The tragedy that has become Japan in little more than a week is so enormous - replete with such an exhaustive catalogue of unfortunate events - that observers around the world have been reduced to shock and awe.
And not in a George W. Bush way.
If ever there were a time to reclaim the rightful meaning of those words, it would be now.
We've been shocked by the power of the Earth's subterranean tectonics to create billions of dollars worth of devastation with a mere shrug. Even in a country whose cities have been built to withstand the unpredictable shaking and heaving of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake has plunged an advanced industrial power into a state of high anxiety, leaning toward chaos.
We've been awed by the seemingly effortless force of a tsunami to strip bare fields, cities and landscapes, along with the humanity that, until the roiling wall of water's arrival, called those places home.
We've been sobered by our growing dependence on nuclear fission - physics that, in the comparatively short span of human history, we've only recently begun to understand, let alone manage.
In each aerial photograph this week, the six-eyed Fukushima Daiichi power plant seemed to stare back into the lens and repeat the words from Hindu scripture, quoted by scientist Robert Oppenheimer when the first atomic bomb detonated at Hiroshima: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
And I suspect that more than a few of us have been struck once again by the arbitrary nature of suffering and catastrophe - how, in the words of poet W.H. Auden, "it takes place while someone else is eating, or opening a window, or just walking dully along."
These are but the latest tribulations of the Japanese people. The archipelago nation has borne its share of hardship over the past two centuries: the gunboat diplomacy of western powers, wars with China and Russia, a drift toward fascism in the early 20th century, the dual terrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with their attendant radiological nightmares, the dissolution of its empire and a postwar occupation.
Through it all, the Japanese have drawn on the strength of their ancient culture to find their bearings and rise again. We have seen that characteristic present itself again this week. Journalists, especially those from the West, remarked on the lack of looting, panic and anarchy that might have characterized life in the streets of a western city under the duress of similar circumstances.
What they (and we) failed to grasp, at least in the early days, was the value the Japanese place on restraint, honour, perseverance and the yielding of oneself to the greater good. Even though less than one fifth of Japanese citizens self-identify as "religious," the character traits they've shown over the past week are tightly woven to centuries-old spiritual traditions.
Shinto, claimed by nearly 84% of Japan's citizens as an influence in their spiritual disciplines, reveres nature and sees spirit in all things: rivers, mountains, wind, rocks, earth and waves. Seven out of 10 Japanese also regard elements of Buddhism as integral to their spirituality. Here, karma and the universality of suffering, caused by desire or craving, are key concepts.
from page E1 Japan now faces its greatest test since the end of the Second World War. Tens of thousands of its citizens have been killed by last week's disaster, while many more are missing. Hundreds of thousands are homeless. The country faces an electricity shortage and a severe radiological threat. Its economy is on tenterhooks. An industrial superpower has been brought to its knees by the force of nature.
The nation will need all the perseverance, grace and courage it can muster to pull itself through. Emperor Akihito acknowledged as much during a rare TV address on Wednesday, when he urged citizens to show solidarity with one another during "the difficult days that lie ahead."
In the days following the terror attacks of 9/11 - which killed 3,000 - most of the world stood in solidarity and empathy with the United States of America. Its tragedy seemed so arbitrary, its wound so deep. Nearly 100,000 Canadians crammed onto Parliament Hill in Ottawa three days later in testament to the notion that, somehow, at that moment in history, we were all American.
A decade later, in the wake of 11/3/11, we are all Japanese. And we should find whatever tangible means we can of saying so.
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