Although a tragedy for Japan and its people, the events set in train by the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11th have benefited the prime minister, Naoto Kan of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), in the narrow sense of preserving his premiership from the ignominious fall that had previously seemed imminent. A series of scandals and some political mistakes had eviscerated his public approval ratings, and analysts were arguing over whether he would be forced to retire in March, June or perhaps September. Whether his presumed fall would also spell the demise of the DPJ or whether that party would succeed in selecting a new leader who could muster more popular support was unclear. But once the disaster struck, the need for large-scale emergency relief and the containment of the radiation emanating from several damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was so overwhelming that both Mr Kan's rivals within the DPJ and the opposition parties felt compelled to postpone their assault on the prime minister and commit themselves to national unity and reconstruction. This gave Mr Kan a few more months in which to prove himself and his cabinet and, if successful in that regard, perhaps to extend his rule through the autumn and into next year. It even seemed possible that he might retain the premiership through the ruling party's next scheduled presidential election in September 2012. The crisis thus gave him a second, final chance to establish himself as a strong leader.

A "simple" combination of an earthquake and a tsunami would have been ideal from Mr Kan's perspective, at least in political terms, inasmuch as once such events have happened the damage is done and the rebuilding can begin. In such circumstances he might have taken control of the emergency relief operations, shepherded the requisite reconstruction legislation through the Diet (parliament), and then reaped the rewards when after a short interim the rate of economic growth accelerated. However, the nuclear dimension of the March incident makes the assertion of leadership significantly more difficult, as widespread radiation is a problem that cannot be remedied quickly and thus inflicts deeper and more lasting damage to corporate and household sentiment. In the event, the malfunction of the monitoring systems at the nuclear plant and the fact that workers could not access the actual reactors meant that Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), the company that owns the plant, and the government were not even aware of what was happening on the ground. This prevented Mr Kan from formulating, let alone conveying to the Japanese people, a clear definition of the problem along with a plan to resolve it. Then came the steady revelations that large doses of radiation had been released into the ocean, compromising the Tohoku region's fishing industry; that water in the capital, Tokyo, was showing slightly elevated levels of contamination; and that agricultural products from the affected area were unhealthily irradiated.

The decision of several other countries to ban temporarily the import of Japanese foodstuffs and of many foreign companies to fly the families of their employees in Tokyo out of the country likewise unsettled the nation and prevented the government from effectuating a bold, rapid recovery scheme. To the contrary, many Japanese wondered if their government was telling them the truth about the nuclear fallout-an impression precisely the opposite of that which Mr Kan wanted to produce.