Japan v. Oakland: A demoralizing side-by-side view

Workers keeping Japan’s streets and byways tidy. Many streets in Oakland are lined with trash.

Over four days in Tokyo, I came across only one or two apparently homeless people. On day three, my son Nico actually pointed out a  piece of garbage on the street – “Look Mom, garbage!” – as if it were a beached narwal. The plethora of spotless public toilets with squirty water for your nether regions and warm air to dry them, as well as TP though you don’t even need it, struck me as a pinnacle of compassionate social policy. 

A few years ago, I delivered socks and sanitary kits to people living in a downtown Oakland encampment just a couple of miles from my house. It was a dank, cold day just before Christmas. The stench from the tents was as noxious as that of a hog farm near my childhood home in Ohio. There was no heat, no garbage collection, no refrigerator, and certainly no toilet with squirty water and warm air for the nether regions. One man told me that his wife was dying from several treatable conditions and he couldn’t get help for her. “I’m so very sorry you are living like this,” I said as I feebly handed him wool socks and some money.

I began crying as my son and I climbed into our car and drove two miles to our tidy, warm home with the stocked refrigerator, the 5G network, closets overflowing with clothes, and a Japanese-made tankless water heater providing endless hot showers. 

“The good people of the United States will one day have an opportunity to choose the values on which to rebuild our society.”

A truism about the differences between Japan and the U.S. is that the Japanese prioritize the collective good while Americans prize individual liberty. We’ve constructed our societies on top of these values, weaving innumerable decisions by voters, politicians, and administrators in every jurisdiction into the systems we have today. 

And this is the result. One country where the rich aren’t as rich and the poor aren’t as poor. Where a finance executive near retirement can only afford a perhaps 1,200-square-foot house and is still working. (We stayed in two such homes in Japan, one in Tokyo and one in Hiroshima). One country where dirtiness is simply not tolerated and another where putridness and squalor have become, on some level, acceptable. Where the politicians wring their hands and well-meaning Unitarian Universalists distribute socks at Christmastime and cry on the drive home.

I’m not pretending that Japan is perfect, or an easy place to live. Social pressures to conform and perform create pain and desperation. Workplace gender discrimination is rampant. Japan’s suicide rate is among the highest in the world. And Oakland is, of course, part of a much larger, systemic failure of politics and policy.

But when viewed side by side, days apart, the difference between Japan and my beloved Oakland was demoralizing, almost shocking.

Personal liberty is critical when it comes to rights like voting. But how much freedom does that homeless man and his wife enjoy? Or the millions of other Americans living in poverty? Where is my freedom from the moral injury of being part of a society that treats its people worse than animals bred for meat?

The U.S. is well down a dark road of hatred- and greed-dominated politics. When the current regime ends, as I hope it soon will, the good people of the United States will have an opportunity to choose the values on which to rebuild our society. We’ve tried leading with greed. Next time a free and fair election comes around, maybe let’s see what taking care of our neighbors might look like.