A lack of criticism has long been the root of Japan's malaise, insularity and inability to manage a crisis. Criticism from the outside, known as gai-atsu in Japanese, can help Japan's long-term recovery and reconstruction; indeed, many Japanese say their society needs it.
But foreigners who solely blame Prime Minister Naoto Kan for the nuclear crisis are pointing fingers in the wrong direction, and they need to understand the dynamics of power behind the scenes that has led Japan into its darkest hour since 1945.
Firstly, there's some truth to the joke going around the expatriate community that when US President Barack Obama called Kan last Thursday, he asked to talk to government spokesman Yukio Edano, who has been gaining public sympathy by softening the bad news he reports on television several times a day.
Indeed, it often seems that Kan is not in charge of what's happening at the smouldering Fukushima reactors. The Tokyo Electric Power Company and others in Japan's secretive nuclear industry have a long history of covering up accidents and operating as if they are above the courts and the Diet.
Kan lacks the mandate needed for strong leadership in a time of crisis. Amid low approval ratings, he was under pressure to resign -before the March 11 disaster- over allegations he accepted donations from a non-Japanese citizen.
Kan did not create the tsunami, of course. He inherited an ageing network of nuclear clunkers from the ousted Liberal Democratic Party, whose kingpins blessed Japan's nuclear development during their five-decade monopoly of rule.
