Can Japan triumph in tragedy? Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has described the catastrophic combination of earthquakes, tsunami and nuclear meltdown as the biggest crisis the country has had to face since the end of World War II which was brought to an apocalyptic end with the atomic fireballs mushrooming over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs - codenamed Fat Boy and Thin Man - took a death toll of between 1,50,000 and 2,40,000 human lives; nature's fury has claimed over 10,000 victims, showing that at its very worst the destructive force of the natural world is far surpassed by the deadly ferocity of man's violence against man.
The economic loss caused by destruction of property and infrastructure cannot even begin to be calculated as yet. In the midst of this appalling devastation it might seem like an obscene joke to suggest that a tragedy of this magnitude could possibly be turned eventually into a triumph.
Yet curiously enough, time and again, not just the human spirit but also the laws of economics have proved amazingly resilient in the face of the most terrible of adversities, when widespread destruction has been taken as a challenge and an opportunity to rebuild with renewed enterprise and determination. The Gujarat earthquake of 2001 is an example. Surat, which was almost totally destroyed in the quake, sprang up out of the killer earth in a rejuvenated avatar, cleaner, better planned and more prosperous than ever before. Indeed, some might attribute the rise of Gujarat as an economic super-state more to the seismic upheaval than to Narendra Modi.
In a paradox that is both cruel and kind, destruction spurs reconstruction and acts as a stimulus for economic enterprise. Surveys have shown that, more often than not, stock markets which crash immediately in the wake of a catastrophe tend to gain new highs shortly after as work of rebuilding begins, generating large-scale production and employment.
History reveals many such examples. The great fire which destroyed almost all of London in the 17th century - an eyewitness account of which is vividly presented in Samuel Pepys's famous diary - turned out in the long run to be more of a blessing than a bane. The conflagration scoured the city of the filthy, crowded hovels which were inevitable breeding places for plague-carrying rats and other disease-bearing vermin. Rebuilt, London came into its own as one of the biggest and richest cities in the world. The gilded Monument in the City of London commemorates the Great Fire and its triumphant aftermath.
Similarly, the great fire that engulfed Chicago in 1871 - caused according to folklore by the twitching tail of a cow which knocked over an oil lantern and set ablaze a pile of hay - was seized by the 'City of Broad Shoulders', as poet Carl Sandberg would later describe it, as an opportunity to recreate itself in a new, innovative image. Their thriving city of cattle stockyards and grain silos reducing to smouldering ruin, Chicago's civic leaders invited architects from the world over to submit their most imaginative designs for its rebuilding. That's how what was billed as the world's first 'skyscraper' - at that time, a building 10 storeys tall - came up in Chicago, renowned today both for its robust local economy and the elegance of its architecture.
Japan itself - the only country in the world to have been the target of not one but two nuclear attacks - rose phoenix-like out of the ashes of a world war and went on to become a globally acclaimed 'economic miracle', the Land of the Rising Sony, a synonym for inventive industry. Today, Japan is once again a deeply wounded victim of malign forces. Will it once again overturn disaster into remarkable victory? It can and it will, because it must. Not just for its own sake, but for the sake of that single fragile and yet indestructible bond that links humankind together: a bond and a lifeline called hope.
The economic loss caused by destruction of property and infrastructure cannot even begin to be calculated as yet. In the midst of this appalling devastation it might seem like an obscene joke to suggest that a tragedy of this magnitude could possibly be turned eventually into a triumph.
Yet curiously enough, time and again, not just the human spirit but also the laws of economics have proved amazingly resilient in the face of the most terrible of adversities, when widespread destruction has been taken as a challenge and an opportunity to rebuild with renewed enterprise and determination. The Gujarat earthquake of 2001 is an example. Surat, which was almost totally destroyed in the quake, sprang up out of the killer earth in a rejuvenated avatar, cleaner, better planned and more prosperous than ever before. Indeed, some might attribute the rise of Gujarat as an economic super-state more to the seismic upheaval than to Narendra Modi.
In a paradox that is both cruel and kind, destruction spurs reconstruction and acts as a stimulus for economic enterprise. Surveys have shown that, more often than not, stock markets which crash immediately in the wake of a catastrophe tend to gain new highs shortly after as work of rebuilding begins, generating large-scale production and employment.
History reveals many such examples. The great fire which destroyed almost all of London in the 17th century - an eyewitness account of which is vividly presented in Samuel Pepys's famous diary - turned out in the long run to be more of a blessing than a bane. The conflagration scoured the city of the filthy, crowded hovels which were inevitable breeding places for plague-carrying rats and other disease-bearing vermin. Rebuilt, London came into its own as one of the biggest and richest cities in the world. The gilded Monument in the City of London commemorates the Great Fire and its triumphant aftermath.
Similarly, the great fire that engulfed Chicago in 1871 - caused according to folklore by the twitching tail of a cow which knocked over an oil lantern and set ablaze a pile of hay - was seized by the 'City of Broad Shoulders', as poet Carl Sandberg would later describe it, as an opportunity to recreate itself in a new, innovative image. Their thriving city of cattle stockyards and grain silos reducing to smouldering ruin, Chicago's civic leaders invited architects from the world over to submit their most imaginative designs for its rebuilding. That's how what was billed as the world's first 'skyscraper' - at that time, a building 10 storeys tall - came up in Chicago, renowned today both for its robust local economy and the elegance of its architecture.
Japan itself - the only country in the world to have been the target of not one but two nuclear attacks - rose phoenix-like out of the ashes of a world war and went on to become a globally acclaimed 'economic miracle', the Land of the Rising Sony, a synonym for inventive industry. Today, Japan is once again a deeply wounded victim of malign forces. Will it once again overturn disaster into remarkable victory? It can and it will, because it must. Not just for its own sake, but for the sake of that single fragile and yet indestructible bond that links humankind together: a bond and a lifeline called hope.
