“When my mother was 10, she was evacuated to Sendai and saw the whole town get bombed flat. My father experienced the big air-raids on Yokohama. Their generation started out when there was nothing left of Japan but smoking ruins. Don’t worry about us – we’ll definitely recover this time too.”
The earthquake which struck Japan on Friday with such devastating human cost was powerful enough to shift the earth’s on its axis and move the Japanese land mass six feet. It is human nature to assume that an event of such destructive force must have powerful lasting effects on stock markets too, but that is not necessarily the case.
Long-term residents of Tokyo tend to be blasé about earthquakes, but this one felt different right from the start. It announced itself with a thunderous jolt