On The Richter Scale

A small country, but a dynamic and powerful one, with the world's third-most-important economy. Still struggling to emerge from a decade of financial weakness, and beginning to see the light of day on its economy. A country comprised of three islands; a large central one, a northern and a southern island. Geographically close to countries that resent it mightily because of past indiscretions as a once-martial nation.

Still respectful of its monarchy though no longer regarding it as divine, and now a staunch democracy, Japan has gone through many changes over the last century. It has faced many challenges during that period of change and surmounted them all. The Japanese are a resilient, compliant people, tending to obey authority. How else could so many people live in harmony on those tight little islands?

Compliant but not complacent. The security that most people once held dear in employment for life, and loyalty to the employer and a small-town-life attitude even while living in a huge metropolis, faded, imposing great pain as the economy waned. A nation of powerful corporations and small shopkeepers representing a huge proportion of the country's wealth.

A country now heavily in debt. And suddenly all those problems on reflection seem to have been far more preferable than what the country looks like one day on from the one before. On Tuesday there was a relatively modest tremblor, on Wednesday another, and then on Thursday a viciously brutal earthquake that has transformed Japan's major island.

The Japanese are accustomed to earthquakes, they occur continually throughout the course of a year. This is an earthquake-prone area, sitting within the notorious 'ring of fire'. Every household has a prepared earthquake kit, to grab as they exit their homes. Of course, tremblors do not occur only when people are at home.

They happen when they're at work, when they're out shopping, out and about engaged in recreational events, or touring, or attending a temple, or gardening. An earthquake that engages you when you're sitting within the confines of your home is vastly different than one that occurs when you're on the 20th floor of an office tower, or when you're out of doors.

Wherever it occurs it engenders in you a feeling of disbelief, of helplessness, of awe and fear. But this was not the ordinary garden-variety kind of trembling of the earth that people have long been accustomed to. This one was 8.9 on the Richter scale, and fearsome in its tremendous earth-shaking, destructive power.

And ... and the tsunamis that followed, and the inundation and the washing away of homes, vehicles, boats, trains, the mudslides that followed, the collapses, the ruination of human habitation, the perishing of too many helpless human beings.