Three Days into the Earthquake in Japan

On October 25, the third day of the series of earthquakes hitting the Joetsu area of Niigata Prefecture in northwest Japan, there was another tremor measuring over 5.0 on the Richter scale. With a magnitude six earthquake projected to strike before long, residents are trembling in fear and apprehension.

As of 4:00 p.m. of the same day, the casualty report listed 25 deaths, eight missing, and more than 2,400 injured. Fifty-eight villages have been completely isolated, while over 100,000 inhabitants have evacuated the area to avoid landslides and falling buildings.

The Shinkansen train line connecting Tokyo and Niigata is not expected to normalize for several weeks to come. Because of the chaos on the roads and railways, the supply of food into the area has not been occurring regularly or effectively.

Japanese earthquake experts point out that the current chain of powerful and frequent earthquakes is due to “the proximity of the source, which is only 13 km underground, and the complicated nature of the fault plane.” The plates are not slipping at once but at sporadic intervals because the fault plane features many jagged irregularities, they explain.

In a wooden two-story building in Nagaoka City, buried under the debris of a landslide, the remains of a 75-year-old woman was discovered under that of her 42-year-old son, who tried to shield her from the onslaught with his own body. The son, who works as a public servant in a distant town, came to look after his ailing mother every Friday. It appears that he fought until the final moment to protect his mother in the only way he could.

The shock of the earthquakes has caused massive geological shifts: the land in several areas within Niigata Prefecture has risen or fallen significantly or even moved horizontally.

According to the GPS (Global Positioning System) observations made by Japan’s Geographical Survey Institute, Ojiya City has risen by an average of 24 cm, while the Sumon and Yamato regions have sunk by nine centimeters and four centimeters, respectively. Also, Sumon has shifted horizontally by 20 cm to the northwest, while Ojiya has moved by roughly nine centimeters.

Experts say that the severe geological shifts are caused by the fact that the active fault is as high as 2.8 km below the earth’s surface in this area.

Takahan Hotel in Echigo Yuzawa, in which Kawabata Yasunari both wrote and set his Nobel Prize-winning novel “Snow Country,” was also damaged in the earthquake.

Echigo Yuzawa is a famous hot springs resort. The corridor walls of the historic hotel’s main building collapsed during the earthquake, and the porcelain ware on display fell to the floor and shattered.

A substantial number of companies in the Niigata Prefecture have ceased operations, and the resulting economic impact to the region is expected to be considerable. Among the businesses currently shut down are Matsushita Electric’s LSI (Large-Scale Integration) chips factory, Sanyo Electronic’s Niigata plant, and a paper mill.

Hun-Joo Cho hanscho@donga.com