Rained-On Ground Hardens: Part III

The 9.0 earthquake that hit Eastern Japan on 11 March 2011 was not only an earthquake but also a massive tsunami and a nuclear disaster bested only by that of Chernobyl. The tsunami hit wide swaths of the island of Honshu – the main island in Japan – but mostly the Tohoku region and its prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima with Miyagi reporting the highest number of deaths. These areas were already more deprived than the rest of Japan and had a higher suicide rate. This utterly devastating event killed an estimated 18,131 people with an additional 2,829 missing as of 2018. Approximately 400,000 homes were destroyed.

As a complex disaster, three in one, the Great East Japan Earthquake had a greater chance of causing a severe impact on the psychological health of survivors. Much like with Katrina, victims were potentially exposed to witnessing the deaths of loved ones – they also saw their communities literally and metaphorically rent asunder by the waters. In the end, however, the greatest risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was in those exposed by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant meltdown.

Japanese citizens have a strong communal spirit with a culture of resilience and group preparation for natural disasters. The country itself is considered strongly resilient, holding to the maxim shouganai, or ‘there is nothing one can do besides moving forward’. This strength wavered in the face of a tsunami that overtopped seawalls, destroyed cities, and killed thousands despite early warning systems. The fact that so many precautions were taken and yet so many were killed is a difficult one to swallow and increases the amount of survivors’ guilt and stigma.

Large numbers of people affected initially showed trauma-related effects, but most did not reach the level of PTSD. It was found that Japanese people affected by the triple disaster were largely resilient.