This is the first in a series of investigative reports from the Chunichi Shimbun about how figures for the probability of a Nankai Trough earthquake were manipulated for a government expert panel report released in February 2018.
It was a few days before Feb. 9, 2018, when the Earthquake Research Committee, the government’s expert panel, announced it had revised its projections about the chance of a major earthquake in the Nankai Trough, off Japan’s Pacific coast, in the next 30 years from about 70 percent to between 70 and 80 percent.
I obtained the information on the revised figure from a source and began coming up with story angles such as whether disaster prevention measures were sufficient and how much damage a huge quake in the Tokai region could cause.