Dear Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda,
Over 560 sq. km of northeast Japan was inundated by the tsunami that followed the massive March 11 earthquake, leaving over 20,000 dead or missing and devastating farmland, ports and nearly the whole regional fishing economy. The subsequent shutdown of most nuclear power plants, part of Japan's highly centralized power generation system, caused an unprecedented energy crisis with severe repercussions for the national and even parts of the global economy.
The aftershocks have sent tremors far beyond the areas directly hit by the natural disaster. But the widely accepted notion of a "triple disaster" of the earthquake, ensuing tsunami and nuclear crisis is a misconception, obscuring the fact that the afflicted areas had already been suffering from deep structural problems for decades.