Fashion designer and artist Victor Wilde arrived in Tokyo for Fashion Week last Wednesday; two days later the earthquake and tsunami devastated the country, leaving an estimated 10,000 dead and a nuclear power plant on the brink of a "worst-case scenario." Wilde, a Canarsie, Brooklyn native who relocated to Los Angeles after witnessing the 9/11 attacks, spoke with us this morning from Tokyo.
How are things in Tokyo? Fine, just fine; you know, everything here in Tokyo is completely fine really. It's just what you hear on the news—and of course, you know, I've got my brother and grandmother in Brooklyn who watch Fox News. Of course, the world is ending tomorrow on any given day according to Fox News so according to my grandmother there is a nuclear cloud about to destroy the U.S. at any moment.
Where were you when the earthquake happened? My cousin Mark and I were in Shibuya driving to Nihombashi. It was strange actually because I remember—this is kind of a tangent—two seconds before the earthquake there was a donkey in the back of a pickup truck in the middle of Shibuya, which was very weird and struck both of us as very odd. We were like, "That's strange, there's a donkey." About two minutes later, the earthquake started. I wish that S.O.B. would have given me a warning; I thought animals got all freaky just before a quake. We were driving from Komazawa across town [Tokyo], it usually takes 40-45 minutes to get there. We were stopped one car back from a stop light. At first, it felt as if the car had been pushed into a lake; it felt like we were surrounded by water and the water was very choppy and it was like the car had become a boat and there were rough seas.
We look up, and we were directly under a raised highway, and the highway starts flapping like a sheet in the wind. It looked as if someone was grabbing it and rocking it back and forth, and there were rocks and small amounts of debris falling on the car. Everyone around us started moving away from underneath the highway as fast as they could. Of course we followed, went through the light, and a policeman signaled for us to stop. I looked to my right, and there was probably about a 15-story building swaying like it was freshly taken out of a Jell-O mold, swaying back and forth like nothing I had ever seen. I've never been in an earthquake that powerful; nothing in L.A. compared. I've never seen a building wobble like that. It was swaying back and forth like in very strong winds or like someone was taking it and shaking it...
How long did this all last? Approximately three minutes. Directly after that we continued to drive on. After about another ten minutes there was another aftershock and then those aftershocks continued throughout the day and they are still continuing. There was one on my way home tonight about an hour ago. It was probably like a 6.
What are you doing in Japan? I was here to do a fashion show. I was doing a fashion show for Fashion Week and and meeting with investors to expand our business to Japan and to open a flagship boutique in Tokyo. Fashion Week has now been canceled, obviously.
You've decided to leave? I decided to leave because everything is shut down. Not because I'm afraid, although I've been getting a lot of pressure from friends and family in the States. It seems to me that they are just scaring the pants off of everybody in the United States, way more than they are here. I don't know if they are holding back here, but I don't really feel that much in danger at all. The only thing now, obviously, is the danger of the radioactivity. They can't cool these reactors down so people think there is going to be some kind of—they've been telling people that there is little chance that there is going to be a Chernobyl or a Three-Mile Island. These reactors can't cool so they are causing radioactive steam. If they don't release the steam into the atmosphere, there will be an explosion. So periodically they're releasing, purposefully, radioactive steam into the atmosphere.
But there have already been three explosions, and the spent fuel rods caught fire. There have been explosions, but according to what I've been hearing, that hasn't been in the core, it's been in the outer walls which is not the reactor. It's just I mean, explosions are very frightening of course, especially when they happen at a nuclear plant, but from what we've been hearing those explosions are not the core.
So the people you see in Tokyo aren't in a state of panic to any degree? No one I know is panicking. I do have many acquaintances that have left town for places like Osaka, places that are two or three hundred miles away, they are moving three to five hundred miles away from Kagoshima. Everyone I know—my family, my girlfriend, close friends here, they are pretty much all staying put. I wouldn't be leaving if everything wasn't canceled here.
Did you have trouble getting a flight? There are flights available every other day. So I called this afternoon and they told me there was a flight available tomorrow. I called an hour and a half hour ago and still got on a flight tomorrow. So it's pretty much business as usual here in Tokyo.
Was there much damage? Not in Tokyo. Japan is probably the most prepared country in the world for earthquakes. A lot of Tokyo has been rebuilt; they are constantly rebuilding in Tokyo, there are many many new buildings. I know that there has been a lot of damage from things shaking off people's shelves and breaking. These are buildings that are high-rises, so if you're on the 15th floor you are going to shake more. My cousin lives in a stand-alone two-story house and it's very new, so anything that's new is very well-prepared for this type of thing. If Tokyo were the epicenter of the quake, there would have been a lot more damage—a lot more. But since it was pretty far away, it only registered at 7 here. And Tokyo is very well-prepared for a 7 on the Richter scale.
So you think the U.S. media is over-sensationalizing this? Or is the domestic media in Japan going along with officials who are downplaying the situation with the nuclear plant? I think it's a little bit of both, but from the pressure I've been receiving from everyone and watching CNN this whole time, it seems that there is a lot of fearmongering going on in the States right now. The U.S. media is notorious for this; they did it on 9/11, they continue to do it with the whole war on terror. They want people to be afraid in the United States for whatever reason. I think that there may be some instances where the Japanese government is downplaying it a little bit, but as far as I can see, they are blowing it way out of proportion in the United States, especially outlets like Fox, where they are saying that any minute now there can be a giant nuclear cloud that can come in and kill everybody as far as into the Midwest, which is just totally ridiculous.
I'm just happy to be alive. I've never been in something like that before. The only thing I can compare it to in my life is 9/11, which obviously I was very much closer to, I watched the whole thing unfold from my rooftop in Brooklyn. So going through something like that really prepares you a lot more for going through something like this. And it sort of pales in comparison to something like 9/11 for me, because I'm 150 miles from where this all happened. But watching this all unfold: watching the tsunami and the death and the destruction, it makes me feel lucky to be alive and makes me complain less for not having my show, and having the headaches of everybody in the States crying to me that I need to get on the next plane to come home. And I obviously feel for the people of Japan and all the people who have died, the numbers are in the thousands.
