Even while it continues to help the Tohoku region recover from the terrible earthquake and tsunami of two years ago, the Japanese government is trying to prepare for future disasters. One great fear that’s being planned for is a possible “Nankai Megathrust Quake,” a particularly nasty kind of earthquake caused by contact between large tectonic plates located to the south of Japan. These have caused great damage over the past 1300 years, including a particularly bad quake and 28-meter tsunami in 1854 that killed 3000 people. For all the damage and loss of life caused by the March 11, 2011 quake, the Tohoku area of Japan is among the most lightly populated parts of Japan. Now the government is projecting damage and loss of life of up to ten times the 2011 quake’s numbers if a similarly strong quake were to happen in Southern Japan — among other things, as we learned in Kobe in 1995, building codes are less strict in the region, compared with the more quake-prone Tokyo. Which is one more reason we’re happy to be in Gunma, as far from the sea as you can get in Japan.
Images from the big quake and tsunami in 1946.
