The "Big One" - An Earthquake of magnitude 9 hits Japan

As everyone who has been following the news will know, the quake that hit Japan recently, was the strongest one since the advent of seismic measurements in the country. It is also apparently the fifth strongest quake in history. In popular coverage of the quake and the tsunami, the label “natural disaster” is frequently applied. This label, while not entirely false, does not entirely capture the many social dimensions of such catastrophes. If an earthquake of such a magnitude had hit a crowded city in India, the casualty toll would have been unimaginable. The relatively milder quake in Haiti last year claimed about a quarter million victims immediately and many more in its wake. It was the same tragic story when quakes hit China, Iran and Pakistan over the past few years. The fact that Japan is a “developed” society with a state that has the power to enforce building regulations designed to withstand strong quakes, has made a tremendous difference. Most commentators have pointed out the amazing resilience of buildings despite the incredible intensity of this particular quake. It is also a testament to the importance of long term state initiated and orchestrated planning that advocates of the so-called “free market” rail against. In societies with tremendous social inequalities that translate into substandard housing if at all, and hardly any building regulations, the results are not surprisingly disastrous. Depending on the social structure and the distribution of resources, the same “natural” quake can have very different consequences. Japan of course, also has a long history of quakes and as historian Gregory Clancey points out in his insightful book _Earthquake Nation_ (2006), seismology is Japan’s major contribution to the world of science. Regular quake drills in schools, countless emergency shelters all over the country and tremors pretty much every week, have ensured that most Japanese cannot ever shake off quake awareness. Psychologically, most Japanese have been prepared for the “big one”.