Japan’s history of disasters has made it a laggard on climate change. With so many old hazards, the new ones have not generated as much urgency as elsewhere
There is plenty to keep her busy. Japan is a “department store of natural hazards”, says Nishiguchi Hiro of Japan Bosai Platform, a group of firms that develop disaster-related technologies. Few countries have been shaped so much by hazards and disasters. Besides earthquakes and tsunamis, there are typhoons, floods, landslides and volcanic eruptions. Japan has had to learn to live with risks, making it a laboratory for resilient societies.
The biggest lesson from Japan is the value of preparation. As Ms Karashima says, “It’s too late if you start acting after the disaster happens.” That this sounds banal in much of the world makes its absence more striking. Of $137bn provided in global disaster-related development assistance from 2005 to 2017, 96% was spent on emergency response and reconstruction, less than 4% on disaster preparedness.
The software is as essential as the hardware. When Shimizu Mika, a resilience expert at Kyoto University, was a child in Kobe in 1995, citizens were unprepared. “We used to have a drill in schools, duck and cover, and then nothing else,” she recalls. Now people realise disaster risk is everyone’s business. A cabinet-office survey before the pandemic found a majority had discussed household disaster plans in the preceding year or two.
The Reiwa era will test these personal ties. One reason is climate change. On Yonaguni, typhoons have become “highly unpredictable”, says Mr Itokazu. Perversely, , laments Koizumi Shinjiro, a former environment minister. The Fukushima meltdown has kept environmentalists focused on anti-nuclear campaigns, rather than climate change.
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