Temblors, typhoons and tragedy for
Japan By Richard Hanson
"Now, without forewarning, there has occurred
the terrible earthquake of September 1 [1923] and whilst
we deplore the happenings of such calamity under our
rule, it is beyond human will to prevent the inexorable
convulsions of nature." - from the Imperial
Rescript (decree) on Reconstruction, September 12, 1923,
on the Great Kanto cataclysm that claimed more than
142,000 lives in Tokyo and Yokohama
TOKYO -
Fast-forward to the latest inexorable convulsion of
nature - and the multitude of publicly funded and
visible feel-good seismographs that gave no warning last
weekend.
Just like typhoons, earthquakes get
names. The series of powerful and deadly temblors that
struck Japan this past weekend were dubbed the Niigata
Prefecture Chuetsu Earthquake, for the region on the
Japan Sea some 200 kilometers to the north of the
capital, Tokyo.
On the Richter Scale, it
measured 6.8 where it struck at 5:56pm on Saturday. By
Tuesday the death toll had risen to 31, with 2,100
injured, according to police estimates. The casualties
are small in comparison with the 1995 Great Hanshin
Earthquake that killed more than 6,400 people around the
crowded port city of Kobe. In Niigata, some 100,000
evacuees are taking refuge in shelters, after
aftershocks rumbled through the area and a cold rain
fell. The Japan Meteorological Agency issued warnings of
heavy showers, more flooding and landslides. The danger
of slides was heightened by record rains last week from
Typhoon No 23, one of the fiercest storms on record.
Two features of Niigata-Chuetsu struck
scientists. One, the epicenter was on a previously
unknown fault in the Chuetsu region, the central part of
Niigata prefecture. The quake hit in a seismic gap, one
near a region with little recent seismic movement, but
potentially one that could be hit by a big quake in the
future, according to experts.
The actual quake
and aftershocks came only 11 days after a notice in
which the government's Earthquake Research Committee
said the area could be hit by a major earthquake due to
the faults off the Niigata coast "with a probability of
2% over the coming 30 years".
Earthquakes are
notorious for coming up with new twists or revealing new
information. What is common in a comparison with the
Great Hanshin Earthquake, which was much stronger at
magnitude 7.8, is mainly that the government and the
local population paid little attention to the threat of
a major shake.
This time, symbolically, Japan
was also shaken by the sight the first-ever derailment
of the high-speed Shinkansen bullet train in the 40-year
history of high-speed rail service. There were no
injuries on the train, which braked to a halt from a
speed of 200km/h.
The government's spokesman,
Hiroyuki Hosoda, summed up the feeling: "It was lucky
that the over 150 passengers there were uninjured," he
said. "But the Transport Ministry will consider ... the
causes, if it could have been controlled, how it should
have been dealt with and the like, as it could have been
a large accident."
To its credit, the government
quickly set up a task force at its crisis-management
center soon after the quakes hit Niigata. In the case of
the Hanshin disaster, the prime minister at the time was
not informed until well after it had struck.
Several weeks will be required to restore the
damaged section of the Shinkansen train line. Removing
the derailed 10-car train will take 10-14 days, while
inspection of rail structures and repairs will take
longer, according to JR East, or the East Japan Railway
Co.
The JR group has been building a system to
stop Shinkansen trains in the event of an earthquake by
capitalizing on the time difference between a quake's
initial tremor and its main shake. (A consortium of
Japanese and Chinese companies recently was awarded a
contract to build a large order of passenger trains for
the Chinese national railway, which will be modeled
after the bullet trains.)
The fact that earlier
quakes did not cause major train crashes is a
combination of good engineering and very good luck.
There have been a number of big tremors in the
region. In December 1828, government records show that
the "Echigo Earthquake" struck with a magnitude of 6.9,
which left 1,400 dead and 11,000 buildings destroyed. A
quake measuring magnitude 6 was recorded in 1933 with no
deaths reported, but it was just 20km from Saturday's
epicenter.
The Great Kanto Quake numbers: The
official death toll in the region that included Tokyo
and Yokohama, the hardest-hit cities, is 142,807 dead or
missing, with 103,733 injured, according to Kodansha's
history of Japan, which used the official figures.
The Niigata-Chuetsu quake falls into the same
category as four other areas that scientists call
"seismic gap D" types that run from island of Hokkaido
in the far north to Toyama prefecture to the west, all
subject to earthquake-causing stresses.
Within
the government and the scientific seismological
community, there is another form of stress over the
prediction and even the warning of earthquakes in Japan.
The controversies and rivalries between
bureaucrats/policymakers and scientists date back to the
dramatic and still remembered Great Kanto Earthquake of
September 1, 1923, at noon.
The debate took a
sharp turn in the 1970s, when seismologists established
that, using theories on the movement of earth plates
(dubbed "plate tectonics") that an earthquake on the
scale of the Great Kanto event would strike an area
about 140km southwest of Tokyo, centered on Suruga Bay
(between Tokyo and Nagoya). The evidence was considered
strong enough prompt the government to pass a law, the
Tokai Earthquake Law, that set out how to deal with such
an earthquake.
This gave rise to what some
scientists say was the first earthquake prediction.
Others, including early supporters of the theory, soon
realized that the Tokai Earthquake Law was also a
convenient way for politicians to spend money in their
home districts in the name of predicting quakes - with
little to show for it.
Critics argue that such
funds would be better spent on planning for the
disasters that unpredictable earthquakes cause. Just how
the recent Niigata-Chuetsu quake will be judged is hard
to tell, since the hardest-hit areas were heavily
populated.
Commenting on the quake, Katsumasa
Abe, professor of Tokyo University's Earthquake Research
Institute, said there was no doubt it was caused by the
previously unknown fault. Given that the foci of the
tremors were shallow and located inland, it was normal
to see large aftershocks, with more such shocks a real
possibility, he said.
Masakazu Otake, president
of the government-funded Coordinating Committee for
Earthquake Prediction, said he had been anticipating
that a major earthquake with a maximum magnitude of 7.5
would rock the Chuetsu region in gap D, the area from
Niigata prefecture to the northern part of Nagano
prefecture, where crust stresses were known to be
building up.
"The earthquakes Saturday should be
considered to have fallen short of releasing all
earthquake-causing stresses," Otake said. "Since only a
small portion of the energy is believed to have been
released this time, the public should be alert to the
high possibility of a rash of aftershocks," he said.
On the critical side: The situation has changed
since the Great Hanshin Earthquake, said Professor
Hideki Shimamura of the Graduate School of Sciences at
Hokkaido University.
"I would have to say that
as things now stand, it is not the scientists who have
triumphed but rather the bureaucrats affiliated with the
former Science and Technology Agency," Shimamura
said.
They have gotten hold of the budget and are
using the money to install seismographs in local
communities the length and breadth of Japan - in other
words, spending vast sums on earthquake monitoring that
is "visible to the public". Nevertheless, these
seismographs are not the kind of equipment best suited
to research - or warning, the professor said.
None of those seismographs across Japan gave
more than a moment's notice that a big one was on its
way.
Richard Hanson, veteran
correspondent and expert on Japanese economy, finance
and politics is the author of Money Lords: The Pride
and Folly of Japan's Finance Ministry Elites.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
Oct 27, 2004
No
material from Asia Times Online may be republished in any form without written
permission.
Copyright
2003, Asia Times Online, 4305 Far East Finance Centre, 16 Harcourt Rd,
Central, Hong Kong
