To what extent are your problems my problems? To what extent are Syria¡¯s troubles Japan¡¯s?
To no extent at all, judging by the paltry number of refugees Japan admits. Europe, of course, is engulfed. But that¡¯s Europe¡¯s problem.
Is it still possible to think that way? Sadako Ogata, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1991 to 2001, in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun last month, deplored Japan¡¯s chilly aloofness from the world¡¯s biggest refugee crisis since World War II. (She spoke before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe¡¯s pledge of generous financial aid to refugees, but probably wouldn¡¯t have changed her tone much on that account.) Japan, she said, is still ¡°an island country,¡± an anomaly in an age of advancing globalization and shrinking distances ¡ª but Japan does have a long ¡°island country¡± history behind it, and history is not lightly escaped from.
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