Whenever I have the chance to read the Japanese history, I am always surprised by the miraculous achievements of this nation. During WWII, Japanese navy was beating the British around Burma, and fighting with Americans around Australian islands. Pearl Harbor bombardment was a suicide mission for those Japanese pilots, they knew, they will never come back, still they knocked out the American strategies. "It was failure of imagination"- as one investigator wrote in his book about Pearl Harbor. So, Japanese have always been beyond the imaginations, as we have witnessed in coming decades of WWII.
Japan is the only country among first world nations where suicide rate is really alarming. I had been reading the news stories about suicides in Japan. I could never imagine why do they actually kill themselves? I asked this same question to a Japanese girl few years ago. She said (more or less in her words), "We believe in ourselves, we believe in our abilities. Whenever we face the defeat, our trust on ourselves shakes. We fail to seek the shelter in our faith(religion) or social norms. That's how a Japanese person leads to the convincing decision of killing himself/herself."
It was very convincing for me. She applauded the Islam for deleting the option of suicide altogether, she mentioned it with out my introduction of our religious commandment about suicide.
Just one day after tsunami flooded the Japan, I had this gentleman leaving for Tokyo. He was very calm. I extended my condolence for such a great disaster in his home country. He appreciated my kind words with a mere smile. He was not sure if airports were yet functional, but he wanted to go to airport to avail first flight to Japan. He tried to tell me in his very little English vocabulary that, this disaster is not bigger than what we have seen in past (probably, he wanted to tell me that we will stand up again.)
The same day, I was reading the article that Gov. of Tokyo had to take his words back for pointing out that this disaster could be the divine punishment. CNN Beleif Blog
Japan has built mind blowing shock proof building. They would probably come up with tsunami proof towns as well. But my question is, would they ever challenge their own ego and come out of these nut shells to surrender their faith in themselves to God? Because He is forever, He is from ever.
during my stay in china and in fatima i had the opportunity of working with Japanese engineers and i agree that they are hardworking and team players, once a japanese engineer told me that in 1995 after kobe earthquake everything was destroyed, roads were damaged and transportation was badly effected and in those days he said that we used to walk around 10km to get to our office, he was working at Kawasaki engineering at that time, according to him almost everybody had to walk few kms to get to office, whereas in pakistan we are always looking for excuses to get a leave from our work
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