Japan spent mightily to soften nature's wrath, but can it ever be enough?
By Ben Dooley, Makiko Inoue and Eimi Yamamitsu
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Japan, a nation grimly accustomed to natural disasters, has invested many billions of dollars in a world-class infrastructure meant to soften nature’s wrath. But with the flooding in areas across central and northern Japan in recent days, the country has been forced to examine more deeply the assumptions that undergird its flood control system.
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After a devastating typhoon killed more than 1,200 people in the late 1950s, Japan embarked on a series of public works projects aimed at taming its many rivers. Levees and dams sprang up on nearly every river, and civil engineers sheathed long stretches of riverbeds in concrete. While the projects have saved countless lives, they are insufficient to meet the challenge of increasingly extreme weather patterns, said Shiro Maeno, a professor of hydraulic engineering at Okayama University.
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In 2017, the national government passed a revision to the country’s flood and river controls laws aimed at decreasing the mounting economic damage from extreme weather and bringing the number of deaths caused by the failure to evacuate down to zero — a challenge made greater by the country’s rapidly aging population.
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The changes have forced local governments to revise how they prepare for disasters. Instead of planning for 100-year storms, they are now thinking about more destructive once-in-a-thousand-year disasters.
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