Is another massive tsunami imminent in Japan?

Fourteen years ago, Japan was devastated by one of the deadliest tsunamis in modern history. Now a prophetic manga is fueling anxiety of a repeat. Could such a calamity occur soon again?

On Friday, March 11, 2011, at 14:46 hrs, disaster struck Japan. One of the largest earthquakes—officially the Great East Japan Earthquake—on record (magnitude 9.0) occurred just off the northeast Pacific coast of the main island of Honshu. The shaking lasted for a full five minutes—a terrifyingly long time when one entirely loses orientation, may not be able to stand up, with everything falling around you, walls and houses crumbling, the rumble of the earth drowning all other sounds—triggering a massive tsunami. Because the epicenter was so close to the coast, there was hardly any warning or time to evacuate. The first waves reached the Sanriku coast in the Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures within ten minutes, completely overrunning the towns and ports leaving total destruction in their wake. Up to 18,500 people perished. The tsunami also caused the meltdown of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Miyagi Prefecture, the worst nuclear accident ever to hit Japan and the worst in the world only after Chernobyl.

Now some people, are again fearful to visit Japan. This is because of a manga comic, published in 1999 and re-released in 2021, warns of a catastrophe hitting Japan in July 2025. The only reason why this comic might scare people off is that it originally predicted, correctly it turned out, a major disaster in Japan in March 2011. The Future I Saw, by the artist Ryo Tatsuki, imagines a massive tsunami caused by a rupture in the undersea fault line between the Philippine and Eurasian plates. As a consequence, the number of tourists, especially from China and Hong Kong, has dropped significantly and some people have decided to postpone their trips to Japan. Tatsuki herself says that she is no prophet.

The scenario itself is not entirely unrealistic. Tsunamis are triggered by undersea events, most often large earthquakes at fault zones, but sometimes by volcanic eruptions or massive landslides deep in the ocean. The Pacific Rim where Japan is located is seismically highly active. The Sanriku Tsunami was the fifth most deadly in the past two centuries or so. The deadliest of all was the Indian Ocean Tsunami on Boxing Day of 2004 when an estimated 230,000-280,000 people perished in half a dozen countries surrounding the Indian Ocean. This was the second time the Sanriku coast was devastated by a tsunami: on June 15, 1896, another tsunami killed some 22,000 people in the same area with waves reaching the height of 30 meters.

Tsunamis are so deadly because of the massive amounts of water and the speed at which they travel. In deep water, the waves remain low but they spread fast in all directions from the epicenter. Tsunami waves have been measured to move at 800 km/h. As they approach shallower coastal waters they slow down, condense, and rise to frightening heights.

This is what destroyed so much of the Sanriku coast. Kesennuma, a port in Miyagi, was gone. I have visited the town both before and after the disaster. First the tsunami swept across the entire low-lying valley. When it receded, fires that ensued as gas pipelines were destroyed finished the job burning down the entire old wooden town. Kesennuma port had been the center of the Pacific shark fisheries just because of the shape of its natural harbor. Now this same geographic advantage had provided the tsunami with a perfect entrance to the harbor bowl allowing the water to rise unhindered into the town.

Tohoku’s largest city, Sendai, situated on higher ground and away from the sea was largely spared from major damage. The city airport closer to the coast was not so lucky. Cameras showed the massive wave sweeping slowly across the runways. Large jet planes floated away like toy models. Aerial shots from the close by mountain areas showed huge liquefaction of the soil, again in slow motion, wiping away entire villages, houses crumbling and washing down the slopes into the sea. 

So what are the chances that such a disaster repeats itself in the near future, if not later this month? It is impossible to give a precise answer to that question. Statistically, major tsunamis globally take place about twice in a decade. The likelihood of one striking a specific major urban is low but it is plausible that one of the major cities around the Pacific Ring of Fire will be struck by a large tsunami in the coming few decades.

The cities most at risk include the Tokyo-Yokohama conurbation, the largest city complex in the world with over 40 million inhabitants. This is also Japan’s economic heart, so a major disaster there would be highly destructive for the country and would disrupt the entire world economy.

Other likely targets include Manila and Jakarta on the Asian side, and Lima and Santiago de Chile in South America, as well as Los Angeles and San Francisco in California. Honolulu in the middle of the Ring of Fire is also vulnerable. In fact, all of these cities have in the past experienced disruptive earthquakes and tsunamis.

Indonesia and its capital Jakarta are particularly at risk from a repeat of an event like the 2004 earthquake and tsunami. Another risk is posed by the active volcano, Krakatoa. Its violent eruption caused a massive tsunami on August 27, 1883. It destroyed two-thirds of the island and killed some 36,000 people, making it the second deadliest event in recorded history.

Hawai’i due to its location has experienced three tsunamis claiming lives in the past eight decades. The worst one was on April 1, 1946, when a 8.6 magnitude earthquake in the Aleutian Islands sent a tsunami racing across the ocean. It destroyed most of Hilo on the Big Island, killing 159 people. As the earthquake that instigated the tsunami took place in Alaska thousands of kilometers northeast of Hawai’I, no one was prepared when the huge waves washed into the islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

When the 9.5 magnitude—the strongest ever recorded—earthquake hit Chile on May 23, 1960, Hilo, 10,000 km away from the epicenter, was again collateral damage and 63 people died there (the range of the casualties overall varies significantly, from 1,000 to 6,000). On November 29, 1979, a local 7.7 magnitude earthquake shook the Big Island causing two deaths. Such a locally generated tsunami gives hardly any warning time for people to escape.

All of the cities exposed to high tsunami risk are constantly monitoring the situation. Japan, with its multi-hazard risk and frequent earthquakes (in fact, a 5.5 magnitude earthquake shook the southwestern Kagoshima Prefecture while I am writing this on the 3rd of July), is arguably the best prepared country in the world. In this, it is helped by its advanced technologies and well-educated, self-disciplined population. Japan employs a national earthquake and tsunami early warning system operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency. It informs people of impending danger through sirens and phone alerts. It has recently deployed drones on the sea in front of popular beaches for tsunami detection. Detailed evacuation maps are maintained by local governments down to the neighborhood level.

Furthermore, millions of people in the country participates in drills and education sessions. September 1st is the National Disaster Prevention Day, with the date commemorating the Great Kantō Earthquake that destroyed Tokyo in 1923.

Scientists in Japan give an 80 percent chance for a mega-quake taking place along the Nankai Trough in the coming 30 years. This revised assessment has led the authorities to require municipalities and businesses to enhance their preparedness plans, to strengthen building earthquake resistance, stockpile food and other necessities, and to update evacuation plans.

Earthquakes and tsunamis cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty. A major event is certain to cause significant damage to infrastructure and the economy. The death of thousands of people in such eventuality is unavoidable. The best we can do is to be aware of the risks and be well prepared. That is our best chance of saving lives.

[Originally published on https://juhauitto.substack.com on July 4, 2025.]

Rikuzentakata July 2015 - Reconstruction from the Tsunami

The earthworks are simply mind blowing. 24-7, the conveyor belts bring earth from the nearby mountains and pile it on the coastal zone to raise the level of the low-lying land by at least 10 meters. It’s more than four years since the tsunami leveled the Sanriku coast and killed more than 15,000 people and made 230,000 homeless on Japan’s Pacific coast. This rehabilitation work that shows virtually no end is a demonstration of Japanese spirit and tenacity.

I traveled back to the Sanriku coast together with Abetake-sensei to see the progress in reconstruction. We did our first jointtrip here in March 2012, just a year after the great east Japan earthquake and tsunami had laid waste to the most unexpecting part of Japan. Abetake-sensei is my wife’s high school geography teacher in Mizusawa, in Iwate Prefecture.

Mizusawa is luckily some 60 km inland and higher up in elevation from the coast. Although the earthquake affected my family’s area, the tsunami did not reach even close.

Abetake-sensei picked me up in Mizusawa this rainy morning and we crossed the coastal mountain range to reach the Sanriku coast. The rather high limestone mountains have all their steep slopes covered in thick forest. In odd flat locations one can suddenly see perfectly maintained rice paddies on terraces where the terrain has allowed adequate space. At this time of the year, their green is so bright as to shine amongst the dark hills. The rainy season – tsuyu – is supposed to be over but the rain has been heavy since last night.

We stopped at Daitoo, a town about half way to the coast for a rest stop and a cigarette for my host. Daitoo is in a beautiful spot in a valley protected from all sides by mountains. We continued onwards driving through the village of Ohara, a small agricultural congregation by the Satetsugawa river, a tributary to the Kitagamigawa river that flows from the north to the south traversing Mizusawa. We were still on the western side of the watershed, meaning that the river flows inland towards the more major Kitagamikawa river.

Having soon crossed the next range – through some distinctly impressive bridges and tunnels above and through mountains – we started descending to the coastal plain. At this stage the road followed Kesengawa, a charming if not a major river known for its Ayu fisheries (ayu or sweetfish caught in rivers and often grilled or fried is one of the delicacies of the Tohoku region). The Kesengawa drains into the Pacific Ocean and when the tsunami struck, its flow was reversed bringing the devastating flood waters as far as 7 km inland.

Descending onto the coastal plain past the sea terraces, the landscape had changed so much that it was difficult to get one’s bearings. On both sides of the road there were huge mounds of earth leveled by bulldozers while enormous conveyer belts transported more earth to the piles from the nearby mountains. It seemed that the goal was to raise the level of the entire coastal plain by 10 meters. For what purpose, was not imminently clear. Hundreds of men and machines were at work now more than four years after the tragedy.

Access to the coastline was blocked from the main area of the former town. We drove south towards Kesennuma and found a road that led to the fishing port. Even there men were at work establishing seawalls. Still, I was able to get to the waterfront to observe the bay where boats were again active.

The legendary lone pine – Ippon Matsu – that became the symbol of resilience after the tsunami is long gone. It was one in many tall pines that lined the coast and miraculously survived the tidal wave – but despite the efforts of the city officials, scientists and the public, it died because of the salinization of the soil and groundwater after the intrusion of the sea. It lives on in numerous flags and posters and a monument is being established for it, I was told although it was impossible to reach the location. Many Japanese people – including school groups – were strolling around the area with their cameras.

The work will continue for years. It begs the question, though, what for? This is not the first time the Sanriku coast has been hit by a tsunami and it won’t be the last either.  This time the destruction and death toll were huge, mostly because of the coastal development and population concentrations on the waterfront. So why spend all the trillions of yen and years of civil works only so that the coast could be rebuilt and people could reestablish themselves in the hazard zone? Unfortunately, this seems to be an expression of the Japanese attitude, a downside of the tenacity: Engineering and civil works to tame the nature – and at the same time do irrevocable damage to the surrounding mountain environments. Here this seems even more futile because the coast has already been depopulated and virtually all people left for the cities and towns further inland, many with no intent on returning. Some of the old folks may want to return to their home areas but even they would likely not want to live right on the coast where their old neighborhoods were destroyed and friends died.  Most likely, the official approach will be to provide homogenous housing, which will be convenient but not appealing.

Naturally, Rikuzentakata is not the only community on the Sanriku coast that is struggling with recovery. The central government is paying for the efforts but it is the local governments that decide on how the money should be spent. In fact, the central government has been criticized for not spending enough of the allocated funds, so massive civil works like those here are welcome, so that large amounts of funds can be disbursed. The local governments have a wish to make the communities livable again. The trouble is that nobody knows who and how many people would eventually return.

The tsunami disaster had a profound impact on the coastal communities, not only in a physical sense. The very fabric of the communities was torn apart. As my friend, Prof. Mikiyasu Nakayama of Tokyo University, has found in his research, many younger people who used to live with the grandparents in three generation households – especially young women dominated by the mothers-in-law – have found it liberating to move away and establish a new life on their own in the urban areas. Even others have realized that modern life in the city with all its amenities is convenient. There is no going back.

A year after the tsunami

 
Ishinomaki, Rikuzentakata, Ofunato, Kamaishi, Kesennuma, Fukushima… These places were suddenly placed on the map in the world consciousness on the 11^th of March 2011. Before that fateful Friday, few people abroad had heard of these towns. Small as they were, together they still were home to hundreds of thousands of people. Only the largest city in the area, Sendai, might have rung a bell amongst those with an interest in Japan or world affairs in general. Having been destroyed by severe bombing during the World War II, Sendai had risen from the ashes to become a very pleasant city of more than a million inhabitants and the capital of the Tohoku region.

The smaller towns on the Sanriku Kaigan facing the Pacific had lived off the ocean for hundreds of years. Generations of fishermen had eked out a living in the sea and the area was the world leader in mariculture of oysters and seaweed. Sanriku kombu, nori and others set the world standard in quality and taste. Sanriku Kaigan had acquired new economic activities, including some heavy industry and notably tourism due to its unparalleled beauty, but much had remained the same for generations. That was much of the attraction in these ocean faring communities. On that cold early spring Friday, the ocean struck with unimaginable force claiming the lives and livelihoods of entire towns and communities.

Much has been written about the tsunami and the massive magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake that caused it. I wrote about it immediately based on reports from the media supplemented by scattered messages that were received from family and friends in Tohoku. There have been scientific analyses of what happened and why, as well as many reportages about the human cost, about people who lost everything, about survivors crowding into temporary shelters where they’d have to live for months to come. Officially, more than 15,000 people perished in the event, with more than 3,000 still missing.

What also received plenty of attention in national and international media was the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the earthquake and tsunami. This sad episode revealed some unexpected incompetence and a dark side in the cosy relationship between big industry and the governmental agencies that are supposed to regulate it. These tensions continue till today, as the nuclear lobby and its pawns in the government have restarted the pressure to rebuild the power, while 80% of the Japanese people now favour phasing it out. But that’s another long story that I am not in the best place to comment on.

Just recently, I had the chance take a tour of some of the worst affected coastal areas. It was 1 year and 9 days after the event. Our friend, Takehiko Abe, living in the Iwate prefecture of Tohoku region offered to take us on a day trip to the coast. Another geographer by training, he shares my interest in the natural and human processes that shape the earth. In fact, Abe Take Sensei, as he is known, was Yoko’s high school teacher years ago (the ‘sensei’ part refers to the respect given to teachers in Japan). He picked us up with his Toyota Belta at Mizusawa town hall and we headed straight east across the coastal mountains. It was late-March but new snow was falling and the mountains rising some 800 metres above sea level displayed a tricolour pattern with the dark green of the conifers and the brown of the leafless trees against a matt of white snow on the ground. On the higher reaches as the winding road edged up the hillsides, the tree branches looked dreamlike covered with thick pads of white snow. In between, in the valleys, rice paddies glistened wet.

 

After some 60 km, we descended to the coastal plain along the Kesengawa valley. The river valley had provided a natural conduit for the tsunami waters, which had here reached 8 km inland wiping out everything low enough on the riverbanks with its force.

We arrived in Rikuzentakata, the town where the tsunami damage had been the widest, although there were towns where more people had died. The determinants of the death toll were varied, depending obviously on the geographical setting of the coastline and the settlements, but also on other factors. Abe Take Sensei explained that in Iwate prefecture, the population had been educated to drop what they were doing and immediately head towards higher ground when they heard the tsunami warning, whereas in neighbouring Miyagi prefecture to the south such education had not been given. So when the tsunami warning came, school kids and others in the Iwate towns like Rikuzentakata started running, grabbing smaller ones with them, while students in Ishinomaki in Miyagi were told to stay put in the assumed safety of the school building only to be swallowed by the waves.

Still, it was hard to see how anyone could have survived the onslaught of the waters in Rikuzentakata. Most of the city was built on the wide floodplain that seemed to go for kilometres before the coastal terraces rose above it. Virtually all the individual houses that had stood on the plain had been entirely wiped away. Not even their foundations could be anymore detected, as the bulldozers had pushed the unfathomable amount of rubble that had covered the land into high mounds that now dotted the landscape. In one place, in the middle of the plain, I saw the two headstones that had marked the entrance to a large house sticking up from the flat open land. The family’s name was permanently carved in the stone, but nothing else of them or their house remained.

Some of the larger and sturdier buildings constructed with reinforced concrete still stood, but were mostly only frames with their innards gutted out. Some, like the Capital Hotel that had held the prime spot on the waterfront, were so strong that it still seemed conceivable that they could be repaired. We stopped by the local hospital, which was gutted up to the 3^rd and top floor. The flat rooftop luckily had been high enough to be out of the reach of the waves. Patients, doctors and nurses who had made it there had been rescued by helicopter. Close by, we saw an apartment building still standing. There the tsunami had reached up to the 4^th floor pushing straight through the building taking with it whatever and whoever was inside.

    

Abe Take Sensei told about his daughter’s friend who had just recently moved to Rikuzentakata from Sendai with her husband and two small children, one of whom was just a new-born baby. The entire family had perished in the tsunami.

A visit to the city hall was heart breaking. The lobby, facing towards the sea but far from the water, was still full of rubble with cables and beams hanging from the ceiling. There was a crushed car, which the waves had washed in. On the floor, there was a pile of elementary school children’s rucksacks still full of books. A page from a photo album with faded snapshots of smiling children was lying amongst them. An impromptu altar had been erected at the entrance, with burning incense, fresh flowers and other offerings piled on it. Helplessly, I added my modest contributions to it. This was o-higan time during which, according to the Japanese Buddhist tradition, spirits return to the land. The flowers, drinks and food were placed there for them.

 

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We drove up to a terrace behind the floodplain. There a Buddhist temple stood amidst a small forest. As is the tradition, the temples are usually located on higher ground and thus this and others survived the tsunami. The graveyard next to it had many new graves (including for pets) and people were there to bring flowers, buckets of water to wash the tombstones, and incense.

 

The tsunami also caused huge damage to the natural environment, which has gone—perhaps understandably, given the immediate impacts on people’s lives—underreported. The best assessment I’ve read about the environmental damage comes from my friend Vicente Santiago-Fandiño, a scientist with many years in Japan. Such irreplaceable loss was evident in Rikuzentakata, its Matsubara beach destroyed. The beach had been recognized as one of Japan’s most beautiful natural sites since the Taisho period in the 1920s. The 2 km stretch of sandy beach was lined with some 70,000 pines. The tidal wave left only one of them, a 200 year old tough tree standing. It still stands there as a lone sentry guarding over its fallen comrades, but its future is not promising. Despite efforts to protect it—it is testimony to the spirit of the Japanese that they would dedicate any energy to the tree under these dire circumstances—its standing place has become waterlogged with sea water and its roots exposed to the saline water are dying.

As we left the town and headed north on the coast the snowfall intensified, the wind whipping it sideways turning the bleak landscape into monochrome. The road took us through several tunnels till we emerged on the other side of the mountains. Here there was less snow and the weather was turning sunny. Ofunato was built along a long and narrow bay stretching north and protected from the open ocean by a thin peninsula to the east. The town and its port still had not been safe from the tsunami. Yet, the atmosphere here was somehow more optimistic and I hope it wasn’t just my own mood improving with the sun coming out.

We stopped in Fukkoo Yataimura, an area where prefabricated housing for shelters had been erected. In the same area, we were delighted to find, many restaurants and izakaya drinking establishments—even some clubs with live music—had reopened after their original places in downtown Ofunato had been rendered unusable. It was time for lunch, so we decided to have some here. The choice was—unfortunately—left to me, as it was assumed (partly correctly, I’m sorry to say) that I had the most food limitations in company. I regret to say that I do have some prejudices towards seafood that is not readily identifiable as fish. And that, in essence, is what the Sanriku delicacies consist of. Our previous visit to Sanriku had been slightly embarrassing We had stopped in Kesennuma—no longer in existence—which then was a major fishing port and the main centre of Japan’s shark fishing industry (I am not fond of that: most sharks are endangered and the Chinese fancy for shark’s fin is driving the despicable trade, which is both wasteful and inhumane). Abe Take Sensei had designs for us to eat a long and fabulous seafood lunch at one of the local places. The restaurant was great: wooden tables with no tablecloths, entirely genuine with no tourists around—and you could get any creature from the ocean, cooked or uncooked. Abe Take Sensei was ordering various delicacies—from shark’s heart to sunfish, mambo, with an odd, flat face—when I shocked him by asking for a simple grilled samma, a pike mackerel, common in any non-specialist restaurant and amply available in supermarkets. Till this day, I have a reputation in Iwate for having ordered samma teishoku in a superb seafood restaurant.

Well, I’d take such embarrassment any time if that brought Kesennuma back. This time in Ofunato, however, we settled for a small Chinese restaurant and sat at the counter. The lady running the place was very friendly, even cheerful, despite the fact that a year ago her restaurant had been destroyed and she had had to relocate to temporary barracks. The food the cook—her husband labouring in a small space behind some curtains—produced was very tasty. This time the meal contained no seafood. The inside of the little restaurant was painted red. The top of the counter was decorated with artistic calligraphy in gold drawn by hand with a brush by a Chinese volunteer who had visited the restaurant. The proprietor explained how the sea connected coastal areas in Japan since ancient times. The local dialect here, which she masters, is closer to that in Kyoto far to the south and west, than to the dialect spoken further inland in Iwate.

Continuing north, we arrived at Kamaishi, with a tall white Buddha statue, Kamaishi Dai Kannon, overlooking the city from a high forested cliff. 

The town is located in a narrow valley at the end of a bay. Thus it had been badly hit. “In this town, most people died,” said Abe Take Sensei as we entered the city. Not quite, but the devastation was still visible. The main street, running up from the harbour, was lined with buildings that had been gutted until the 2^nd and 3^rd floors. 

Amazingly, shops had reopened in buildings that were still operational. “Oh my, that barber is open,” Yoko exclaimed as she noticed the classic red-blue-white spiral marking the small shop squeezed in between badly damaged buildings. Around town we saw many stores that were open again and tempting customers. The reconstruction has brought to the area large numbers of workers—mainly men without families. The barbershops and izakayas would likely be in demand.

 

 The double tragedy of the earthquake and tsunami was horrible. Luckily the nuclear disaster, bad as it was, took place far enough not to threaten this area. Still, so many lives ended and so many others were devastated. The economy of the region and the country suffered an incredible blow. Yet, people and towns are slowly being reconstructed and bouncing back. 

This is not the first time Sanriku has been badly hit: in 1896, the Meiji-Sanriku earthquake caused a major tsunami in the region killing at least 22,000 people; then again in March 1933, another earthquake sent in a destructive tidal wave. One can only admire the Japanese people whose stoic discipline, organization and respect for other people and community has done what in many other places would seem impossible: cleaning up, building back, re-establishing businesses, restarting lives in the face of incredible adversity. Where one would not even know where to start and the enormity of the task would seem insurmountable, after just a year they have brought new hope to Sanriku Kaigan.

Massive earthquake and tsunami devastate northeastern Japan

On Friday, 11 March 2011, at 14:46 hrs, disaster struck Japan. One of the largest earthquakes on record struck just off the Pacific coast of the island nation. The shaking lasted for a full five minutes—a terrifyingly long time when one entirely loses orientation, may not be able to stand up, with everything falling down around you, walls and houses crumbling, the rumble of the earth drowning all other sounds—triggering a massive tsunami. Because the epicentre was so close to the coast, there was hardly any warning or time to evacuate. The first waves reached the Sanriku coast within ten minutes completely overrunning the towns and ports leaving total destruction in their wake.

The worst affected areas were in the northeast of the main island, Honshu. The prefectures of Miyagi and Iwate bore the brunt of the force. Iwate is the home area of my wife’s family where we have also planned to return eventually to live in the lovely valleys between forested mountains. It has been considered the most stable region of Japan, least at risk from earthquakes. There was no way to get in touch with relatives and friends as, of course, all communications were cut. Whatever communications infrastructure was left standing was immediately overstretched as millions of people tried to contact their loved ones. We were left helplessly glued to TV Japan that broadcast horrifying live footage from the disaster zones. Initial films were mostly from Tokyo with some footage shot from helicopters flying over the coast. The northern Tohoku region where Miyagi, Iwate and Aomori Prefectures are located was cut off the rest of the world.

Tohoku’s largest city, Sendai, situated on higher ground and away from the sea was largely spared from major damage. The city airport closer to the coast was not so lucky. Cameras from there showed the massive wave sweeping slowly across the runways. Large jet planes floated away like toy models. Aerial shots from the close by mountain areas showed huge liquefaction of the soil, again in slow motion, wiping away entire villages, houses crumbling and being washed down the slopes into the sea. The destruction there was complete.

The magnitude of the earthquake and the ensuing tsunami entirely overwhelmed all preparedness plans in Japan, probably the best prepared country in the world. The infrastructure was destroyed to such an extent that no rescue teams could reach the area. Places that we so well know were no more. Kesennuma, a major port city on the Sanriku coast in Miyagi, was gone. First the tsunami swept across the entire low lying valley. When it receded, fires that ensued as gas pipelines were destroyed finished the job burning down the entire old wooden town. Kesennuma had been the site of a large fishing port and the centre of the Pacific shark fisheries just because of the shape of its natural harbour. Now this same geographic advantage had provided the tsunami a perfect entrance to the harbour bowl allowing the water to rise unhindered into the city. A couple of years ago we spent some lovely time in Kesennuma enjoying its fabulous seafood. Yoko’s old high school geography teacher, Abe Take Sensei, took us to his favourite restaurant and was slightly upset with me for ordering simple grilled fish in this haven of amazing specialities from the sea. Abe Take Sensei himself ordered shark’s heart to accompany his beer. We all feasted on the weird looking sunfish from deep under the ocean. Now, none of these places would no longer be in existence.

Luckily, Yoko’s family resides mostly further inland, in and around Oshu-shi straight north from Sendai halfway to Morioka, the second largest city in Tohoku. Their towns—Mizusawa, Esashi Maesawa, Koromokawa—were at least out of the reach of the tsunami. Late on Friday afternoon when it was already night in Japan we finally received a brief text message from an aunt, Shigeyo. She had been in touch with Yoko’s mother Tomoko. Both elderly ladies were fine, but there was no electricity and no water. The entire area was in pitch darkness and it was cold. Snow was falling on the ravaged land. Nevertheless, it was a huge relief to hear from the family.

Another major worry, however, remained. Yoko’s 15 year old nephew Hiromichi and his mother Miho lived in Hakodate, a coastal city on the northern island of Hokkaido and there were reports about the tsunami having soaked the city.

I was scheduled to fly into Japan in the beginning of the coming week in connection with an Asian business trip, but I cancelled the trip. There was no sense in going and adding to the chaos and possibly hampering transportation of relief workers and supplies. Some economists were already calculating how such dedication of port facilities to relief needs would be blocking Japan’s exports. Other economists were estimating how the reconstruction that follows might actually provide a boost to Japanese manufacturing and economy. Economists are a different breed. No one was able to estimate the human death toll from the disaster, but there were reports of 200-300 bodies floating in the water on Miyagi coast, whom nobody was able to reach. But for the economists, there were more important and urgent calculations to be made.

On Saturday there was more live footage from Sanriku. Rikuzentakada, Ofunato, Kamaishi and other towns had been completely wiped out. It was impossible to imagine how one might even begin clearing the debris and start reconstruction. Only some sturdier concrete buildings stood amongst the rubble. Some lucky people had managed to reach their rooftops or run up the slopes to be saved only to observe the annihilation of their homes. Many old people didn’t make it. In Kamaishi there was a home for disabled children. It seems it was gone with the waves.

In January 1995, a strong earthquake hit the western Japanese port city of Kobe and its surroundings. It was the worst disaster in Japan for decades before that. I was then in Osaka, just some 80 kilometres from the worst affected areas. I was woken up in my small 10th floor hotel room in the early morning hours. The shaking was intense but much shorter and less powerful than this time. But it was the scariest moment that I had ever experienced—before or after. On the following day I managed to get to Kobe to observe the damage together with colleagues who were world’s leading earthquake experts. They were all shocked. Tsuneo Katayama, then earthquake engineering professor at Tokyo University and a top authority on the topic, estimated in the morning that several hundred people may have perished. In reality, the final count was more than 6,000 dead. The trust in Japanese engineering solutions and earthquake preparedness had bred complacency. It turned out to be mistaken, as large buildings pancaked, elevated expressways broke up and crashed, fires engulfed older neighbourhoods.

But the Great Hanshin Earthquake that destroyed Kobe was small compared with the current Miyagi-Iwate Earthquake. On Saturday night, the Japanese authorities adjusted the original estimates of the earthquake’s magnitude upward to 9.0 on the Richter scale, making it one of the most powerful events ever experienced anywhere. Furthermore, the Great Hanshin Earthquake was relatively concentrated in a limited geographical area. While this time the main epicentre was off the coast in the northeast, earthquakes erupted throughout a huge area some 500 km long and 200 km wide running in parallel of the Honshu coastline. Even in Tokyo, the shaking had been at the level of 7.0 Richter.

On Saturday we finally got through to Yoko’s mother. It was an incredible relief to hear my dear mother-in-law at the other end of a surprisingly clear phone line. True to her nature, Okaa-san (or mother as we call her) sounded upbeat. She too was very happy to talk to her daughter on the other side of the world. Somewhat against the odds, the rather flimsy home in Mizusawa was still standing and relatively undamaged.

As electricity and communications were slowly being restored, we managed to get in touch with the rest of the family. Everyone seemed to be accounted for. Miho told that the tsunami had completely soaked Hakodate with the streets flowing with 1-2 metres of water, cars and other loose items piling up in heaps where the waves threw them. But miraculously hardly any lives were lost. Akiko, a cousin who manages a Buddhist temple in Esashi after her late monk husband, reported that the graveyard on the slope had been destroyed, but that she was fine. So were the other cousins and relatives in Maesawa and Koromokawa. Akiko had slept the past two nights in her car. It was freezing.

Many other families were of course not so fortunate. Today, Sunday, there are still no firm figures on casualties, but it is likely that the death toll will exceed 10,000. Prime Minister Naoto Kan stated that this was the worst disaster Japan had faced since World War II. The National Broadcasting Company NHK is interviewing survivors. A man survived by swimming for almost 30 minutes in the freezing waters. His face was badly bruised and all his ribs were broken. An elderly woman had been riding in a car driven by her husband along the coast in Kamaishi when the tsunami hit. It lifted the tiny Japanese car 2 metres up a tree where it got stuck in a hook between branches, which saved her life. There she sat, soaked and frozen as snow was falling, until she was rescued and lifted up into a helicopter that transported her to a hospital. These were amongst the lucky people.

Then there is the issue of the nuclear power plants, which the resource-strapped Japan relies on for its energy needs. There were immediate reports that the coastal plant in Fukushima would become a radiation risk. Already on Friday, the government ordered an evacuation of people on a 3 kilometre radius from the plant. People within a 10 kilometre radius were supposed to stay inside and close the windows. That obviously assumed they still had some place to stay in. Also many people in the vicinity, especially old people, were not able to evacuate. On Saturday, there was an explosion in the plant and hundreds of people were exposed to radiation.

It further turned out that it was not only the Fukushima plant that was at risk. The Japanese nuclear plants—the best in the world and supposedly entirely secured against seismic risk—had not been prepared against quite this magnitude of an earthquake. A good friend of mine called from Vienna, Austria, where he works at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). I could hear he was upset with his engineer colleagues who had always underplayed any risks with nuclear energy. The problem is that nuclear plants, like other such systems, are designed to withstand incidents based on a calculation of historical risk. Cost-benefit calculations are made relating the investment needed to the likelihood of an incidence above a certain magnitude. How low the likelihood may ever be, when such an incident takes place, its impact is 100 percent.

As I write this, Tokyo Electric Power Company officials on TV are appealing to citizens to limit their electricity use, as facilities are not able to provide them sufficient current. This inconvenience pales in comparison with what may happen if the nuclear plants start blowing up.

Despite all this amazing damage and chaos, Japanese preparedness seems to be paying off and organizational effectiveness is facilitating early rescue and recovery efforts. Footage from centres where survivors have gathered shows people behaving calmly, keeping warm in groups around stoves, waiting in orderly lines to get water or reach a telephone that has been provided by the authorities. In Japan, people are self-disciplined and well educated. They do not riot or loot or start fighting with each other. One can only imagine what kind of consequences this kind of disaster could have in many other countries.

In the meantime, powerful aftershocks continue and the danger is far from over. According to the scientists, there is still a 70 percent probability for a 7.0 magnitude aftershock in the coming 3 days. We will continue monitoring the situation from a distance. Our thoughts and our hearts are with the people in Japan, family, friends and strangers alike.