Tsunami Panic

By Bill Lee

Happy New Year to all of our avid readers!

Politically, last year was the year of Donald Trump, and whatever we think of him, at least he gives us something to be annoyed about. This year looks to be more of the same.

During the New Year’s break, we took a drive along the west coast of Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture. It’s a beautiful winding coastline, and, like a lot of regions with a line of little fishing villages, sleepy. In contrast to the well-developed Southern California west coast, where each beach area has its own distinctive social and cultural feature — from the off-limits Marine Corps beaches at the south end, up to the artsy colony of Laguna Beach, the wealthy enclave of Newport Beach, the gritty, druggy beaches above them, and so on — the Izu region is relatively homogenous. But it would seem a wonderful place to live, or at least retire to, especially if you like marine sports.

But nobody wants to live or move there. Land or building owners can’t sell their properties and prices have plummeted. The reason? Everyone is afraid of a devastating earthquake and tsunami striking the region. But their paralyzing fear is irrational. For decades, the Japanese government warned of the “Tokai Earthquake” that would strike Shizuoka. The warning has now been widened to the “Nankai Trough Earthquake,” which could strike along a much longer stretch of the Pacific coastline. Aside from creating fear among the Japanese public — so much so that they don’t want to live in a beautiful coastal region — the predictions have raised non-life insurance premiums in those regions, further discouraging people from moving, or staying, there.

The government recently issued a forecast that there is a 7-40 percent chance of a megaquake hitting off the Pacific coast of Hokkaido in the next 30 years. But as Tokyo University Emeritus Professor Robert Geller noted in the Japan Times last month, the forecast is meaninglessly vague. If one does hit, the predictors can say the forecast was correct; if one doesn’t strike, they can, at the low end, say there was really a 93 percent chance one wouldn’t hit.

It’s a shame that Japan’s local areas are being depopulated, and doubly a shame when the cause is based on misleading claims. I’m moving to Izu.

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Photo by Alan Doherty via Flickr