TOKYO — With all the euphemistic language on display from officials handling Japan’s nuclear crisis, one commodity has been in short supply: information. Foreign nuclear experts, the Japanese media and an increasingly angry Japanese public are frustrated by government and power-company officials’ failure to communicate clearly and promptly about the nuclear crisis.
With crises striking in rapid, bewildering succession, Japan’s leaders need skills they are not trained to have: rallying the public, improvising solutions and cooperating with powerful bureaucracies.
“Japan has never experienced such a serious test,” said Takeshi Sasaki, a political scientist at Gakushuin University. “At the same time, there is a leadership vacuum.”
Politicians are almost completely reliant on Tokyo Electric Power for information and have been left to report what they are told, often in unconvincing fashion.
In a telling outburst, Prime Minister Naoto Kan publicly berated power-company officials for not informing the government of two explosions at the plant early Tuesday.
The less-than-straight talk may be rooted in political considerations. In the only nation that has endured an atomic- bomb attack, acute sensitivity about radiation sickness may motivate public officials to try to contain panic — and to perform political damage control.
