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Japan and Natural Disasters
Prevention and Risk Management
Jean-Francois Heimburger
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eBook - ePub
Japan and Natural Disasters
Prevention and Risk Management
Jean-Francois Heimburger
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Japan is one of those countries most often affected by powerful natural hazards: earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, typhoons, heavy rains, heavy snowfall, tornadoes, etc. The Archipelago is considered a very advanced country in terms of forecasting, prevention and management of natural disasters. A detailed analysis of the reality of recent years is however necessary. In the run-up to the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, among others, a publication on the subject will inform a large number of people wanting to know more about the risks of natural disasters in Japan.
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Part 1
Hazards, Risks and Disasters
1
From Hazard to Disaster
âEven if we canât say that earthquakes, tsunamis or typhoons donât happen in other Western countries, it is rare that they happen so frequently and cause as much damage as in Japan. [âŠ] But it is necessary to consider something which is always forgotten: the intensity of disasters caused by violence of nature becomes stronger as civilization advances.â1 [TER 11, pp. 11â12]2
Japan is not just a group of islands. It is also an archipelago of natural hazards on which is constructed a society that, over the course of its development, has increased its exposure to disaster risks. Before presenting the different phenomena which regularly affect the country, as well as their human and material consequences, it is necessary to first review the meaning of several key words and their equivalents in the Japanese language.
1.1. Hazard, vulnerability and risk
In the natural domain, a hazard is defined as an event which can occur and cause damage to people and developments as well as to the environment. Although there is no exact translation of this word in Japanese, the term that comes closest is shizen genshĂŽ (èȘç¶çŸè±Ą, ânatural phenomenonâ). HazĂądo, taken from the English word âhazardâ, is not used in this sense except in hazĂądo mappu (ăă¶ăŒăăăă, âhazard mapâ, âdanger mapâ).
Vulnerability refers to the level of predictable consequences of a phenomenon on society. The equivalent Japanese term is zeijakusei (èćŒ±æ§), which indicates a fragile and weak character.
Risk is the result of the combination between hazard and vulnerability. The closest Japanese terms are kikensei (ć±éșæ§, âdangerousnessâ) as well as the Anglicism risuku (ăȘăčăŻ, âriskâ), present in expressions such as saigai risuku (çœćźłăȘăčăŻ, âdisaster riskâ) at least since the beginning of the 2000s3. The latter term is being used more and more, including by local governments or by the Japan Meteorological Agency.
1.2. Disaster
The word âdisasterâ, which in the current modern sense refers to an unfortunate event that is abrupt in origin and with numerous victims, has an exact equivalent in Japanese, namely saigai (çœćźł, âdisasterâ), defined as a âmisfortune which arrives in an unexpected way, such as a natural disaster, a fire or an accidentâ [REY 10, SHĂ 01]. The term saigai is made up of two ideograms. The first and more important uses a dam (ć·) on top and fire (ç«) below, together signifying a large fire disrupting a comfortable life. Here, the dam has a negative meaning, since it is not able to prevent flooding, but to keep life from going smoothly [TĂD 10]4. Natural disaster is translated as shizen saigai (èȘç¶çœćźł) or tensai (怩çœ), as opposed to jinisaigai (äșșçșçœćźł) and jinsai (äșșçœ) which refer to a disaster caused by humans.
As for the terms âcalamityâ, meaning a great public misfortune, and âcurseâ, defined as a disastrous thing which seems to be the instrument of divine anger, these are similar to the Japanese word yakusai (ćçœ), which evokes fear or renunciation in the face of a negative element that human beings are not able to control [YAM 17a].
2
Earth and Fire
2.1. Earthquakes
Kanto, September 1, 1923. âThereâs an ocean of fire in Fukagawaâ, HonjĂŽ yells to his friend JirĂŽ and then looks toward the sky disturbed by the wind: âThe fire will spread. Tokyo is finished!â A little earlier, JirĂŽ, the young hero of Hayao Miyazakiâs animated film The Wind Rises, had found himself on a train when the earthquake occurred. The rails, like the wooden houses, had undulated violently to the rhythm of the propagation of the seismic waves. The train managed to stop without derailing. However, as everyone fled, columns of smoke appeared on the horizon [MIY 13].
âThe reason the fires spread so quickly in spite of the profusion of vegetation was that it was noon and that, in every home, the stoves were glowing red with coalâ, written by JunichirĂŽ Tanizaki in A Tuft of Hair, which appeared in 1926 [TAN 97]. The writer knew something about it, since he experienced the event, which even prompted him, several days later, to move from Kanto to Kansai, a region considered safer at that time.
If the great Kanto earthquake, caused by an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 followed by numerous and powerful aftershocks, is widely present in the literature of the 1920s and still on the mind of our contemporaries, as Miyazakiâs masterpiece shows, it is because it was the origin of the worst natural disaster in Japanâs history. There were 105,000 dead, of which 88% would die in the flames. More than 460,000 buildings were completely destroyed. The economic damage represented more than 35% of the GDP [SHI 15, IMA 16].
2.1.1. Japan, principal seismic country
All of Japanâs inhabitants have certainly experienced an earthquake. The world leader in terms of number of earthquakes measured, the Japanese archipelago is located in an area where four tectonic plates meet and continuously shift against each other. The brutal shifting between two rock masses, which causes shocks, can appear in various places: between two plates, such as the earthquake in eastern Japan on March 11, 2011; the interior of a plate, such as the Hokkaido TĂŽhĂŽ-Oki earthquake on October 4, 1994; at shallow depths in Earthâs crust, such as the Kobe...