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unbearable’. That statement had been prompted by two nuclear bombs, which had made Japan’s surrender, and subsequent occupation, inevitable. More than six decades later, his son was confronting both a natural disaster and a nuclear one in similarly sombre tones. Dressed in a dark suit with black tie and seated before a wood-and-paper screen, Akihito spoke for six minutes. Coincidentally or not, that was the length of time the earth had shaken. ‘The number of people killed is increasing day by day and we do not know how many people have fallen victim,’ he said. ‘I pray for the safety of as many people as possible. People are being forced to evacuate in such severe conditions of bitter cold, with shortages of water and fuel.’ As to the gathering nuclear catastrophe, he professed deep concern. ‘I sincerely hope that we can keep the situation from getting worse,’ he offered. 1
    The situation behind the scenes was even more desperate than the emperor had let on. That morning, while my plane was still in the air, there had been a hydrogen explosion at the Fukushima plant, the third blast in as many days. Kan, the prime minister, a former social activist, marched into Tokyo Electric’s headquarters in central Tokyo. An investigation into the nuclear crisis later concluded that Kan had reacted with fury at suggestions by Tokyo Electric that it might abandon the plant altogether. 2 In an angry confrontation with thecompany’s president, Masataka Shimizu, the prime minister demanded ‘what the hell is going on?’ So dangerous was the situation that Kan began to discuss a worst-case scenario with his cabinet. If Fukushima Daiichi were abandoned, the plant might spiral out of control, forcing the evacuation of nearby plants and risking further meltdowns. Yukio Edano, the down-to-earth-looking chief cabinet secretary whose regular television appearances made him the face of the crisis, privately warned his colleagues of a ‘demonic chain reaction’ that might force the evacuation of the capital. ‘We would lose Fukushima Daini, then we would lose Tokai,’ he said, referring to two other plants. ‘If that happened, it was only logical to conclude that we would lose Tokyo itself.’ 3
    There was certainly a sense of buttoned-down fear in Tokyo, though no one at that point knew anything about the panicked deliberations going on inside the cabinet. Later there were rumours that some people with close government connections had quietly been tipped off to slip out of the city. Tokyo at night was stranger still than in the day. It was, as a colleague of mine wrote, like a city ‘operating on the lowest dimmer setting’. 4 Of all the cities in the world, Tokyo in normal times burns perhaps the brightest. The fashionable avenues of the Ginza and the teeming streets of Shibuya, Ikebukuro, Shinjuku and Akasaka are a blaze of neon. The roads are jammed with yellow, green and red cabs, the pavements clogged with swaying salarymen, office ladies and dolled-up bar hostesses in evening gowns. Now, they were shadowy and deserted. The sushi bars,
tonkatsu
pork cutlet outlets, the high-end and low-end restaurants, the holes in the wall, the noodle shops, the
izakaya
pubs, the clubs, the jazz bars, the karaoke lounges and the drinking establishments of this, the most bedazzling of night-time cities – all had closed up the shutters by eight or nine o’clock. This in a city that usually thrums until two or three in the morning. But in
setsuden
Tokyo, a few days after the quake, people hurried nervously home before the power failed or the trains stopped running. In one less than brightly lit subway carriage I spotted a man wearing a miner’s hat, with torch attached, the better to read his newspaper. Even the lights of Tokyo Tower, an Eiffel Tower lookalike that is a symbol of the city, were turned off. The antenna at the top, it was said, had been bent by the earthquake.
    That night, I telephoned an old friend, Shijuro Ogata. He