How can Japan be so developed despite facing so many natural disasters?
Because contrary to common sense, natural disasters are not only destructive in terms of development and economics. Perhaps counter-intuitively, they end up creating jobs in the long run, jobs which permit the country to ultimately survive and recover after natural disasters.
Imagine you live in a country which a dragon visits every decade or so, and really messes things up. It burns your crops, kills a few people, destroys hundreds of thousands of homes and so on. It’s expensive and a pain for everyone. You can’t kill it, so instead you learn to live with it. But because it only visits every ten years or so, and it doesn’t usually visit the same place twice with regularity, this doesn’t actually stop you building houses, schools, supermarkets, and the other things you need for daily life.
So, you train some people not to fight the dragon, but predict when the dragon is going to visit next. You pay them to predict where the dragon is probably going to visit. You pay them to send letters to everyone the dragon might visit, telling them how to prepare if the dragon comes, and what to do if it does come. You then pay some other people to prepare for their response after the dragon comes - they need to be able to help people injured by it, rescue people who are missing because of it, and repair the damage it did. You even pay some people to make buildings which are “dragon proof” so they don’t need to worry at all if the dragon visits.
Then, after all that, when the dragon does visit, you just need to make sure that the other towns and cities nearby can send people, goods and money to the areas the dragon actually does go to. Because this dragon visits your country, thousands of people have jobs that they otherwise wouldn’t need. It’s a terrible thing, but that dragon also pays the bills for a lot of people.
- James Gaskin (Teacher, reluctant ethnographer)
