Even from the air, you could tell that Tokyo had in just 24 hours become a distant cousin of its usual self: deserted, tacit and dehumanised like the cardboard Tokyo sets of Godzilla movies before the improbable monster rampages into sight.
The mighty Aqualine – a combination of bridges and tunnels that would normally be full of golfers on their way to Chiba that is the most expensive strip of motorway ever constructed - was completely empty. Factories stretched away across Kawasaki without a single chimney in visible operation. And eeriest of all were the scores, perhaps hundreds of massive ships anchored silently in Tokyo bay unable to deliver or receive the huge cargoes that propel the world’s third biggest economy.
And once on the ground, the unease was all the more tangible. At Hamamatsucho station in central Tokyo, a 29-year old hairdresser howled in exasperation when an empty ATM failed to dish out the cash she needed to get home. A couple crouched on blankets in an alley discussing where they could find lunch. Two women flicked through news on their mobiles and spoke of “heading south” to avoid radiation from the nuclear power plant Fukushima that had suffered an explosion.
Many, having finally made it home after a night camped in offices or stations, stayed with their families: transfixed by the unrelenting misery on their televisions – towns and villages with barely a structure left standing and all with that same terrifying void of visible activity which portends huge eventual losses. Occasionally, popping out from the rubble you could see known shop signs – the familiar brands of every Japanese shopping street reminding people just how quickly nature can switch mundane life into a twisted, shattered nightmare.
Equally soul destroying was the evidence of economic destruction. The area affected was not a pre-eminent dynamo of Japanese industry, but Toyota, Honda and other huge Japanese manufacturers admitted today that they will have to suspend national operations from Monday: the “just in time” component delivery networks that lie at the heart of the Japanese manufacturing miracle have been knocked hideously out of shape by Friday’s calamity. Again, the story was told through the fate of huge merchant ships – in one case four of them smashed together and stranded high above the waterline.
Advertisement
Then, of course, there was the remorselessly grim progress of efforts to avert a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The broadcast of the explosion which blew off the roof of the reactor building, coupled with the news that iodine tablets were being handed out to civilians on the edge of the 20km evacuation zone, persuaded many that the situation was rapidly turning from a pure natural disaster to a radioactive panic.
Those very few who were out and about in Tokyo were struck by the spooky emptiness of the streets. Many shops and restaurants were closed; those that stayed open were occupied only by their own staff. Supermarkets and other stores were clear targets of panic buying. Bread, noodles, meat and tofu had already disappeared from the shelves of many larger stores and shoppers were left to compete for the remaining oddities.
Candles had completely sold out in many stores after electricity companies warned of potentially severe disruptions to supply as nuclear reactors boiled ominously in Fukushima. Hardware shops had sold out of torches and batteries.
And through it all, Tokyo continued to suffer heart-stopping chill of dozens of aftershocks – many of a strength that would normally have sent people ducking for cover. Some theorise that the combination of quakes on both east and west coasts of Japan now make a quake closer to Tokyo more likely.
Experts in tectonics know it is more complicated than that, but today none of that matters. After years anticipating something horrific, Tokyo has spent today staring a Big One in the face and deciding that nature could have plenty more Big Ones in store.