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Mint
15 hours ago
- Business
- Mint
How a year of tremor and terror transformed Japan
WHO COULD have known that on an ordinary Monday morning in 1995 a commute in Tokyo would turn into a scene from hell? On March 20th five members of Aum Shinrikyo, a doomsday cult, boarded separate trains on the capital's subway carrying bags filled with sarin, a deadly nerve gas. The poison spread through the packed carriages; 14 people died and thousands were injured. 'I still wonder: am I dreaming? Did the attack really happen?" says Sakahara Atsushi, a film-maker caught in the attack who still has symptoms today. For a country as safe and orderly as Japan, the terrorist attack was an unimaginable shock. It came just two months after the Great Hanshin earthquake, a 6.9-magnitude disaster that killed more than 6,000 and left 45,000 homeless. The scale of the Kobe quake caught both residents and authorities off guard. It was the largest tremor to hit a big Japanese city since 1923. Today, Kobe has been completely rebuilt, and the Aum leaders were executed in 2018. But the trauma of these two disasters remains etched in the Japanese psyche. The disasters struck a Japan already reeling economically. After decades as a powerhouse, it suffered a terrific crash of stock and property prices in 1991-92 as its asset bubble burst. Many believed that the downturn would be short-lived—but 1995 shattered even that remaining confidence. The Kobe earthquake exposed a government that was suffocating in red tape. Swiss rescue dogs sent to find survivors were stuck in quarantine, and the Self-Defence Forces (SDF) arrived too late. The once-vaunted 'iron triangle" of bureaucrats, politicians and business that powered Japan's growth 'began to look rusty", says Jeff Kingston of Temple University in Japan. 'There was a marked change in the Japanese consciousness 'before' and 'after' these events," wrote Murakami Haruki, a renowned novelist, in 1997. These two 'nightmarish eruptions", he observed, triggered a 'critical inquiry into the very roots of the Japanese state". Just a couple of years earlier, foreign observers still feared Japanese dominance; 'Rising Sun", a 1993 Hollywood thriller, revolved around sinister Japanese businessmen. But Japan's mood turned gloomy after 1995. The media fixated on how Aum's recruits included elite-university graduates. Thirty years on, Japan still lives in the shadow of 1995. Roam around Tokyo, and you may notice something amiss: public bins are scarce, removed following the sarin attack. Even those born after the attack recoil at the name 'Aum". Recently, Banyan nervously attended a study session run by Hikari no Wa—a group that splintered from Aum Shinrikyo. The session seemed innocuous (to your correspondent's relief), focusing on breathing techniques, meditation and Buddhist teachings. But outside the building hung angry banners that read: 'We will never forget the sarin incident!!" 'Your group must be dissolved!" A policeman stood watch, too. Suspicion of marginal religious sects resurfaced in 2022 after Yamagami Tetsuya assassinated a former prime minister, Abe Shinzo, citing grievances against the Unification Church (also known as 'the Moonies"), a group with ties to the ruling party. The government has since moved to dissolve the group, and a court ordered it to do so this week—a rare step, taken in only a handful of cases, most notably against Aum Shinrikyo. Though the two groups are not remotely comparable, the backlash against the Moonies, including their dodgy recruitment tactics, carried echoes of the 1995 trauma. Political leaders now struggle to lift Japan out of its malaise that began with the bubble's collapse—what started as a 'lost decade" has stretched to over three decades of stagnation. When Ishiba Shigeru, the current prime minister, recently said he wanted to build a 'fun Japan", critics slammed him as tone-deaf, arguing he should focus on solving economic hardships instead. But 1995 also left a positive legacy. The earthquake inspired what came to be known as 'Year one of volunteering"—with over a million helpers flocking to the disaster zone. Civil society flourished. When the Tohoku earthquake struck in 2011, the SDF mobilised immediately. Since 1995, 'Japan has come to realise it needs to prepare for risk," says Fukuda Mitsuru at Nihon University in Tokyo. What emerged from that terrible year was a Japan that no longer believes it is invincible, but can face its vulnerabilities. Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our Opinion newsletter, which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
In 35 days, a ‘mega tsunami' will devastate Japan (according to a comic book ‘prophet')
A long-forgotten prophecy of impending apocalypse has resurfaced in Japan, putting the disaster-prone country I call home on edge once again. According to Ryo Tatsuki's manga comic book, The Future I Saw, the sea south of the island nation will bubble in July this year, intimating that a huge earthquake and tsunami are imminent. The book, which was originally published in 1999 and depicts cartoon visions of Tatsuki's dreams, has become a recent bestseller after going viral on social media. Hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold, driven by claims that the 70-year-old artist and author accurately predicted the 1995 Great Hanshin (Kobe) earthquake in Japan, the Covid-19 pandemic and the sudden deaths of Freddie Mercury and Princess Diana. Many believe the original version of her comic – with a cover warning of a 'massive disaster in March 2011' – predicted the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan 14 years ago, triggering the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. In an updated edition published in 2021, Tatsuki predicts the next disaster will strike on July 5, when a seabed crack between Japan and the Philippines will send waves three times taller than those seen in the 2011 tsunami crashing ashore. While gripping the nation, her ominous tale is also having an impact far beyond Japan itself, triggering mass cancellations of trips to the country. Chinese tourists, in particular, seem to be taking the prophecy seriously, with many cancelling their summer trips to Japan. The fear has also spread to countries like Thailand and Vietnam, where travel warnings about Japan are widely shared on social media, and to Hong Kong, where psychics have issued warnings of impending disaster. Absurd, superstitious nonsense? Maybe. But the powerful impact of Tatsuki's supposed prophecy has less to do with her past track record – which like most mystics consists of connecting vague utterances to real-world events – and more to do with a deep-seated anxiety about the geological realities of East Asia. Japan itself lies on the ring of fire – on top of four major tectonic plates – and the fear of natural disaster prowls the consciousness of every resident in the country. Anyone who lives here is likely to receive every year, through the door, a detailed 'disaster map' from the local government – marking areas at risk of tsunami, floods and landslides – and showing nearby evacuation centres. Everyone knows where these shelters are and regularly takes part in drills. It's common for people to keep a bag of emergency supplies by their front door, ready in case they suddenly become homeless refugees. So much so that it's easy to become blasé about the threat of natural disasters. But earlier this year, Japan's government earthquake research committee issued its latest best-guess prediction on the likelihood and impact of a massive quake in the Nankai Trough – located in the waters south of Japan along the Pacific coast. The scenario they envision is jaw-droppingly apocalyptic. The committee warns there is an '80 per cent' chance of a mega earthquake, magnitude 8 or higher, striking the area within the next 30 years. Such an event would generate waves up to 100ft tall, devastating the entire seaboard of central Japan – especially the south coast of Shikoku, the Kii Peninsula, and the Nagoya region – but also reaching Osaka, Kobe and other major urban centres. Around 300,000 people could be killed, 12 million displaced and the immediate damage estimated at nearly £1.5 trillion – roughly double Japan's national budget. Those figures are staggering. Not just in the projected number of deaths and the cost of the devastation, but also in the relative nearness of the timescale and the extremely high odds of the disaster occurring. In other words, what the experts are saying is: it's very probably going to happen. And relatively soon. And a 'go bag' by the door of your apartment is not going to save you or your family. More than the rediscovery of a 26-year-old comic book, it is this science-backed prophecy from the Japanese government that has prompted the deep unease and sense of panic. Predictions, of course, can be notoriously unreliable. Go back to the late 1980s and early 1990s and all the talk was of the 'Big One', the devastating earthquake that tended to strike Tokyo every 70 years or so (the last catastrophic quakes in Tokyo were in 1923 and 1855, killing over 100,000 and 7,000 people respectively). But in a country like Japan, attempting to outrun disaster – predicted or otherwise – can prove futile. In the early 1990s, I decided I would permanently avoid Tokyo going forward and moved to Kobe, where no one could ever remember an earthquake having taken place. That is until the morning of Jan 17 1995, when a huge earthquake killed around 6,000 people in the city and destroyed the apartment I was living in. So I continue to edgily live in Japan alongside the ever-present threat. I drill my children on what to do if a major quake occurs – flee north as fast as your legs will take you to get away from any accompanying tsunami. I tell them that if our house collapses, they are not to spend more than ten minutes looking for Daddy's body, but to evacuate immediately. Once uphill, don't look back, I say. For the 37 years in which I have been visiting and living in Japan, I have been constantly weighing up its risks. But only when I read the latest earthquake research committee prediction did it occur to me that I still wasn't fully processing the information. I suspect even the tourists cancelling their trips this summer – because they hope a clairvoyant can pin down 'risk' to a specific day – don't fully appreciate just how dire the warning is. Because if a catastrophic, apocalypse-style event of the like thought by experts to be highly probable in the next three decades actually occurs, then the country as we know it would, in the space of an hour or so, pretty much cease to exist. The almost perfectly safe, charming, jewel-like existence enjoyed in modern Japan would suddenly be turned into something comparable to the most hellish of war zones. Truly understanding that means treasuring every day in the country, foreboding comic books and all. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Climate
- Telegraph
In 35 days, a ‘mega tsunami' will devastate Japan (according to a comic book ‘prophet')
A long-forgotten prophecy of impending apocalypse has resurfaced in Japan, putting the disaster-prone country I call home on edge once again. According to Ryo Tatsuki's manga comic book, The Future I Saw, the sea south of the island nation will bubble in July this year, intimating that a huge earthquake and tsunami are imminent. The book, which was originally published in 1999 and depicts cartoon visions of Tatsuki's dreams, has become a recent bestseller after going viral on social media. Hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold, driven by claims that the 70-year-old artist and author accurately predicted the 1995 Great Hanshin (Kobe) earthquake in Japan, the Covid-19 pandemic and the sudden deaths of Freddie Mercury and Princess Diana. Many believe the original version of her comic – with a cover warning of a 'massive disaster in March 2011' – predicted the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan 14 years ago, triggering the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. In an updated edition published in 2021, Tatsuki predicts the next disaster will strike on July 5, when a seabed crack between Japan and the Philippines will send waves three times taller than those seen in the 2011 tsunami crashing ashore. While gripping the nation, her ominous tale is also having an impact far beyond Japan itself, triggering mass cancellations of trips to the country. Chinese tourists, in particular, seem to be taking the prophecy seriously, with many cancelling their summer trips to Japan. The fear has also spread to countries like Thailand and Vietnam, where travel warnings about Japan are widely shared on social media, and to Hong Kong, where psychics have issued warnings of impending disaster. Absurd, superstitious nonsense? Maybe. But the powerful impact of Tatsuki's supposed prophecy has less to do with her past track record – which like most mystics consists of connecting vague utterances to real-world events – and more to do with a deep-seated anxiety about the geological realities of East Asia. Japan itself lies on the ring of fire – on top of four major tectonic plates – and the fear of natural disaster prowls the consciousness of every resident in the country. Anyone who lives here is likely to receive every year, through the door, a detailed 'disaster map' from the local government – marking areas at risk of tsunami, floods and landslides – and showing nearby evacuation centres. Everyone knows where these shelters are and regularly takes part in drills. It's common for people to keep a bag of emergency supplies by their front door, ready in case they suddenly become homeless refugees. So much so that it's easy to become blasé about the threat of natural disasters. But earlier this year, Japan's government earthquake research committee issued its latest best-guess prediction on the likelihood and impact of a massive quake in the Nankai Trough – located in the waters south of Japan along the Pacific coast. The scenario they envision is jaw-droppingly apocalyptic. The committee warns there is an '80 per cent' chance of a mega earthquake, magnitude 8 or higher, striking the area within the next 30 years. Such an event would generate waves up to 100ft tall, devastating the entire seaboard of central Japan – especially the south coast of Shikoku, the Kii Peninsula, and the Nagoya region – but also reaching Osaka, Kobe and other major urban centres. Around 300,000 people could be killed, 12 million displaced and the immediate damage estimated at nearly £1.5 trillion – roughly double Japan's national budget. Those figures are staggering. Not just in the projected number of deaths and the cost of the devastation, but also in the relative nearness of the timescale and the extremely high odds of the disaster occurring. In other words, what the experts are saying is: it's very probably going to happen. And relatively soon. And a 'go bag' by the door of your apartment is not going to save you or your family. More than the rediscovery of a 26-year-old comic book, it is this science-backed prophecy from the Japanese government that has prompted the deep unease and sense of panic. Predictions, of course, can be notoriously unreliable. Go back to the late 1980s and early 1990s and all the talk was of the 'Big One', the devastating earthquake that tended to strike Tokyo every 70 years or so (the last catastrophic quakes in Tokyo were in 1923 and 1855, killing over 100,000 and 7,000 people respectively). But in a country like Japan, attempting to outrun disaster – predicted or otherwise – can prove futile. In the early 1990s, I decided I would permanently avoid Tokyo going forward and moved to Kobe, where no one could ever remember an earthquake having taken place. That is until the morning of Jan 17 1995, when a huge earthquake killed around 6,000 people in the city and destroyed the apartment I was living in. So I continue to edgily live in Japan alongside the ever-present threat. I drill my children on what to do if a major quake occurs – flee north as fast as your legs will take you to get away from any accompanying tsunami. I tell them that if our house collapses, they are not to spend more than ten minutes looking for Daddy's body, but to evacuate immediately. Once uphill, don't look back, I say. For the 37 years in which I have been visiting and living in Japan, I have been constantly weighing up its risks. But only when I read the latest earthquake research committee prediction did it occur to me that I still wasn't fully processing the information. I suspect even the tourists cancelling their trips this summer – because they hope a clairvoyant can pin down 'risk' to a specific day – don't fully appreciate just how dire the warning is. Because if a catastrophic, apocalypse-style event of the like thought by experts to be highly probable in the next three decades actually occurs, then the country as we know it would, in the space of an hour or so, pretty much cease to exist. The almost perfectly safe, charming, jewel-like existence enjoyed in modern Japan would suddenly be turned into something comparable to the most hellish of war zones.
The Guardian
17-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘Like a game of black-belt level Jenga': inside the ancient art of Japanese carpentry
Do you know your ant's head from your shell mouth? Or your cogged lap from your scarfed gooseneck? These are just some of the mind-boggling array of timber jointing techniques on display in a new exhibition spotlighting the meticulous craft of Japanese carpentry. The basement gallery of London's Japan House has been transformed into a woody wonder world of chisels and saws, mortises and tenons, and brackets of infinite intricacy, alongside traditional clay plastering, shoji paper screen making and tatami mat weaving. It is a dazzling display of the phenomenal skills behind centuries of timber architecture and joinery, celebrating elite master carpenters with the spiritual reverence of a high priesthood. 'In Japan we have a deep respect for our forests,' says curator Nishiyama Marcelo, who heads up the team at the Takenaka Carpentry Tools Museum in Kobe, a temple to the history of Japanese joinery. 'If a carpenter uses a 1,000-year-old tree, they must be prepared to take on more than 1,000 years of responsibility for the building that they create.' It is a momentous duty, and one we should heed. As debates around the embodied carbon of the built environment dominate the construction industry, there could be no more timely exhibition to remind us of the importance of designing with longevity, care and repair in mind. Numerous specialist tools have been shipped over from the Kobe museum, along with a team of master carpenters who have built a remarkable series of structures in the gallery, replicating parts of buildings that have lasted for hundreds of years in the face of wind, rain, snow and earthquakes. Dominating the room is a 1:2 scale reconstruction of a section of the Toindo hall at the temple of Yakushi-ji in Nara, built in the Kamakura period (1185-1333). It shows how the roof's deep eaves are supported by delicately curved parallel rafters, along with a coffered ceiling of cleverly intersecting horizontal beams, all held together by invisible joints. Key to supporting the immense weight of the tiled, tiered rooftops are the brackets, or kumimono, each made up of a fiendishly complex cat's cradle of masu (bearing blocks) and hijiki (bracket arms), stacked in four directions. A table nearby shows the more than 50 hand-carved wooden pieces that go into assembling just one of these brackets, along with a 3D animation showing how the bits all fit together. It looks like a game of black-belt-level Jenga. It may seem like a decorative flight of fancy, a bravura exercise in complex carpentry, simply to embellish the corners of the temple, but these brackets serve a crucial seismic purpose too. 'We have a lot of earthquakes in Japan,' says Nishiyama. 'The reason these temples have survived so long is because of these intricate timber joints, which allow the structural members to slide past each other, as well as distributing the load.' When the Great Hanshin earthquake struck Kobe in 1995, with devastating impact on the Kansai region, the Yakushi-ji temple emerged unscathed. Indeed, it had survived many earthquakes since its first construction in the seventh century. Taking a similar approach to the flexible bracket joints, the timber columns of temples and shrines usually sit on raised stone bases. This not only prevents the wood from getting damp and rotting, but allows lateral movement in the event of seismic activity. A nearby display shows how the bottoms of the columns are carefully sculpted to fit into the natural curves of the uneven stone bases, using a contour gauge in a process known as hikari-tsuke. The level of hand-tooled precision looks like a devotional religious act in itself, and there is a spiritual reverence for these natural materials from the start. The woodsmen even seek permission from the mountain spirit deities, or kami, when felling the trees in the forest. The reconstruction and maintenance of these ancient Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples is the exclusive work of domiya daiku, or temple carpenters, who enjoy a rarefied status as keepers of architectural heritage that spans more than a millennium. One of the greatest such 20th-century figures was Nishioka Tsunekazu, nicknamed oni, or the devil, for his exacting approach. His meticulous structural drawings, carved into wooden boards, are shown in the exhibition, combining elevations, cross-sections and 45-degree diagonal views at once. They hang alongside racks of templates used to cut the different components, which dangle from pegs like tailors' manilla pattern cards. Nishioka laid out key principles, advising that wood for temple construction should be taken from a single mountain, and specifying that trees grown on higher slopes should be used for for structural elements such as beams and pillars, while those in the lower valleys are better for finishing materials. Knowing which trees to use for which purposes, says Nishiyama, showing off a display of different kinds of cypress, pine, chestnut, and bamboo logs, is just as important as knowing how to put them together. Alongside the domiya daiku we are introduced to the profane world of the sukiya daiku, or teahouse and residential carpenters, known for their more lightweight, rustic style. While the carpenters of temples and shrines revelled in the structural acrobatics of massive beams and weighty roofs, the traditional teahouse is an essay in delicacy and economy of means. For the exhibition, the team has re-created Sa-an, a famous teahouse built in 1742 at the Zen monastery of Daitoku-ji in Kyoto. But here it has been stripped of its plaster walls to reveal the skeletal structural workings. The aesthetic of sukiya gives the impression of rustic simplicity, often using unprocessed round logs stacked in a childlike diagram of a house. But as the exhibition reveals, the intersection of round logs, using an invisible jointing technique known as neji-gumi, is 'the pinnacle of log craftsmanship'. Once assembled, it is almost impossible to discern how the pieces fit together. A breakdown of the component pieces, along with another animation, reveals how this miraculous carpentry conjuring trick is done. Forget black belt, this is 10th dan, sensei-level stuff. There's plenty more to discover, from the secrets of exquisite kumiko latticework screens to the wonders of sashimono joinery, used to make boxes and furniture, along with a hands-on display upstairs where you can have a go at assembling some of these 3D puzzle-like joints for yourself. But if there's one thing missing, it is any mention of how these techniques could be of broader relevance today. Nishiyama admits that the work on show comes from an exclusive niche, reserved for luxury commissions, with something like the teahouse on display costing 'around 10 times as much to build as a regular house' due to the specialist manual craftsmanship involved. It seems that the contemporary master carpenter's skills are reserved for billionaires' garden follies, or the conservation of priceless heritage. Yet there are crucial lessons that the modern construction industry could learn from. The sophistication of Japan's carpentry culture was born of necessity: the country's lack of iron meant that jointing techniques had to be developed that did not rely on nails. We are moving towards a time when design for disassembly and repair has become ever more desirable, and necessary, than our bulldoze-and-rebuild mindset. Resource scarcity is a very real prospect. These centuries-old techniques, updated with today's technology – with components milled using computer-controlled machinery, not just hand tools – could well hold some answers for a low-carbon, long-life, reconfigurable future. The Craft of Carpentry is at Japan House, London, until 6 July
