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disaster response

This ratio is a feature of Japanese disaster policy, not an anomaly. Evacuation instructions are issued pre-emptively for tsunami risk, aftershock-triggered landslides and structural uncertainty in buildings that have not yet been inspected. The system deliberately over-evacuates because the cost of a night in a school gymnasium is small and the cost of being wrong is not. Reading a high evacuation figure as a proxy for casualties misunderstands what the number measures.

• Self-Defence Force units were mobilised within hours, the standard trigger for an event of this scale.
• Evacuation instructions — a stronger legal category than advisories — cover roughly 300,000 people, most in coastal and landslide-risk zones.
• Infrastructure damage is significant: road severance, water main failures and localised power loss are all reported.
• Multiple governments have offered assistance; Japan has historically accepted specialist search teams and declined general aid.