Cửa Thiền vừa cữ cuối Xuân,
Bông hoa đầy đất vẻ ngang lưng trời.
Truyện Kiều
Vĩnh Sính
Trùng trùng duyên khởi: Trong thơ Nhật, không hiểu sao chúng tôi cảm thấy gần gũi với Saigyō (1118-1190)[1] và Bashō (1644-1694) lạ lùng. Đặc biệt là Bashō.
Hồi còn ở Nhật,[2] chúng tôi có gõ cửa Thiền mấy lần nhưng duyên chửa bén. Kịp đến khi bắt đầu ra dạy học (năm 1982), trùng trùng duyên khởi, cửa Thiền học mở rộng rồi duyên mới kết. Đến với Thiền học trước khi gặp Bashō đúng là hạnh ngộ ! Lý do là Thiền bàng bạc trong thơ Bashō.
Thế rồi mười hai năm trước (1998), những lúc rảnh rỗi chúng tôi dịch cuốn Oku no hosomichi (奥の細道Lối lên miền Oku/Bắc) của Bashō ra tiếng Việt.[3] Thư khích lệ của bạn đọc tạo niềm vui vô hạn, tiếc rằng sách đã tuyệt bản. Hy vọng chúng tôi sẽ có dịp sửa lại bản dịch và bài giới thiệu cho hoàn chỉnh, thêm phần minh hoạ cho đàng hoàng hơn nữa để rồi giới thiệu cùng độc giả.
Trong bài này chúng tôi xin giới thiệu vài bài thơ của Bashō mà chúng tôi cảm thấy khó quên.
***
Vài điều cần biết về haiku của Bashō: Bashō là người đã định hình thể thơ haiku và đưa haiku có chỗ đứng bề thế và trang trọng trên văn đàn Nhật Bản.[4] Qua thơ Bashō, lần đầu tiên một khái niệm mỹ học (美学) mang tên là sabi (寂びtịch, như trong chữ “tịch liêu”) được đưa vào một cách hài hòa và ở một mức độ chưa từng thấy.
Sabi đầu tiên được phổ biến qua thơ waka của Fujiwara Shunzei (1114-1204). Ý thức này được các nhà thơ sau đó, đặc biệt là Bashō, tiếp tục phát triển và định hình. Trên thực tế, sabi trở thành khái niệm căn bản trong thơ Bashō. Sabi nhấn mạnh vẻ đẹp tao nhã của những dáng hình cổ kính hay của thiên nhiên cô tịch — không hào nhoáng rực rỡ, lộng lẫy hay kiêu kỳ. Cần để ý rằng thơ haiku của Bashō tuy phảng phất không khí trầm lắng u huyền, gợi cho người đọc sự vô thường trong cuộc đời, nhưng luôn thắm đượm tình người và không bao giờ mang nét cay đắng chua chát hay u uất, oán hờn.[5]
Sức ám thị (suggestibility) và tính hàm súc, theo học giả Daisetz Suzuki, là bí quyết của thơ haiku cũng như của nghệ thuật Nhật Bản nói chung. “Các nhà nghệ thuật Nhật Bản đều ít nhiều chịu ảnh hưởng của Thiền (禅Zen), họ luôn luôn có khuynh hướng diễn tả tình cảm với số chữ hoặc số nét tối thiểu.” Điều tối kỵ khi làm thơ haiku là thích lý luận dông dài, “khi tình cảm đã đạt đến mức độ cao nhất, ta lặng thinh, bởi lẽ không có ngôn ngữ nào có thể diễn tả thích đáng. Ngay mười bảy âm tiết [trong thơ haiku] cũng đã quá dài.”[6] Xem như vậy, người làm thơ haiku vừa phải là người tu luyện Thiền.[7]
Tuy không phải là Thiền sư, Bashō thường ăn vận như một nhà sư. Ngày ngày ngồi tham Thiền và đọc sách, Bashō lần lần ý thức rằng haiku không chỉ là trò giải trí hay thú tiêu khiển, mà phải biểu lộ sâu sắc thái độ của người làm thơ đối với cuộc sống. Thơ của Bashō dần dần thể hiện vẻ đẹp u hoài diệu vợi của thiên nhiên và cuộc sống hiu quạnh của chính mình. Tương truyền Bashō trồng bên cạnh túp lều này một bụi chuối (chữ Hán gọi cây chuối là “Ba-tiêu芭蕉”, tức Bashō) do môn đệ biếu.[8]
Cây chuối vì ít thấy ở Nhật, hàng xóm từ đó bắt đầu gọi túp lều có bụi-chuối-không-trái này là Bashō-an (芭蕉庵 ), tức là Am Ba-tiêu, rồi chẳng bao lâu họ gọi luôn chủ nhân của túp lều đó là Bashō-Sensei (Ba-tiêu Tiên sinh). Chủ nhân túp lều chắc vừa ý với cái tên Ba-tiêu nên từ đấy mới lấy Bashō làm bút hiệu. Cây chuối, đối với Bashō, tượng trưng cho tính nhạy cảm (sensibility): trước một cơn gió nhẹ, tàu lá chuối có thể gãy bất cứ lúc nào. Nhà thơ lắng nghe tiếng lá chuối day động xào xạt mỗi lúc trời trở gió giữa đêm khuya thanh vắng. Nếu trong bản hợp tấu của thiên nhiên hòa thêm tiếng mưa rơi rả rích, không khí trong túp lều chắc hẳn lại thêm phần cô tịch và sâu lắng.[9]
Ngoài ra, Bashō đã nhắc đến bốn mùa trong haiku một cách gián tiếp và thường xuyên, được gọi là “quí ngữ季語” — tức là ký hiệu về bốn mùa.
Tương truyền khi mất Bashō có đến trên hai ngàn môn đệ. Những nhà thơ nổi tiếng về sau, như Buson (1716-1784),[10] Issa (1763-1827),[11] và vô số nhà thơ khác đều chịu ảnh hưởng của thơ Bashō.[12]
Nhiều bài thơ được yêu chuộng của Bashō đã được sáng tác trên những chuyến đi. Những cuộc ngao du này không những đã ghi lại cảm hứng của Bashō khi viếng thăm những nơi danh lam thắng cảnh, mà còn nói lên sự nhạy cảm của nhà thơ đối với những loài cỏ mọn hoa hèn, như hoa mã đề (nazuna), hoa nghệ (benibana), hoa thu (hagi); thảng hoặc những con nhái, con ve sầu, con chuồn chuồn, con chim cuốc, v.v. mà nhà thơ đã bắt gặp đó đây trên bước hải hồ.
Những hình tượng này gần gũi với người Việt, và cũng chính vì ảnh hưởng của Thiền còn bàng bạc trong văn hoá Việt Nam, độc giả người Việt có thể thưởng thức cảm tính nghệ thuật trong thơ haiku của Bashō không mấy khó khăn.
Bashō-Tranh Buson
Vài bài thơ khó quên:
· Thăm bãi chiến trường xưa
Natsugusa ya Cỏ mùa Hè [cao che mất lối đi]
Tsuwamonodomo ga Binh lửa
Yume no ato Dấu vết xưa
Cỏ cao che lấp lối mòn,
Dấu xưa binh lửa chỉ còn thế thôi !
Bashō sáng tác bài này khi qua vùng Hiraizumi,[13] nơi ngày xưa vào cuối thế kỷ XII vị võ tướng tài hoa son trẻ Minamoto-no-Yoshitsune,[14] sau khi giúp anh-cùng-cha-khác-mẹ là Minamoto-no-Yoritomo[15] dẹp tan họ Taira[16] lập nên chế độ bakufu đầu tiên tại Kamakura, bị Yoritomo ganh tỵ ra lệnh truy nã. Cuối cùng sa cơ thất thế, mãnh hổ nan địch quần hồ Yoshitsune phải tự vẫn, khiến muôn đời vẫn còn luyến tiếc.
Chúng tôi đã lồng ý “mùa Hè” trong nguyên văn qua hai chữ “cỏ cao.” Đỗ Phủ, vị thánh thơ thời Thịnh Đường, đã viết hai câu đầu trong bài “Xuân vọng春望” như sau:[17]
Quốc phá sơn hà tại, 国破山河在
Thành Xuân thảo mộc thâm. 城春草木深
Tạm dịch:
Chiến tranh tàn phá, nước còn đây,
Thành đã vào Xuân, cỏ ngút đầy !
Bashō chắc đã ít nhiều lấy ý từ hai câu này, song sáng tạo nhuần nhuyễn, chuyển “Thành đã vào Xuân” thành cỏ mùa Hè mà chúng ta gọi tắt theo “quí ngữ” là “cỏ cao.”
Hiraizumi
Hiraizumi cũng là nơi dòng họ Fujiwara ba đời lập nghiệp, vinh hoa nổi tiếng một thời. Bài thơ trên đã được sáng tác trong niềm cảm hoài khi Bashō đến thăm dấu vết của bãi chiến trường khoảng năm trăm năm về trước.
Chắc hẳn cũng trong niềm cảm hoài tương tợ mà Bà Huyện Thanh Quan đã viết nên bài “Thăng Long thành hoài cổ” nổi tiếng trong văn học nước ta:
Tạo hoá gây chi cuộc hý trường,
Đến nay thấm thoát mấy tinh sương,
Lối xưa xe ngựa hồn thu thảo
Nền cũ lâu đài bóng tịch dương...
· Thăm thắng cảnh Matsushima
Matsushima ya Kìa Tùng Đảo
 Matsushima ya Ô kìa Tùng Đảo
Matsushima ya Kìa Tùng Đảo
Ô kìa Tùng Đảo, đây Tùng Đảo !
Tùng Đảo đây rồi ! Tùng Đảo đây !
Ở Nhật có vô số danh lam thắng cảnh, trong đó Matsushima (松島Tùng-Đảo) thuộc huyện Miyagi được xem là một trong “ba thắng cảnh tuyệt vời nhất”.
Matsushima có hơn 260 đảo nhỏ, do biển xoáy mòn tạo thành một cảnh quan hiếm có. Trên đảo lại có những chòm thông muôn hình muôn vẻ. Du khách ngỡ mình đi lạc vào Bồng Lai tiên cảnh.
Matsushima
Khi viếng thăm Matsushima, nhìn cảnh sắc đẹp không bút nào tả xiết, Bashō khẩu chiếm bài thơ trên, trong đó hầu như nhà thơ chỉ nhắc đến tên Matsushima, còn những chữ khác đều là những tiếng phụ. Cảnh đẹp quá, đến nổi không có lời diễn tả !
Nhà thơ Đào Uyên Minh thời Lục Triều ở Trung Hoa có bài thơ rất hay để nói lên tâm trạng đó:
Sơn khí nhật tịch giai,
Phi điểu tương dữ hoàn,
Thử trung hữu chân ý,
Dục biện dĩ vong ngôn.
Tạm dịch:
Chiều tà khí núi đẹp ghê !
Đàn chim vỗ cánh bay về cùng mây,
Ngẫng xem chân ý tràn đầy,
Muốn đem bút viết chẳng hay viết gì !
Đọc bài thơ Matsushima, chúng ta không khỏi nhớ đến Hàn Mặc Tử. Nhà thơ tài hoa mệnh bạc khi đi qua Phan Thiết, trong niềm thổn thức và cọng cảm với non nước xứ Lầu Ông Hoàng, đã buột miệng kêu lên hai tiếng ‘Phan Thiết ! Phan Thiết !’ mà lời thơ là một bài haiku toàn bích như Bashō (mặc dầu trong thơ Bashō không hề mang nét cay đắng, u uất):
Ôi trời ơi ! Là Phan Thiết ! Phan Thiết !
Mà tang thương còn lại mảnh trăng rơi...[18]
· Tiếng ve sầu muôn thuở
Con ve, hay ve sầu, là đề tài phổ biến trong văn học Nhật Bản ngay từ thời Heian (794-1192).
Truyện Genji [19] vào thế kỷ XI thường được xem là cuốn tiểu thuyết đầu tiên của nữ sĩ Murasaki Shikibu. Trong chương thứ ba, với đầu đề là Utsusemi 空蝉, “không-thiền”, tức là ‘Vỏ ve sầu’, đồng thời cũng là tên người phụ nữ chính trong chương này. Genji, ông hoàng mười-bảy-tuổi đẹp trai và cũng là tay ăn chơi nổi tiếng, muốn tán tỉnh nàng Utsusemi nhưng bị từ chối vì nàng đã có chồng. Nàng trốn chạy Genji, bỏ lại chiếc áo choàng trong phòng. Genji đành chịu, làm bài thơ tanka,[20] ví chiếc áo choàng của nàng Utsusemi với ‘vỏ ve sầu’ !
Mặc dầu ve sầu xuất hiện rất sớm trong văn học Nhật Bản và Truyện Genji rất nổi tiếng, phải đợi đến Bashō, tức hơn sáu thế kỷ sau, tiếng ve mới gợi cho ta rõ ràng là tiếng gọi của mùa Hè với tình cảm nhớ mong, mong nhớ. Bashō đã mang hình tượng của con ve sầu sít lại với chúng ta và trong haiku trở thành một kigo (quí ngữ) — tượng trưng cho mùa Hè oi ả.
Hồi nhỏ chúng tôi thích đi bắt ‘vè ve’.[21] Bôi mủ mít vào đầu cây sào để trít những con ve đậu cao. Buổi trưa Hè, cứ mỗi lần nghe tiếng ve kêu vang, chúng tôi cảm thấy thôi thúc, giục giã khôn lường. Khi dậy sớm, lúc trời còn tối mịt mờ, chúng tôi đến gốc cây mít, cây đào,[22] cây nhỡn,[23] cây Ngải-Tướng-quân,[24] v.v. dùng đèn sáp để đi xem ‘vè ve non’ mới bò dưới đất lên cây thay vỏ — để lộ đôi cánh non màu xanh lục, óng ả đẹp vô cùng. Nào đâu có biết thời gian con ve sống trên cây chỉ nội trong bảy ngày, trong khi ở dưới đất phải đi qua một chu kỳ là bảy năm trường !
Khi đi qua chùa Ryūshakuji (立石寺Lập-Thạch-Tự) thuộc huyện Yamagata ngày nay, Bashō đã viết:
Shizukasa ya Yên tĩnh
Iwa ni shimiiru Thấm vào đá
Semi no koe Tiếng ve sầu
Nơi đây hiu quạnh một màu,
Tiếng ve rầu rĩ, luống sầu núi non !
hoặc:
Giữa trưa bỗng tiếng ve sầu,
Nghe chừng vách đá nhuốm màu tịch liêu !
hoặc:
Chùa xưa nghiêng bóng trưa Hè,
Ve kêu rền rĩ : tư bề quạnh hiu !
Ve sầu
Trong thơ haiku có lắm bài nhắc đến tiếng ve sầu. Tiếng ve, giống như tiếng nước khua, có tác dụng như một câu công án, không làm ta cảm thấy ồn ào mà ngược lại khiến ta ý thức được sự tĩnh mịch của buổi trưa Hè.
Con ve sầu, chữ Hán gọi là Thiền蝉, là tiếng đồng âm dị nghĩa với chữ Thiền禅 của Thiền tông.
· Tiếng cuốc gợi niềm hoài cổ
Kyō nite mo Tuy ở kinh đô
Kyō natsukashi ya Mà nhớ kinh đô
Hototogisu Chim cuốc
Hôm nay nằm giữa kinh thành,
Cuốc kêu nhớ lại kinh thành năm nao !
Trong văn học cổ điển Việt Nam, hình ảnh chim cuốc khá phổ biến. Chim cuốc còn có tên là “cuốc cuốc”, “quốc”, “quốc quốc”, “đỗ quyên”, “đỗ vũ”, hay “tử quy”.
Theo truyền thống văn học Việt Nam, chim cuốc thường được dùng theo điển tích là hồn Thục Đế nhớ nước:
Nhớ nước đau lòng con quốc quốc,
Thương nhà mỏi miệng cái gia gia.
Bà Huyện Thanh Quan
Shisendō (詩仙堂Thi-Tiên Đường), Kyoto
Trong văn học Nhật, chim cuốc (hototogisu) có thể viết chữ Hán là ‘đỗ quyên’ 杜鵑, ‘bất như quy’ 不如帰, hoặc ‘thời điểu’ 時鳥. Tuy không mang cùng hình tượng, hototogisu vẫn gợi cái gì u tịch và hoài cổ — đúng với tâm trạng Bashō khi trở lại kinh đô, Kyoto, nhưng vẫn cảm thấy có gì mất mác khi hồi tưởng lại đất thần kinh của một năm nào.
Nhà thơ Nguyễn Bính mồ côi mẹ từ hồi còn trẻ, lại thêm cảnh nhà túng thiếu, từ Nam Định phiêu bạt vào Huế. Khi đến thăm xóm Ngự Viên, nơi đã một thời là vườn Thượng Uyển,
Sớm Đào trưa Lý, đêm Hồng phấn,
Tuyết Hạnh, sương Quỳnh, máu Đỗ Quyên.
Trước cảnh ‘giậu đổ bìm leo’ (“Giậu đổ dây leo suồng sả quá”) nhà thơ đã biểu lộ mối cảm hoài của mình qua hai câu, mà tứ thơ không có gì khác lắm so với hai câu trên của Bashō:
Hôm nay có một người du khách,
Ở Ngự Viên mà nhớ Ngự Viên ![25]
· “Rộng thương cỏ mọn hoa hèn”
a. Hoa mã đề (馬蹄nazuna):
Cây mã đề
Yoku mireba Nhìn kỹ
Nazuna hana saku Hoa mã đề đang nở
Kakine kana Bên giậu
Mắt nhìn bên chiếc giậu tre,
Lơ thơ mấy bụi mã đề đơm hoa.
Trong thơ Bashō ta thường bắt gặp những hình tượng nhỏ bé nhưng lời ít, ý nhiều : lá xương bồ, hoa thu, hoa nghệ, hoa mã đề, v.v. Trong Thiền học, lời càng nhiều, càng đi xa bản chất của sự vật.
Hoa mã đề (nazuna馬蹄), đúng như tên chữ Hán là “Tiền-xa-thảo前車草” (cỏ-mọc-trước-xe), thường mọc bên vệ đường, giống như một loài hoa dại. Hoa mã đề, nazuna, còn viết là 薺(tề), là loại hoa sống được hai năm. Thân cao chừng 30 centimét, hoa có hình thập tự bé, nở vào mùa Xuân. Khóm hoa màu trắng — không rực rỡ như hoa hồng, hoa cúc — nở bên bờ rào nhũn nhặn, có mấy ai đoái hoài nghĩ đến !
Hoa mã đề thuộc trong bộ hoa môi (Lamiales), tên khoa học là Plantaginaceae.
Cảm tính của Bashō được biểu lộ ngay với cả loài cỏ mọn hoa hèn, gây cọng cảm và làm ấm lòng người đọc. Bất giác ta liên tưởng đến ‘cái giậu mồng tơi’ dễ thương trong thơ Nguyễn Bính:
Nhà nàng ở cạnh nhà tôi,
Cách nhau cái dậu mồng tơi xanh rờn...
hoặc mấy khóm gừng luống tỏi đầy ‘nhân tính’ trong bài thơ của Ôn-Như-Hầu Nguyễn Gia Thiều (1741-98):
Lởm chởm gừng vài khóm,
Lơ thơ tỏi mấy hàng,
Vẻ chi là cảnh mọn
Mà cũng đến tang thương.
b. Hoa thu (萩hagi)
Hoa thu
Yuki yuki te Đi, đi mãi
Taore fusu tomo Dầu có ngã trên đường
Hagi no hara Cánh đồng hoa thu
Mai đây có ngã trên đàng,
Cho tôi xin ngã giữa ngàn hoa thu !
Cây thu thuộc họ đậu, cao chừng 1 mét rưởi, mọc thành từng bụi. Cành thường lã xuống. Hoa màu hồng tía hay màu trắng.
Trong các tác phẩm của Bashō, chúng ta thấy có nhiều hoa thu. Nhà thơ chắc hẳn mến loài hoa ‘cỏ mọn hoa hèn,’ đơn sơ, không rực rỡ lộng lẫy — có từ thuở xa xưa. Hoa thu là một trong bảy loại cây cỏ tiêu biểu của mùa Thu (七草thất-thảo), người Nhật gọi là nanakusa.
c. Hoa nghệ (紅花benibana)
Hoa nghệ (benibana)
Mayu haki o Kẻ lông mày
Omokage ni shite Liên tưởng đến
Beni no hana Hoa nghệ phấn
Bên đường hoa nghệ nở vàng,
Người xưa bên cửa điểm trang thuở nào…
hoặc:
Nghệ nở vàng hoe cả cánh đồng,
Có ngồi bên cửa điểm trang không ?
Cây nghệ thuộc họ cúc và sống được một hay hai năm. Cây nguyên ở Ả Rập và vùng Tiểu Á Tế Á, dùng để lấy dầu, dược liệu, hay thuốc nhuộm. Người ta dùng hột để lấy dầu, khi đốt hột ra tro người ta lấy tro đó làm mực xạ.
Thân cây cao từ 30 đến 90 centimét, chung quanh lá có gai lởm chởm. Vào mùa Hè, hoa nở một phần màu vàng nghệ, một phần sắc đỏ tươi rực rỡ. Huyện Yamagata trồng nhiều nhất nước Nhật về hoa nghệ; người ta thường trồng cả một cánh đồng.
· “Rừng phong thu đã nhuốm màu quan san”
Okuraretsu Được người đưa tiễn
Okuritsu hate wa Rồi đưa tiễn người
Kiso no aki Mùa Thu ở rừng Kiso
Tiễn đưa, đưa tiễn mấy lần,
Quan san Thu đã nhuốm rừng Ki-so !
Cảnh Thu ở gần cầu Togetsubashi (渡月橋Độ-Nguyệt Kiều), Kyoto
Chùa Kiyomizudera (清水寺Thanh-Thủy Tự ) vào Thu, Kyoto
Cây kaede (楓) chữ Hán gọi là “phong”. Cây phong vào mùa Thu lá đỏ rực gọi là momiji (紅葉 hồng diệp), tức là “lá đỏ”.
Truyện Kiều có câu:
Rừng phong thu đã nhuốm màu quan san,
Dặm hồng bụi cuốn chinh an.
Trông người đã khuất mấy ngàn dâu xanh...
(Câu 1520-1522)
Cây phong của Nhật Bản và cây phong trong Truyện Kiều phải giống nhau. Tuy nhiên, cây phong ở Nhật (Japanese maple) vào mùa Thu lá đỏ rực như lửa, khác những cây phong thường. Nước ta tuy không có cây phong, nhưng Tiên Điền Nguyễn Du đã đi sứ sang Trung Hoa và nhà thơ đã mượn Trung Hoa làm tìêu chuẩn đối chiếu.
Theo nhân sinh quan của Bashō, đời là một chuyến đi hay một cuộc lữ hành. Trong đời có bao biết nhiêu lần tiễn đưa, đưa tiễn. Trong bài thơ trên, Bashō tuyệt nhiên không nói đến tình cảm luyến tiếc của kẻ ở người đi lúc chia tay. Theo tinh thần của Thiền tông, người làm thơ haiku không biểu lộ tình cảm riêng tư, tức là phải vô ngã (muga無我). Ở đây nhà thơ chỉ nói đơn sơ là sau mấy bận tiễn-đưa-đưa-tiễn, mùa Thu đến lúc nào chẳng hay.
Nhẹ nhàng thật, nhưng có gì man mác, lưu luyến.
· Hoa anh đào muôn thuở
Samazama no Nhiều
Koto omoidasu Chuyện nhớ lại
Sakura kana Hoa anh đào !
Khơi bao niêm nhớ vô vàn,
Cánh hoa đào ấy chẳng tàn trong tôi !
Chùa Ryōanji (竜安寺Long-An Tự), Kyoto
Bài thơ còn có thể hiểu như sau:
Bao nhiêu thế sự cùng năm tháng,
Vẫn nhớ đào hoa một dạo nào !
hoặc:
Dẫu cho ngày tháng phôi pha,
Chao ôi nhớ mãi hoa đào năm nao !
hoặc:
Nhớ chi ngày tháng qua rồi ?
Nhớ chăng chắc hẳn anh đào ngày xưa !
Hoa anh đào với người Nhật có ý nghĩa rất đặc biệt. Cứ vào cuối tháng ba cho đến đầu tháng tư mỗi năm, khi hoa anh đào nở, dân chúng lại nô nức rủ nhau đi xem hoa.
Nhiều người thích đi tản bộ dưới những cành hoa, vừa ngắm hoa vừa chụp hình lưu niệm. Lắm kẻ lại thích cùng gia đình hoặc bầu bạn trải chiếu ngồi dưới gốc hoa — vừa thưởng hoa vừa ăn uống, ca hát.
Ngày tựu trường mỗi năm học ở Nhật cũng vào đầu tháng tư, đúng vào mùa hoa anh đào. Vì thế người Nhật gọi bạn đồng song là ‘bạn cùng mùa hoa anh đào’ (dōki no sakura同期の桜). Lâu ngày gặp lại bạn đồng song, người ta không khỏi nhớ đến mùa hoa anh đào thuở mới quen nhau. Na ná như người Việt khi nhìn cành hoa phượng, ‘hoa học trò’, lại thổn thức nhớ lại tuổi hoa niên:
Sao bông phượng nở trong màu huyết,
Nhỏ xuống lòng tôi những giọt châu ?[26]
Hàn Mặc Tử
Hoa anh đào có nhiều loại: có loại hoa đơn, có loại hoa kép, có loại có cành lả ngọn tựa như liễu rũ v.v.
Hoa anh đào nào cũng chóng tàn. Ngày xưa, người võ sĩ (samurai) đã chọn hai thanh kiếm và hoa anh đào làm biểu tượng, bởi lẽ người võ sĩ nguyện sẵn sàng hiến thân cho chủ tướng giống như hoa anh đào sẵn sàng rơi rụng trước cơn gió nhẹ. Nói theo ngôn ngữ nhà Phật, hoa anh đào là biểu tượng của sự vô thường (mujō 無常), vô ngã (muga無我) trong cuộc đời.
Bashō đã sáng tác bài thơ trên khi trở lại cố lý ở Iga (nay thuộc huyện Mie) và viếng thành Ueno, nơi hơn hai mươi năm trước đã một thời là võ sĩ dưới trướng của Tōdō Yoshitada. Sau đó, vì chủ quân mất sớm, Bashō đã từ bỏ phù hoa của thế tục để lấy gió trăng làm bạn lữ.
Nhìn lại những cành hoa anh đào mang sắc hình của tuổi hoa niên giờ đang nở rộ dưới nắng Xuân, chắc hẳn nhà thơ cũng dậy lên biết bao kỷ niệm. Tuy nhiên, Bashō vẫn trầm tĩnh như mọi khi, chỉ cho biết là nhà thơ chợt nhớ lại cánh hoa đào ngày trước. Dĩ nhiên chúng ta đoán hiểu là cánh hoa đào nơi cố lý đã xui nhà thơ nhớ lại chuyện xưa.
Lời thơ đơn sơ, nhẹ nhàng, nhưng hàm súc và sâu lắng.
Hoa anh đào bên “Lối đi của các triết nhân”, Kyoto[27]
Viết lại xong vào những ngày áp Tết Tân Mão (2011)
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[1] 西行Tây-Hành. Xin xem bài Vĩnh Sính, “Saigyō (1118-1190): Thi sĩ tài hoa yêu phiêu du của Nhật Bản”. http://www.erct.com/2-ThoVan/VinhSinh/SaiGyo-Hoshi.htm.
[2] Chúng tôi sang Nlhật năm 1963, nhưng vì học tiếng Nhật cần thời giờ nên lúc đầu đọc sách về Thiền học một nửa để học ngôn ngữ, một nửa để tìm hiểu về Thiền. Chúng tôi ở Nhật cho đến năm 1972, giai đoạn sau khi vấn đề ngôn ngữ không còn nữa, lại bận nhiều về những chuyện khác.
[3] Matsuo Bashō. Lối lên miền Oku, Vĩnh Sính dịch và giới thiệu (Hà Nội: Nxb Thế giới, 1998).
[4] Haiku chỉ có 17 âm tiết vỏn vẹn với 3 câu theo thứ tự là 5-7-5. Xin xem thêm bài Vĩnh Sính, “Bashō và cõi thơ haiku” về thơ haiku và Bashō. http://www.erct.com/2-ThoVan/VinhSinh/BaSho.htm
[5] Xem bài trên.
[6] Zen to Nihon bunka (Thiền và văn hóa Nhật Bản ) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1967), trang 187-188.
[7] Xem Vĩnh Sính, “Bashō và cõi thơ haiku”.
[8] Như trên.
[9]Như trên.
[10]蕪村 Vu-Thôn.
[11]一茶Nhất-Trà.
[12] Xin xem Vĩnh Sính, “Bashō và cõi thơ haiku” để biết về tiểu sử của Bashō.
[13] 平泉Bình-Tuyền.
[14] 源義経 Nguyên Nghĩa-Kinh.
[15] 源頼朝Nguyên Lại-Triều.
[16] 平Bình.
[17] Về ảnh hưởng của Đỗ Phủ đối với Bashō, xin xem Vĩnh Sính, “Bashō và cõi thơ haiku”.
[18] Trong bài “Phan Thiết! Phan Thiết!”, trích từ Tuyển tập Hàn Mặc Tử (Hà Nội: Nxb Văn Học, 1987), trang 93.
[19] Tức Genji monogatari, tương truyền do nữ sĩ Murasaki Shikibu (970-1031 sau CN) sáng tác. Một số nghiên cứu gần đây có khuynh hướng cho rầng Truyện Genji là một cọng tác, thay vì Murasaki Shikibu sáng tác đơn độc. Theo các học giả từ-điển-học người Nhật, danh từ Utsusemi cũng xuất hiện vào Heian.
[20] Tanka (短歌 đoản-ca, tức thơ ngắn) có 31 âm tiết theo thứ tự 5-7-5-7-7, và chōka (長 歌trường-ca) với số âm tiết không có giới hạn. Tanka và chōka gọi chung là waka ( 和歌hòa-ca; tức thơ Nhật Bản).
[21] Phương ngữ Huế.
[22] Tức cây mận.
[23] Tức cây nhãn.
[24] Cây Ngải-Tướng-quân có bẹ lá rất lớn, thân cây cao từ một mét hoặc một mét rưỡi. Tuy cây tương đối thấp, ve thích thay vỏ trên cây; vỏ ve nằm ngay trên bẹ lá. Hoa màu trắng, đẹp, trông rất tinh khiết. Tục truyền vua Gia Long hồi còn bôn ba tẩu quốc đã dùng củ cây này chữa bệnh được cho nhiều người. Nhân đó, cây ngải được nhà vua phong làm “Ngải-Tướng-quân.”
[25] “Xóm Ngự Viên” trong tập Thơ Nguyễn Bính (Hà Nội: Nxb Văn học Hà Nam Ninh và Nxb Văn Học, 1986), trang 76-78.
[26] Trong bài “Những giọt lệ”, trích từ Tuyển tập Hàn Mặc Tử, trang 79.
[27] Tiếng Nhật gọi lối đi này là “Tetsugaku no michi” (“Philosophers’ Walk”) rất đẹp và thơ mộng, đặc biệt vào mùa hoa anh đào. Giữa hai bên lối đi có dòng nước chảy.
Monday, March 14, 2011
12/03 A Changed Starbucks. A Changed C.E.O.
March 12, 2011
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
SEATTLE
RAISE your hand if you remember when Starbucks seemed cool.
Anyone?
Think back. To before the planet groaned with 17,000 Starbucks shops. Before the pumpkin spice lattes and the Ciao Amore CDs. Before the Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino ice cream, the Starbucks cream liqueur, the Pinkberry-inspired Sorbetto.
In short, to before Howard D. Schultz and his trenta-size ambition turned a few coffeehouses here into the vast corporate Empire of the Bean.
The world has often seemed three espressos behind Mr. Schultz — which is why the low-key guy sitting in his office here doesn’t quite seem like Howard Schultz.
Did he just say “but”? As in, “We have won in many ways, but ...”? Was that a “we” instead of an “I”? A note of humility?
Yes, this is Howard Schultz: the man who willed Starbucks onto so many street corners — and then, for a moment, looked as if he might lose it all.
Not even Mr. Schultz could have predicted how Starbucks would change our culture when its first shop opened here, in Pike Place Market, on March 30, 1971. Like it or not, Starbucks became, for many of us, what we talk about when we talk about coffee. It changed how we drink it (on a sofa, with Wi-Fi, or on the subway), how we order it (“for here, grande, two-pump vanilla, skinny extra hot latte”) and what we are willing to pay for it ($4.30 for the aforementioned in Manhattan).
But during the depths of the recession, Starbucks nearly drowned in its caramel macchiato. After decades of breakneck expansion under Mr. Schultz, tight-fisted consumers abandoned it. The company’s sales and share price sank so low that insiders worried Starbucks might become a takeover target.
So, after an eight-year hiatus, an alarmed Mr. Schultz returned as chief executive in January 2008. He shut 900 shops, mostly in the United States, drastically cut costs and put the company back on course.
Friends and colleagues say this hellish experience left Mr. Schultz a changed man. Starbucks, these people say, is no longer “The Howard Schultz Show.” The adjective that many use to characterize his new self is “humble” — a word that few would have applied to him before.
“Everything Starbucks did in the past, more or less, had worked,” Mr. Schultz said in an interview in January at the company’s headquarters, with a view of Puget Sound south of downtown Seattle. “Every store we opened was successful, every city, every country.”
He continued: “Growth had a life of its own — and that’s O.K., when you’re hitting the cover off the ball every time, but at some point, nothing lasts forever.”
One thing hasn’t changed: the man dreams big. In that same interview, Mr. Schultz spoke of expanding into still more products and in markets like China. He is pushing, of all things, a brand of instant coffee. The words “Starbucks Coffee” were just removed from the company’s green mermaid logo because he wants to waltz his brand up and down the grocery aisles. On Thursday, he announced that the company had struck a deal with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to distribute Starbucks coffee and teas for Keurig single-serving systems. Shares of Starbucks jumped nearly 10 percent on the news, reaching their highest level since 2006. The stock closed at $36.56 on Friday.
Mr. Schultz and his colleagues say Starbucks will keep its feet on the ground this time, but some outsiders have doubts. Detractors say Starbucks long ago ceded its role as a gourmet tastemaker to become a “billions-and-billions served” chain like McDonald’s. Starbucks — “Charbucks,” to those who complain that its heavily roasted coffee tastes burned — will never rekindle the old romance, these people say.
“Has anybody said they came back because people love the coffee again?” asks Bryant Simon, a history professor at Temple University and author of “Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America From Starbucks.”
“They came back because they’re remaking themselves as a brand that competes on value, largely — a brand that’s everywhere, easily accessible, predictable,” Mr. Simon says.
HOWARD SCHULTZ, now 57, is a tall, sinewy man with a toothy grin and a silky sales pitch. He rarely sticks to script, preferring to speak off the cuff, whatever his audience. In conversations, he leans in, locks eyes and gives the impression that, right now, there is no one else in the world he would rather be talking to. When he speaks of “soul” and “authenticity” and “love,” you could almost forget that he runs a multibillion-dollar business that has become an uneasy symbol of globalization. Or that the British actor Rupert Everett once likened Starbucks to a metastasizing cancer.
The story of Mr. Schultz’s life and career has been told many times, not least by Mr. Schultz. (His second book, “Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul,” is to be published on March 29.) But some highlights bear repeating:
He grew up poor in the Bay View housing projects in Canarsie, Brooklyn, received a football scholarship to Northern Michigan University and, after a variety of jobs, joined the fledging Starbucks in 1982, as head of marketing. Inspired by Italy’s coffee culture, he left Starbucks and opened his own coffee shop. Then, in 1987, he bought Starbucks, which at the time had all of six shops. By 1995, Starbucks had 677 shops. By 2000, it had 3,501, and that year Mr. Schultz stepped aside as C.E.O.
And so it went for Starbucks, one success after another, until the recession hit and exposed the company’s overreach to the world.
In December 2007, Mr. Schultz was worried that the Starbucks brand was losing its luster, and he and the board decided that in the new year, they would push aside Jim Donald and announce that Mr. Schultz would return as C.E.O. That month, Mr. Schultz, his wife, Sheri, and their two children flew to Hawaii for their annual getaway.
But on the beach in Kona, he just couldn’t relax. He kept checking the company’s daily sales figures and was horrified to see that they were falling by double digits.
Also in Hawaii then was his friend Michael Dell, who had recently returned to run Dell Inc. On a long bicycle ride along the coast, Mr. Dell told Mr. Schultz that when he returned to Dell, he wrote what he called a “transformational agenda.” Mr. Schultz then created his own plan for Starbucks.
His goals were to fix troubled stores, to rekindle an emotional attachment with customers and to make longer-term changes like reorganizing executives and revamping the supply chain.
He returned to Seattle, handed copies of his plan to the company’s senior executives and posed the big question: Are you in, or are you out? Eight of those top 10 executives have since departed.
“What the company needed then was what he used to be to us — the innovation, the refusal to not be a champion,” says Troy Alstead, the chief financial officer. “A lot of people were questioning, in that span before he came back, ‘Were we done?’ And Howard came back, and it wasn’t even a question anymore.”
MR. SCHULTZ usually rises at 4 a.m., without an alarm, downs a Starbucks Sumatran coffee at home, followed by a short double latte or espresso macchiato from one of two Starbucks stores he visits on his way to work. He arrives in his office by 6:30.
Friends and colleagues agree that he is as fanatical as ever about Starbucks. Millard Drexler, the chief executive of J. Crew, recently e-mailed Mr. Schultz to complain that the coffee lids at a Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan kept spilling coffee on his shirt. Mr. Schultz’s reply: “On it.”
Mr. Drexler, who has a habit of e-mailing C.E.O.’s with complaints, says: “I can give you many more examples when they say, ‘I’ll send this to a research department or a gatekeeper.’ ” But, he says of Starbucks, “to have that kind of quality control they have around the world is pretty extraordinary.”
It was on such a morning in early 2008 that Mr. Schultz was convinced he had a product that would re-energize the company’s tired sales. It was called Sorbetto after the Italian for “sorbet,” and the drink was a twist on Pinkberry, the frozen yogurt chain in which Mr. Schultz is an investor.
Mr. Schultz had flown to Italy to taste the ingredients of his new product and thought he had the next Frappuccino. By that summer, 300 Starbucks locations in California were bathed in pink to promote the new drink. Starbucks had shipped in ingredients from Italy, and Mr. Schultz had primed investors.
But customers didn’t like the sugary concoction. And neither did Starbucks baristas, who had to spend an hour and a half cleaning the Sorbetto machines at the end of their shifts. A few months later, Mr. Schultz abandoned Sorbetto.
“Sorbetto, we did too quickly, and that was my fault,” Mr. Schultz says.
The headlong introduction was a mistake, but it was also classic Schultz.
“He likes things moving quickly, he likes people to be decisive, he’s got this energy level, this need for driving and for winning, and I think at times it’s hard for some people to keep up,” says Michelle Gass, the president of Seattle’s Best Coffee, which Starbucks owns. After his missteps, Ms. Gass says, Mr. Schultz has become more disciplined and a better listener.
Mr. Schultz concedes that he can no longer run Starbucks through the Cult of Howard. And he readily acknowledges that he badly misread the economy and underestimated the extent to which his customers would pull back during the recession.
At the time, he says, he had a hard time accepting that Starbucks would become a poster child for excess.
After his return, he halted new store openings and, with a P.R. flourish, closed every Starbucks in the nation for three hours to retrain baristas. The chain ran its biggest ad campaign ever, emphasizing the quality and freshness of its coffee. It ordered baristas to dump brewed coffee after 30 minutes.
But growth in same-store sales dipped below zero for the first time ever, and the company’s share price kept falling. It was a new feeling for Mr. Schultz, like the A student who breezes into college and then gets C’s.
Executives concluded that Starbucks had to close 200 American shops. The board suggested 600. Executives said that if sales and the economy got worse, they would also cut $400 million in costs. The board said no, let’s start cutting costs immediately, while closing locations. Starbucks ultimately closed 900 locations worldwide and cut $580 million in costs. As the decline in same-store sales neared 10 percent, board members asked executives to model what would happen if the sales slide hit 20 percent — which once would have been unthinkable.
“Nobody knew where the bottom was,” recalls James G. Shennan Jr., a venture capitalist who has been on the company’s board since 1990. “The general agreement around the table was we better have the doomsday plan.”
In December 2008, almost a year after he returned as C.E.O., Mr. Schultz flew to New York on the company jet. He and his team were scheduled to meet with analysts from Wall Street, where Mr. Schultz, once a darling, was now being doubted as never before.
On the plane, he reviewed the grim quarterly numbers: Profits were underwhelming, and holiday sales looked dreadful. Just before the meeting, the company’s chief financial officer, Pete Bocian, resigned.
Mr. Schultz reread the script for the presentation — and didn’t like what he saw. He worried that the stock price might drop so low that someone would swoop in and buy the company.
He summoned his executives to his Fifth Avenue apartment. Late into the night, around the dining room table, they revised the presentation.
The next day, as the executives rehearsed, Mr. Schultz kept interrupting. Vivek Varma, who had recently joined Starbucks as head of public affairs, told him that he should leave.
No one could remember anyone talking like that to Mr. Schultz. But he left. The next day, he and the other executives painted a somber picture for analysts and laid out the recovery plans. Rather than plunge, the company’s share price rose 20 cents that day.
Over the next year, Starbucks made much deeper and more difficult changes than Mr. Schultz had originally envisioned. By April 2009, same-store sales, though still down from a year earlier, were finally rising. By the holidays, they had turned positive.
INSTANT coffee: the very words leave a bad taste in many people’s mouths. But Starbucks has been developing instant coffee in earnest since 2006. Mr. Schultz says his industry considers instant a “death category.” It is, however, a $20 billion one.
Before he returned, Mr. Schultz complained that if Apple could develop the iPod in less than a year, Starbucks could surely develop an instant coffee in that time. Finally, in January 2009, the new product, Via, was scheduled for a full-scale introduction.
But there was a problem: market research was showing that skeptical customers needed a lesson about instant coffee. Some executives worried that a big rollout might flop. Ms. Gass and a few others told Mr. Schultz that Starbucks should delay Via and introduce it in two cities before going national.
“That was hard for him,” Ms. Gass says. But rather than overrule his executives, as he might have in the past, Mr. Schultz agreed. It turned out to be the right decision. After testing Via in Seattle and Chicago, Starbucks rewrote the plan for a nationwide introduction. For instance, instead of just giving away free samples, which customers forgot in the bottom of their briefcases, purses and backpacks, it prepared Via in the stores and gave customers a blind taste test.
In 2010, sales of Via were over $200 million. The instant coffee is now also sold in grocery stores and in Britain, Canada, Japan and the Philippines.
The methodical introduction of Via offered a sharp contrast to the old Howard Schultz whose gut told him — wrongly — that Sorbetto would be a winner. But he has also gone so far as to embrace big-company ideas like focus groups, which he used to shun. Delegating, and accepting other people’s conclusions, is now easier for him. “There’s been more arguing, challenging and debate in the last two to three years than there’s ever been,” says Mr. Alstead, the chief financial officer.
Mr. Schultz’s take: “What leadership means is the courage it takes to talk about things that, in the past, perhaps we wouldn’t have, because I’m not right all the time.”
Born entrepreneurs are not necessarily born managers. You need creativity and drive to start a company, discipline and delegation to run one. In the last year, people who work closely with Mr. Schultz say, he has shown he can make the leap.
Perhaps the bigger question is whether Mr. Schultz can, as he likes to say, preserve Starbucks’s soul, or whatever soul it has left. In a switch, the company is designing new stores with local woods, furniture and art, to make them feel more like a neighborhood shop. It is also buying specialty beans in limited supply, as artisanal shops do.
Whether Starbucks can recapture a neighborhood feel, as Mr. Schultz insists, is anyone’s guess. For many people, especially in areas where carefully made, lighter-roast coffee from the likes of Stumptown and Intelligentsia is trendy, Starbucks has become a place to go for free Wi-Fi, or to use the restroom, or to buy a coffee on the go.
There is a market for a convenient coffee chain, as the recent Starbucks sales rebound shows. But some customers and analysts say that the mass-market approach conflicts with Mr. Schultz’s vision of a global giant that somehow feels local everywhere.
Mr. Simon of Temple University says: “When you’re selling stuff people don’t need, you’ve got to be selling something else, and that’s what Starbucks lost. There’s a kind of dissonance between the messaging and the actual practice.”
Mr. Schultz no longer plans to blanket the United States with new Starbucks stores, sometimes with multiple locations on one block — a practice that inspired a contest on Flickr to see how many Starbucks shops people could fit into a single photograph. Instead, like so many other executives, he has his sights on China. Starbucks already has roughly 430 stores in mainland China and plans to have 1,500 there by 2015. India beckons as well. The company also plans to sell a wider variety of drinks and foods in grocery stores and its own shops, like Kind fruit and nut bars, which Starbucks put on the map.
IT may be difficult to believe, but there was a time when McDonald’s was a novelty. But, like Ray Kroc, who took over a small hamburger business and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world, Mr. Schultz has learned that growth can be seductive, and that it can exact a price.
Starbucks and its leader are more measured than during his last stint in the corner office. “I think we are very conscious of the things that we have done wrong over the years, particularly when we just got caught up in the growth phase,” says Mr. Shennan, the Starbucks director. “We are not going to do that again under Howard’s management, I tell you, or the current board’s.”
In January, three years after his return, Mr. Schultz stood before 1,100 employees at the headquarters here. Three thousand more from around the world were patched in via Webcast. The company had finished its strongest holiday season ever, and Mr. Schultz had just unveiled its new, “coffee”-less logo. Yet his words were laced with caution.
“We have won in many ways,” he said, “but I feel it’s so important to remind us all of how fleeting success and winning can be.”
More in Business Day (23 of 26 articles)
Corner Office: Learn to Walk With Beggars and Kings
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By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
SEATTLE
RAISE your hand if you remember when Starbucks seemed cool.
Anyone?
Think back. To before the planet groaned with 17,000 Starbucks shops. Before the pumpkin spice lattes and the Ciao Amore CDs. Before the Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino ice cream, the Starbucks cream liqueur, the Pinkberry-inspired Sorbetto.
In short, to before Howard D. Schultz and his trenta-size ambition turned a few coffeehouses here into the vast corporate Empire of the Bean.
The world has often seemed three espressos behind Mr. Schultz — which is why the low-key guy sitting in his office here doesn’t quite seem like Howard Schultz.
Did he just say “but”? As in, “We have won in many ways, but ...”? Was that a “we” instead of an “I”? A note of humility?
Yes, this is Howard Schultz: the man who willed Starbucks onto so many street corners — and then, for a moment, looked as if he might lose it all.
Not even Mr. Schultz could have predicted how Starbucks would change our culture when its first shop opened here, in Pike Place Market, on March 30, 1971. Like it or not, Starbucks became, for many of us, what we talk about when we talk about coffee. It changed how we drink it (on a sofa, with Wi-Fi, or on the subway), how we order it (“for here, grande, two-pump vanilla, skinny extra hot latte”) and what we are willing to pay for it ($4.30 for the aforementioned in Manhattan).
But during the depths of the recession, Starbucks nearly drowned in its caramel macchiato. After decades of breakneck expansion under Mr. Schultz, tight-fisted consumers abandoned it. The company’s sales and share price sank so low that insiders worried Starbucks might become a takeover target.
So, after an eight-year hiatus, an alarmed Mr. Schultz returned as chief executive in January 2008. He shut 900 shops, mostly in the United States, drastically cut costs and put the company back on course.
Friends and colleagues say this hellish experience left Mr. Schultz a changed man. Starbucks, these people say, is no longer “The Howard Schultz Show.” The adjective that many use to characterize his new self is “humble” — a word that few would have applied to him before.
“Everything Starbucks did in the past, more or less, had worked,” Mr. Schultz said in an interview in January at the company’s headquarters, with a view of Puget Sound south of downtown Seattle. “Every store we opened was successful, every city, every country.”
He continued: “Growth had a life of its own — and that’s O.K., when you’re hitting the cover off the ball every time, but at some point, nothing lasts forever.”
One thing hasn’t changed: the man dreams big. In that same interview, Mr. Schultz spoke of expanding into still more products and in markets like China. He is pushing, of all things, a brand of instant coffee. The words “Starbucks Coffee” were just removed from the company’s green mermaid logo because he wants to waltz his brand up and down the grocery aisles. On Thursday, he announced that the company had struck a deal with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to distribute Starbucks coffee and teas for Keurig single-serving systems. Shares of Starbucks jumped nearly 10 percent on the news, reaching their highest level since 2006. The stock closed at $36.56 on Friday.
Mr. Schultz and his colleagues say Starbucks will keep its feet on the ground this time, but some outsiders have doubts. Detractors say Starbucks long ago ceded its role as a gourmet tastemaker to become a “billions-and-billions served” chain like McDonald’s. Starbucks — “Charbucks,” to those who complain that its heavily roasted coffee tastes burned — will never rekindle the old romance, these people say.
“Has anybody said they came back because people love the coffee again?” asks Bryant Simon, a history professor at Temple University and author of “Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America From Starbucks.”
“They came back because they’re remaking themselves as a brand that competes on value, largely — a brand that’s everywhere, easily accessible, predictable,” Mr. Simon says.
HOWARD SCHULTZ, now 57, is a tall, sinewy man with a toothy grin and a silky sales pitch. He rarely sticks to script, preferring to speak off the cuff, whatever his audience. In conversations, he leans in, locks eyes and gives the impression that, right now, there is no one else in the world he would rather be talking to. When he speaks of “soul” and “authenticity” and “love,” you could almost forget that he runs a multibillion-dollar business that has become an uneasy symbol of globalization. Or that the British actor Rupert Everett once likened Starbucks to a metastasizing cancer.
The story of Mr. Schultz’s life and career has been told many times, not least by Mr. Schultz. (His second book, “Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul,” is to be published on March 29.) But some highlights bear repeating:
He grew up poor in the Bay View housing projects in Canarsie, Brooklyn, received a football scholarship to Northern Michigan University and, after a variety of jobs, joined the fledging Starbucks in 1982, as head of marketing. Inspired by Italy’s coffee culture, he left Starbucks and opened his own coffee shop. Then, in 1987, he bought Starbucks, which at the time had all of six shops. By 1995, Starbucks had 677 shops. By 2000, it had 3,501, and that year Mr. Schultz stepped aside as C.E.O.
And so it went for Starbucks, one success after another, until the recession hit and exposed the company’s overreach to the world.
In December 2007, Mr. Schultz was worried that the Starbucks brand was losing its luster, and he and the board decided that in the new year, they would push aside Jim Donald and announce that Mr. Schultz would return as C.E.O. That month, Mr. Schultz, his wife, Sheri, and their two children flew to Hawaii for their annual getaway.
But on the beach in Kona, he just couldn’t relax. He kept checking the company’s daily sales figures and was horrified to see that they were falling by double digits.
Also in Hawaii then was his friend Michael Dell, who had recently returned to run Dell Inc. On a long bicycle ride along the coast, Mr. Dell told Mr. Schultz that when he returned to Dell, he wrote what he called a “transformational agenda.” Mr. Schultz then created his own plan for Starbucks.
His goals were to fix troubled stores, to rekindle an emotional attachment with customers and to make longer-term changes like reorganizing executives and revamping the supply chain.
He returned to Seattle, handed copies of his plan to the company’s senior executives and posed the big question: Are you in, or are you out? Eight of those top 10 executives have since departed.
“What the company needed then was what he used to be to us — the innovation, the refusal to not be a champion,” says Troy Alstead, the chief financial officer. “A lot of people were questioning, in that span before he came back, ‘Were we done?’ And Howard came back, and it wasn’t even a question anymore.”
MR. SCHULTZ usually rises at 4 a.m., without an alarm, downs a Starbucks Sumatran coffee at home, followed by a short double latte or espresso macchiato from one of two Starbucks stores he visits on his way to work. He arrives in his office by 6:30.
Friends and colleagues agree that he is as fanatical as ever about Starbucks. Millard Drexler, the chief executive of J. Crew, recently e-mailed Mr. Schultz to complain that the coffee lids at a Starbucks on Astor Place in Manhattan kept spilling coffee on his shirt. Mr. Schultz’s reply: “On it.”
Mr. Drexler, who has a habit of e-mailing C.E.O.’s with complaints, says: “I can give you many more examples when they say, ‘I’ll send this to a research department or a gatekeeper.’ ” But, he says of Starbucks, “to have that kind of quality control they have around the world is pretty extraordinary.”
It was on such a morning in early 2008 that Mr. Schultz was convinced he had a product that would re-energize the company’s tired sales. It was called Sorbetto after the Italian for “sorbet,” and the drink was a twist on Pinkberry, the frozen yogurt chain in which Mr. Schultz is an investor.
Mr. Schultz had flown to Italy to taste the ingredients of his new product and thought he had the next Frappuccino. By that summer, 300 Starbucks locations in California were bathed in pink to promote the new drink. Starbucks had shipped in ingredients from Italy, and Mr. Schultz had primed investors.
But customers didn’t like the sugary concoction. And neither did Starbucks baristas, who had to spend an hour and a half cleaning the Sorbetto machines at the end of their shifts. A few months later, Mr. Schultz abandoned Sorbetto.
“Sorbetto, we did too quickly, and that was my fault,” Mr. Schultz says.
The headlong introduction was a mistake, but it was also classic Schultz.
“He likes things moving quickly, he likes people to be decisive, he’s got this energy level, this need for driving and for winning, and I think at times it’s hard for some people to keep up,” says Michelle Gass, the president of Seattle’s Best Coffee, which Starbucks owns. After his missteps, Ms. Gass says, Mr. Schultz has become more disciplined and a better listener.
Mr. Schultz concedes that he can no longer run Starbucks through the Cult of Howard. And he readily acknowledges that he badly misread the economy and underestimated the extent to which his customers would pull back during the recession.
At the time, he says, he had a hard time accepting that Starbucks would become a poster child for excess.
After his return, he halted new store openings and, with a P.R. flourish, closed every Starbucks in the nation for three hours to retrain baristas. The chain ran its biggest ad campaign ever, emphasizing the quality and freshness of its coffee. It ordered baristas to dump brewed coffee after 30 minutes.
But growth in same-store sales dipped below zero for the first time ever, and the company’s share price kept falling. It was a new feeling for Mr. Schultz, like the A student who breezes into college and then gets C’s.
Executives concluded that Starbucks had to close 200 American shops. The board suggested 600. Executives said that if sales and the economy got worse, they would also cut $400 million in costs. The board said no, let’s start cutting costs immediately, while closing locations. Starbucks ultimately closed 900 locations worldwide and cut $580 million in costs. As the decline in same-store sales neared 10 percent, board members asked executives to model what would happen if the sales slide hit 20 percent — which once would have been unthinkable.
“Nobody knew where the bottom was,” recalls James G. Shennan Jr., a venture capitalist who has been on the company’s board since 1990. “The general agreement around the table was we better have the doomsday plan.”
In December 2008, almost a year after he returned as C.E.O., Mr. Schultz flew to New York on the company jet. He and his team were scheduled to meet with analysts from Wall Street, where Mr. Schultz, once a darling, was now being doubted as never before.
On the plane, he reviewed the grim quarterly numbers: Profits were underwhelming, and holiday sales looked dreadful. Just before the meeting, the company’s chief financial officer, Pete Bocian, resigned.
Mr. Schultz reread the script for the presentation — and didn’t like what he saw. He worried that the stock price might drop so low that someone would swoop in and buy the company.
He summoned his executives to his Fifth Avenue apartment. Late into the night, around the dining room table, they revised the presentation.
The next day, as the executives rehearsed, Mr. Schultz kept interrupting. Vivek Varma, who had recently joined Starbucks as head of public affairs, told him that he should leave.
No one could remember anyone talking like that to Mr. Schultz. But he left. The next day, he and the other executives painted a somber picture for analysts and laid out the recovery plans. Rather than plunge, the company’s share price rose 20 cents that day.
Over the next year, Starbucks made much deeper and more difficult changes than Mr. Schultz had originally envisioned. By April 2009, same-store sales, though still down from a year earlier, were finally rising. By the holidays, they had turned positive.
INSTANT coffee: the very words leave a bad taste in many people’s mouths. But Starbucks has been developing instant coffee in earnest since 2006. Mr. Schultz says his industry considers instant a “death category.” It is, however, a $20 billion one.
Before he returned, Mr. Schultz complained that if Apple could develop the iPod in less than a year, Starbucks could surely develop an instant coffee in that time. Finally, in January 2009, the new product, Via, was scheduled for a full-scale introduction.
But there was a problem: market research was showing that skeptical customers needed a lesson about instant coffee. Some executives worried that a big rollout might flop. Ms. Gass and a few others told Mr. Schultz that Starbucks should delay Via and introduce it in two cities before going national.
“That was hard for him,” Ms. Gass says. But rather than overrule his executives, as he might have in the past, Mr. Schultz agreed. It turned out to be the right decision. After testing Via in Seattle and Chicago, Starbucks rewrote the plan for a nationwide introduction. For instance, instead of just giving away free samples, which customers forgot in the bottom of their briefcases, purses and backpacks, it prepared Via in the stores and gave customers a blind taste test.
In 2010, sales of Via were over $200 million. The instant coffee is now also sold in grocery stores and in Britain, Canada, Japan and the Philippines.
The methodical introduction of Via offered a sharp contrast to the old Howard Schultz whose gut told him — wrongly — that Sorbetto would be a winner. But he has also gone so far as to embrace big-company ideas like focus groups, which he used to shun. Delegating, and accepting other people’s conclusions, is now easier for him. “There’s been more arguing, challenging and debate in the last two to three years than there’s ever been,” says Mr. Alstead, the chief financial officer.
Mr. Schultz’s take: “What leadership means is the courage it takes to talk about things that, in the past, perhaps we wouldn’t have, because I’m not right all the time.”
Born entrepreneurs are not necessarily born managers. You need creativity and drive to start a company, discipline and delegation to run one. In the last year, people who work closely with Mr. Schultz say, he has shown he can make the leap.
Perhaps the bigger question is whether Mr. Schultz can, as he likes to say, preserve Starbucks’s soul, or whatever soul it has left. In a switch, the company is designing new stores with local woods, furniture and art, to make them feel more like a neighborhood shop. It is also buying specialty beans in limited supply, as artisanal shops do.
Whether Starbucks can recapture a neighborhood feel, as Mr. Schultz insists, is anyone’s guess. For many people, especially in areas where carefully made, lighter-roast coffee from the likes of Stumptown and Intelligentsia is trendy, Starbucks has become a place to go for free Wi-Fi, or to use the restroom, or to buy a coffee on the go.
There is a market for a convenient coffee chain, as the recent Starbucks sales rebound shows. But some customers and analysts say that the mass-market approach conflicts with Mr. Schultz’s vision of a global giant that somehow feels local everywhere.
Mr. Simon of Temple University says: “When you’re selling stuff people don’t need, you’ve got to be selling something else, and that’s what Starbucks lost. There’s a kind of dissonance between the messaging and the actual practice.”
Mr. Schultz no longer plans to blanket the United States with new Starbucks stores, sometimes with multiple locations on one block — a practice that inspired a contest on Flickr to see how many Starbucks shops people could fit into a single photograph. Instead, like so many other executives, he has his sights on China. Starbucks already has roughly 430 stores in mainland China and plans to have 1,500 there by 2015. India beckons as well. The company also plans to sell a wider variety of drinks and foods in grocery stores and its own shops, like Kind fruit and nut bars, which Starbucks put on the map.
IT may be difficult to believe, but there was a time when McDonald’s was a novelty. But, like Ray Kroc, who took over a small hamburger business and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world, Mr. Schultz has learned that growth can be seductive, and that it can exact a price.
Starbucks and its leader are more measured than during his last stint in the corner office. “I think we are very conscious of the things that we have done wrong over the years, particularly when we just got caught up in the growth phase,” says Mr. Shennan, the Starbucks director. “We are not going to do that again under Howard’s management, I tell you, or the current board’s.”
In January, three years after his return, Mr. Schultz stood before 1,100 employees at the headquarters here. Three thousand more from around the world were patched in via Webcast. The company had finished its strongest holiday season ever, and Mr. Schultz had just unveiled its new, “coffee”-less logo. Yet his words were laced with caution.
“We have won in many ways,” he said, “but I feel it’s so important to remind us all of how fleeting success and winning can be.”
More in Business Day (23 of 26 articles)
Corner Office: Learn to Walk With Beggars and Kings
Read More »
Close
13/03 Tất cả sinh viên Việt Nam ở tỉnh Miyagi đều an toàn
6:11 PM, 13/03/2011
(Chinhphu.vn) – Hãng tin NHK Nhật Bản chiều nay cho biết, tất cả sinh viên Việt Nam ở Đại học Tohoku, ở thành phố Sendai, tỉnh Miyagi, một trong những tỉnh bị thiệt hại nặng nề nhất trong trận động đất và sóng thần vừa qua đều an toàn.
Thông tin NHK nhận được từ một sinh viên Việt Nam tên Bùi Phi Anh đang học tập tại Trường Đại học Tohoku, thành phố Sendai, tỉnh Miyagi.
Đại học Tohoku nằm ở thành phố Sendai, thuộc tỉnh Miyagi. Đây là một trong những tỉnh bị thiệt hại nặng nề nhất trong trận động đất và sóng thần hôm thứ Sáu, 11/3.
Bùi Phi Anh cho biết, toàn bộ sinh viên và nghiên cứu sinh Việt Nam ở Đại học Tohoku đều an toàn và đã liên lạc được với nhau.
Hiện nay, Phi Anh cùng 17 sinh viên và nghiên cứu sinh Việt Nam ở Đại học Tohoku đang tạm trú tại một trung tâm lánh nạn khẩn cấp và được cung cấp đầy đủ thức ăn, nước uống và nhu yếu phẩm. Mặc dù hiện Sendai vẫn chưa có điện và khí đốt nhưng dự kiến điện và khí đốt sẽ được cung cấp lại trong 2-3 ngày tới.
Bùi Phi Anh nói thêm rằng, mặc dù trận động đất rất mạnh, nhưng nhà anh ở không bị hư hại nhiều và anh dự định sẽ trở về nhà sau khi điện và khí đốt được cấp trở lại.
Chờ đợi tại sân bay Haneda để tìm đường về Sendai, Nguyễn Chí Nghĩa, công tác tại trường đại học Tohoku cũng thông báo đã liên lạc được với vợ và khoảng 20 người bạn ở Sendai. Hiện nay tất cả nhóm này đều an toàn và sức khỏe ổn định.
Hội Thanh niên - Sinh viên Việt Nam (VYSA) cho biết, hiện người Việt ở Sendai đang tập trung thành 3 nhóm. Nhóm 1 có 15 người, trong đó có 2 em nhỏ, lánh nạn tại Hachiman. Nhóm 2 có 9 người, trong đó có 1 em nhỏ, lánh nạn tại Kawauchi Campus. Nhóm 3 có khoảng 11 người ở gần trường tiếng Nhật ga Sendai.
Tình hình cuộc sống đang dần phục hồi. Thức ăn nước uống có đủ.
Ngọc Ánh
(Chinhphu.vn) – Hãng tin NHK Nhật Bản chiều nay cho biết, tất cả sinh viên Việt Nam ở Đại học Tohoku, ở thành phố Sendai, tỉnh Miyagi, một trong những tỉnh bị thiệt hại nặng nề nhất trong trận động đất và sóng thần vừa qua đều an toàn.
Thông tin NHK nhận được từ một sinh viên Việt Nam tên Bùi Phi Anh đang học tập tại Trường Đại học Tohoku, thành phố Sendai, tỉnh Miyagi.
Đại học Tohoku nằm ở thành phố Sendai, thuộc tỉnh Miyagi. Đây là một trong những tỉnh bị thiệt hại nặng nề nhất trong trận động đất và sóng thần hôm thứ Sáu, 11/3.
Bùi Phi Anh cho biết, toàn bộ sinh viên và nghiên cứu sinh Việt Nam ở Đại học Tohoku đều an toàn và đã liên lạc được với nhau.
Hiện nay, Phi Anh cùng 17 sinh viên và nghiên cứu sinh Việt Nam ở Đại học Tohoku đang tạm trú tại một trung tâm lánh nạn khẩn cấp và được cung cấp đầy đủ thức ăn, nước uống và nhu yếu phẩm. Mặc dù hiện Sendai vẫn chưa có điện và khí đốt nhưng dự kiến điện và khí đốt sẽ được cung cấp lại trong 2-3 ngày tới.
Bùi Phi Anh nói thêm rằng, mặc dù trận động đất rất mạnh, nhưng nhà anh ở không bị hư hại nhiều và anh dự định sẽ trở về nhà sau khi điện và khí đốt được cấp trở lại.
Chờ đợi tại sân bay Haneda để tìm đường về Sendai, Nguyễn Chí Nghĩa, công tác tại trường đại học Tohoku cũng thông báo đã liên lạc được với vợ và khoảng 20 người bạn ở Sendai. Hiện nay tất cả nhóm này đều an toàn và sức khỏe ổn định.
Hội Thanh niên - Sinh viên Việt Nam (VYSA) cho biết, hiện người Việt ở Sendai đang tập trung thành 3 nhóm. Nhóm 1 có 15 người, trong đó có 2 em nhỏ, lánh nạn tại Hachiman. Nhóm 2 có 9 người, trong đó có 1 em nhỏ, lánh nạn tại Kawauchi Campus. Nhóm 3 có khoảng 11 người ở gần trường tiếng Nhật ga Sendai.
Tình hình cuộc sống đang dần phục hồi. Thức ăn nước uống có đủ.
Ngọc Ánh
14/03 ĐSQ Việt Nam thiết lập kênh hỗ trợ thông tin tại Nhật Bản
2:09 PM, 14/03/2011
(Chinhphu.vn) - Đại sứ quán Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản ngày 13/3 thông báo đã thiết lập kênh thông tin hỗ trợ các gia đình trong nước liên hệ tìm hiểu tình hình người thân sống và làm việc tại các vùng bị ảnh hưởng động đất và sóng thần.
Theo Đại sứ quán, các nhóm thực tập sinh, lưu học sinh mà Đại sứ quán liên hệ được hiện đang được chính quyền các địa phương, cơ quan, tổ chức cứu hộ ở Nhật Bản đưa đến tạm trú tại các địa điểm an toàn, cung cấp tiện nghi sinh hoạt. Cho đến nay chưa có trường hợp công dân Việt Nam nào thương vong.
Tuy nhiên, do hệ thống thông tin liên lạc ở Nhật Bản bị ảnh hưởng nặng nề sau động đất nên thông tin có thể chưa đầy đủ, một số trường hợp còn chưa liên hệ được.
Vì vậy, các gia đình có người thân tại Nhật Bản chưa nhận được thông tin của người thân có thể liên hệ trực tiếp với Đại sứ quán Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản theo các địa chỉ sau:
1/ Thư điện tử: vnembassyjp@gmail.com
2/ Các số điện thoại:
-Văn phòng Đại sứ quán Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản: 0081.3.3466.3313
- Ban Quản lý lao động Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản: 0081.3.3466.4324
-Bộ phận quản lý lưu học sinh Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản: 0081.3.6868.7512
(Nguồn: TTXVN)
(Chinhphu.vn) - Đại sứ quán Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản ngày 13/3 thông báo đã thiết lập kênh thông tin hỗ trợ các gia đình trong nước liên hệ tìm hiểu tình hình người thân sống và làm việc tại các vùng bị ảnh hưởng động đất và sóng thần.
Theo Đại sứ quán, các nhóm thực tập sinh, lưu học sinh mà Đại sứ quán liên hệ được hiện đang được chính quyền các địa phương, cơ quan, tổ chức cứu hộ ở Nhật Bản đưa đến tạm trú tại các địa điểm an toàn, cung cấp tiện nghi sinh hoạt. Cho đến nay chưa có trường hợp công dân Việt Nam nào thương vong.
Tuy nhiên, do hệ thống thông tin liên lạc ở Nhật Bản bị ảnh hưởng nặng nề sau động đất nên thông tin có thể chưa đầy đủ, một số trường hợp còn chưa liên hệ được.
Vì vậy, các gia đình có người thân tại Nhật Bản chưa nhận được thông tin của người thân có thể liên hệ trực tiếp với Đại sứ quán Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản theo các địa chỉ sau:
1/ Thư điện tử: vnembassyjp@gmail.com
2/ Các số điện thoại:
-Văn phòng Đại sứ quán Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản: 0081.3.3466.3313
- Ban Quản lý lao động Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản: 0081.3.3466.4324
-Bộ phận quản lý lưu học sinh Việt Nam tại Nhật Bản: 0081.3.6868.7512
(Nguồn: TTXVN)
11/03 Tablets, Compared
2010 was supposed to be the Year of the Tablet. That did not really happen — the flood of product was reduced to a trickle, as many manufacturers awaited a more tablet-friendly operating system from Google. So, once more, with feeling: 2011 will be the Year of the Tablet. Several new models have either been released, or are in a very advanced state of preview. This interactive guide can help sort through the latest offerings. Use the checkbox at the top of each listing to select it for comparison. And check back frequently — this page will be updated as new information or models are released.
JUMP TO A PRODUCT:
Apple iPadMotorola XoomH.P. SlateDell StreakBlackBerry PlayBookSamsung Galaxy TabToshiba Tablet.
JUMP TO A PRODUCT:
Apple iPadMotorola XoomH.P. SlateDell StreakBlackBerry PlayBookSamsung Galaxy TabToshiba Tablet.
13/03 Radioactive Releases in Japan Could Last Months, Experts Say
NHK, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images An explosion Monday at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station blew the roof off the containment building of reactor No. 3, right. Reactor No. 1’s containment building, left, was damaged in an explosion on Saturday.
March 13, 2011
By DAVID E. SANGER and MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON — As the scale of Japan’s nuclear crisis begins to come to light, experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months.
The emergency flooding of two stricken reactors with seawater and the resulting steam releases are a desperate step intended to avoid a much bigger problem: a full meltdown of the nuclear cores in two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. On Monday, an explosion blew the roof off the second reactor, not damaging the core, officials said, but presumably leaking more radiation.
So far, Japanese officials have said the melting of the nuclear cores in the two plants is assumed to be “partial,” and the amount of radioactivity measured outside the plants, though twice the level Japan considers safe, has been relatively modest.
But Pentagon officials reported Sunday that helicopters flying 60 miles from the plant picked up small amounts of radioactive particulates — still being analyzed, but presumed to include cesium-137 and iodine-121 — suggesting widening environmental contamination.
In a country where memories of a nuclear horror of a different sort in the last days of World War II weigh heavily on the national psyche and national politics, the impact of continued venting of long-lasting radioactivity from the plants is hard to overstate.
Japanese reactor operators now have little choice but to periodically release radioactive steam as part of an emergency cooling process for the fuel of the stricken reactors that may continue for a year or more even after fission has stopped. The plant’s operator must constantly try to flood the reactors with seawater, then release the resulting radioactive steam into the atmosphere, several experts familiar with the design of the Daiichi facility said.
That suggests that the tens of thousands of people who have been evacuated may not be able to return to their homes for a considerable period, and that shifts in the wind could blow radioactive materials toward Japanese cities rather than out to sea.
Re-establishing normal cooling of the reactors would require restoring electric power — which was cut in the earthquake and tsunami — and now may require plant technicians working in areas that have become highly contaminated with radioactivity.
More steam releases also mean that the plume headed across the Pacific could continue to grow. On Sunday evening, the White House sought to tamp down concerns, saying that modeling done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had concluded that “Hawaii, Alaska, the U.S. Territories and the U.S. West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.”
But all weekend, after a series of intense interchanges between Tokyo and Washington and the arrival of the first American nuclear experts in Japan, officials said they were beginning to get a clearer picture of what went wrong over the past three days. And as one senior official put it, “under the best scenarios, this isn’t going to end anytime soon.”
The essential problem is the definition of “off” in a nuclear reactor. When the nuclear chain reaction is stopped and the reactor shuts down, the fuel is still producing about 6 percent as much heat as it did when it was running, caused by continuing radioactivity, the release of subatomic particles and of gamma rays.
Usually when a reactor is first shut down, an electric pump pulls heated water from the vessel to a heat exchanger, and cool water from a river or ocean is brought in to draw off that heat.
But at the Japanese reactors, after losing electric power, that system could not be used. Instead the operators are dumping seawater into the vessel and letting it cool the fuel by boiling. But as it boils, pressure rises too high to pump in more water, so they have to vent the vessel to the atmosphere, and feed in more water, a procedure known as “feed and bleed.”
When the fuel was intact, the steam they were releasing had only modest amounts of radioactive material, in a nontroublesome form. With damaged fuel, that steam is getting dirtier.
Another potential concern is that some Japanese reactors (as well as some in France and Germany) run on a mixed fuel known as mox, or mixed oxide, that includes reclaimed plutonium. It is not clear whether the stricken reactors are among those, but if they are, the steam they release could be more toxic.
Christopher D. Wilson, a reactor operator and later a manager at Exelon’s Oyster Creek plant, near Toms River, N.J., said, “normally you would just re-establish electricity supply, from the on-site diesel generator or a portable one.” Portable generators have been brought into Fukushima, he said.
Fukushima was designed by General Electric, as Oyster Creek was around the same time, and the two plants are similar. The problem, he said, was that the hookup is done through electric switching equipment that is in a basement room flooded by the tsunami, he said. “Even though you have generators on site, you have to get the water out of the basement,” he said.
Another nuclear engineer with long experience in reactors of this type, who now works for a government agency, was emphatic. “To completely stop venting, they’re going to have to put some sort of equipment back in service,” he said. He asked not to be named because his agency had not authorized him to speak.
The central problem arises from a series of failures that began after the tsunami. It easily overcame the sea walls surrounding the Fukushima plant. It swamped the diesel generators, which were placed in a low-lying area, apparently because of misplaced confidence that the sea walls would protect them. At 3:41 p.m. Friday, roughly an hour after the quake and just around the time the region would have been struck by the giant waves, the generators shut down. According to Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant switched to an emergency cooling system that operates on batteries, but these were soon depleted.
Inside the plant, according to industry executives and American experts who received briefings over the weekend, there was deep concern that spent nuclear fuel that was kept in a “cooling pond” inside one of the plants had been exposed and begun letting off potentially deadly gamma radiation. Then water levels inside the reactor cores began to fall. While estimates vary, several officials and industry experts said Sunday that the top four to nine feet of the nuclear fuel in the core and control rods appear to have been exposed to the air — a condition that that can quickly lead to melting, and ultimately to full meltdown.
At 8 p.m., just as Americans were waking up to news of the earthquake, the government declared an emergency, contradicting its earlier reassurances that there were no major problems. But the chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, stressed that there had been no radiation leak.
But one was coming: Workers inside the reactors saw that levels of coolant water were dropping. They did not know how severely. “The gauges that measure the water level don’t appear to be giving accurate readings,” one American official said.
What the workers knew by Saturday morning was that cooling systems at a nearby power plant, Fukushima Daini, were also starting to fail, for many of the same reasons. And the pressure in the No. 1 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi was rising so fast that engineers knew they would have to relieve it by letting steam escape.
Shortly before 4 p.m., camera crews near the Daiichi plant captured what appears to have been an explosion at the No. 1 reactor — apparently caused by a buildup of hydrogen. It was dramatic television but not especially dangerous — except to the workers injured by the force of the blast.
The explosion was in the outer container, leaving the main reactor vessel unharmed, according to Tokyo Electric’s reports to the International Atomic Energy Agency. (The walls of the outer building blew apart, as they are designed to do, rather than allow a buildup of pressure that could damage the reactor vessel.)
But the dramatic blast was also a warning sign of what could happen inside the reactor vessel if the core was not cooled. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that “as a countermeasure to limit damage to the reactor core,” Tokyo Electric proposed injecting seawater mixed with boron — which can choke off a nuclear reaction — and it began to do that at 10:20 p.m. Saturday.
It was a desperation move: The corrosive seawater will essentially disable the 40-year-old plant; the decision to flood the core amounted to a decision to abandon the facility. But even that operation has not been easy.
To pump in the water, the Japanese have apparently tried used firefighting equipment — hardly the usual procedure. But forcing the seawater inside the containment vessel has been difficult because the pressure in the vessel has become so great.
One American official likened the process to “trying to pour water into an inflated balloon,” and said that on Sunday it was “not clear how much water they are getting in, or whether they are covering the cores.”
The problem was compounded because gauges in the reactor seemed to have been damaged in the earthquake or tsunami, making it impossible to know just how much water is in the core.
And workers at the pumping operation are presumed to be exposed to radiation; several workers, according to Japanese reports, have been treated for radiation poisoning. It is not clear how severe their exposure was.
Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong, Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo and Henry Fountain from New York.
13/03 Stricken Reactors Defy Technicians’ Best Efforts to Contain the Damage
March 13, 2011
By HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW L. WALD
TOKYO — A second explosion rocked a troubled nuclear power plant Monday, blowing the roof off a containment building but not harming the reactor, Japanese nuclear officials announced on public television.
The explosion underscores the difficulties Japanese authorities are having in bringing several stricken reactors under control three days after a massive earthquake and a tsunami hit Japan’s northeast coast and shut down the electricity that runs the crucial cooling systems for reactors.
Operators fear that if they cannot establish control, despite increasingly desperate measures to do so, the reactors could experience full meltdowns, which would release catastrophic amounts of radiation.
It was unclear if radiation was released by the explosion, but a similar explosion at another reactor at the plant over the weekend did release radioactive material.
Live footage on public broadcaster NHK showed thick smoke rising from the building.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said that the release of large amounts of radiation was unlikely. But traces of radiation could be released into the atmosphere, and 600 people who remained within a 12 mile radius have been ordered to take cover indoors, he said.
The country’s nuclear power watchdog said readings taken soon after the explosion showed no big change in radiation levels around the plant or any damage to the containment vessel, which protects the radioactive material in the reactor.
“I have received reports that the containment vessel is sound,” he said. “I understand that there is little possibility that radioactive materials are being released in large amounts.”
Twenty-two people who live near the plant are already showing signs of radiation exposure from earlier radiation releases at the plant, but it is not clear if they received dangerous doses.
Technicians had been scrambling most of Sunday to fix a mechanical failure that left the reactor far more vulnerable to explosions.
The two reactors where the explosions occurred are both presumed to have already suffered partial meltdowns — a dangerous situation that, if unchecked, could lead to a full meltdown.
The reactors are both at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where another reactor is also having difficulties.
The Fukushima Daiichi plant and the Fukushima Daini power station, about 10 miles away, have been under a state of emergency.
On Monday morning, Tokyo Electric, which runs both plants, said it had restored the cooling systems at two of three reactors experiencing problems at Daini. That would leave a total of four reactors at the two plants with pumping difficulties.
“I’m not aware that we’ve ever had more than one reactor troubled at a time,” said Frank N. von Hippel, a physicist and professor at Princeton, explaining the difficulties faced by the Japanese.
“The whole country was focused on Three Mile Island,” he said, referring to the Pennsylvania nuclear plant accident in 1979. “Here you have Tokyo Electric Power and the Japanese regulators focusing on multiple plants at the same time.”“
In what was perhaps the clearest sign of the rising anxiety over the nuclear crisis, both the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Russian authorities issued statements on Sunday trying to allay fears, saying they did not expect harmful levels of radiation to reach their territory.
Late Sunday night, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Japan had added a third plant, Onagawa, to the list of those under a state of emergency because a low level of radioactive materials had been detected outside its walls. But on Monday morning, it quoted Japanese authorities as saying that the radioactivity levels at the Onagawa plant had returned to normal levels and that there appeared to be no leak there.
“The increased level may have been due to a release of radioactive material from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,” the agency said. The Onagawa and Daiichi plants are 75 miles apart. The operator of the Onagawa plant, Tohoku Electric Power, said that levels of radiation there were twice the allowed level, but that they did not pose health risks.
Soon after that announcement, Kyodo News reported that a plant about 75 miles north of Tokyo was having at least some cooling system problems. But a plant spokesman later said a backup pump was working.
The government was testing people who lived near the Daiichi plant, with local officials saying that about 170 residents had probably been exposed. The government earlier said that three workers had radiation illness, but Tokyo Electric said Monday that only one worker was ill.
The problems at Fukushima Daiichi appeared to be the most serious involving a nuclear plant since the Chernobyl disaster. A partial meltdown can occur when radioactive fuel rods, which normally are covered in water, remain partially uncovered for too long. The more the fuel is exposed, the closer the reactor comes to a full meltdown.
Technicians are essentially fighting for time while heat generation in the fuel gradually declines, trying to keep the rods covered despite a breakdown in the normal cooling system, which runs off the electrical grid. Since that was knocked out in the earthquake, and diesel generators later failed — possibly because of the tsunami — the operators have used a makeshift system for keeping cool water on the fuel rods.
Now, they pump in new water, let it boil and then vent it to the atmosphere, releasing some radioactive material. But they are having difficulty even with that, and have sometimes allowed the water levels to drop too low, exposing the fuel to steam and air, with resulting fuel damage.
On Sunday, Japanese nuclear officials said operators at the plant had suffered a setback trying to bring one of the reactors under control when a valve malfunction stopped the flow of water and left fuel rods partially uncovered. The delay raised pressure at the reactor.
At a late-night news conference, officials at Tokyo Electric Power said that the valve had been fixed, but that water levels had not yet begun rising.
Hiroko Tabuchi reported from Tokyo, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington. Michael Wines contributed reporting from Koriyama, Japan, and Ellen Barry from Moscow.
By HIROKO TABUCHI and MATTHEW L. WALD
TOKYO — A second explosion rocked a troubled nuclear power plant Monday, blowing the roof off a containment building but not harming the reactor, Japanese nuclear officials announced on public television.
The explosion underscores the difficulties Japanese authorities are having in bringing several stricken reactors under control three days after a massive earthquake and a tsunami hit Japan’s northeast coast and shut down the electricity that runs the crucial cooling systems for reactors.
Operators fear that if they cannot establish control, despite increasingly desperate measures to do so, the reactors could experience full meltdowns, which would release catastrophic amounts of radiation.
It was unclear if radiation was released by the explosion, but a similar explosion at another reactor at the plant over the weekend did release radioactive material.
Live footage on public broadcaster NHK showed thick smoke rising from the building.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said that the release of large amounts of radiation was unlikely. But traces of radiation could be released into the atmosphere, and 600 people who remained within a 12 mile radius have been ordered to take cover indoors, he said.
The country’s nuclear power watchdog said readings taken soon after the explosion showed no big change in radiation levels around the plant or any damage to the containment vessel, which protects the radioactive material in the reactor.
“I have received reports that the containment vessel is sound,” he said. “I understand that there is little possibility that radioactive materials are being released in large amounts.”
Twenty-two people who live near the plant are already showing signs of radiation exposure from earlier radiation releases at the plant, but it is not clear if they received dangerous doses.
Technicians had been scrambling most of Sunday to fix a mechanical failure that left the reactor far more vulnerable to explosions.
The two reactors where the explosions occurred are both presumed to have already suffered partial meltdowns — a dangerous situation that, if unchecked, could lead to a full meltdown.
The reactors are both at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where another reactor is also having difficulties.
The Fukushima Daiichi plant and the Fukushima Daini power station, about 10 miles away, have been under a state of emergency.
On Monday morning, Tokyo Electric, which runs both plants, said it had restored the cooling systems at two of three reactors experiencing problems at Daini. That would leave a total of four reactors at the two plants with pumping difficulties.
“I’m not aware that we’ve ever had more than one reactor troubled at a time,” said Frank N. von Hippel, a physicist and professor at Princeton, explaining the difficulties faced by the Japanese.
“The whole country was focused on Three Mile Island,” he said, referring to the Pennsylvania nuclear plant accident in 1979. “Here you have Tokyo Electric Power and the Japanese regulators focusing on multiple plants at the same time.”“
In what was perhaps the clearest sign of the rising anxiety over the nuclear crisis, both the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Russian authorities issued statements on Sunday trying to allay fears, saying they did not expect harmful levels of radiation to reach their territory.
Late Sunday night, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Japan had added a third plant, Onagawa, to the list of those under a state of emergency because a low level of radioactive materials had been detected outside its walls. But on Monday morning, it quoted Japanese authorities as saying that the radioactivity levels at the Onagawa plant had returned to normal levels and that there appeared to be no leak there.
“The increased level may have been due to a release of radioactive material from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,” the agency said. The Onagawa and Daiichi plants are 75 miles apart. The operator of the Onagawa plant, Tohoku Electric Power, said that levels of radiation there were twice the allowed level, but that they did not pose health risks.
Soon after that announcement, Kyodo News reported that a plant about 75 miles north of Tokyo was having at least some cooling system problems. But a plant spokesman later said a backup pump was working.
The government was testing people who lived near the Daiichi plant, with local officials saying that about 170 residents had probably been exposed. The government earlier said that three workers had radiation illness, but Tokyo Electric said Monday that only one worker was ill.
The problems at Fukushima Daiichi appeared to be the most serious involving a nuclear plant since the Chernobyl disaster. A partial meltdown can occur when radioactive fuel rods, which normally are covered in water, remain partially uncovered for too long. The more the fuel is exposed, the closer the reactor comes to a full meltdown.
Technicians are essentially fighting for time while heat generation in the fuel gradually declines, trying to keep the rods covered despite a breakdown in the normal cooling system, which runs off the electrical grid. Since that was knocked out in the earthquake, and diesel generators later failed — possibly because of the tsunami — the operators have used a makeshift system for keeping cool water on the fuel rods.
Now, they pump in new water, let it boil and then vent it to the atmosphere, releasing some radioactive material. But they are having difficulty even with that, and have sometimes allowed the water levels to drop too low, exposing the fuel to steam and air, with resulting fuel damage.
On Sunday, Japanese nuclear officials said operators at the plant had suffered a setback trying to bring one of the reactors under control when a valve malfunction stopped the flow of water and left fuel rods partially uncovered. The delay raised pressure at the reactor.
At a late-night news conference, officials at Tokyo Electric Power said that the valve had been fixed, but that water levels had not yet begun rising.
Hiroko Tabuchi reported from Tokyo, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington. Michael Wines contributed reporting from Koriyama, Japan, and Ellen Barry from Moscow.
13/03 Death Toll Estimate in Japan Soars as Relief Efforts Intensify
March 13, 2011
By MARTIN FACKLER and MARK McDONALD
SENDAI, Japan — Japan reeled from a rapidly unfolding disaster of epic scale on Sunday, pummeled by the death toll, destruction and homelessness caused by the earthquake and tsunami and new hazards from damaged nuclear reactors that were leaking radiation. The prime minister called it Japan’s worst crisis since World War II.
Japan’s $5 trillion economy, the third largest in the world, was threatened with severe disruptions and partial paralysis as many industries shut down and the armed forces and volunteers mobilized for the far more urgent effort of finding survivors, evacuating residents near the stricken power plants and caring for the victims of the record 8.9 magnitude quake that struck on Friday.
The disaster has left more than 10,000 people dead, many thousands homeless and millions without water, power, heat or transportation.
The most urgent worries concerned the failures at two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where engineers were still struggling Sunday to avert meltdowns and where some radiation had already leaked. Fukushima Daiichi and another power station, Fukushima Daiini, about 10 miles away, have been under a state of emergency since the quake.
The collective anxiety about Japan caused a rout in the Japanese stock market on Monday morning, with the main index falling 5.5 percent, the worst drop in three years.
Worried about the severe strains on the banking and financial systems, the Bank of Japan pumped about $86 billion into the economy on Monday, and the government was discussing an emergency tax increase to help finance relief and recovery work.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the country’s crippled nuclear power grid, announced a series of rotating blackouts to conserve electricity — the first controlled power cuts in Japan in 60 years.
The death toll was certain to climb as searchers began to reach coastal villages that essentially vanished under the first muddy surge of the tsunami, which struck the nation’s northern Pacific coast near the port city of Sendai. In one town alone, the port of Minamisanriku, a senior police official said the number of dead would “certainly be more than 10,000.” That is more than half the town’s population of 17,000.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan told a news conference in Tokyo late Sunday: “I think that the earthquake, tsunami and the situation at our nuclear reactors makes up the worst crisis in the 65 years since the war. If the nation works together, we will overcome.”
The government ordered 100,000 troops — nearly half the country’s active military force and the largest mobilization in postwar Japan — to take part in the relief effort. An American naval strike group led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan also arrived off Japan on Sunday to help with refueling, supply and rescue duties.
The quake and tsunami did not reach Japan’s industrial heartland, although economists said the power blackouts could affect industrial production — notably carmakers, electronics manufacturers and steel plants — and interrupt the nation’s famously efficient supply chain. Tourism was also bound to plummet, as the United States, France and other nations urged citizens to avoid traveling to Japan.
AIR Worldwide, a risk consultant in Boston, said its disaster models estimated property damage to be as high as $35 billion. The company said 70 percent of residential construction in Japan was wood, and earthquake insurance was not widely used.
Amid the despair and mourning, and the worry over an unrelenting series of strong aftershocks, there was one bright moment when the Japanese Navy rescued a 60-year-old man who had been floating at sea for two days.
The man, Hiromitsu Arakawa, clung to the roof of his tiny home in the town of Minamisoma after it was torn from its foundations by the first wave of the tsunami, the Defense Ministry said. He saw his wife slip away in the deluge, but he hung on as the house drifted away. He was discovered late Sunday morning, still on his roof, nine miles south of the town where he lived and nine miles out to sea.
The quake was the strongest to hit Japan, which sits astride the “ring of fire” that marks the most violent seismic activity in the Pacific Basin.
About 80,000 people were ordered to evacuate danger zones around the two compromised atomic facilities in Fukushima Prefecture. Japanese officials reported that 22 people showed signs of radiation exposure and as many as 170 were feared to have been exposed, including some who had been outside one of the plants waiting to be evacuated. Three workers were suffering what medical officials described as full-blown radiation sickness.
In a televised address the trade minister, Banri Kaieda, asked businesses to limit their use of power as they returned to operation on Monday. He asked specifically for nighttime cutbacks of lights and heating. The power company said the rolling blackouts would affect three million customers, including homes and factories.
The Japan Railways Group cut operations at six of its commuters lines and two bullet trains to 20 percent of normal to conserve electricity.
Tokyo and central Japan continued to be struck by aftershocks off the eastern coast of Honshu Island, and United States agencies recorded 90 smaller quakes throughout the day Saturday. A long tremor registering 6.2 caused buildings in central Tokyo to sway dramatically on Sunday morning.
Search teams from more than a dozen nations were bound for Japan, including a unit from New Zealand, which suffered a devastating quake last month in Christchurch. A Japanese team that had been working in New Zealand was called home.
A combined search squad from Los Angeles County and Fairfax County, Va., arrived from the United States with 150 personnel and a dozen dogs that would help in the search for bodies.
Assistance teams also were expected from China and South Korea, two of Japan’s most bitter rivals.
Tokyo’s acceptance of help — along with a parade of senior officials who offered updates at televised news conferences on Sunday — was in marked contrast to the government’s policies after the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which killed more than 6,000 people. Japan refused most offers of aid at the time, put restrictions on foreign aid operations and offered little information about the disaster.
Here in Sendai, a city of roughly a million people near the center of the catastrophe, many buildings cracked but none had collapsed. Still, city officials said that more than 500,000 households and businesses were without water, and many more lacked electricity as well.
Soldiers surrounded Sendai’s city hall, where officials were using two floors to shelter evacuees and treat the injured, using power drawn from a generator. Thousands of residents sought refuge inside and waited anxiously for word from their relatives. A line of people waited outside with plastic bottles and buckets in hand to collect water from a pump.
Masaki Kokubum, 35, has been living at the city hall since the quake. He had worked at a supermarket, and his neighborhood lost power and water. He said he had not slept in three days.
“I can’t sleep,” he said as he sat in a chair in a hallway. “I just sit here and wait.”
Martin Fackler reported from Sendai, Japan, and Mark McDonald from Tokyo. Moshe Komata and Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo.
By MARTIN FACKLER and MARK McDONALD
SENDAI, Japan — Japan reeled from a rapidly unfolding disaster of epic scale on Sunday, pummeled by the death toll, destruction and homelessness caused by the earthquake and tsunami and new hazards from damaged nuclear reactors that were leaking radiation. The prime minister called it Japan’s worst crisis since World War II.
Japan’s $5 trillion economy, the third largest in the world, was threatened with severe disruptions and partial paralysis as many industries shut down and the armed forces and volunteers mobilized for the far more urgent effort of finding survivors, evacuating residents near the stricken power plants and caring for the victims of the record 8.9 magnitude quake that struck on Friday.
The disaster has left more than 10,000 people dead, many thousands homeless and millions without water, power, heat or transportation.
The most urgent worries concerned the failures at two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where engineers were still struggling Sunday to avert meltdowns and where some radiation had already leaked. Fukushima Daiichi and another power station, Fukushima Daiini, about 10 miles away, have been under a state of emergency since the quake.
The collective anxiety about Japan caused a rout in the Japanese stock market on Monday morning, with the main index falling 5.5 percent, the worst drop in three years.
Worried about the severe strains on the banking and financial systems, the Bank of Japan pumped about $86 billion into the economy on Monday, and the government was discussing an emergency tax increase to help finance relief and recovery work.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the country’s crippled nuclear power grid, announced a series of rotating blackouts to conserve electricity — the first controlled power cuts in Japan in 60 years.
The death toll was certain to climb as searchers began to reach coastal villages that essentially vanished under the first muddy surge of the tsunami, which struck the nation’s northern Pacific coast near the port city of Sendai. In one town alone, the port of Minamisanriku, a senior police official said the number of dead would “certainly be more than 10,000.” That is more than half the town’s population of 17,000.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan told a news conference in Tokyo late Sunday: “I think that the earthquake, tsunami and the situation at our nuclear reactors makes up the worst crisis in the 65 years since the war. If the nation works together, we will overcome.”
The government ordered 100,000 troops — nearly half the country’s active military force and the largest mobilization in postwar Japan — to take part in the relief effort. An American naval strike group led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan also arrived off Japan on Sunday to help with refueling, supply and rescue duties.
The quake and tsunami did not reach Japan’s industrial heartland, although economists said the power blackouts could affect industrial production — notably carmakers, electronics manufacturers and steel plants — and interrupt the nation’s famously efficient supply chain. Tourism was also bound to plummet, as the United States, France and other nations urged citizens to avoid traveling to Japan.
AIR Worldwide, a risk consultant in Boston, said its disaster models estimated property damage to be as high as $35 billion. The company said 70 percent of residential construction in Japan was wood, and earthquake insurance was not widely used.
Amid the despair and mourning, and the worry over an unrelenting series of strong aftershocks, there was one bright moment when the Japanese Navy rescued a 60-year-old man who had been floating at sea for two days.
The man, Hiromitsu Arakawa, clung to the roof of his tiny home in the town of Minamisoma after it was torn from its foundations by the first wave of the tsunami, the Defense Ministry said. He saw his wife slip away in the deluge, but he hung on as the house drifted away. He was discovered late Sunday morning, still on his roof, nine miles south of the town where he lived and nine miles out to sea.
The quake was the strongest to hit Japan, which sits astride the “ring of fire” that marks the most violent seismic activity in the Pacific Basin.
About 80,000 people were ordered to evacuate danger zones around the two compromised atomic facilities in Fukushima Prefecture. Japanese officials reported that 22 people showed signs of radiation exposure and as many as 170 were feared to have been exposed, including some who had been outside one of the plants waiting to be evacuated. Three workers were suffering what medical officials described as full-blown radiation sickness.
In a televised address the trade minister, Banri Kaieda, asked businesses to limit their use of power as they returned to operation on Monday. He asked specifically for nighttime cutbacks of lights and heating. The power company said the rolling blackouts would affect three million customers, including homes and factories.
The Japan Railways Group cut operations at six of its commuters lines and two bullet trains to 20 percent of normal to conserve electricity.
Tokyo and central Japan continued to be struck by aftershocks off the eastern coast of Honshu Island, and United States agencies recorded 90 smaller quakes throughout the day Saturday. A long tremor registering 6.2 caused buildings in central Tokyo to sway dramatically on Sunday morning.
Search teams from more than a dozen nations were bound for Japan, including a unit from New Zealand, which suffered a devastating quake last month in Christchurch. A Japanese team that had been working in New Zealand was called home.
A combined search squad from Los Angeles County and Fairfax County, Va., arrived from the United States with 150 personnel and a dozen dogs that would help in the search for bodies.
Assistance teams also were expected from China and South Korea, two of Japan’s most bitter rivals.
Tokyo’s acceptance of help — along with a parade of senior officials who offered updates at televised news conferences on Sunday — was in marked contrast to the government’s policies after the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which killed more than 6,000 people. Japan refused most offers of aid at the time, put restrictions on foreign aid operations and offered little information about the disaster.
Here in Sendai, a city of roughly a million people near the center of the catastrophe, many buildings cracked but none had collapsed. Still, city officials said that more than 500,000 households and businesses were without water, and many more lacked electricity as well.
Soldiers surrounded Sendai’s city hall, where officials were using two floors to shelter evacuees and treat the injured, using power drawn from a generator. Thousands of residents sought refuge inside and waited anxiously for word from their relatives. A line of people waited outside with plastic bottles and buckets in hand to collect water from a pump.
Masaki Kokubum, 35, has been living at the city hall since the quake. He had worked at a supermarket, and his neighborhood lost power and water. He said he had not slept in three days.
“I can’t sleep,” he said as he sat in a chair in a hallway. “I just sit here and wait.”
Martin Fackler reported from Sendai, Japan, and Mark McDonald from Tokyo. Moshe Komata and Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo.
13/03 Tổng thống Pháp “mắng” phóng viên vì hỏi chuyện ngoại tình
Thứ Bảy, 13/03/2010 16:38
Tổng thống Pháp Nicolas Sarkozy đã giận dữ khiển trách một nhà báo vì đặt câu hỏi liên quan tới những tin đồn xung quanh cuộc hôn nhân của ông với cựu siêu mẫu Carla Bruni.
Tổng thống Pháp Sarkozy trong cuộc họp báo với Thủ tướng Anh Brown.
Tại cuộc họp báo chung diễn ra ở số 10 phố Downing cùng Thủ tướng Anh Gordon Brown, ông Sarkozy đã 2 lần bị phóng viên hỏi chuyện đời tư.
Ông Sarkozy đã “bật lại” một phóng viên Pháp nhắc tới chủ đề đó đầu tiên, gọi câu hỏi là ngớ ngẩn. Ít phút sau đó, một nhà báo Anh lại nêu ra câu hỏi lần 2. Lần nay, ông Sarkozy từ chối trả lời trước khi Thủ tướng Brown tuyên bố kết thúc cuộc họp báo.
Nhà lãnh đạo Pháp đã nổi giận khi trả lời câu hỏi đầu tiên. “Rõ ràng là bạn không biết gì về những việc Tổng thống Pháp phải làm trong suốt một ngày dài. Tôi không có thời gian để xử lý những tin đồn lố bịch, dù chỉ một giây”.
“Tôi thậm chí không biết tại sao bạn lãng phí thời gian để đặt một câu hỏi ngớ ngẩn như thế”, ông Sarkozy nói.
Thủ tướng Brown đã cố gắng hạ hỏa bằng cách đưa ra những suy nghĩ của ông về báo chí Anh. “Tôi có thể nói với ông Sarkozy rằng tôi không tin tất cả những gì đọc được trên báo chí Anh”.
Báo chí Pháp gần đây rộ tin đồn rằng mối quan hệ giữa ông Sarkozy và đệ nhất phu nhân Carla Bruni-Sarkozy đang gặp trục trặc, và rằng cả 2 người cùng ngoại tình. Dinh tổng thống Pháp đã từ chối bình luận về các tin đồn này.
Ông Sarkozy đang có chuyến thăm Anh để cuộc hội đàm với Thủ tướng Gordon Brown và lãnh đạo Công đảng Anh David Cameron.
Ông Sarkozy đã “bật lại” một phóng viên Pháp nhắc tới chủ đề đó đầu tiên, gọi câu hỏi là ngớ ngẩn. Ít phút sau đó, một nhà báo Anh lại nêu ra câu hỏi lần 2. Lần nay, ông Sarkozy từ chối trả lời trước khi Thủ tướng Brown tuyên bố kết thúc cuộc họp báo.
Nhà lãnh đạo Pháp đã nổi giận khi trả lời câu hỏi đầu tiên. “Rõ ràng là bạn không biết gì về những việc Tổng thống Pháp phải làm trong suốt một ngày dài. Tôi không có thời gian để xử lý những tin đồn lố bịch, dù chỉ một giây”.
“Tôi thậm chí không biết tại sao bạn lãng phí thời gian để đặt một câu hỏi ngớ ngẩn như thế”, ông Sarkozy nói.
Thủ tướng Brown đã cố gắng hạ hỏa bằng cách đưa ra những suy nghĩ của ông về báo chí Anh. “Tôi có thể nói với ông Sarkozy rằng tôi không tin tất cả những gì đọc được trên báo chí Anh”.
Báo chí Pháp gần đây rộ tin đồn rằng mối quan hệ giữa ông Sarkozy và đệ nhất phu nhân Carla Bruni-Sarkozy đang gặp trục trặc, và rằng cả 2 người cùng ngoại tình. Dinh tổng thống Pháp đã từ chối bình luận về các tin đồn này.
Ông Sarkozy đang có chuyến thăm Anh để cuộc hội đàm với Thủ tướng Gordon Brown và lãnh đạo Công đảng Anh David Cameron.
Theo An Bình (Dân Trí)
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