At 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano was sitting in an Upper House committee along with then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his Cabinet. Without warning, the room they had gathered in began to shake violently, and looks of concern intensified on lawmakers' faces. Edano immediately asked the chairman of the committee if he could be excused so he could return to the prime minister's office.
Within a few minutes, the Great East Japan Earthquake had sparked the biggest management crisis Japan has been forced to deal with in its postwar era.
Edano recalls how irritated he was in the aftermath of the disaster because he wasn't getting sufficient information from the areas that had been damaged. Hundreds of the local public offices had been affected by the temblor; some were then destroyed by the tsunami.