Global Perspective: Natural disasters are deadly, but wars are much worse

By Makoto Iokibe, Chairman of the Asia Affairs Research Institute

Japan, an archipelago of disasters, appears to be entering a period of great calamities. We live with a wide variety of disasters, but what is it that we should truly fear?

The most frequent disaster is wind and flood damage. Water is life for human beings, but its under- or over-abundance leads to disasters.

In the 15 years since Japan lost World War II, there have been six wind and flood disasters that killed more than 1,000 people, including the 1945 Typhoon Ida/Makurazaki and the June 1953 torrential rains that devastated northern Kyushu in southern Japan. In particular, Typhoon Vera/Isewan in 1959 killed 5,098 people, the largest number of victims of wind and flood disasters, and led to the enactment of the Basic Act on Disaster Management two years later.

Since the 1960s, however, weather conditions have become more moderate, and Japan’s towns and dwellings have become stronger with an increase in the number of reinforced concrete buildings. As a result, wind and flood damage with 400 or more deaths was no longer seen. But this is no reason to indulge ourselves in a victory of making our society resilient. We should be aware that the 21st century is witnessing the intensification of typhoons and linear precipitation zones due to global warming, and that flooding in densely populated areas lying near sea level poses a danger of causing damage no less severe than that of Typhoon Isewan.

Secondly, there are active faults lying directly under towns and cities all over Japan. The largest recorded casualty from an earthquake was caused by the Nobi Earthquake of 1891 (8.0 on the Moment magnitude scale=Mo scale), which killed 7,273 people. It was followed by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (7.3 on the Mo scale) that killed 6,434 people including related deaths. Earthquakes caused by faults directly under cities nevertheless rarely cause casualties exceeding 10,000.

However, there were far more massive inland earthquakes. History buffs will recall the Tensho Earthquake of 1586. The entire Kaerikumo Castle and its surrounding town in the mountains of Hida in central Japan were buried in a landslide and disappeared. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a leading 16th century warlord who was defeated in the Battle of Komaki-Nagakute in 1584, had built a base to store military provisions in preparation for a campaign against his rival Tokugawa Ieyasu, but that base was also destroyed. Nagashima Castle on the shore of Ise Bay, Kibune Castle in Toyama, and Nagahama Castle on the shore of Lake Biwa collapsed over a wide area in central Japan in the present-day Mie, Toyama and Gifu prefectures. The earthquake, which is thought to have been caused by the interlocking of several faults, was far more massive than the Nobi earthquake.

Ocean earthquakes cause tsunamis that engulf coastal residents. In modern times, the Meiji Sanriku Tsunami of 1896 (8.2 on the Mo scale) and the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 (9.0 on the Mo scale) both claimed about 22,000 victims. The former only caused small tremors and many people having nighttime parties were unaware of it. But the tsunami it triggered was relatively large and allowed few people to escape, resulting in the same level of casualties as the latter.

The Nankai Trough Earthquake tsunami that is expected to strike the western half of Japan on the Pacific coast in the not-too-distant future is expected to kill 200,000 to 300,000 people. The only way to survive a tsunami is to flee. Unlike the Sanriku region that was hit by the 2011 megaquake in northern Japan, there will be no time delay between the earthquake tremor and the tsunami in the Nankai Trough quake. In recent years, however, evacuation towers have sprung up along the areas expected to be affected by the tsunami, and many local governments have prepared evacuation maps for residents in cooperation with them. It is hoped that such human efforts will reduce human casualties by half or more. I would like to think that the number of victims of the tsunami will be capped at approximately 22,000.

Fire, along with water, is a necessity for human life. Controlling it is especially difficult for Japanese cities. Many dwellings were made of wood and paper; the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 killed 105,000 people — the largest number of earthquake victims in recorded history — and 90,000 of them were burned to death.

Edo and its successor Tokyo suffered three fires that claimed 100,000 victims: the Meireki Fire of 1657, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and the Great Tokyo Air Raid of 1945 carried out by American bombers.

At the time of the Meireki Fire, the population of Edo was still less than 500,000, so it is hard to believe that 100,000 people died in that fire. However, there had been no rain for 80 days, and the city was parched and dry. With a strong wind blowing, a fire started at a temple in the Hongo area downtown and quickly consumed the entire city.

The Great Kanto Earthquake occurred while people were preparing for lunch, and fires broke out in 134 locations, which were spread by strong winds and consumed many parts of the city. The day before, a small typhoon that had made landfall on Kumamoto from the Ariake Sea in southern Japan, passed over the Sea of Japan and turned into a tropical cyclone. It made another landfall near Kanazawa in central Japan and headed east to cross the northern Kanto region into the Pacific Ocean in the afternoon of Sept. 1, the day the big one hit Tokyo. A secondary low pressure system also formed around Chichibu north of Tokyo, causing strong winds of over 10 meters per second in the capital. These strong winds were the main culprit of the major fire.

Of the four elements of earthquakes, dryness, strong winds, and sources of fire, strong winds are without a doubt the most decisive. If these conditions are met, any major city in Japan can face significant risks of losing a large number of people.

While we have only looked at natural disasters, epidemics are far more deadly. Plague, tuberculosis and other bacterial diseases that once raged in Japan and the world have been largely conquered by the development of medicine. On the other hand, viruses, which are microscopic and prone to mutation, continue to be a challenge. The Spanish flu during World War I is said to have killed 25 million to 50 million people across the world, and 400,000 in Japan, far more than the number of deaths during the war.

The new coronavirus was feared to be as deadly as the Spanish flu, but thanks to the development of vaccines and other measures, the number of deaths worldwide has been limited to about 6.9 million.

In Japan, about 75,000 people are said to have died from COVID-19, which is more than from any other natural disaster except the Great Kanto Earthquake. There will be no end to pandemics caused by new viruses in the future. Therefore, there is an urgent need to build a national infrastructure and system to deal with them.

Is there a disaster even bigger than the above? Yes, there is. War, a human activity.

The victims of the Russo-Japanese War at the beginning of the 20th century were long referred to as the “100,000 Heroic Spirits.” Ten years later, the casualties from World War I soared to millions. This was mainly due to the machine gun becoming the primary weapon of choice.

In World War II, airplanes and tanks became the mainstay of warfare, attacking even the civilian population far away from the frontlines. Tens of millions of people were killed worldwide, and by the end of the war, nuclear weapons had even appeared. The Japanese death toll was 3.1 million, a man-made disaster far greater than any natural disaster or pandemic.

The extreme development of the means of warfare created a situation of “mutually assured destruction” that endangered the very survival of the peoples. In response to this situation, mankind created the United Nations system after World War II, which forbade all member states from unilaterally changing the status quo by force. As its defenders, five major powers were designated, but after 77 years, one of them invaded a neighboring country. The recognition of this fact will lead to a return to the “law of the jungle” of human history, and will mean a return to a situation in which war is a new normal occurrence.

Profile: Makoto Iokibe

Born in 1943, Iokibe completed his graduate studies at Kyoto University, specializing in Japanese political and diplomatic history. After serving as a visiting scholar at Harvard University, a professor at Kobe University and president of the National Defense Academy, he served as chancellor of the University of Hyogo. Iokibe also sat on the government’s reconstruction design council as its chair following the Great East Japan Earthquake. He is chairman of the Asia Pacific Prize selection committee and president of the Hyogo Earthquake Memorial 21st Century Research Institute.