Safety and security of Japanese society threatened by unpredictable earthquake and tsunami: overcoming the crisis with Japanese wisdom and cheer

摘要

Was this happening in reality? What a catastrophe it was. It seems like we are still having the worst nightmare. The great East Japan earthquake of magnitude 9.0 that struck at 14:46 h on 1 lth of March 2011 was the world's fourth largest. The unprecedented and unpredictable- SOUTEIGAI-monster earthquake led to a subsequent gigantic tsunami-one of the SOUTEIGAI aftermaths- which devastated towns and villages along the coastline of Pacific Ocean. One prominent example is the collapse of the world's deepest tsunami protection breakwater. The breakwater, located at the mouth of Kamaishi bay, Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan, was proclaimed by Guinness Book of World Records in July 2010 as the world's deepest breakwater (63 m deep) embedded in the bottom of the sea. It was a large-scale caisson breakwater and was designed against a massive earthquake and resultant tsunami. It took 31 years to complete the construction (completed in March 2009) at a cost of 126 billion Japanese yen (1.5 billion US$). The breakwater had a 1960 m length and the base was located at 63 m beneath the seawater surface. It was