Areport this year by the Independent Investigation Committee on the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, a group set up in September 2011 by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, condemned what it called Japan's "absolute safety myth." The Japanese government, in collusion with the media and the regional electric-power companies — with Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) at the front of the line — perpetrated this myth on a gullible public, the report inferred.
The result: the incalculable destruction of property and desecration of land by the release of radioactive substances into the environment after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.
Now Japan, in little more than a year, has switched in disaster-consciousness terms from "never happen" mode to "any day now." There's been no such 180-degree turnaround since Aug. 15, 1945, the day the war ended, when the nation switched off belligerency and hubris and on to peace and deep regret.