Tohoku Kanto Earthquake and Shinkansen



Sakura arriving at Hiroshima

The day after an unbelievably large-scale earthquake hit Japan’s Tohoku region on March 11, 2011, the Kyushu Shinkansen Super Express line started its full-fledged operation. The opening day was supposed to have been joyful and festive and the media should have reported one happy day; instead there was not much celebration and the service started smoothly but too quietly. On the previous day, people, cars, houses, trains, and nuclear power plants were at the mercy of the magnitude 9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami waves that attacked Tohoku.

I was in Nagasaki, away from home and further away from the earthquake-affected area, about to work for a tour on the next day. The tours, however, were all canceled because all the Japanese ports were closed due to tsunami alerts and warnings issued to every port of the country. Though the port of Nagasaki was least affected and the waves were quiet, the port had to be closed by law. The large passenger ship, Queen Elizabeth 2, safely waiting offshore, skipped calling at Nagasaki and probably sailed to Shanghai.

My fellow tour guides and I left Nagasaki using different transportation measures from usual, for some of the JR lines running along the seashore stopped their operations to be safe. We managed to get on an expressway bus from Nagasaki to Hakata, where we took a Shinkansen Super Express to Hiroshima. We came back earlier than we should have if we had done our tour in Nagasaki. Feeling strange, we were home.

  It didn’t take us long to learn that this earthquake, followed by tsunami waves, was truly unprecedented and besides victimizing people and towns, it left a crippled nuclear power plant in its immediate aftermath.

I watched both domestic TV news, NHK and others, and CNN. I read a Japanese paper and articles in English on the net by New York Times and BBC. I was curious how CNN and other overseas media would report. I didn’t value CNN and New York Times highly as I had expected. BBC articles on the net, I thought, were objective and trustworthy.  

The government and TEPCO might not have been able to announce the matters very swiftly at first and truly there are things in detail I’d like to know and have yet to know but I believe they never fabricated or falsified facts.

The grave nuclear issue is ongoing and many people in Japan will be righteously worried about radiation sneaking into food chain, though at this moment, the possible risk is nominal and they should not panic. Fortunately, Japanese people are relatively calm and not panicking. But I do regret that the general public is not sufficiently aware of what radiation is all about. The country that has been through two nuclear destructions, on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, should have known better. We should have been better educated and should not have had any nuclear power plants at all. We should have studied on nuclear-free countries like New Zealand and should have seriously considered the danger and risk of nuclear power generation. We should have supported the scientists to explore for alternative sustainable energy.



Sakura bound for Shin-Osaka

 Now at the end of this article, let me give you a bit of info about our proud Shinkansen. On March 12, 2011, the Kyushu Shinkansen connecting Hakata and Kagoshima in one hour and 20 minutes started to operate. Some of the Kyushu Shinkansen trains travel as far as to Shin-Osaka, enabling a travel between Kagoshima and Shin-Osaka in less than four hours, the critical travel time for many people to choose either Shinkansen or air travel. If it takes less than four hours, more people choose this very rapid train. The Shinkansen has been in the progress. The magnetic levitated Chuo Shinkansen is in evolution and hopefully its operation will start in 2025.