After the Quakes: China versus Japan on NPR/PRI


I proffer a few words (almost literally) on cultures and grieving on PRI's The World here.
Elias Canetti addresses this concept kaleidoscopically in Crowds and Power.

Important to add that the Kobe quake in 95, while violent and devastating, was far smaller in scale and scope than this month's catastrophe in Chengdu. And Japan was hit almost exactly two months later with the Aum Shinrikyo subway poisonings in Tokyo, diverting attention from Kobe and blanketing the entire nation in an apocalyptic gloom.

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