The peculiar and unique U.S.-Japan relationship has entered a new phase, in which its future is shrouded in mist. While few Americans can be bothered ever to think about it, in the back of many Japanese minds it is something as generally accepted as a fact of nature, but at the same time a permanent complication that is recently showing sharp and irritating edges. Quite a few have begun to think that they should shake themselves out of the habit of taking it so much for granted.

Japan seems on the verge of a second defeat. The March 11 magnitude 9.0 East Japan earthquake shoved the entire country 2 metres and brought even more mayhem in a tsunami that wrecked whole communities and snatched away the lives of thousands. Now we see 100,000 troops from the Self-Defense forces dispatched to rescue operations amidst the pall rising from massively damaged nuclear reactors. Radioactivity is drifting out to sea and over the surrounding prefectures, poisoning farm produce and forcing restrictions on their shipment and sale. The crisis has extended even to drinking water in the capital of Tokyo. The scale of disasters evokes embedded memories of the cusp of postwar reconstruction, the moment when rebuilding economy and society was about to harness prodigious resources and time.

In its press release of April 20, TEPCO has retracted the Cl-38 radioactivity concentration measurement (1.6 MBq/mL) for the seawater used to cool reactor #1that it had issued on March 25, saying that it was “below minimum detectable density”. Based on this original measurement, we had determined that the value was too high to be explained without invoking the possibility of inadvertent, transient criticalities. We are pleased that TEPCO has retracted this result and has set out to improve its analysis protocol as described in the same press release. But we would appreciate further explanation of why previous results were simply retracted with inadequate categorization and explanation of the errors, as in the TEPCO press release. (The Cl-38 reading was changed on April 20th from 1.6MBq to a value “below detection limit” with the following explanation: “Identification and determination of radioactivity density were conducted based on main peaks.”) For example, the main gamma lines of Cl-38 are at 1.64 MeV and 2.16 MeV. What lines did these interfere with that required a downscaling of 6 orders of magnitude? If the count rate could not be attributed to Cl-38 what isotope had a count rate equivalent to 1.6 MBq/mL?

Kanno Mitsuhide (36) is standing on a pile of muddy firewood where his home used to be. He has come to salvage what he can and found a single object: a hibachi, a traditional Japanese charcoal heater. “We could only locate the house because of this,” he says, pointing at an old green water pump still clinging stubbornly to solid ground. The small family car is 200 meters away, upside down, across the ruined landscape of Rikuzen-Takata.