soft cover US$29.90 978-981-4843-64-5 244 pp 2019 may not be pretty, but the results speak for themselves. ☐ many members of the Korean elite in the colonial period. When he established his first company in 1936, Website: bookshop.iseas.edu.sg Email: [email protected] Peter Tasker is the author of ‘On Kurosawa: A Tribute to a vegetable and dried fish shop, he chose the name the Master Director’

22

MR 2020-May.indd 1 20/2/20 4:40 PM MEMOIR Scholar and believer Martin Stuart-Fox

CHARLES KEYES eighteen years. Over that time, his understanding about Impermanence: An Anthropologist of Thailand and Asia what he was doing changed. From the first, he immersed Silkworm Books: 2019 himself in everything Balinese, to the point where, after several years, he identified so deeply with Balinese culture that he felt uncomfortable visiting Australia. During this he first thing about this memoir that piqued time he made lifelong Balinese friends, but in the end he my interest was its title. Impermanence is not a realised that, no matter how warmly he was accepted into concept that has much traction in the West, much the lives of his Balinese informants, and no matter how Tless in Christianity. It is implicit in Heraclitus’ dictum long he interacted with them (and their children), a divide that one can never step into the same river twice, but the that could never be bridged would always exist between Christian West has been shaped by belief in revelation how they understood Balinese culture and how he did. as the source of absolute truth. Science is a bit less Keyes is too good an anthropologist not to be aware dogmatic: as Karl Popper pointed out, we can never be of this. He was frequently reminded by the villagers of absolutely certain that scientific knowledge is absolutely Ban Nong Tuen of the gap that existed between them, true. But the curve of theoretical paradigm change is and how differently each understood the relationship asymptotic, and scientific progress can be measured by between them—as illustrated, for example, in the its instrumental application: if things work, we can be villagers’ persistent belief that all farang were immensely pretty sure we’ve got some of it right. Jane Keyes wealthy, an impression reinforced by every US citizen The Buddhist view of the world is very different. they came into contact with, from aid workers to soldiers Impermanence (Pali: anicca) is one of the three core signs Charles Keyes in Maha Sarakham Province, Thailand, November 1967 on a nearby NATO exercise. And of course the Keyes of being, the three indelible characteristics of all existence. were wealthy, no matter how hard they tried not to show Charles Keyes nowhere mentions the other two, so we University set the direction of Keyes’s life. From it, and, unlike the villagers, free to leave at any time. So don’t know whether he embraces either or both. One is physics and maths, he gravitated to English and the observer–observed relationship morphed inevitably dukkha, usually misleadingly translated as ‘suffering’ but anthropology, took a keen interest in world affairs, into a patron–client one, as anyone who knows anything better understood as ‘unsatisfactoriness’: no matter how actively campaigned for John F. Kennedy on campus about Lao culture and society might expect. And it was as joyous life is at any moment, there is no way any human and gave up, as he puts it, ‘formal affiliation with any a patron that to his credit Keyes maintained contact with being can avoid sickness, old age and/or death. The other religions’—code, I surmise, for loss of faith. What the villagers of Ban Nong Tuen long after he returned to is anatta, meaning absence of any eternal essence in the he took from Christianity was its message of social Cornell, obtained his doctorate, and took up a teaching form of an atman, or soul. For, as the Buddha discovered activism, along with a realisation of the need for position at the University of Washington. after seven years of introspective meditation and taught ecumenical dialogue across the barriers of belief. Both The Keyeses came back to Thailand twice more for for the rest of his life, all a human being consists of is would be lifelong convictions. extended periods: first in 1967 to conduct fieldwork changing aggregations of material form, perceptions, Keyes chose Cornell over Harvard or Chicago to far from Isan on the Burmese border at Mae Sariang; sensations, thoughts and consciousness. pursue graduate studies in anthropology and, once there, and again in 1972 when Keyes took up a position as Impermanence is central to the Buddhist conception Southeast Asia over the Middle East or the Americas. visiting professor at the University of Chiang Mai; on of how the world is: think the symbolism of cherry At the suggestion of his prospective supervisors, he each occasion for a couple of years. Significantly, Keyes’s blossoms for the Japanese. For Keyes, it is not the embarked on serious study of Thai language and research in Mae Sariang pursued several of the same metaphysical concept that matters, however, but the Buddhism, while at the same time casting around for themes that had interested him in Isan: ethnic relations, psychological comfort provided by the realisation that all a topic on which to write a dissertation. Eventually he the influence of Buddhism, forms of accommodation to is transient as he copes with the changes he has undergone settled on Isan, the area of northeast Thailand once part government authority. ‘in status, lifestyle and body’ since retiring, downsizing of the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang, and arguably then One thing that was different in Mae Sariang, and being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. What we still more Lao than central Thai. The topic he chose to however, was the presence of five competing are not told is whether Keyes counts himself as a Buddhist study was the relationship between Isan villagers and the denominations of Christian missionaries. In Papua and, if not, how Buddhist concepts like impermanence central government as the region became integrated into New Guinea, I have seen the divisions such competition have influenced the way he has lived his life. the Thai state. It was a good choice, and one that kept his can create in previously cohesive communities, and You don’t have to read very far into Keyes’s memoir interest for half a century, from his first single-authored how previously vibrant cultural traditions become to recognise that this is a book by a scholar. Even the publication to his last. impoverished as a result of conversion. Keyes was prelude has footnotes, and there are plenty more along Keyes and his wife Jane arrived in Thailand in August interested in how conversion could reinforce ethnic the way, providing information about sources (letters 1962 and spent the next four months improving their identity (in the case of Christianity, and conceivably home, diary entries, fieldwork notes, all precisely dated), Thai, making useful contacts and working out where best Islam), or assist in social integration into the Thai state about the meanings of words and concepts, and about to conduct fieldwork. Keyes decided on the central Isan (as missionary activity by Buddhist monks among the people Keyes encountered in the course of his career, province of Mahasarakham, where local officials directed upland minorities was designed to do). their interests, their publications and, yes, their status him to the village of Ban Nong Tuen, fifteen kilometres Keyes refrains from directly criticising Christian within the spectrum of Southeast Asian studies. The from the provincial capital. There the couple settled in for missionary activity in Mae Sariang, but the fact that he writing is measured, precise, unemotional, the account eighteen months as farang members of the community, preferred to attend ceremonies in the local Buddhist comprehensive but modest. Keyes shies away from taking part in village life, attending ceremonies, making wat implies what he thought. Indeed, for the abbot assessing his own contribution to Thai and Southeast donations, observing and being observed. he became both friend and mentor. Keyes has written Asian studies, though it has been considerable. Anthropological fieldwork is problematic at the perceptively on why the Thai are not Christian, in an best of times. As the controversy over Margaret Mead’s article in which he argues that ‘historic religions’ like harles Keyes was born in a small town in the conclusions about Samoan sexuality illustrate, it is Christianity and Buddhism ‘derive their coherence from cattle country of northwestern Nebraska in difficult to know whether informants are answering a belief in an abstract being [God] or principle [the Law October 1937. Soon after, the family moved to questions accurately and truthfully, or making light of Karma] under which all other supernatural powers as CIdaho, where ‘Biff’, as he was always called by family and of the exchange and relating what they think the well as humans are subject’. Historic religions, in other friends, grew up as an outsider, a Presbyterian among anthropologist wants to hear. Very often it’s a bit of both. words, rationalise the supernatural—and Christianity majority Mormon classmates. The young Keyes was not Though he does mention some misunderstandings, and Buddhism do this equally well. an outsider by choice—he joined the Scouts and the Keyes avoids discussion of this observed-observer I cite this example because it illustrates what is and YMCA—but more because both at school and later at problem, while making clear how much he sympathised is not included in this memoir. What is included is Nebraska University he was studious and serious and got with—indeed, identified with—‘his’ villagers. where Keyes went, where he lived, what he did and who good grades. Today we would probably call him a nerd. My brother is an anthropologist who lived in Bali for he met, plus the cultural and historical background

23 required for context. If the reader wants to know what Keyes thought about what he was doing, how he came to the conclusions he did or how his experiences shaped his beliefs, one must read between the lines. Nowhere, for example, does Keyes explicitly argue for the significance Discover Thailand’s lost cinemas of history in shaping the culture and society that an anthropologist observes during relatively brief fieldwork, though the extent and degree to which history provides a crucial dimension of Keyes’s work on Thailand is by no means common across a discipline that notably entertains structural and functional explanations. The most fascinating event that Keyes recounts from his years in northern Thailand was not the visit of King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit, but an expedition accompanying the abbot of the Mae Sariang wat to recover ancient manuscripts that had been discovered in a remote cave. It took days of travel by elephant through mountainous forested country to reach Red Cliff Cave overlooking the Salween River. Some manuscripts had been damaged by robbers and others eaten by termites; but a sufficient number were still intact to fill nine large plastic sacks. This was not just an adventure, but an extraordinary find, for all the manuscripts had been copied prior to the end of the eighteenth century and provided new insights into northern Thai history. Keyes took up a two-year teaching position in social science at the University of Chiang Mai in July 1972. It was an interesting time to be in Thailand, for the worldwide student protest movement was about to reach Thai university campuses. Of more concern to Keyes than radical student politics, however, were accusations that US academics studying Thai village life were contributing to the anti-communist counterinsurgency campaign, and thus were little more than lackeys of US imperialism. Keyes was so incensed that he agreed to participate in a film narrated in Thai that demonstrated what he, as an anthropologist, had actually been doing. The last three chapters of the book shift focus from Thailand to the United States, to Keyes’s career Embark on a pictorial journey through the temples of cinema in Thailand’s Movie Theatres: Relics, as teacher and administrator, as supervisor of both Ruins and the Romance of Escape. This culmination of 10 years’ worth of field work includes Thai and non-Thai postgraduates, and as an academic both original and vintage photographs, travel essays, and a rich collection of movie theatre ambassador, fostering relations between US and Southeast paraphernalia, as well as a section of the movie theatres of neighbouring Laos. Author Philip Asian scholars and institutions. Given the cloud that anthropology was under, Keyes’s first task in taking up a Jablon highlights more than 50 of the most compelling, significant and breath-taking of these position at the University of Washington was to establish architectural spectacles in the twilight of their lifespan. anthropology as a discipline whose value lay in promoting To order a signed copy with complimentary vintage movie theatre ticket directly from the author, tolerance through revealing the cultural diversity of send a message to the Southeast Asia Movie Theater Project Facige. humankind. And that’s what he continued to do. What Keyes felt when, in October 1976, the brief experiment in democracy in Thailand was brought to an end with the massacre of student activists in Praise for Thailand’s Movie Theatres Bangkok, we are not told. But it is evident from his later publications that, from about then on, he took “Philip Jablon has done miracles here. The temples of lights, the ships or dreams, are revived. increasing interest in the political dimensions of social We have forgotten the beautiful rituals involving cinema, all the ingredients that made every and cultural change in Thailand. And it was the political film special. This book in an emotional journey to keep.” crisis of 2008–10 that brought Keyes’s work full circle, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, filmmaker back to the villagers of northeastern Thailand for whom (Palme d’Or winner for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives) he had such sympathy and affection. The Red Shirt demonstrations of those years are “Philip Jablon’s definitive look back at the Thai movie palaces of the past is a masterful not covered in this memoir, but I wonder if Keyes work of cultural archaeology—a testament to the rapidly changing evolution of visual recognised the villagers of Ban Nong Tuen among the story-telling.” demonstrators who so persistently struggled to defend Newton Tomas Sigel, American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) the government they had elected. In Finding Their Voice, Keyes argued that the political activism of the Red Shirts, overwhelmingly from northeastern and northern “For a few short decades in the twentieth century, Thailand produced some of the most Thailand, is understandable as the outcome of a process innovative movie-theater architecture in the world. But as the Thai public has turned to of historical change in the course of which ‘traditional’ other entertainment mediums, and theaters have closed, those great dream palaces are peasants became ‘cosmopolitan’ citizens through taking disappearing from the landscape. With a keen eye for architectural details, and a deep advantage of new opportunities in a globalising economy, understanding of history, Phil Jablon has set out to preserve the memory of Thailand’s movie and that it was this that promoted growing awareness houses. His spectacular photographs reveal the glamour and ambition of a world that was as of their political power within a democratic order. He is fleeting as the celluloid images they celebrated.” probably right; but sadly, of course, since Keyes published Inga Saffron, Architecture Critic, The Philadelphia Inquirer his analysis, Thai democracy has been all but demolished. I can’t speak for Keyes, but everything in this memoir suggests that he must hope that the impermanence that characterises human existence extends to the current Thai Supported by political order, and that Isan voices will be heard again. ☐

Martin Stuart-Fox is emeritus professor of history at the University of Queensland

24 FICTION City of hope Siti Keo

SUON SORIN the Phnom Penh of his novel and that of various A New Sun Rises over the Old Land newspapers. Another possible reason is Sorin’s impulse (translated by Roger Nelson) to show the differences between the late colonial period NUS Press: 2020 and the Sangkum period. In his aspiration to show both the old and the new, A New Sun Rises fails to depict temporal continuities. The novel is about how Sangkum uon Sorin’s popular novel A New Sun Rises over the Reastr Niyum is new, and different from the old. The Old Land (1961) is part of a larger literary moment Sangkum regime is the new sun: in Cambodian history. The diminishing French Sempire, along with the dissolution of Indochina, had In times past, this old land had been wilted and triggered an identity crisis among Khmer intellectuals. To despairing. It had been without the light of the sun, create a new, more stable identity centred on Cambodia, and without any thought of growth. Now, a new sun these intellectuals developed the broloam lok (the modern shone its light on that nature. This was the brightness Khmer novel) as a canvas on which to project a collective of the growth that was being built by all the peasants, cultural image. The broloam lok soon began to capture and by His Majesty Samdech Norodom Sihanouk, the Cambodian imagination: fewer than two novels per the Father of National Independence and the most year were published in the 1940s, but this number rose marvelous leader. to seventy in 1957 and a hundred in 1966. These novels covered a wide range of topics, from prostitution, to the The discontinuity in the novel will be important flight of urban workers, to the lives of the middle class. for scholars of Cambodia, since it offers insights into Ly Team Teng, a Khmer literary critic, noted in 1970 Phnom Penh, circa 1960 how the Democratic Party failed and was eclipsed that ‘the literature produced during these times is valuable by Sihanouk’s regime. As a historian who seeks to in every way, worthy of being named independence a shelter for cyclo drivers, and the people living understand the characteristics and tribulations of literature or national literature’. Sorin’s novel, like much inside all looked remarkably happy … Now, the Cambodian democracy, I find chapter 9, ‘The Deceitful of the literature of Cambodia in this period, captures the workers in the new era had achieved their great Politicians’, and chapter 12, ‘The Ungrateful Politicians’, everyday lives of ordinary Cambodians. destiny, which was provided by the generous the most captivating. In these chapters, readers will A New Sun Rises depicts the trials of Sam, a man hospitality of the Royal Government. They had been find depictions of political practices during the early scraping by as a cyclo driver in late-colonial Phnom rescued, provided with a place to live, a place to days of Cambodia’s experimentation with democracy. Penh. The story begins in 1960, with Sam on a train, shelter from the rain and from the heat of the sun. The late colonial period (1945–54) was the first time returning to the capital for the first time since his Cambodia developed a constitution, written by the departure seven or eight years earlier. On this train Sorin, via Sam’s memories of the past, contrasts this leaders of the Democratic Party: Ieu Koeus, Sim Var and ride, Sam remembers when he had first arrived in image of happy, sheltered cyclo drivers with that of Sam Prince Yutevong. It was also the first time Cambodians Phnom Penh, as an eighteen-year-old from Battambang when he is homeless and vulnerable to the elements. The held elections and voted for their representatives. These province escaping the Khmer Issarak, or Free Khmer. words ‘now’ and ‘new’ capture the rupture between the developments are why Sorin labels this era ‘the period From there, Sam tells the reader of his attempts to find past and the present, between the years before Sangkum of false independence’. While I can quibble with Sorin’s work in the city, his stints in jail, and his wife’s rape and and those of Sangkum itself. The novel emphasises characterisation, his novel is the only source I know of, in her death, along with that of their unborn child. discontinuity rather than continuity. Khmer and by a Khmer, to provide some level of cultural Roger Nelson’s approachable translation is the Sorin portrays this rupture between the old and the representation of these elections. The colonial archives first English-language edition of a full-length Khmer new in his depictions of ‘modern Phnom Penh’ (the in Aix-en-Provence offer some Cambodian perspectives, novel. Nelson has condensed the main text to a little title of chapter 18). When Sam returns to Phnom Penh, but they are often filtered through the voices of the over a hundred pages, and the clarity of his translation in 1960, he notes how much the city has changed from French sûreté. is apparent from the first scene. His introduction and when he lived there in the early 1950s. There is more When Sam becomes a union leader, he works to help analysis are also useful, especially his argument on the traffic, for example. Yet Sam says ‘the city [is] also very get politicians elected. The ensuing vignettes show how instrumentalisation of literature in support of Sangkum neat, orderly, and well-organised’, echoing Sihanouk’s the democratic experiment functioned in late-colonial Reastr Niyum, a political movement founded in the vision for Phnom Penh. In fact, Sam’s tour of Phnom Cambodia. Sam’s disillusionment with the corrupt mid-1950s by Norodom Sihanouk. Penh mirrors that undertaken by the protagonist of politicians suggests possible reasons why Cambodians Nelson argues that ‘the temporal ambiguity in Sihanouk’s 1965 film, Apsara. These images of the capital rejected parliamentary democracy and accepted the narrative—heightened by the extended flashback as orderly differ from some accounts of 1960s Phnom Sihanouk’s populist, one-party rule. The establishment structure—raises the possibility that inequality and Penh. In 1961, the newspaper Réalités cambodgienne of Sangkum Reastr Niyum and the suppression of the impoverishment continue[d] even under Sihanouk’s complained that the traffic on Norodom Boulevard was Democratic Party had lasting negative consequences rule’. While Nelson recognises that ‘Sihanouk remains becoming ‘more and more anarchic’ because stop signs for Cambodian democracy. In addition to showing the irreproachable, in the novel as in all public discourse were ‘rarely respected by the drivers of most vehicles’ democratic processes of the late colonial period, the novel during the period’, he maintains that the ‘social and ‘a number of automobilists did not respect the renders visible the insecurity Cambodians experienced and economic inequality that the novel’s characters Law’. Chau Seng, in a 1963 article in Neak cheat niyum, during the late colonial period. Many know this period embody continued under the new regime, as did the another newspaper, described how as the First Indochina War, in which Cambodia appeared precariousness of life for the urban poor, and the cruel marginalised and whose main theatre involved French disdain which the wealthy elite felt for them. For Nelson, on the morning of January 23, 1963, Trasok Peam and communist Vietnamese forces. Yet Sorin’s novel Sam’s recounting of the past, as he travels to Phnom (Sweet Melon) Street, which is to the west of Psar demonstrates how the war had a tremendous impact on Penh, suggests that this inequality continued into the Tmey (Central Market) and close to the police Cambodians, especially those in the countryside—the war Sangkum period, and that A New Sun Rises is a story of headquarters, was chaotic with big and small is the main impetus for Sam’s migration to the city. continuous hardship and class disparity. automobiles crowding one another. The cars came to In the preface, Sorin described A New Sun Rises as ‘a a standstill, taking two hours to get out. story of the struggle between the horrible and the good; wish to offer an alternative reading of Sorin’s novel. it is a story of the struggle between poverty and wealth; While Sorin depicts class inequalities and the harsh For some, then, Phnom Penh was not a neat and it is a story of the struggle between death and life’. realities of cyclo drivers in Phnom Penh, he does orderly city. Yet Sorin failed to mention the chaos of Embedded in Sam’s tribulations is the hope that joy will Inot suggest that these inequalities continued under urban life when he spoke of the Sangkum government. emerge from despair. ☐ Sangkum Reastr Niyum. Indeed, in chapter 18, Sam His desire to propagandise Sihanouk and Sangkum notices that the Sangkum government has provided Reastr Niyum is one reason for the discrepancy between Siti Keo is a student at the University of California

25 FICTION Lao lite Bryan Thao Worra

PAUL YOON there during the war. Readers familiar with Laos might Run Me to Earth wonder if Yoon’s city is meant to be Muang Phuan, or Simon & Schuster: 2020 Xieng Khouang. The Phonsavan of Run Me to Earth is not described in enough detail to suggest that it is. The Tai Dam, Phuan, Khmu and Tai Daeng people who utside of books by Lao writers, Laos doesn’t historically also made this region of Laos their home often figure in literary historical fiction beyond have been erased from the story. So it goes. Ethnic Lao Colin Cotterill’s Detective Siri series or novels and Hmong are mentioned, but readers will need to Olike Adam Lewis Schroeder’s In the Fabled East. For look elsewhere for an understanding of their customs decades the country was mentioned only briefly in and traditions. fictional works such as John Le Carre’s The Honourable Run Me to Earth isn’t intended as an anthropological Schoolboy or pulpy action-adventure paperbacks. treatise. In the fictionalised Laos of this novel, everyone Scenes of Everyday Life: Southeast Asian fiction tends to be set in Thailand, seems to have abandoned the traditional Lao greeting Cambodia or Vietnam, building upon ground established of saying sabaidee or giving people a polite nop. The Poems of Vietnam, Indonesia, in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American or The Ugly orphan characters of Alisak, Prany and Noi, as well as Cambodia, Russia, 2016 American by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, who their friend Dr Vang, are likeable enough, but none by Richard Milazzo (with mixed media works by Aga Ousseinov) opted to create the fictional nation of Sarkhan to explore of them could reliably tell you where to find a good their ideas about coming conflicts in the region. bowl of khao piak or how to cook sticky rice. When a Published by TSUKUDA ISLAND PRESS Although Laos has endured various states of civil character hits their brother on the head, Yoon doesn’t Hayama-Tokyo war and occupation since the 1700s, it is typically call attention to how taboo this would be in a traditional characterised as a quiet, peaceful Eden—that is, until Lao household, leaving it to the reader to know. One the Secret War era, when the US State Department and suspects these are the kinds of kids who wear their shoes the CIA, around the same time as the Vietnam War, inside and can’t tell dok champa from gaeng kee lek. circumvented the Geneva Accords and supported the As orphans in Laos, their outlooks on life and Jonathan Lasker Royal Lao government. This included conducting a responses to crisis are human enough, but it’s hard to New Complete Essays secret bombing campaign that ultimately contaminated say why these characters, then, had to be Lao. Could - more than 30 per cent of Laos with unexploded the book just as easily have been set in Cambodia or 1984 2019 munitions. This is the romanticised period that Vietnam, which also hide unexploded ordnance, or typically captures the imagination of those discovering some Southeast Asian Macondo, if one is not going to Lao history for the first time, embodying a particular take a Lao approach to this scenario? Apocalypse Now-meets-Casablanca mystique. Run Me to Earth cites the research of respected Paul Yoon’s novel Run Me to Earth, his second, scholars such as the late Grant Evans, Vatthana Pholsena examines the fictional lives of three orphans during and Joshua Kurlantzick, as well as a speech by former US the war for Laos. Opening in 1969, the story follows president Barack Obama and even the work of Hmong its characters across an ambitious fifty-year span. poet Mai Der Vang. Yoon’s novel clearly asserts itself as Yoon, an American writer from New York, explores fiction, becoming an outright alternative history when new territory in how we fictionalise Laos in literature, characters are imprisoned in a re-education camp for pushing the boundaries of what we change and what we seven years, until 1977. Historically, Lao re-education keep recognisable. camps were not established until after 1975. The more Yoon’s prose may frustrate some readers; spare than 3,000 people who endured the camps in real life yet elegant, it jumps from one perspective to another might take a dim view of this artistic liberty, but readers E D G E W I S E and goes back and forth in time. It alternates between not directly affected by it will probably see this as a the intimate and the formal as he presents six minor chronological quibble in service to the novel’s interconnected stories focusing on different characters overall ambitious themes. brought together by the war. Some might consider this New Complete Essays: 1984-2019 jarring, while others might be more concerned about inding modern Lao fiction in English by Lao by Jonathan Lasker questions of cultural ventriloquism. But when his prose writers can be a challenge. We have the novels (edited and with an introduction and is beautiful, it’s beautiful. of T.C. Huo—Land of Smiles and A Thousand commentary by Richard Milazzo) FWings. There are the short stories of Souvankham Published and distributed by iven the complex politics of the time, Run Me Thammavongsa collected in How to Pronounce Knife, EDGEWISE PRESS to Earth showcases the brutality of the secret and the late Outhine Bounyavong’s Mother’s Beloved: New York American bombing and harsh conditions of re- Stories from Laos. Only a handful of Lao memoirs Geducation camps and postwar Laos. Finding themselves are readily available, like I Little Slave by Bounsang in their various predicaments, Yoon’s characters often Khamkeo. The creative writing collections of the ruminate. ‘She wondered, too, what proof of herself, of SatJaDham Lao Literary Project have long been out of them, would remain in this house after they were gone,’ print. So, in this literary landscape, a novel like Run Me one reflects. to Earth attracts attention. Yet readers with roots in Laos may be hard-pressed In the United States, the most well-known Lao to recognise themselves, their country or their culture character has been Kahn Souphanousinphone from the in this novel. Yoon and the publisher have repeatedly animated TV show King of the Hill. In modern literary emphasised that Run Me to Earth is a work of fiction, works, we’ve yet to see an enduring Lao character who one that changes the chronology and geography of Laos. captures our imagination—a Don Quixote, Inspector For example, the book features a town called Phonsavan Javert, Hester Prynne or Wittman Ah Sing. It’s hard to near the famed Plain of Jars, but it’s not the historical say with certainty if Alisak, Prany or Noi will ever achieve Available through Edgewise Press, Inc. Phonsavan. In the historical Phonsavan, established in such stature, but they are all we have for the moment. ☐ 24 Fifth Ave. (No. 224), New York, N.Y. 10011 the late 1970s, you can catch Hmong bullfights or talk [email protected] | edgewisepress.org to locals about the rocket that hit the Tham Piu cave Bryan Thao Worra is a poet and writer based in richardmilazzo.com in 1969, killing more than 374 people taking refuge California

26 SHORT STORY Night-shift scenes* Wong Yi

Charis Loke

n days when Joseph works the night shift, Will these heavy and forceful sounds thumping in her rises and come home to rest when the sun sets, before drifting off to sleep, Cherie turns ears ever stop beating? She longs to persuade him to instead of taking turns with his colleagues being off the overhead light in the bedroom and switch to a job that doesn’t require working shifts— the reason that one of the windows in a postcard Oswitches on the small nightlight, watching the faint newspapers have long reported relevant scientific of Hong Kong’s city nightscape is lit up. But he is yellow glow illuminate the ceiling and silhouettes findings that working shifts can lead to premature the kind of person who likes to dance to the beat of the objects in the room, invariably realising that death. Fortunately, he doesn’t smoke, but he of his own drum. It would kill him to sit at a desk life is truly short. Her friend forwarded her a math occasionally has a few drinks, and regularly eats Spam every day for nine hours—his childhood wish had problem circulating online: If you want to have two fried noodles, both of which are factors contributing been to find a job where he didn’t have to sit in children before the age of thirty, and the two children to premature death—if he doesn’t live to the average an office, but her wish is that after they grow old are spaced three years apart, working backwards, life expectancy for a man, then in the life that she has together, they’ll sit side-by-side in an outdoor cafe when will you get pregnant, when will you enjoy calculated, the days that they can spend together just in Europe, admiring the colour of the night sky in post-marriage life just the two of you, when will you the two of them post-retirement will be even shorter. early autumn, waiting for young waiters to serve get married, when will you start preparing for the At this thought, she wants to cry all over again. them hot drinks and refreshments. If Joseph ruins wedding, when will you begin dating? If you happen He works in a five-star hotel and frequently tries his health at a young age serving hot drinks and to meet Mr Right when you’re twenty-one, do the to amuse her with stories of the high-level executives refreshments to others, and dies before her fantasy math, and you’ll clearly see that you’ve already fallen of foreign companies and local upper-class women retirement arrives … at this thought, she bursts into far behind this marriage timeline. Counting from the whom he meets in the executive lounge, or the tears. He’s tired, not because of his shift, but because time they have kids, when will both kids grow up and bantering and squabbling with colleagues in between he doesn’t want to keep arguing with her about why graduate from college, when will the kids be married wiping glasses and serving food. Maybe he’s not a he doesn’t want to follow her advice and change jobs, off, when will she and Joseph save up enough money very good joke teller—she rarely laughs at his chatter doesn’t want to keep telling her to stop letting her to retire, how many years will there be between about work. Sometimes, when he’s regaling her with imagination run away from her, doesn’t want to keep their retirement age and the average life expectancy stories, she notices a glimmer in his eyes, a bit like convincing her not to put too much stock into the for Cherie and Joseph to have a second chance at the starry skies in van Gogh’s paintings, and also a often-contradictory health information and scientific spending quality time together just the two of them? bit like the glint in those gigantic eyeballs in girls’ findings in the newspapers. Life isn’t that profound— Perhaps when you love someone, you begin fearing manga. He prattles on about the national currency if he’s happy with the present, why change things to that you and your partner will eventually die—Cherie of the tip he received when completing a special avoid a bad ending that may not even come? And thinks too much about Joseph’s possible death, gets all assignment for a guest, how everyone in the kitchen after he grows old, he doesn’t know whether the wife choked up, and calls Joseph’s phone to hear his voice, shared an unimaginably huge platter of pastries, how who’ll be beside him will be her; he pretends to be but he’s always busy, and so she doesn’t dare shut off a guest who’d followed his advice to explore Hong sound asleep, unable to hear her deliberate cries. the nightlight the entire night, afraid that if the light Kong’s more remarkable and small-scale attractions There are only a few hours before he has to get up goes out, these thoughts that frighten her will return beyond ‘Pearl of the East, City of Culinary Feasts’ and go to work. All he wants is a good rest. ☐ to haunt her mind, one after the other. came back and raved to him about the city, unable When Joseph comes back from his shift to go to to see that after toiling away night after night, every sleep, she’s not afraid of the dark, as he’s beside her. time he returns home from work, the first words out * After Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Café Terrace at Night’ He has to tightly draw the thick curtains, blocking out of his mouth are, ‘So sleepy’, and not ‘I miss you’. all the sunlight in the bedroom at 10 a.m. or 4 p.m. so Nor has she succeeded in persuading him to First published in Chinese in ‘Ming Pao Weekly’, 14 that he can fall asleep as quickly as possible, catching consider changing to a position in the hospitality June 2019. This translation, by Jennifer Feeley, was up on sleep in time for his next shift. When he finally industry that doesn’t entail working shifts. With commissioned by Spicy Fish as part of its publishing climbs into bed, Cherie leans over his chest, listening his reading abilities, a degree in hotel management program at the 2019 Singapore Writers Festival to his heartbeat. She doesn’t understand the medical shouldn’t be too difficult. If he becomes an office mysteries of heartbeats, but she knows he’s still alive. manager, like her, he can go to work when the sun Wong Yi is a Hong Kong writer, librettist and editor

27 POETRY Border crossings Michael Freeman

BOEY KIM CHENG, ARIN ALICIA FONG AND exile. She teaches and is published in California, but her to a new life, and / an immigrant without home ghosts / JUSTIN CHIA (EDITORS) family lived in Laos during the Vietnam War, members cannot believe the land is real’. To Gather Your Leaving: Asian Diaspora Poetry of the Hmong community that fought on the side of Many start with the transient: ‘At present, on Ethos Books: 2019 the United States and then went on to bear the reaction this sleeper train, there’s nowhere to arrive’. There’s of the Pathet Lao. Two poems are a direct address, one considerable intertextuality in the epigraphs and generation of the diaspora speaking to the generation allusions. One poem is formally prose that rotates oetry anthologies, as often as not, are platforms before, evoking the distance in time and culture, evincing round a passage from Marguerite Duras: ‘Writing was for a polemic, staking a claim for a ‘movement’, the difficulty in crossing the gap. Her lyric poem ‘Your taking an image, a ferry crossing the Mekong say, and conferring a status on shifts in the genre. They are Mountain Lies Down with You’ circles round botany and empty it of all significance until it became an idea, an Pa principal vehicle for literary taxonomies and histories, topography for its symbols of distance in time and place. image caught between memory and forgetting’. (After are mobilised as weapons in the struggle. To Gather Your Beginning with ‘Mourn the poppies, the mangosteen and translating Chinese poems, Ezra Pound asserted, Leaving is one such map for a poetic territory. dragon fruit. / But you come as a refugee, an exile, a body ‘An image is that which presents an intellectual and The poems collected here are the documents of border seeking mountains, / Meaning the same in translations’, it emotional complex in an instant of time’.) The poem crossings: from the nations and cultures from which the closes with ‘Grandfather, you are not buried in the green ‘Opus Tesselatum’ is a mosaic of ‘the fragments of my writers are exiled—exiles themselves or the descendants mountains of Laos / but here in the Tollhouse hills, earth shattered history’ in which ‘I gather every bright shard, of exiles, émigrés or refugees—and then to the cultures and heaven to oak gods. / Your highlands have come collect every broken piece, / wash and polish, press them where their writing seeks its readership. At the core of this home, / And now you finally sleep.’ California’s Mount into place’. The recurring word interrogated throughout cultural intersection are the lines of Debjani Chatterjee: Whitney matches the Phou Bia in Laos, the magnolia these poems is home, the lost one, the new-found one, reminds grandfather of the dok champa, the national but a homing instinct forced to track both ways. Indifferent language of an alien shore, flower of Laos that he cradled from homeland to ‘the Not all of these poems are explicitly about those the journey was troubled but I am here: ghettos of St Paul’. In sharp contrast, her poem ‘Dear central issues of the diaspora, but in the framework of register me among your step-children … Soldier of the Secret War’ stays with the backstory to the this edition even a sensuous lyric is likely to be read as but I do not come to your rhythms empty-handed— exile, the brutalities of the Pathet Lao after the US war: elegiac. A moment of memory will take on symbolic or the treasures of other traditions are mine. ‘Your Hmong village is a graveyard’. The other poems, even polemical overtones—‘memory revises me’—as an ‘Calling the Lost’ and ‘Transmigration’, speak to their image of one lost landscape will echo and resonate with The poems track alienations and assimilations: titles: ‘I am refugee. You are too. Cry, but do not weep’. another from a different homeland. dislocations from cultural communities, their language In these poems the simplicity of the imagery, diction But there’s an oddity in the organisation of the book. and landscape, then transitions into different cultures and syntax focus but don’t reduce the complexities of the The poets are listed under the cultures within which while struggling not to traduce the values of the original situation being evoked. they write and are published, but not in a listing of the cultures. Many of the poems by other authors here are more national cultures of their background; nor is there an So the poems are embedded in a set of identity oblique and opaque, some more coolly analytical, some index of those lines which would have strengthened politics and its background in geopolitics, whether hanging on anecdote, some opening up into a narrative. the anthology’s main aim. A good deal of this cultural regional hegemonies or proxy wars. But this is to A few play typographic and page-space games. Some geography, the backstories, can be discerned from generalise the voices that speak here: it’s in their are dramatic monologues, others expand in a bricolage the poems’ internal evidence or the bibliographical individuality—their forms and images, their syntax and of shifting images, remembrance of times past, which apparatus, but the arrangement under where the poets rhythms—that this collection has its weight and edge. deepens the sense of exile rather than comfort. A few are writing rather than where they’re from in their ‘natal Still, for all the sheer heterogeneity of the voices and set up an aphorism in order to pick it apart: Shirley cultures’ risks an implicit and reductive homogenisation styles, there are striking contiguities, cross-currents, Geok-Lin’s ‘Riding into California’ begins ‘If you come of disparate Asian cultures. But that’s surely not underlying continuities. On the evidence of such texts, to a land with no ancestors / to bless you, you have to be intended, and the editors’ introductory essay mitigates the introduction is right to cite Edward Said’s Reflections your own / ancestor’ and continues ‘Ghosts welcome us any such charge with some usefully specific exposition on Exile, to speak of ‘the exilic mind and diasporic and reference to secondary sources. state’—where it’s both the state of mind and the adopted There’s already an academic industry on the literature POEM nation state with its different culture, within which and of diaspora, categorising its themes and forms, teasing against which the poems stand their ground. The editors out the sociology and ethnographics, but these poems note that not many of the writers here were forcibly Spirit House (four) provide the texture and specificities; they track the expelled from their natal cultures, though many are imaginative unfolding of the sense of displacement and the children of refugees who were pressured into exile, sibling follows the tensions of cultural assimilation. Precisely because of but a sense of cultural rift and loss, a sense of spiritual sibling into the compelling range and richness of this collection, it’s displacement pervades the collection, and many of the thorn forest important not to schematise it. The introductory essay poems circle round a return to home, their actual home construes these texts as exilic poetry almost as though or the home their family members had left, whether an girl holds stick this were a sub-genre, but if it is, then it’s a strikingly actual visit or an imagined return that acts as a symbolic of incense tip aglow polymorphous one in the styles and formal structures on centre in the poem’s reflections. 37 nats await atop Mount Popa display here, and any shared characteristics are thematic A duality underpins most of these poems, two rather than formal. Even my earlier invoking of the strata and the disruptive tension between them: of how volcanic relics term ‘identity politics’ is itself reductive: it suggests a it was and how it is, of a contrast of landscape, of one sister brother narrowing of the issues, of the imaginative cutting edge generation and the next, of past violence and present blue-throated barbets in these stark testimonies of individuals and generations uneasy stasis, binary conditions being navigated, not caught up in historic ruptures. resolved. Nostalgia doesn’t do the trick, nor does visiting lightning clue To Gather Your Leaving builds to a history of ‘homeland’ in family-history tourism; in most there’s nest lands on soft earth dislocation and alienation as it’s reflected and refracted a tough-minded realism about what memory makes entwined vines in what have now become several waves of diasporic of things, whether a collective memory or the scars poetry. A classic anthology, it stakes its claim and maps of a family’s wounds. Even the old joke about cultural distant blaze a territory, though not to aestheticise and historicise relativism kicks in: don’t be so open minded that your candle wick floating its territory. The causes and consequences of the brain falls out. Openness brings vulnerable exposure; the in bowl of oil diaspora continue. A new edition might come to include poems are an attempt to manage it. writing from Rohingya displaced from Myanmar into The four poems by Mai Der Vang offer a clear Maw Shein Win Bangladesh or—an internal diaspora—the Uyghur in example, each digging into history and landscape and China’s ‘national re-education’ gulag. ☐

28 NEIGHBOURHOOD Rise and fall Melody Kemp

Nick Freeman

hile I was peeling garlic, Minnie, my reliable of the houseboat moored ten metres downstream was joined corrugated iron. It was a bad marketing model, front-door dog, rose unsteadily on her gone, as the dry season starved the river of water, pulling and customers did not arrive. The monks across the road arthritic legs and launched into her heavy- the eccentrically designed houseboat out of sight. As the had little need for large tins of garish paint, G clamps or Wthroated barking. Someone was outside. sun turned red, matching Public Security man’s eyes, he asbestos-based roof tiles. Rather they needed cards for I waited for a knock. None came. smiled, managed an admirably tanged ‘See ya later’, and their mobiles, to which they were more attentive than Refreshing my lipstick so I didn’t look like I felt, I a laugh before a backwards push launched him onto his the dharma. Public Security man’s workers, bored at went to the door. feet and out the gate. the inactivity, would amble around to sit with our night Leaning heavily and somewhat unsteadily against the The drunken ‘See ya later’ proved prophetic, as I guards. Eventually he and his shop just disappeared and spare wheel of my battered ’93 Suzuki was a slim man would later see him strolling past the house, his eyes were replaced by Chinese spyware. with tousled hair. He wore a skinny-legged black suit carefully averted, towel in hand, ribs visible through a and white open-necked shirt with a pair of long-toed yellowed singlet worn over cotton shorts, to take (and he Mekong River is our neighbourhood’s shoes that curled upwards, as I imagined Aladdin’s did. probably give) his ablutions on the banks of the Mekong signature. For fifteen years we have listened to ‘I’m Public Security’ were the first words he slurred only fifty metres away. The Mekong giveth and the long-hulled cargo boats thud rhythmically on at me. I felt a flash of cold. I was a journalist and had Mekong taketh away. Ttheir way either to repairs between the rusting walls of often been warned I was under surveillance. Laos the dry docks 500 metres upstream or to the adjacent in general and Vientiane in particular do not enjoy ears ago, our lane was unofficially known port to deliver loads of sand. The docks mark one end scrutiny. In fact, the week before, a dodgy American as Coffin Street because of the conveniently of the river walk and our neighbourhood. Wat Sop, the bloke who pretended he was an ocean fisheries expert located corner stall that sold high-quality ornate Corpse Temple, named for a hydrological artefact that (why was he in a land-locked country?) had found me at Ypaper burial chambers. When he wasn’t preening his once sent the odd floating body to beach on its riverside a riverside bar and warned me that I was being watched. collection of fighting cocks, our soft-faced neighbour, steps, marks the southern border. By a perch, cod or stingray, I mused? with his ready smile, made the finest, most creative Since my meeting with Public Security man six years In his hand the Public Security man held a bottle of coffins in Vientiane. ago, the issues I reported on—dams, resettlement and Johnnie Walker Red. My immediate thought was that After a tussle with cancer years ago, I had had a corruption—have superseded the natural power of the he must be an underling who couldn’t afford Black or pessimistic eye on a black-and-gold structure. I loved seasons and caused the river to still its rhythmic rise and Green. It was obvious that the ‘Suze’, as she is known, its elegant lines and just the right degree of ostentation. fall. Its murky characteristic brown has turned greenish was the only thing holding his skinny frame upright, but I never did find out why it was black while the others blue, a sign that the river’s life-giving sediment and nonetheless he waved the bottle at me as an invitation were all white. The Public Security guy was there to tell nutrient load was being diverted. Only a few weeks ago to join him. I fetched two glasses, trying to control my me, among other things, that he had taken Mr Coffin’s I woke to waves and turbulence as the waters held back prickling anxiety. land and was about to replace that business with a by China were suddenly released, causing a peculiar He poured a decent three fingers into both glasses, hardware shop. backflow as it merged and clashed with the regular emptying the bottle, which he tossed into my garden. Our creative artisan neighbour disappeared downstream flow. I realised I was watching a symbol of We clinked a smeary sokdee (‘good luck’). I managed a overnight, along with his cocks and possibly the coffins, riparian pathology. The Mekong River’s new chromatic smile tossing back the bad-tasting whisky. I was aware though rumour has it he incinerated them all in disgust. vibrancy is not an indicator of cleanliness, but of that it was only just before 5 p.m. He left behind an exposed smelly squat toilet with its biological death. ☐ A fading sun glinted off the Mekong River, which attendant aquatic life, and nothing else. flows downstream outside our house. Any evidence A token hardware shop was set up made of poorly Melody Kemp is a writer based in Vientiane

29 PROFILE On standby Peter Yeoh

n 14 March, Jeremy Tiang tweeted, ‘My play has for the Singapore Literary Prize, and won the prize with Tiang couldn’t remember when he came across the been postponed indefinitely and I made a pink his first novel, State of Emergency, released in 2018. play. ‘I would have been in my teens. There were many cake’, with pictures of a pinkish Swiss roll he When Tiang began writing State of Emergency, a things I didn’t completely understand, mainly because I Ohad just baked while self-isolating in his apartment in fictional account of a family embroiled in the leftist didn’t know enough about America. But as I read more Flushing. ‘Looking forward to baking my troubles away,’ movements in Singapore’s political upheavals, in 2010, American books and plays (and watched more American the Singaporean writer and translator quipped in the he received a National Arts Council grant. But the TV) I was able to fill in the gaps. I’ve never actually seen same thread. council withdrew the rest of the award money after it on stage! I don’t know why … And I see a lot of theatre. Two weeks earlier, we had arranged to meet at reading the novel’s first draft in 2016. The Emergency When I watched the Beijing production on video, that Kinokuniya’s Cafe Zaiya in Bryant Park to discuss his play of 1948, warfare against pro-independence communist was my first time watching the play all the way through.’ with the prolix title Salesman 之死: The (Almost!) True guerrillas in Malaysia and Singapore, is still a sensitive But he wasn’t interested in adapting Salesman, as Story of the 1983 Production of Death of a Salesman at the topic in the island nation. there have been countless revivals since 1949. In fact, Beijing People’s Art Theatre Directed By Mr Arthur Miller Now, living in New York, he has written a new there was another revival at the Young Vic in London Himself from a Script Translated By Mr Ying Ruocheng play. ‘I think of them as part of the same practice,’ last year, set in the Brooklyn home of a black US Who Also Played Willy Loman. It was set to premiere he explained when I asked if he preferred one genre family, with Wendell Pierce playing Loman and the at the end of March at Target Margin Theater in Sunset over another. ‘They feed each other. I’ve learned a lot magnificent Sharon D. Clarke as Linda. In his review for Park, an ethnically diverse neighbourhood in Brooklyn. about playwriting by translating plays. The fact that the Guardian, Michael Billington remarked on the play’s It was early Saturday afternoon, and business in the I’m a playwright helps my translating. The fact that I ability to transcend skin colour. Japanese bookshop in midtown Manhattan was brisk. write and translate plays enables me to bring a kind of Matt Wolf from the New York Times disagreed. He Despite Covid-19 infections and deaths spiking in China performativity to my fiction writing and translation.’ felt that race wasn’t explored enough: ‘The obvious and Italy, not to mention an outbreak in Washington reason is that such discussions don’t feature in Miller’s State, most shoppers didn’t appear to be taking any iang, forty-three, was born into a blended text … the script makes much of Willy’s desire to precautions. At the time, no one could foresee how family—his father is a Singapore-born Sri Lankan be liked, and you can’t help but wonder whether an quickly New York would become the centre of the and his mother is Malaysian-Chinese; he grew African-American man in post-World War II Brooklyn coronavirus epidemic in the United States. Tup speaking English at home and Mandarin at school. wouldn’t worry more about being accepted … The In the cafe where I waited for Tiang, no one wore His parents communicate in the Cantonese dialect and production, you feel, could dig a bit deeper still.’ masks—I wasn’t wearing one—nor were they adhering Tamil, neither of which Tiang speaks; he communicates You can sense that Tiang is attempting to dig deeper to the social distancing rule of keeping at least six feet with them in English. He left Singapore when he was still and come up with a fresh take. His Salesman 之死 apart. From where I was sitting, I could see Bryant nineteen to read English at University College Oxford is more about Miller staging Salesman in Beijing, a Park’s lawn and its surrounding towers, anchored by the and study acting at Drama Centre London, and lived in sort of play within a play, or a response to it, and also New York Public Library’s marble Beaux-Arts building. London for several years before moving to New York. putting into relief Ying’s role as translator and actor—he People drifted across the lawn, still too cold for them to Beyond instinct and raw talent, writing also comes translated Salesman into Mandarin and acted the role of linger, and Sixth Avenue outside Kinokuniya was noisy from the love of language. ‘The languages you grow up Loman. To make Salesman 之死 different, making life with traffic. In only two weeks, the entire area would with are quite random, and you don’t have a choice,’ he more difficult for himself and Michael Leibenluft, the become a ghost town. said, glancing at Bryant Park. Maybe he saw Loman, play’s director, Tiang wrote his play in Mandarin and I imagined Willy Loman, the tragic figure in Arthur too, anxiously darting across the lawn. ‘All work has a English, and for an all-female cast. Miller’s masterpiece, hurrying across the green to get to context and nothing’s truly abstract. The best work is ‘Death of a Salesman is a very male story,’ said Tiang. 42nd Street station to catch the subway back to Brooklyn writing that grounds its story in lived reality.’ ‘This is a way of redressing that balance. Arthur Miller after failing to persuade his boss to let him work in His childhood of traversing languages also got him is played by a [white] woman. That’s kind of a signal that New York. Perhaps he stopped briefly at the fountain interested in translation. ‘Translation is a way of pulling this isn’t meant to be a documentary representation. to catch his breath and gaze at the buildings around together all these different things,’ he said. ‘By going Hopefully the audience will understand that, although him, reassuring himself that the American Dream was across cultures and languages, I feel it helps to make we’re drawing from an actual event, we’re also alive and well, that despite his own failures, his sons, sense of being in between. There are writers who are exaggerating them a little … to unpack issues. Because particularly Biff, could still attain material wealth and very secure within a single language and culture, and we weren’t there, we don’t know exactly what happened. social mobility through hard, honest work. they can write entirely within that. I belong in a lot of We’re pushing it a little further and using that as a way of As I was conjuring my own fiction, Tiang arrived. places, and I belong nowhere. And translation is a way saying, well, what was going on under the surface?’ After we shook hands, he discreetly sprayed his hand with of making sense of that.’ What about that very long title? ‘It started out as just a small sanitiser and settled down on the stool beside me. Salesman 之死 in many ways expresses Tiang’s Salesman 之死,’ explained Tiang. ‘But it was pointed I pretended not to notice even though there was a distinct interest in exploring the babelic nature of language. He out to me that people who don’t read Chinese would smell of disinfectant. Because he lives in Flushing, in the tells the story, with some poetic licence, of Miller’s trip to have trouble googling the title (and there’s already a film borough of Queens, which has the largest population of China in 1983 to direct Salesman at the Beijing People’s called Salesman), so we needed a subtitle, at which point Asian Americans and Chinese immigrants in New York, I Art Theatre. In the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, I decided to go for maximalism. The play is bilingual, so assumed he was more caught up in the gyre of grim news Miller was invited by Chinese playwright Cao Yu and it seemed right that the title should be, too.’ coming out of Asia than most Manhattanites. actor Ying Ruocheng to stage the play in their city. To In his Twitter bio, Tiang describes himself as a bring a US play to communist China then was an artistic fter our meeting, things evolved quickly. novelist, a translator from Chinese, a playwright, push for earnest post-Mao reform. Miller couldn’t resist. Stringent restrictions have been imposed as the managing editor of Pathlight (an English literary He told John Lahr of the New Yorker that Salesman pandemic engulfs New York City, turning it magazine of Chinese writing in translation) and ‘signaled the changing cultural mood’ of the US postwar Ainto an eerily desolate metropolis. Tiang’s play has been a member of Cedilla & Co (a collective of literary boom, ‘a journey to the interior of the American psyche’. postponed, in line with Broadway’s decision to shutter translators). His oeuvre is indeed impressive. He has Miller wanted to call his play ‘The Inside of His Head’ its theatres until the crisis is over, and no one has any translated into English many Chinese novels—and also because Loman ‘is all the voices’. And he also ‘toyed idea how long this shutdown will last. a Jackie Chan autobiography!—short stories, poetry with the idea of having the proscenium designed in Tiang agrees with the decision. ‘It’s better to be safe,’ collections and plays. the shape of a head and having the action take place he emailed me. ‘It’s clear from the experiences of other He won Singapore’s National Arts Council’s Golden inside it’. Although Salesman is particularly American, countries that it would be safest to stop public gatherings Point Award writing competition in 2009 for his Miller believed it was possible to take it to China. In for the time being.’ But both Tiang and Leibenluft are short story ‘Trondheim’ and studied translation at the his Loman, the legendary playwright saw a universal confident the play will be staged eventually, though they University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in experience. He later wrote in Timebends, his memoir, don’t know when. ☐ 2011. He published a short story collection, It Never ‘Willy was representative everywhere, in every kind of Rains, on National Day, in 2016, which was shortlisted system, of ourselves in this time.’ Peter Yeoh is a writer, editor and art book designer

30 Lauren Crothers

31 TRAVEL Carry across Conner Bouchard-Roberts

ast midnight, my companion and I were walking cultures will migrate in massive flows to both welcome speaking with another’s words could express what you along an unmarked two-lane road in the south of and war. These are old human occurrences, yet today the hold within, what you have held within, what you have Thailand, north of Phang Nga town, on our way scale is magnitudes larger. experienced: the hard-to-say bits. The art of translation Pback to Bangkok. An hour ago there was a suggestion of There will be a loss of innocence. There already is the art of listening across the frightening divide of a village in this direction, but now we were lost among has been. Any notions of human exceptionalism will experience, human and otherwise, and it may be sacred. endless, near-identical trees. The trees were in careful dissipate, painfully, as the definition of ‘human’ (as When you travel, you become a word in translation— rows, row upon row barely illuminated by my headlamp. separate from ecology) collapses from within and the whole of you in a new semiotic context; seen in We debated what they were. Eventually, roaming a bit without. This may be a point of hope; we will relearn strange ways, your habits are read under the light of other off the road (now just dirt) we saw a V-shaped spout what being human means, build new connections and ways of life. The self, that word of you, is misheard and wedged into a trunk and a viscous white liquid dripping rebuild forgotten communities. But the realisation rewritten, and arrives day after day at the traveller’s mouth into a hanging bucket. Rubber plantations … The sight of is immense and its implications unimaginable. as a foreign phrase. Your feet carry the I across, slowly. gridded jungle from the plane, days before, came back Civilisation’s narrow boundaries, of the wild, the self and Your travels offer strange ways to speak yourself. with a stark realism. Of course, every tree was part of a the soul, will disappear and be redrawn. Some are horrifying. Some are beautiful, others comical: large monoculture, and we were right in the stomach of it. This is the reality of our era, and the real scale of the you rhyme with another person; you find yourself This was an ecology of southern Thailand I’d heard question at hand: there is no such thing as ‘moral travel’ rhyming with a lake; you grasp at yourself with half- about. I had no reason to be surprised; I had read articles or a ‘moral traveller’. Ecotourism is merely a brand. words and realise that an old word was wrong. An about the industry’s hundred-year-old beginnings and Taking more or fewer flights is a question of privilege image, a poem, a body, a creature gathering nouns and the myth of how a wealthy provincial ruler smuggled not ethics. To travel is to bear witness to this human adjectives, ways of seeing and memories—cascading into the first trees from Indonesia. Yet the experience experiment, to suspend oneself immorally from the the self you are becoming. arrived sidelong and unexpected. It was unfamiliar and everyday, in hopes of getting a reply, however brief, to the When you arrive back home, you speak and hear immense, and sat oddly in my being—how do you feel real question at hand: What does it mean to be human? your own being with an accent, altered this way and the loss of something you never knew personally: outside Walking in the plantation yielded an answer atonal that by the lilt and scents and light and poetry of that your country, your ecology, your lifespan and your and disharmonic. A human with too much power other place you travelled through. The village or city in language? These monocultures will eventually strip the displaced countless species, including other humans, which you grew up may seem inexplicable. Practices you soil, eventually erode into themselves. in order to create a single biological ode to short- believed were sound may appear flawed. In this way we My companion and I were very lost. Wandering after sightedness, greed and exceptionalism. And this is a all journey together into the Anthropocene; we return dark. Little creatures, we were so utterly small. truth about us. once again to this, our larger home, already deep in crisis. Travel, in all its variety (the near and far, the long and am not from Thailand, or even Southeast Asia. I am here are nights when meaning feels far away, the momentary)—and not just in the rough and rambling from small town on the south coast of the Salish when I feel the only real human virtue is sort of way, or across oceans—is the pursuit of translation Sea, a body of water that connects the west coast of translation. Maybe this ambient depression is and curiosity. It is a continuous border crossing. From ICanada to the United States and sovereign Indigenous Twhy I am drawn to travel. one way of life to another. From one ecology to another. lands. It is a region defined by fecundity, biodiversity Translation (from translatus), meaning to ‘carry From one nation, village or home to another. This is often and marine life as much as by devastating logging across’—to shepherd across water and through borders where growth begins, between systems. practices, overfishing and colonial settlement. It is a between linguistic and cultural systems. A good paradoxical place. translation is an understanding of meaning, intimacy, he humid and thick night air held us totally. I first came to Thailand when I was nine, with my voice, grammar and grace, of the possibility that On that gravel road illuminated by only my parents. Nearly every year since, I’ve crossed the Pacific headlamp, amid the monstrous monoculture, we to return to a village southwest of Lampang. I learned Tkept walking. It would be another week or so before we the language. In my free time, I translate Thai poems POEM reached Bangkok. On looking back, our journey had a into English. I cannot translate in the other direction. near constant echo of devastation that soon overtook In my home country I work as a bartender to pay the Jerryrigged machine the goodwill of those who helped us: from the rubber continually rising rent (characteristic of my region). plantations, and the cruel tourist trails, to a city destined When I can, I travel—mostly around the Salish coastline I screw your to be under water in my lifetime. Odd, partial memories but sometimes, with planning, abroad. eyes to keep your gaze trained resurfaced: the commodified and sacred songbirds in their This practice of travel, I feel, keeps my mind alive and on me, ornate cages, on front porches, in the centre of towns, in reminds me of my idiocy. It remains intricately tied to my the backs of trucks. A passer-by once told me that this ideas of education and self-understanding, of undoing beat your mind with a hammer, is a tradition that migrated from China generations ago. prejudice. It also creates a dilemma: In the age of climate lock down your breasts and delicate The birds, I learned later, had been here long before that, catastrophe, is there such a thing as ‘sustainable travel’, or parts, living and dying for centuries before being turned into even ‘ethical travel’? If not, should we travel at all? talismans, caged for human ideas of beauty and luck. These questions are deeply inadequate. They are loop a chain around your arms and lower legs, My companion, a biologist, shouted from the low foolish. Of course we should all strive to be less wasteful, dress with armor for resisting your brush just off the road: Turn off your light! less ignorant. But ecotourism and its cousins are just own It’s too dark. I was afraid. trends to ease the guilt that travel often brings to the Turn it off! forefront of our consciousness. Ah, yes, New York Times recital of dos and don’ts, Apprehensively I pressed the button (a part of me editors, maybe if I reused that bottle and flew only once haram and halal, heretic and was convinced large predators somehow still ranged a year the world would be a better place: meanwhile, sacred, here). The road disappeared into blackness. Coca-Cola alone produces 200,000 plastic bottles a Soon the moonlight sketched silvery hues on the minute and Amazon operates 110 cargo flights a day. and infiltrate with metal the flesh, with wire the leaves and my hands. He was crouched to the soil. The scale of the tragedy is nearly incomprehensible; veins, with algorithm the thought. Jerryrig Look at this … he called quietly. Glowing on his hand individual changes are pebbles against a flood. protective love. was a luminescent worm. My eyes adjusted to the little The Anthropocene, the Capitalocene—this age we points of light all around us. Fireflies dipped in and seemingly awoke in, a geological and historical epoch Tilde Acuña out of sight, the nightscape starry with blueish-green now defined by human consequences for the planet and phosphorescent beings. ☐ by a climate catastrophe. A critical mass of human acts is Translated from the Filipino by Kristine Ong now cascading into what may be the greatest tragedy of Muslim Conner Bouchard-Roberts is a writer and publisher our species thus far. Cities will disappear, crops will fail, from Salish, Canada

32 FOOD Against Malaysian food Alicia Izharuddin

alking about food in the era of Covid-19, we image of multicultural cohesion is fundamentally built are seized by how lockdowns have upended the on a racial hierarchy. Mamak food production relies on way we eat. Restaurants shut and many may stay migrant bodies, bodies fragmented further into hands Tclosed forever, driven out of business by the escalating that bring to the table fried noodles and strong iced tea costs of waiting and patience. Takeaways and delivery in an instant. Those who serve are the transnational services surge. Cooking fills the long days at home. an-nehs (‘elder brothers’ in Tamil) from India, Sri Lanka, Questions about whether or not we will eat and drink Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar who toil round the in public spaces the same way again hang over many a clock for pitiful wages. sleepless night. The collapse of the hospitality industry If anything, the love of Malaysian food is the finest aside, social relationships forged and lubricated by beers expression of the exclusionary trope of nationalism: to and fried noodles, so precious now yet taken for granted secure the happiness of an in-group there needs to be when viewed from wistful hindsight, will be hard-won exploitation of an out-group. Round-the-clock mamak from now on. What is certain is that we cannot go back Charis Loke food, like other ‘ethnic’ cuisines, is the direct descendant to where we were with the way we eat, at least not for of a colonial culinary heritage. Racialised labour patterns a long while. The feeling of grief is palpable: food is a under British rule were a means to manage entry into the comfort. It is culture and identity. What happens when punt and point out the ugliness and destructiveness that colony and to keep ethnic groups apart once they were food, like Malaysian cuisine, is placed at the centre of an Malaysian food betrays and conceals. Not to put too fine there. Take one well-known example. Among the last entire cultural identity, and faces the consequences of a point on it, the hedonistic emphasis on deliciousness large-scale migrant groups to arrive in colonial Malaya, the pandemic? hides the cuisine’s history of colonialism and present- Hainanese from southern China, were confronted with a When I first started writing this essay, during those day exploitation and eco-degradation. More than saturated labour market and given scant choice in terms carefree pre-Covid days, stakeholding on cultural food this, the very deliciousness of Malaysian food depends of work. And most ended up in commercial cooking and and the culture of food in Malaysia continued to rage, on the omission of its colonial past and present-day food production. Many Hainanese went on to settle and to the exclusion of any preparation for a major event exploitation and eco-degradation. integrated as citizens of the newly independent Malaysia. that could imperil comfort, culture and identity. Not While there is some acknowledgement of the But it’s not been so straightforward for postcolonial the pandemic, but the climate emergency. There is now way food is in fact integral to the environmental migrants—from Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, mounting evidence that the two are intertwined. destructiveness of the Anthropocene, a lot less attention Myanmar, Vietnam and Cambodia—who don’t even Pandemics of the past originated with animals: rats, is paid to the human costs of actually producing it. possess the promise of second-class citizenship. pigs, chickens, creatures that live close—dangerously Malaysia is a consummate consumer society. And food Erasure and exclusion keep the myths of food close—to humans. But they were not carriers of is appreciated almost exclusively according to how it nationalism alive, until those myths become untenable pestilence on their own. Other unwitting animal tastes and how to consume as much of it as possible. and destabilised by a catastrophe like Covid-19. Workers accomplices, whose manner of existence was once Any visitor will be told about the country’s food who make eating as cheap and cheerful as possible remote from human contact, made their presence felt and how wonderful it is. To know Malaysia is to eat face even more hardship from increased exposure to when wild habitats were destroyed for human use. The Malaysia. Malaysians abroad find fellow feeling through the virus. This is the lived reality: most stay in totally first Nipah virus outbreak in 1997 and 1998 in Malaysia locating, preparing and eating the food of home. Often inadequate accommodation, face unemployment or a was traced to bats and the destruction of their food there is little else to bond over. For too long, Malaysians cut to paltry wages, and are threatened with detention source. Some 265 humans were infected; 105 died. have been divided linguistically, by class, religion and or worse. They are those who Arundhati Roy calls ‘ghost Lessons from this kind virus could have been learned ethnicity, and by an obsession with titles, status and workers’, the hundreds of thousands of farmers (in and relearned—that today human and animal foodways wealth. Food is the common language Malaysians speak India) who have committed suicide to escape punishing overlap in a deadly admixture of environmental to each other. The tedium and superficiality of this debt; the hundreds of millions who live on less than degradation, genetic quirk and a pathogenic time bomb. shared food language are enlivened by the next trendy two dollars a day. Ghost workers are the underclass A shift in the way Malaysian food is talked about, food item and destination in a collective partaking of the that performs invisible, difficult yet essential labour for imagined, produced and consumed needs to reflect banality of deliciousness. next to nothing. It’s an image that’s been picked up by these pressing concerns. Subconsciously, everyone The banality of deliciousness, referencing Hannah Parthiban Muniandy, who shows how ghost workers knows that food is intertwined with the self. But through Arendt’s famous dictum about ‘the banality of evil’, may in the Malaysian food industry bear the stigmata of a Malaysian lens, local food quite literally feeds the seem like an odd choice of words when she was talking impermanence, interchangeability, invisibility and national and nationalist self. The furore early this year about the normalisation of genocide. But the kernel precarity. Life is nasty, brutish and often short. about a British woman’s disapproval of nasi lemak served of Arendt’s argument finds its resonance in instances A fresh awareness and appreciation of our on a British Airways flight became another episode in when extraordinary harm is made mundane—that environmental interconnectedness during the global the national pastime of disparaging white people for moral responsibility for acts of harm can be suspended pandemic might just bring us closer to a coming to their gastronomic ignorance. Never mind that it was and displaced in a labyrinthine chain of command and terms with the real origins of the latest bio-catastrophe. airplane nasi lemak. The woman made two categorical supply. Enjoying delicious food may seem completely Understanding the genesis of bio-catastrophes could errors: posting her views on Twitter and castigating harmless when the exploitation of food workers is less also offer clues to a means of preserving a sense of the one thing that brings Malaysians together. And visible. Like a Marxian fetish, banal deliciousness is cultural identity so lovingly defined by food. together Malaysians heaped scorn on the unwitting only meaningful when the labouring hands that enable There is no better illustration of interconnectedness diner. Perceived in one way, the episode was the revenge farm to fork are obscured from view. And not just male than the Nipah virus that afflicted Malaysia (and of the natives. The formerly colonised satisfying their migrant hands, but also women’s hands in the home. elsewhere) in 1997 and 1998. There is a trail. The virus vengeance over their oppressor through a medium was contracted from pigs infected by the excrement of that is both intimate and political, food. Speak ill of he ubiquitous mamak food, a cuisine pioneered bats displaced by anthropogenic forest fires in Indonesia the olfactory challenges of durian and belacan at your by the Indian Muslim community, is a reliable that inhibited the fruiting of forest trees, the source of peril. But seen in another way, it was a sinister form of site for the banality of deliciousness in Malaysia. food for bats. For now, these are simply pieces of an gastronomic chauvinism, a way of ganging up against TOpen twenty-four hours every day of the week, the origin story. The connection with how we eat still needs others because there are few other avenues for social mamak restaurant is a gift to the national pastime of to be made to the collapsing natural world that is not cohesion to identify with. eating. It is the jewel that sits on the crown of food just over there, but here and now. As provocative as the title of this essay may sound, pride: cheap, cheerful, convivial, convenient. The In her recent book Decolonizing Extinction, Juno it’s not really about rejecting or disliking Malaysian food mamak restaurant is celebrated as a properly multiracial Salazar Parreñas shows that displacement caused by dam- in toto. The pleasures of the country’s food are world- space where different ethnic groups, who are divided building and deforestation in Sarawak forced humans and renowned. Only people who lack taste buds could object otherwise by religion and dietary restrictions, can sit orangutans into an unwanted collision in their respective to its cornucopia of delights. Rather, I intend to take a together and enjoy the same meals. But this superficial searches for food. At risk of extinction and vulnerable

33 to wildlife trafficking and starvation, orangutans have outs to undocumented migrants, mainly organised been placed in rehabilitation centres for their protection. by civic groups. But this takes place clandestinely to These centres may be artificial spaces where orphaned avoid encounters with the thuggish official paramilitary orangutans learn to feed themselves as nature intended group, the People’s Volunteer Corps. Migrant workers before being released into their natural habitat. Yet while aren’t safe from the police either. They risk arrest and they mitigate harm, the centres are really only temporary detention for breaking the movement control order or havens from likelihood of extinction. And jobless people a documentation-related infraction while out looking need orangutan rehabilitation centres to stay open since for work and food. And inevitably, at the beginning other sources of livelihood are few. of May, just when the lockdown was being eased, the Wordsters, Poets & Scribes In Parreñas’s ethnography, the Ibans who work with Malaysian authorities were systematically rounding up orangutans must find ways to cari makan (literally, undocumented migrants as part of ‘efforts to contain the ‘find food’) or make a living under new circumstances. spread of coronavirus’. That’s also the new normal: when But here, cari makan takes on a new meaning in the ‘containing the virus’ becomes the shield for a simple The Mekong’s age of mass extinction and environmental collapse. absence of basic humanity. Something is somehow gained from ecological loss. But then none of this is really all that new. It’s just Dedicated Displaced people and animals form new environmental that in a situation of extreme unemployment and subjectivities defined by an interdependency of survival. precariousness, people are even more desperate to find ‘Word’ Pop-up It is anything but a utopian symbiosis. Neither really ways to cari makan. And this also means embracing wants to be so interdependent with the other. Those mutual but unequal vulnerabilities and risks. Delivery taking responsibility for their non-human charges boys on their motorbikes and food producers are become new persons in two ways: ‘essential workers’. But being ‘essential’ does not take COMING IN 2020 away the risk of exposure to viral load in order to keep first as environmental subjects who must cari makan, people fed. ‘Essential’ food workers might be rewarded or find food in ways that differ from the past, and with public applause, but cheers do nothing to address second as wage-earning animal handlers who must pre-existing conditions of deep-seated inequality. JUNE interface directly with animals that they would During these desperate times, choice is often not an otherwise rarely encounter. option. At the vital anterior of the food supply chain PHNOM PENH HOWL are disruptions that can have a rippling effect on food The image of live wild animals in wet markets services and household consumers. Transportation of Word Jam across Asia, made foreboding by the Western media, perishable produce like meat, fish, fruit and vegetables ‘The Capital Edition’ presents another version of environmental subjectivity. across state lines is an essential service during the The consumption of animals rarely encountered in partial lockdown. But many workers are quite sensibly globalised factory farming has been linked to the likely concerned about putting their families and themselves source of Covid-19, the Huanan Seafood Wholesale at risk. Hidden away and distrustful of the public gaze, OCTOBER Market in Wuhan, China, where, belying its name, factory farming and meat-processing plants were bats, snakes and civets were also sold. At first glance, it always notoriously dangerous places to work in even SIEM REAP HOWL looks like the opposite to the environmental subjectivity before Covid-19. Now, what were previously regular if in conservation work mentioned by Parreñas. Wild nasty aspects of the job, like working in large groups in Word Jam animals were at the market to be eaten not protected. confined spaces, have the makings of a virus hotspot. ‘The Temple Edition’ Unsurprisingly, there have been concerted calls for such A new world of eating after the pandemic passes markets to be shut down. awaits us. It could be one enriched by a greater But beyond a total ban on wet markets and the sale awareness of our interconnectedness. It could be one of wildlife for consumption, there is greater complexity tempered by recognition of the mutual but unequal TBA at play here once we pause to think about matters of vulnerabilities between humans and non-human livelihoods and cultural food practices a little more animals alike. Some of that vision has already been Book Markets, deeply. Nearly everywhere, rural and indigenous woven into our everyday lives under lockdown, through populations cari makan through wildlife consumption, enforced social distancing, contact tracing and staying Reviews, Launches by means of both hunting and trading. Rural suppliers at home. A sense of connectedness with the non-human, & Other Events and market traders, along with wildlife poachers and one that embraces a non-anthropocentric perspective, smugglers, are part of an industry—sometimes legal, has already begun in our humble acceptance that the sometimes not—that has supplied different markets for human body, the economy and civilisation are no match generations: other rural and indigenous consumers, for an invisible virus. Connectedness with non-human and sometimes affluent consumers of unusual (exotic? animals may also be all about perspective. As John traditional?) medicines. Berger writes in his essay ‘Why Look at Animals?’, there Got a book to launch, What the pandemic reveals to us is that people is a presumption that ‘animals first entered the human poem to read, working in relatively remote spaces like the rainforests imagination as meat or leather or horn’ that neglects of Sarawak or a wet market in a metropolis of eleven to appreciate that they ‘first entered the imagination as some words to share? million or in the everyday mamak eateries have become messengers and promises’. We can organise a HOWL environmental subjects. They too are impacted by an The way the pandemic has changed our relationship irreversible biosecurity and ecological crisis. Old ways with each other and with the natural world is no for you. Venues, media of working should not apply to the never-ending quest different from a twist in a dark fairy tale. Within a & coffee - free. to cari makan. Perfunctory hygiene in food production few months, seemingly like magic, every person on and preparation ought to improve fast. Wages need the planet has been pushed into tighter spheres of to increase to account for health and safety risks. interdependency. In more quotidian terms, there are You would think that such a necessary future means limits to that interdependency. Long excluded groups everything compared to the dire present. But the like migrant workers and refugees are simply not Details and Updates Huanan market has reopened, as restaurants close or allowed into the abrupt embrace of interdependency, howlcambodia.com dramatically scale down in Malaysia, and life continues embedding their ghostly status further. as before in the interior of Sarawak. There is every likelihood that attitudes that overfed facebook.com/howlsiemreap/ the banality of deliciousness before the pandemic will o what has happened to the ubiquitous mamak return in full force, like a repressed spring uncoiling All inquiries restaurants and their workers through the six- with great urgency. There will be feasts after social week movement control order imposed by the famine. Food workers in the mamak stalls need to Dr. Howl at SMalaysian government in mid-March? It’s been a tale work, food nationalism needs to be reconsolidated. [email protected] of woe that’s usually camouflaged when times are But, I think, not quite in the same way. The chances are ‘normal’. Operating hours have been curtailed, and inequalities will deepen as people cari makan under workers have had no choice but to take pay cuts or else newly impoverished circumstances. ☐ they’ve been made redundant. This in turn means a drastic shortfall in precious remittances sent to needy Alicia Izharuddin is a research associate at the Women’s Join the pack! families back home. There are emergency food hand- Studies in Religion Program at the Harvard Divinity School

34 URBAN Bangkok days Pim Wangtechawat

PHILIP CORNWEL-SMITH Very Bangkok: In the City of the Senses River Books: 2020

s someone born and raised in Bangkok, no matter how often I heard outsiders characterise the city a ‘bounty of sensory pleasures’, it always Afelt as though they were describing a place that didn’t exist. Despite its many mazes, its contrasting shades and sides, to me Bangkok is simply home, a place where you spend your life navigating the traffic, the humidity and the shopping malls. And the nature of home is that it remains the same. However it might feel to others, my Bangkok was stagnant, impervious to progress. And to live in it was to be bound by its sense of uniformity. I spent my childhood and teenage years feeling out of place in my own city and yearning to be somewhere else, to belong somewhere else. Other places in the world— whether it be London, Paris, Tokyo, Milan—all seemed rich and intoxicating in comparison. So whenever I heard Philip Cornwel-Smith visitors or friends from abroad rhapsodising about how much they ‘love Bangkok’, I always felt sceptical and Cafe in Bangkok detached from their positive sentiment. There are many things about being from Bangkok that these outsiders past’, and ‘amnesiac Bangkok is recovering the gaps in this city, or the nation’, and ‘selfies are a way to get could never understand—especially the way life is lived its memory’. Many of the observations in Very Bangkok your face out there without fear of losing face’—come here, which, as a young person, I find mundane and might not be the most flattering to this city of angels, across as sweeping generalisations. The quote from stifling. Unless you become an actor or a pop star, your but they are honest and important ones that many Thais Wayne Deakin, a Thailand-based British philosopher, entire ‘ordinary’ life is already laid out before you—a good haven’t dwelled on or even noticed, partly because they that ‘Thai people are searching for identity’, is not far education, a steady job, a steady income and then a family. are so ingrained in us. off the mark. But you can’t help reading it and wishing When I first heard of Very Bangkok, Philip Cornwel- Thailand’s class system, for example, has always been the conversation could have gone on longer, with more Smith’s follow-up to his popular book Very Thai, I felt a harmful but rarely discussed element of our culture. in-depth discussions of what might have caused this similarly sceptical. What could a white Westerner tell me Very Bangkok notes that both of Bangkok’s electric condition—perhaps with other contributors, especially about my hometown that I didn’t already know? What rail systems, the MRT and the BTS, are ‘off limits to those who are Thai, taking centre stage. Cornwel-Smith could be gained from a book about Bangkok written in the poor or those with meagre incomes’, with stations insists that his ‘status as an outsider is somewhat moot English and meant to be consumed largely by non- directly integrated into affluent shopping malls, unlike after twenty-five years of experience’. But would the Thais? The experiment seemed both futile and clichéd. bus stops. Religion, too, is put under the microscope, book be different if there had been a native at the helm? Would the book, like so many others about Thailand with one of the book’s Thai contributors arguing that The answer isn’t straightforward. written by foreigners, be concerned with just the Thai religiosity ‘has more to do with nationalism … ‘touristy’ elements of Bangkok? If not, then how honest than philosophical aspects of religion’. Our reverence ast year I moved to Edinburgh. Living in Europe, and nuanced could it be when it came to discussing for seniority is also shown to be harmful, especially to I’ve found that Bangkok has taken on another what it’s truly like to be a Bangkokian? the younger generations. ‘Youth movements require role in my life. In many ways, I am now both the Yet as I started engaging with Very Bangkok, I spaces and time’, writes Cornwel-Smith, ‘which are not Loutsider and the insider; while the city is still my home, began to see that there might be some merit to having just lacking, but deliberately curtailed.’ We’re seeing being away from it has simultaneously deepened my as its author someone who hasn’t, to quote author more and more of this as young people attempt to take appreciation for it and opened my eyes to many of its Lawrence Osborne in the book’s foreword, ‘absorbed a greater role in politics. flaws. Like Cornwel-Smith, I have learned to dissect the unconsciously as a child’ the things which make The section of the book that I appreciate the most city and tried to figure out what lies beneath, leading Bangkok unique. By taking on the role of an outside discusses Bangkok’s attitude towards sexuality. In to questions about the way we’ve been conditioned to observer, Cornwel-Smith is able to provide a more the West, Thailand is often regarded as somewhere view the world and, as Bangkokians, each other: Why well-rounded view of Bangkok than a Bangkokian who’s to have ‘a good time’, a phrase usually accompanied do I always get compliments on my pale skin? What lived in only one area of the city. An example of this is by a suggestive wink. But this perception of sexual is life like for Bangkokians whose ethnicity or sexual the section on Bangkok’s LGBT scene, which has long liberation has always contrasted greatly with reality. orientation differs from mine? Will things ever be better been unfairly aligned with the city’s seedy underbelly. To quote Cornwel-Smith, Bangkok is more ‘Sin City for women or those not born into wealth? ‘Bangkok is my church,’ drag artist Nuh Peace says. ‘In meets Prim City’. For many Bangkokians, public But despite these flaws—and the city’s inability any other religion, if you are queer or different you’re displays of affection between couples are unseemly; to address or confront them—I still find myself out. But Bangkok accepts you how you are.’ sex is not a topic that is openly or healthily discussed, missing Bangkok. While I don’t miss the traffic or the True to its title, much of the book is devoted to either in schools or during one’s upbringing. The book humidity, I’ve found myself longing for small home Bangkok’s ‘sensory pleasures’, and to finding out the also highlights that Thailand has the world’s second- comforts, mainly the food, the shopping malls, the causes of the city’s ‘unexplained puzzles’. Filled with highest rate of teen pregnancy, and that 44 per cent language and the people. Now, whenever friends of photographs of Bangkok and its people, Very Bangkok of men admitted to having assaulted their partners mine from Europe or the United States ask for my has three parts: ‘Senses’, ‘Heart’ and ‘Face’. Cornwel- when drunk. Although Bangkok is perceived to be a advice on visiting Thailand, especially Bangkok, I Smith calls Bangkok ‘the world’s most primate city’ and bachelor’s paradise, many of its locals are actually living encourage them to go. ‘It will be very different what is interested not in simply providing niche knowledge in a society which ‘frowns on female sexuality’. you’re used to, though,’ I always tell them. ‘Different on various historical landmarks but in getting under the Where Very Bangkok could have done better, and overwhelming.’ But perhaps that’s what I’ve come city’s skin and making sense of its DNA. Hence these however, is in its preoccupation with defining ‘Thai-ness’ to miss most about my city since I’ve been away: the musings, which almost turn Bangkok, a place of ‘very and ‘Bangkok-ness’. Certain statements from the author overwhelming sameness of home. ☐ meaty spaces’, into a living, breathing character: ‘a city and non-Thai contributors—such as ‘for Bangkokians, fretting about the future finds solace in orchestrating the nothing matters more than to ‘gain face’, for the self, Pim Wangtechawat is a Thai writer based in Edinburgh

35 MUSIC Missing on stage Mina Bui Jones

WOMADELAIDE of progressive social and cultural movements and 5–9 March 2020 ambitious festival season, should be able to curate a Botanic Gardens, Adelaide, South Australia world music festival that truly includes the magnificent cacophony of the world, especially the sounds of our region. Are logistical convenience and old habits OMADelaide is an awkward hybrid preventing Asian acts from being included in the annual combining the ‘world of music, arts microcosm of the world that is WOMADelaide? and dance’ with the capital city of South WAustralia. It’s the Australian incarnation of a festival delaide is a city of open skies, flat and wide, its staged in various forms around the world since it was mostly empty streets lying on a plain as if they started in England in 1982 by former Genesis frontman have thrown themselves down and opened their Peter Gabriel and others. WOMAD in Adelaide opened Aarms to the world. It’s the only Australian city I’ve been a decade later and has been staged annually since to where I’ve heard Aboriginal languages spoken on the 2003, part of a festival season the locals refer to as street and where a passion for cuisine and an interest in ‘mad March’—incorporating the Adelaide Festival, the art and literature seem genuinely rooted in place. Adelaide Fringe and Adelaide Writers’ Week. According Michael Coghlan/Flickr Somewhat mythologised, South Australia’s history to the publicity, last year more than 90,000 people came is quite different from the other states and territories to lap up music, dance, workshops, talks, art installations in Australia’s federation, most of which were British and food from more than thirty countries in a bazaar- first as an artist liaison and then for the last ten years as a penal colonies. It was colonised by free settlers and like atmosphere in Botanic Park. program manager. Tripodi explains that she and festival Europeans fleeing religious persecution, and its laws and This year was my fifth WOMADelaide and the director Ian Scobie work closely to balance headline acts regulations have often been relatively enlightened. My third in a row. But while I’m a fan of the event, it’s hard and surprising performances with ‘the strongest, freshest home town, Sydney, on the other hand, the starting point for me not to notice the dearth of performers from and best quality music from around the world’. To do for Britain’s military possession of Australia, has always Asia, especially from Southeast Asia. In fact, last year this, they frequently ‘check in’ with WOMAD UK and try been a grasping, smash-and-grab kind of city, where there were none. The 2020 line-up seems to have a to see as much live music as possible. Both travel to the heroes of public good have been few and far between few more artists than usual from Australia’s regional United Kingdom and Europe for the northern summer and are too little remembered, too rarely championed. neighbours. There’s Maubere Timor, fronted by veteran festival season, between them attending WOMAD John Birmingham, in Leviathan: The Unauthorised independence fighters from Timor-Leste, and the Orang UK and others such as Chalon dans la Rue in France Biography of Sydney, argues that, from the start, officers Orang Drum Theatre from Malaysia. From Taiwan, and Sziget in Hungary. I get the impression that the in charge of prisoners transported to Sydney used every there’s the impressive B. Dance, and from Japan, the European and UK trips are annual. The relationship with opportunity to dispossess native peoples of their land and Minyo Crusaders, valiantly seeking to revive a form of its foundation organisation, WOMAD UK, is clearly profit from the forced labour of the prisoners under their folk song they say has become extinct, playing cumbia fundamental to WOMADelaide. command. Birmingham believes this period set the tone beats and wearing masks and kimonos. The Crusaders Performances are also sourced through trusted for the development of a competitive and individualistic were one of two bands from Japan this year; the other, arts agencies and recommendations from world music character in Sydney ever after. Kikagaku Moyo, plays psychedelic rock reminiscent of luminaries such as Annette Shun Wah and Lucky Oceans. The openness of Adelaide belies, of course, the last year’s crowd favourites Khruangbin (a US band with Another source is their open applications platform, same histories in South Australia that played out a Thai name). but Tripodi admits few artists who submit through this across the rest of the country as colonial power and its Despite the rise in representation from Asia, I channel have the professional support that makes it opportunists, the settlers, expanded its reach: frontier still feel there’s something missing, perhaps not only ‘possible’ for them to be booked. They might be good, she violence, murderous land acquisition and policies in the geographic spread of sources, but also in the explains, but they have ‘no agent, no management, and enacted upon Indigenous Australians that are now festival’s curatorial vision. I’m wondering if there is there are going to be problems with visas’. recognised as genocidal—despite intentions that South a philosophical or theoretical framework guiding I ask if WOMADelaide has any genre or regional Australia would be different. how the ‘world’ is represented here in music, arts and specialists on its team, and Tripodi says no. She and However, things have been different in South dance, especially given that one of WOMADelaide’s Scobie ‘play to each other’s strengths’, she says. They Australia, especially in the 1970s under the premiership principal sponsors is the state government. It’s not that confer with colleagues in the United Kingdom. Some of Don Dunstan, who, among many progressive social anyone expects or would even want to see a perfectly of the promoters have regional specialisations, like reforms, championed Australia’s growing familiarity proportional representation of the world, but less than one who concentrates on Celtic folk music, whose with Southeast Asia. Dunstan’s was just one of many 1 per cent of performances from Southeast Asia over suggestions Tripodi says they can ‘trust blind’. ‘expressions of cosmopolitan receptivity to the East’, in a twenty years suggests there might be something missing When I ask about a relative lack of Southeast Asian long agony of existential doubt and debate documented in how the program is created. performances, Tripodi cites this year’s Orang Orang by David Walker in his books Stranded Nation: White Performances from East Asia (China, South and Drum Theatre, Kim So Ra from Korea and the Minyo Australia in an Asian Region (2019) and Anxious Nation North Korea, Taiwan and Japan) get a better look-in, Crusaders. She mentions the esteemed Indian violinist, (1999). Walker shows that Australians have regarded at around 2.5 per cent, while artists from South Asia Dr L. Subramariam, playing WOMADelaide for a Asia as a source of opportunity as much as fear, at least (Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh) second time this year thanks to an ongoing relationship since the 1880s. have been given 3.5 per cent of performance slots. By between the WOMADelaide Foundation and the Nataraj After Dunstan, Australian leaders, including prime comparison, in three of the most recent festivals, while Cultural Centre in Melbourne. ministers Keating and Rudd, argued that Australia was— maintaining a consistent representation of Australian Tripodi says that while they would like to have more or certainly could be if we all wised up a little—an Asian artists at around 45 per cent, the representation from Asian performers, it’s not always easy to find the right nation, and that we should look to our region instead the rest of the world was: North America, 14 per cent; artists at the right time. They are ‘going for the best of back to old England to develop skills and cultural Africa (excluding Middle East and North Africa), 11 possible mix … and it’s very organic. We will never go identities to match our current realities and likely futures. per cent; Europe, 10 per cent; and the United Kingdom, down the path of having a quota or anything like that’. One of the most fascinating aspects of Walker’s 6 per cent. Combined, Asian performances—from any Later, I wonder about Southeast Asian events Tripodi books is their record of more than 150 years of of more than two dozen diverse countries between and Scobie might have scouted for artists. Tripodi replies Australian interest in the arts and cultures of Asia and Turkmenistan and Japan—have made up a total of just in an email: WOMAD Singapore, Korea Performing of fruitful cultural exchange. Looking at the line-up of under 7 per cent over twenty years of festivals. Arts Market and Sound of the Xity in Beijing. Over WOMADelaide, it seems its organisers haven’t come as I want to know how this world music festival is put twenty years, from a country seated on Asia’s doorstep, far as its audience and are still taking most of their cues together, and am fortunate to speak with Angela Tripodi, that’s not a lot. from an old colonial centre. It’s no longer tenable for an who has worked on WOMADelaide for two decades, It seems to me that Adelaide, with its history Australian view of the world to look so British. ☐

36 FILM Onward, Christian soldier David Scott Mathieson

BRENT GUDGEL AND The team meets a large family trapped for three CHRIS SINCLAIR (DIRECTORS) years, who moments after a hopeful liberation scene, are Free Burma Rangers shredded by an ISIS mine. Eubank again has a ‘Kill them Deidox Films: 2020 all, let God sort them out’ anguished moment. But, as he laments, ‘Vengeance looks like justice, but it’s hate.’ Yet, as one of his team members casually mentions, Eubank he first time I met American humanitarian did kill three ISIS fighters in combat. missionary Dave Eubank was in 2004 over The interviews with Eubank when he agonises over breakfast in Chiang Mai, where we discussed these contradictions of faith would have been as off- Tmules, powered flight and civil war in Myanmar. putting as a TV evangelist if not for his humanity and Desmond Ball, the late professor of the Australian honesty. These scenes, and the way the film-makers not National University, had introduced us, and for an just centre on Eubank’s effusive self-examination, but avowed atheist, Ball took Eubank’s energetic Christian broaden it out with ample interviews with Karen Eubank speech in his stride; it was all about the conflict and and the many Karen and Iraqi aid workers and footage what they were both doing, in very different ways, to of people they encounter, swerve away from what could alleviate the suffering of civilians. be an indulgent hagiography. Eubank told me that just that day he had ordered two The centrepiece of the Iraq sections, which the powered paragliders, or paramotoring devices—simply documentary begins with, is Eubank’s dramatic rescue of a propeller strapped to your back that blows wind into Deidox Films a young girl trapped among a pile of corpses, including a parachute—to evacuate landmine victims over the her mother, whose hijab she uses as cover, against a wall, mountains in eastern Myanmar into Thailand. That Dave Eubank, in Free Burma Rangers pinned down by ISIS snipers. Using an Iraqi army tank mules could move supplies through jungle terrain, he and US military smokescreen airdrops, Eubank runs had gleaned from reading Bernard Ferguson’s classic an estimated one and a half million people around the into gunfire and plucks the girl to safety. He and other memoirs of the World War II Chindit expeditions, The world, a major achievement for what is essentially a team members then return through that same fire and Wild Green Earth, so he got several of them too. small family-run relief operation. drag two wounded men to safety. War zones attract a rogue’s gallery of adventurers, And it truly is a family affair. The Eubanks’ three This dramatic footage from 2017 was well covered by fantasists and psychopaths. Eubank and his Free Burma children, Sahale, Suuzane and Peter, literally grew up the international media. What was not is that wounded, Rangers (FBR) have been called all those and more, but in conflict zones, home-schooled and helping with trapped civilians in buildings close by also called for they are distinguished by their effectiveness, as a new training operations. There is ample footage of the help, and the FBR rescued them, too. Eubank admits documentary treatment of their activities in Myanmar family mountain climbing, horse riding, parachuting fear and reluctance, but citing John 15:13—‘greater love and Iraq makes clear. The Free Burma Rangers have been and hiking into the middle of war zones with rebel hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for in operation for over twenty-four years, starting small soldiers. Karen Eubank formed the Good Life Club, his friends’—he did it. Many FBR members have laid along the Thailand–Myanmar border to help the Karen which organises activities, entertainment and basic down their lives in missions, including the enigmatic people in the longest running civil war in the world. goods for displaced children, and it’s in many of these Shaheen, and the cameraman Zau Seng, from Kachin Eubank was born in Texas and grew up in Thailand, scenes that the real hope is found in the resilience of state, cut down in Kurdistan doing what he believed in. son of a prominent Christian missionary family. After people amidst carnage. The Christian rhetoric and constant referencing college he joined the US military, serving in the elite The front-line conflict footage is the documentary’s of prayer and God’s plan may well put off many non- Ranger battalions, and then as a major in the Special core strength: the FBR’s interaction with civilians believers. Some of Eubank’s Western champions Forces, or Green Berets, for ten years. Upon leaving, and caught in crossfires and ever present landmines and also have dubious political leanings, including the searching for a mission, he was asked by his father to a relentlessly sadistic Myanmar army. Travelling notorious Colonel Oliver North and Republican Party return to Thailand. Hearing of fighting along the border repeatedly to Myanmar’s northern Kachin state, congressmen who attended graduation ceremonies at in ethnic Karen areas, he loaded a truck with medical where more than 100,000 civilians were displaced Camp Ta U Wah at the end of 2019. The FBR was also supplies and adopted a simple philosophy, which the by widespread fighting following the breakdown of consulted for Sylvester Stallone’s 2008 film Rambo, FBR follow today: ‘Go to the sound of guns, go to the a ceasefire between the central government and the apparently partly modelled on the FBR’s operations. This sound of need, and trust God.’ On the trail he gave a Kachin Independence Army, Eubank hears of the bestial makes disparaging the FBR as a right-wing, militaristic, lift to a Karen medic, called Eliya, who Eubank recalls rape and murder of two young Kachin teachers, Maran Christian nut-bag cabal easy. looked like a ‘pirate angel’, and the Free Burma Rangers Lu Ra and Tangbau Hkawn Nan Tsin, in neighbouring Yet, as the documentary illustrates, the FBR are a were in operation. Shan state, a crime that remains unresolved. committed collective with a drive to help people at the That nucleus of Eliya, Eubank and the latter’s wife It’s at this point that, on camera, Eubank gets on sharp end of armed conflict. They are not the only ones. Karen started training mobile medical teams modelled his knees and says, ‘I do want to kill all the Burma On the Thailand border there are also Backpack Health on Ranger operations that would venture deep into the army, no question in my mind.’ The narrative then Worker Teams, the Mao Tao Clinic and dozens of civil conflict zones and provide medical support to internally introduces a young Karen man, Sah Nay Htoo, who society or insurgent-connected service delivery providers. displaced people, guide them away from marauding was press-ganged into the Myanmar army, committed The FBR is one group within a wider humanitarian Myanmar army columns and stay in solidarity. Soon, the murderous atrocities against his own people, fragged his milieu. Criticism that their branding—there are FBR FBR was documenting its activities through interviews commanding officer and deserted, eventually joining the T-shirts in every corner of Myanmar now—is simply and film and sending the reports to the outside world. FBR, and then being baptised. This case, Eubank says, cynical self-promotion, is facile. United Nations agencies As human rights reporting goes, it was by no means shows that ‘forgiveness is counter-warfare’. and large international aid agencies and human rights balanced, but it was accurate and impassioned, and it Mid-way through, the documentary pivots to Mosul groups all aggrandise their work for fundraising, often had real impact. in Iraq. The FBR opened operations there several years with a strained relationship with the truth. By the time the documentary film-makers for this ago, deploying teams to assist civilians trapped by Islamic Approaching this film prepared to snigger at God- movie had arrived at the FBR’s main training base, Front (ISIS). There are scenes of rescue operations bothering zealots misses the point. The result should be Camp Ta U Wah (White Monkey) in Kaw Thoo Lei that are as harrowing as any the group experienced in respect for brave and dedicated people willing to place (Free Karen state), the FBR had a total of seventy-two Myanmar. Several of the Myanmar members of the their principles and faith on the line to help those in permanent teams, and had trained 4,500 teams in total. FBR deploy as well, and are joined by like-minded Iraqi desperate need. The FBR’s methods may not appeal to Much of the work is carried out by committed Karen, soldiers such as Shaheen and Muhammed, awed by the many, but you would be a churlishly judgy atheist to Karenni and Kachin specialists, augmented by a frequent Karen and other ethnic minorities coming all that way to claim they haven’t been effective. ☐ flow of serving or retired US military personnel as help them. An Iraqi general gives them his blessing and volunteers. According to Eubank, the FBR have ‘served’ protection to operate in the area. David Scott Mathieson is a writer based in Southeast Asia

37 THE BOOKSELLER New cause Brian Chee-Shing Hioe

Janelle Retka

auseway Bay Books, founded in 1994 in Hong opening, it was packed with visitors. There was little Many of the customers in the store had the distinctive Kong, originally sold and published books standing room and many of the bookshelves were bare. look of Taiwanese youth activists. I could tell from the critical of the Chinese government. Between It wasn’t clear to me whether those books had all been topics they talked about as they perused the shelves, the COctober and December 2015, five employees of the sold already or whether the store had yet to be fully shirts they wore or the ribbons that adorned their bags. I bookshop were kidnapped from the Chinese mainland, stocked. also heard a number of Cantonese speakers, who seemed Thailand and Hong Kong itself, later reappearing in Lam, sixty-four, was the only employee there that to be Hongkongers. public to confess to lurid crimes. Their confessions had day, standing in front of a simple desk, taking deliveries Banners with slogans such as ‘I Am Taiwanese, I all the marks of being forced. and ringing up purchases, making calls all the while. Support Taiwanese Independence’ and ‘Reclaim Hong The kidnappings had a chilling effect on independent Lam had a brisk, business-like demeanour, holding Kong, Revolution of Our Times’ hung in the bookshop. bookshops and publishers in Hong Kong. Lam Wing- conversations in a rapid-fire manner. A bunk bed behind On the shelves I spotted works by philosophers such kee, the founder of Causeway Bay Books, is currently the the desk suggested that Lam was living at the bookshop, as Roland Barthes and Max Weber, and by writers only one of the kidnapped booksellers to remain free; he too. such as Osamu Dazai, Carson McCullers and Milan escaped after being temporarily released in Hong Kong Just a few days before Lam was set to reopen Kundera. There was no sign of the tabloid-style books by Chinese authorities. Causeway Bay Books in Taiwan, he was splashed with that the original shop was known for. But I noticed that Lam fled to Taiwan last year ahead of the anticipated red paint by several attackers. In early photos of Lam many books still had Hong Kong prices listed inside. passing of a bill that would have allowed for Hongkongers from the shop’s opening, red paint can still be seen in I bought a Chinese-language copy of Nietzsche’s The to be extradited to the mainland to face charges. This is Lam’s hair. Taiwan, only recently a post-authoritarian Birth of Tragedy from Lam and was surprised that it what led Lam to reopen Causeway Bay Books in Taiwan country after a decades-long struggle for democracy, has was less than 200 New Taiwan dollars (US$6.70). Lam in April, after a year of preparation—a year in which a history of organised-crime groups threatening political didn’t have a register but instead tabulated prices in a demonstrations against the extradition bill that caused dissidents. notebook. Sometimes he would be unable to break a Lam to flee brought millions onto the streets of Hong Lam was taking a risk with the bookshop as well, larger bill and would give a customer extra change. Kong in protest. particularly if he was sleeping there. When I asked Lam I asked Lam why he thought it was important The original Causeway Bay Books was one of over whether he was afraid of reprisals from the Chinese to reopen Causeway Bay Books in Taiwan. ‘Many a hundred independent bookshops in Hong Kong that government in Taiwan, he commented, ‘If Taiwan isn’t independent bookstores in Taiwan just target hipsters,’ rented out space on the upstairs floors, rather than at safe, where is there to run? I haven’t done anything said Lam, though he added that he had nothing against ground level, of buildings in order to avoid expensive illegal, so why should I be afraid? Only those who have such shops. ‘If you really want to understand something,’ rents. This continues with Causeway Bay Books’ new broken the law should be afraid.’ He added, however, he continued, ‘you need to understand reality. You location, a small, unassuming spot on the tenth floor of that ‘Taiwan’s democracy itself also has issues. There are can only do this through reading. And running a an office building in Taipei’s Zhongshan District. If not people in Taiwan that advocate unification with China.’ bookstore is with the hope that more people can come to for the sign indicating the existence of a bookshop, one Strewn around the bookshop were flowers from well- understand our ideals—that this can protect Taiwan.’ ☐ would mistake it for simply another office. wishers. I recognised many of the signatures, including When I went to the bookshop several days after its that of Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen. Brian Chee-Shing Hioe is the editor of ‘New Bloom’

38