In the aftermath of the recent Japanese tsunami I was asked for interviews by a number of Southeast Asian broadcast journalists because I had written a book on Japanese earthquakes. Most of them politely gave me their questions in advance. This was not just politeness, of course, because writing out all one's questions in advance predetermines the course of the interview, constructing a narrative ahead of the conversation. One narrative that I was continually invited to contribute to could be called "the admirable stoicism of the Japanese in the face of natural disaster." My role as a historian, I was signaled, was to help viewers or listeners understand how the long history of earthquakes, disaster, and simply hardship had inured the Japanese people to sublime misfortune. One interviewer (who had an undergraduate degree in history) actually asked me to begin in the Tokugawa period and tell viewers how each successive period and its crises had made the Japanese more stoical. Another wanted me to explicitly contrast the behavior of the Japanese with that of other peoples who had faced similar crises and (supposedly) had not behaved so admirably (he mentioned Haitians and the citizens of New Orleans).
