TOKYO: In the dark months after a catastrophic tsunami smashed into Japan, killing almost 19,000 people and sparking a nuclear disaster, hopes for a rapid recovery and a national rebirth were frustrated by political paralysis.
Two years on and with an energised new administration in Tokyo, some are daring to believe that better times lie ahead for the stricken northeast, and the country as a whole.
Monday marks the second anniversary of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that sent a huge wall of water into the coast of the Tohoku region, splintering whole communities and ruining swathes of prime farmland.
More than a million homes were destroyed or damaged by the natural disaster. Of the roughly 470,000 people who fled during the initial catastrophe and in the weeks after the nuclear crisis began, more than 315,000 people still live in temporary housing, many in dreary public units.
But hopes that massive infrastructure spending would put the region back on its feet, and reinvigorate a national economy that has suffered more than a decade of growth-sapping deflation, did not materialise. Nearly 10,000 aftershocks have been recorded, including 736 jolts that measured above magnitude 5.0.
In December Shinzo Abe swept into the prime minister’s office, promising massive spending programmes to speed up reconstruction and boost the national economy.
“We will build a Tohoku in which young people are able to have hearts full of hope,” said Abe in a recent policy speech.
Norio Kanno, Mayor of Iitate village, 40km from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, said he and other local leaders have great hopes of the new government.
“It’s been said ‘There won’t be any recovery of Japan without the recovery of Fukushima,’” said Kanno, whose village became a radiation hotspot. “We have great expectations of the new government, which appears to be tackling this issue seriously.”
Engineers say the crippled reactors are no longer leaking radiation, experts believe it will be about 40 years before the site is decommissioned. Agencies
