Japan spent mightily to soften nature's wrath, but can it ever be enough?

NAGANUMA, JAPAN - The time was 1:30am, and Hiroshi Ogawa was trying to decide whether he should run from the biggest typhoon to hit Japan in decades.

The levee, in an area northwest of Tokyo, was one of at least 55 breached as Typhoon Hagibis dumped record-breaking rains on Japan last weekend, with more than 70 people dying in the storm and floodwaters hitting more than 10,000 homes. Even so, he said,"realistically, there will be rains you can't defend against". That has not always been the view of the Japanese government. For centuries, it has seen disaster management as a problem to be solved by engineering.

The heavy investment in infrastructure has not come without a cost. The spending has helped send Japan's national debt to record highs, as the country has approved many projects that turned out to be minimally effective or, at worst, damaging to the environment. 'BETTER TO FLEE' "Why would you possibly leave when you have this system set up to protect you?" he said."Why go anywhere? It's a moral hazard when you believe the systems in place will protect you more than the process of fleeing, which is of course what we really want."

But planners now imagine a much worse scenario: 40cm of rain over two days, resulting in more than a dozen levee breaches and leaving Naganuma drowning under nearly 20m of water. "We have to move forward with the understanding that no matter what's installed, there will be a flood that it can't defend against," Okamoto said. The government needs to shift its focus to"doing public relations work so that people will evacuate" during floods, he said, adding,"It's hard to get them to run.

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