How the worlds newest island explains Japans approach to life

By Alex EhrenreichFeatures correspondent

A series of dramatic volcanic eruptions recently birthed a new island off the coast of Japan – which explains a lot about the nation and its unique worldview.

In late October, plumes of billowing white smoke and ash began to spew from the sea, as an underwater volcano roared to life near Japan's Ogasawara archipelago in the western Pacific. By November, the eruptions became so violent and frequent that they caused a new land mass to surface measuring 100m in diameter off the southern coast of Iwoto island (formerly called Iwo Jima). 

While the dramatic event made international headlines, it largely went unnoticed here in Japan, whose location along the Ring of Fire makes it the most seismically active nation on Earth. Home to roughly 10% of the world's active volcanoes and enduring an estimated 1,500 earthquakes each year, in many ways, Japan is a rumbling, grinding, geological laboratory shaped by mighty forces. And over the centuries, the same forces that have shaped Japan physically have also shaped its unique worldview. 

Japan is a nation of islands. Though it consists of four main islands connected by bridges and bullet trains, the entire Japanese archipelago contains more than 14,000 islands – including 7,000 that were discovered earlier this year. Underwater volcanoes regularly heave up new landmasses. Sometimes these new islands erode and disappear under the waves. Other times they merge with existing islands to resemble funny shapes. And occasionally, these volatile volcanoes continue to spew ash and rock 200m into the sky a decade after forming – as happened just a few weeks ago. Needless to say, Japan has not always been the easiest place for people to live.

A century ago, more than 100,000 people died and nearly half of Tokyo was destroyed in a single afternoon during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Since then, despite Japan pioneering some of the world's most disaster-proof buildings, flash floods, cyclones, tsunamis, typhoons, blizzards, earthquakes, landslides and volcanoes have killed more than 55,000 people in the country. 

Despite – or perhaps because of – their history living atop a highly active fault line, Japanese people tend to have a strong sense of resilience, a deep respect for the natural world and a belief in the power of impermanence. 

There's a commonly phrase in Japan: "shou ga nai", which is best translated as "it cannot be helped". You might hear someone utter this when they're caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella, when there's ice on the road or when a small tremor delays their train. While it's easy to liken this phrase to the French c'est la vie" or the English "it is what it is", shou ga nai expresses a universal sentiment in a distinctly Japanese way: we can't control our environment, but we can control our reactions to that which we can't control. In a nation where societal harmony has traditionally been paramount and where nature reigns supreme, there's something almost freeing about accepting bad situations rather than constantly fighting them. 

"I think sometimes Japanese people are criticised for not being more proactive, and this expression reflects that. But Japanese are very resilient and look for ways to cope with the environment," said Susan Onuma, the past president of the Japanese American Association of New York. "Japanese people feel a very strong sense of unity because [the unpredictable natural events] that happen on the island nation tend to only happen to them."

Japan's acceptance of and appreciation for the whims of the natural world may spring from its two most popular religions: the country's indigenous Shinto faith and Buddhism. Shintoism is largely based on one's relationship with the patterns and power of nature and was once centred on the direct worship of nature itself. Devotees believe in millions of deities (called kami) that live in forests, mountains and animals. Since these spirits are constantly changing, there's the belief that followers live in a permanent state of impermanence. 

When Buddhism started spreading to all social classes in Japan in the 12th and 13th Centuries, Japanese people began to more closely incorporate the Buddhist sense of transience into the natural environment and their cultural practices. Today, everything from Japanese woodblock prints (known as ukiyo-e, from a Buddhist word expressing impermanence) to kintsugi (literally: "to join with gold", but really a reminder to remain optimistic when things fall apart) to wabi-sabi (which reminds us there's beauty in imperfection) is rooted in this idea of transience and accepting that which you cannot change. 

There's even a term for the Japanese philosophy of embracing impermanence: "mono-no aware". The concept means "the ephemeral nature of beauty", but encompasses a larger sense of seasonality and transience and is perhaps best explained by Japan's obsession with cherry blossoms. Every year in early spring, busy city dwellers go out to the greener suburbs to view these beautiful pink and white blossoms before they fall to the ground. 

Yet, even in a nation that embraces the shifting moods of the natural world, a continuous wave of natural disasters has tested Japan's unique worldview. In 2011, the strongest earthquake to ever hit Japan unleashed a tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people and wiped entire towns off the map. The 9.0-magnitude quake was so strong it shifted the Earth off its axis and affected the psyche of those who lived through it.

"Many people are still in shock over what occurred, and you can still see evidence of this disaster today," said Tomohiro Ito, who works in the city of Sendai that was just 130km east of the epicentre. Ito was in his seventh-floor office when, as he recalled, "The ground shook harder than I'd never experienced before; it seemed like at any moment the ceiling would come crashing down and that'd be it for me!" 

Though most of the buildings in Sendai's centre were spared, homes in nearby low-lying areas were swept away by the ensuing tsunami and thousands died. As Ito explained, the mindset of local residents was changed forever. "It is common for people here to now to think of things in terms of whether something happened before the quake or after the quake." 

Today, Sendai's port has been completely rebuilt and the glittering city has a growing population of roughly one million people. Yet, Ito explained that many locals now keep an extra week's supply of food in their homes and a full tank of petrol in their cars at all times because here, like in so much of Japan, you never know what may happen tomorrow. 

The world's newest island is now visible from space, yet experts still don't know whether it will keep its current size, expand as the volcano continues to erupt or simply disappear into the sea as it erodes. But in a constantly shifting nation that is still – literally – in the making, one thing is certain: Japan's newest island won't be the last.

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