The most powerful earthquake in the nation's history struck the northeastern part of Japan on March 11. Even more devastating than the quake itself was the tsunami that followed, as it took more than 20,000 lives and destroyed countless structures.
Radioactive leaks continue to threaten residents near the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Station, with the restoration of cooling capacity to the ailing reactors perhaps months away.
Nobody had even dreamed of what has turned out to be a chain reaction of the earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear plant accident. That was something that "could not have happened." Before the disaster, most economists had confidently predicted that the nation's economy would start growing in the first quarter of this year, after a negative growth shown in the preliminary statistics for October-December last year.