By and large, I think “gaman” has served the Japanese people well in this crisis. And, yes, “gambaru” has been and will continue to be a great help in many of the situations throughout the nation as we work to recover from this.
However, as it relates to Fukushima, or any serious crisis, neither one of those traits are much use for the people who are supposed to be in charge. Those people need to “think” and “act” quickly and decisively in real-time.
Instead of that, we had chickens running around without their heads squawking at everything, ostriches with their head buried in the sand hoping it would all go away, and most of all — we had the consensus-building, duck-quacking, group-think-let’s-all-keep-yakking-until-a-consensus-emerges aspect of Japanese life that drives EVERY American here close to total psycho every now and then.
A freshly-minted USN Lt.j.g., fresh out of Nuke school, could have handled this crisis better if he had been put in charge and given free reign. Hell, a good chief could have handled it better.