Natural Disasters in Japan

Abstract

Japan is a disaster-prone country which suffers from many kinds of natural disasters because of its geographical, topographical and meteorological conditions. As indicated in Figure 6.1, the number of dead or missing as a result of natural disasters exceeded 1000 almost every year because of successive big typhoons and earthquakes from the end of the Second World War to the 1959 Ise-wan typhoon, which caused the greatest flood damage with over 5000 dead or missing. This event made holistic disaster management one of the top priority policies in Japan. The impact of natural disasters in terms of mortality decreased because of various kinds of flood mitigation measures over the years to the extent that there would be no more disasters in Japan with 1000 or more fatalities until the 1995 Kobe earthquake occurred. It was found that Japanese disaster management was not well prepared for devastating damage due to near field earthquakes when the 1995 Kobe earthquake disasters killed more than 6000 people. More recently, we are facing two new challenges. One is the preparation for the expected mega damage due to a series of gigantic inter-plate earthquakes and tsunamis in the first half of this century. The other is the preparation for the so-called guerrilla flood, which is an acute micro-flood, due to extreme rainfalls which could occur at anywhere and anytime. In this chapter, the progress and remaining issues in natural disaster management in post-war Japan for the last 50 years will be reviewed.