August 31, 2003	Sunday	Rajab 2, 1424

TOKYO: Surprising as it may seem in a country where the earth moves roughly 300 times a day, there is still a need to remind Tokyo residents that their world could come crashing down in a major earthquake at any moment.

For the last month an exhibition has been running at the capital’s National Science Museum, explaining everything the Japanese never want to know about earthquakes unless they are prepared to live in a state of perpetual anxiety.

“There is a saying that after 75 days we forget everything,” said geologist Kazumi Yokoyama, one of the organizers of “The Jishinten” (The Great Earthquake Exhibition). But rather than 75 days, it is now 80 years since the Japanese capital was devastated by a massive earthquake.

On September 1, 1923, at two minutes to noon, a quake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale levelled the Kanto Plain on which Tokyo and its hinterland stands.

The quake and its aftermath left over 142,000 people dead or missing and 100,000 injured.

The exhibition includes photographs of Ginza at the time — already Tokyo’s smartest and most Westernized district — resembling Hiroshima after the atomic bombing 22 years later.

Such images could once again become reality on the glitzy street which is home to top Japanese stores and international designer brands and has some of the most expensive property prices in the world.

Located above three converging tectonic plates, Tokyo is at constant risk of another major quake.

The historical frequency of such tremors is every 69 years on average and seismologists warn that another quake of equivalent intensity to the one that killed more than 6,000 people in Kobe in 1995 could come at any time.

The Kobe earthquake, Japan’s deadliest since the end of World War II, caused major infrastructure damage, including the collapse of elevated expressways and buildings, shattering the complacency of the Japanese authorities who thought modern Japan was largely protected from nature’s fury.

Huge resources have been expended on trying to predict earthquakes, minimize infrastructure damage and protect the public after the barrage of criticism for the shortcomings in the government’s response to a disaster it initially underestimated and to which it was slow to react.

Tokyo today is undoubtedly safer and better prepared than in 1923. Strict earthquake resistance standards have been introduced for buildings and gas supplies are automatically cut off following a moderately powerful quake, while the emergency services, including the armed forces, can be rapidly mobilized.

But the population of greater Tokyo has trebled to some 33 million people, and more and more skyscrapers are being built while vast areas of the city still comprise relatively flimsy wood-framed housing, and whole areas of re-claimed land fringing Tokyo Bay are prone to liquefaction.—AFP