On March 13, 2011, just two days after the Great East Japan Earthquake, as massive aftershocks rocked the capital and fears of a radioactive cloud spreading over the country seemed all-too real, Yasuyuki Higuchi, president of a Tokyo-based software company, sat down and typed an email to his 2,200 staff.
"As you know from news reports, the crisis at the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear power plant is continuing. In response to this, we had an emergency disaster risk-management meeting today, and have decided that from tomorrow, everyone will work from home, in principle," it said. More than half that email's recipients took his advice.
Two days later, with the situation in Tokyo little changed, Higuchi wrote a second email. This time he removed the "in principle."