Issue:
October 2026
Japan’s disaster resilience is being tested again as aging residents raise the stakes
Kumamoto Prefecture has been battered by two major earthquakes in ten years, alongside severe rain and flood disasters in 2020, 2022, and 2025. Some residents are still struggling to recover from the previous magnitude-6.2 earthquake, which destroyed or damaged 71,000 homes.
The July 28 Kumamoto earthquake struck while some residents were still repaying loans taken out to rebuild after the massive earthquake in 2016, former Internal Affairs Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told the FCCJ on Sept. 1, the 103rd anniversary of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake.
The Age Factor
Kumamoto’s aging population is among the hardest hit in the earthquake's aftermath. An initial disaster can be followed by what experts call a “second disaster,” in which poor shelter conditions, delays in repairs and disaster certification, and shortages of temporary housing can worsen health problems.
In the two months since the quake, roughly 1,500 residents remain in shelters. Many others have chosen to live in damaged homes or sleep in cars. The earthquake also damaged more than 900 elderly care facilities across Kumamoto. The demographic challenge is particularly acute in Kumamoto, where roughly one in three residents is 65 or older. About 557,000 of the prefecture’s 1.68 million residents fall into that age group, according to local government data.
Seniors are vulnerable to heat stroke and dehydration as many of the public school gymnasiums and other facilities that have been designated as evacuation shelters lack air conditioning.
A few days after the earthquake, a woman in her 70s died while sheltering in her car as temperatures climbed to 38.9 degrees Celsius. Her vehicle ran out of gas, leaving her without air conditioning. Some residents felt sheltering in cars was “unavoidable” because electricity and water were disrupted. Power was restored by Aug. 6.
A System Under Strain
Japan’s disaster response depends heavily on local governments. But municipalities struggle to respond to emergencies because, among other reasons, local officials also become displaced.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs coordinates the deployment of local government staff from outside disaster-hit areas, but Japan’s decentralized fire services, which are run by individual municipalities, can complicate the response.
Up to 9,000 support personnel were dispatched to Kumamoto from every prefecture of Japan. Hayashi, who visited the region in August, said lessons learned from the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes helped the government deploy personnel more quickly.
Japan is known for its evacuation drills, strict building codes and flood protection in big cities. But it's no longer just about disaster preparedness. There are growing concerns about whether towns have the staff, money and up-to-date infrastructure to ensure that essential services are up and running after a natural disaster.
Water service was restored across Kumamoto on Aug. 28, a month after the earthquake. But repairs exposed the prefecture’s aging infrastructure. Crews found that municipal records were inconsistent with conditions underground, and the types of pipes installed. They also discovered a large number of pipes that were not quake-resistant, according to Nikkei. Hayashi said the government is looking at how to maintain disaster-response capabilities in communities where populations are shrinking and aging.
Japan’s new land minister Tatsunori Ibayashi said his first priority will be to “do everything possible for disaster response.”
“The greatest strengths of the ministry are its on-the-ground capabilities and its overall strength. I will make maximum use of them,” he said at his first press conference on Sept.18
The Takaichi administration plans to establish a Disaster Management Agency in November, giving Japan a central command center for major emergencies. The new agency is intended to improve coordination in Japan’s fragmented disaster-response system, where responsibilities are spread across multiple agencies and local governments.
But the concerns go deeper than bureaucratic silos. Experts say Japan’s disaster response is built around short-term recovery, rather than a forward-looking, evidence-based strategy that accounts for climate change, aging residents, a shrinking local workforce and deteriorating infrastructure.
Japan has decades of experience rebuilding after disasters. The harder task is investing before the next one strikes.
Thisanka Siripala is an Australian-Sri Lankan journalist and data journalism graduate student at Columbia University
