At least once a year, Japan's government issues alarming but bogus earthquake forecasts (e.g.,"Hokkaido's risk of M9 quake at 40 percent," The Japan Times, Dec. 20) which are routinely and unquestioningly reported by the media. This must stop.
Present science is, alas, unable to reliably say that one place in Japan is more or less dangerous than another, when earthquakes will strike or how big they will be when they do. There are effective ways to mitigate, although not eliminate, earthquake hazards, but that's a subject for another column.
Relying on the now discredited belief that large earthquakes occurred cyclically, in the mid-1970s the Japanese government adopted earthquake countermeasures based on the idea that a megaquake was "overdue" off the Pacific coast of the Tokai district (from Shizuoka to Nagoya). Through repetition, the meme that "the 'Tokai earthquake' is imminent" became an almost unquestioned belief in Japan.