I wonder how many rescue and clean-up workers in Japan are union...

And have proper training because they're union, have the equipment needed to do the job because they're union, are willing to put themselves in danger because they're union....etc.

I wager a good deal. I used to work as a municipal employee. We had everything on hand for stuff like this (within reason, we didn't own a helicopter or anything) but we had emergency procedures in place, attack plans, a lot of stuff a private contractor never would have thought about cause nobody would have made them think about it.

If I'm in a place like Miyagi prefecture, I certainly would feel better knowing an established, well-oiled public union was in charge of my rescue as opposed to some private company that got the contract by being cheap, which is because it cuts corners.

But the Japanese unions are not exactly the Teamsters when it comes to separation from management

Their public employees are very highly regarded as a class - they actually get a lot of respect from people for working in the government. So it would seem a bit incongruous tome if they had a union; but they certainly would have some sort of leadership structure to enable 'labor' to participate on an equal footing in the consensus process of decision making.

To begin with, unions are "employer specific". If you are a Honda auto worker then you belong to the Honda auto worker's union. If you are a Toyota auto worker then you belong to the Toyota auto worker's union. Because the unions are tied to the specific company, the unions tend to be tightly aligned to the companies interest.

Public workers in Japan can unionize with certain exceptions (law enforcement, firefighters, prison guards, coast guard, and military are prohibited from unionizing). Although public workers can unionize they are prohibited from striking or negotiating wages. Again, the unions are employer-specific, so a public worker might belong to the "city of X public worker union".

The requirement that unions be employer specific naturally leads to Japan having lots of small unions instead of a few big unions. I think there are over 70,000 unions there. Smaller unions do join together into "trade associations", but they still negotiate independently of each other.