Did you know that until 40 years ago in Japan, several thousand people died each year due to natural disasters? The development of disaster prevention in recent years owes very much to the bitter experiences of having been victimized by natural disasters up until today. Question often asked by those concerned in disaster prevention in Indonesia is about the history of the disaster prevention in Japan. (Fig.4 The number of the victims of natural disasters in Japan)

Fig.4 The Number of the Victims of Natural Disasters in Japan

The First Turnabout - The Ise Bay Typhoon and the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Law
In September 1959, the Ise Bay Typhoon struck directly the City of Nagoya and the surrounding area, leaving 5,098 people dead and missing and seriously damaging the Chukyo Industrial Zone, which was on the way to post-war recovery. Even until then, the annual number of victims of natural disasters after 1945 had been in the scale of 1000 people. But because the number of those victimized in the Ise Bay Typhoon was strikingly high and that it devastated a large area around Nagoya with high tide and storm, it shocked the whole nation.

With this disaster as a turning point, the conventional disaster prevention system was criticized as being deficient, and in 1961, the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Law was enacted to develop a comprehensive and systematic disaster prevention order. The law contained three epoch-making features in proceeding with disaster prevention countermeasures.

1. The Central Disaster Prevention Council, highest coordination organization dedicated to disaster prevention on the national level headed by the prime minister and consisting of all of the cabinet members as well as semi-public institutions deeply connected to disaster prevention. (Currently, the Japanese Red Cross Society, Bank of Japan, Japan Broadcasting Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (at that time)) was established. Furthermore, corporations engaged in public works projects, including electricity, gas, transportation, and telecommunication, were designated by the prime minister as the designated public institution with their obligation pertaining to disaster prevention clarified. With this the importance of “disaster prevention” became recognized widely among those concerned while clarifying the obligations enabled disaster countermeasures to be taken based on close cooperation between the public and private organizations.



2. It became mandatory for the government to report to the Diet (Parliament of Japan) the annual disaster prevention plan as well as measures taken with regard to disaster prevention. With this, the system was established to discuss “disaster prevention” every year as an important national issue at the Diet even at a time there are only a few disasters. This made the budget for disaster prevention to be secured steadily.



3. The obligation of the state, prefectures, cities, towns, villages, designated public institutions, local residents and so on was specified with regard to disaster prevention. In order to guarantee such obligation, each party became responsible to come up with a disaster prevention plan. With the establishment of “The Disaster Prevention Day” in 1960, (September 1- this is the time when an integrated disaster prevention drill is held every year under the direction of the Prime Minister - named after the day of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 which left 142,800 people dead or missing) awareness of the importance of disaster prevention among each organization and individual grew dramatically.

The Second Turnabout - The Great Hanshin and Awaji Earthquake
In January, 1995, The Hanshin and Awaji districts were struck by an earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale of which the epicenter was directly below. This was a massive disaster which left 6437 people dead. As the earthquake disabled the personnel and facilities in charge of leading disaster countermeasures, crushing the 6th floor of the Kobe Municipal Office for an instance, the initial action by police and fire fighters who were supposed to take action before anything else fell behind. The Disaster Countermeasures Basic Law which was enacted in 1961 is founded on the bottom-up approach in dealing with disasters: disaster countermeasures are handled first by the city, town or village and when the disaster is big enough to exceed the ability of the city to handle, the prefecture will be in charge. In case of an enormous disaster, the state takes action based on the request of the prefecture. Because of this, the law could not deal with a disaster that gave a devastating damage to urban areas where the functions of disaster prevention countermeasures were concentrated.

Learning from this, the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Law was revised in December 1995 as follows: In the case of a considerably extraordinary and severe disaster, the emergency disaster countermeasures headquarters headed by Prime Minister can be set up without a state of emergency declaration, the head of the emergency disaster countermeasures headquarters can direct the heads and similar of designated administrative organizations and that the items with regard to the conclusion of treaties in connection with reciprocal support between local public entities must be dealt hard to be realized.

In the Great Hanshin and Awaji Earthquake about 80 percent of the victims died crashed under the fallen buildings and most of them died within 15 minutes after the earthquake. From these facts, people recognized anew the importance of the idea of “disaster prevention and mitigation” by “making buildings earthquake-proof.” Even today, countermeasures including seismic retrofitting of general households and public facilities, are underway as an urgent matter.

Furthermore, in 2001 on the occasion of the reorganization of central government ministries and agencies, Disaster Prevention Bureau of National Land Agency which was in charge of the secretariat of the Central Disaster Prevention Council was moved to the Cabinet Office with the ministry in charge of disaster prevention posted permanently at the office. This helped in developing a system that made it possible to deal with a disaster at anytime while enabling the effort of disaster tackling to be executed constantly even when there is no disaster happening.

Every year, Japan is hit by many typhoons as well as earthquakes. It is said that an earthquake of which the center is directly below the Tokyo metropolitan area or the Tokai earthquake or the East-Nankai and Nankai earthquakes or earthquakes around the Japan Trench and Chishima Trench can happen anytime. How can we be prepared for these? Right now, Japan is fighting against the clock to get ready for a disaster of gigantic scale. Human cannot prevent natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes from occurring. That’s why the challenge we face is how we can mitigate its damage when the natural disaster strikes.

In the future, natural disasters can be even more severe due to the effects of the global warming. It is hoped that the Indonesian Government, just as the Japanese Government, will perceive the budget for disaster prevention to prevent disasters and mitigate the damage not as “expenditure” but as “investment” and continue to work hard in order to protect its people from natural disasters.

(Muronaga Takeshi)