Not everything in Tokyo is back to normal. Office workers complain that the corridors of their buildings are so dark, the result of electricity-saving measures, that they fail to recognise colleagues in the gloom. One man was spotted on the subway, also less bright than usual, wearing a miner’s hat with torch attached, the better to read his newspaper. There are fewer foreigners on the streets, since many who fled in the immediate aftermath of the March 11 earthquake have not returned. And shops have taken to selling unusual items: one was offering “ice-touch underpants” for the hot, non-air-conditioned summer that descended with a vengeance on the capital this week.
But three months after the triple calamity of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, Tokyo is gradually regaining some sense of equilibrium. Shops are well stocked. Water is back on the shelves after briefly running out in panic buying. Remarkably too, given the disruption to the supply chain and the severity of power shortages, economists are predicting that industrial production will regain pre-crisis levels in the next few months. For Japan as a whole – if not for the Tohoku region, where 22,000 are dead or missing – the immediate sense of crisis is over.
Many Japanese think that is not altogether a good thing. Japan has a long history of overcoming crises. But to overcome a crisis, one has to have a sense of one.