This year, thousands of Japanese around the country celebrated Coming-of-Age Day. In Kobe, however, the occasion was especially poignant, as those who will turn 20 this year were just days old or, most likely, born after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of Jan. 17, 1995. The first generation of adults who never experienced the event firsthand has officially arrived.
For those of us who lived through the quake, it remains one of the defining moments of our lives. The experience changed the way we saw Kobe, the Kansai region, and Japan itself. Like the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, it demolished official lies that had become articles of faith.
Two of these fallacies were: Japanese construction is quake-proof, and the central government will assist in a timely manner if disaster strikes. Both beliefs crumbled quicker than the Hanshin Expressway. In particular, Tokyo bureaucrats and politicians who could not respond quickly, and the 1,001 anecdotes of asinine behavior when they did, in Kobe and Kansai created deep resentments and a skepticism — even cynicism — of government that still lingers.