Waiting for disaster is a way of life in Japan

In Japan, you live with the possibility of earthquakes. When I first arrived, in 1978, I was woken one night by the bed in my seventh-floor hotel room thudding against the wall. I was terrified, but soon discovered that tremors happen regularly; eventually, I came to take them almost for granted.

As people there say, Japan has two sorts of earthquakes – the ones when everything sways and lights swing from side to side, and the really lethal ones, when things bounce up and down. If the earthquake’s one of the second type, there’s little you can do and nowhere you can go. A friend of mine was in a field near the Izu peninsula, notorious for its quakes, as the ground rippled like waves. The only way she could stop herself from falling over was by holding on to a tree.

Living in one of the least geologically stable parts of the planet, with the possibility that sudden disaster might strike at any time, colours one’s outlook on life. It gives people an awareness of the transience of things. It’s a bit like the Japanese love of cherry blossoms: the whole point is that they only bloom for a few days. The tsunami that struck yesterday is only the latest chapter of horror and misery. [...]

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Originally published in The Telegraph on 11 March 2011