Background
The Tokyo Earthquake of 1923
The earthquake shocked the whole country. Ever since, on 1 September each year, everybody has taken part in training drills for the next time an earthquake strikes.
Millions have been spent since then on strengthening buildings and installing instruments. 500 researchers work to predict when and where the next earthquake will happen.
The two tectonic plates near Tokyo were behaving differently from those in California: instead of one rubbing past another, the Pacific plate is being forced under the Eurasian plate, causing pressure to build up until the friction can hold it no longer.
The impact of the Kobe Earthquake in 1995
Three tectonic plates meet near Japan: the Pacific, the Eurasian and the Philippine. All three are being forced under or over one another, creating the potential for earthquakes.
In the old quarter of Kobe, in the city centre, the housing was wooden and flexible enough not to collapse, but broken gas pipes and shorting electricity lines caused 150 fires to rage for days after the earthquake. Fires killed more people than the earthquake itself.
The Japanese were so surprised by the earthquake that the rescue services seemed almost paralysed as the disaster unfolded. There were few listening devices to detect people hidden in collapsed buildings. Offers of help from abroad were only taken up slowly.
Elevated roadways, built to survive severe earthquakes, collapsed like cardboard. Communications, including telephones and railways, broke down.
About 300,000 people were made homeless. Dressed only in their night-clothes, they faced freezing winter weather with hardly any help. Shelters were set up in schools and community centres, but the old and the poor suffered agonies. The building of temporary housing only began two weeks later.
