Every quarter the BOJ conducts a Tankan survey of sentiment among some 11,000 firms to discover their views on business conditions and economic prospects at present. The last such survey was in process when the earthquake and tsunami occurred, and the central bank has subsequently separated the reports filed before and after that date to divulge what impact the disaster has had on corporate confidence. The results are telling. Companies were becoming more sanguine in the early winter but then grew substantially more pessimistic in the last fortnight of March. The causes of this deterioration were the devastation itself but also the interruption of supply chains, the sudden decline in the availability of electricity, an inability to find the parts necessary to produce goods for export, and a fear that consumers will curtail their spending on goods and services. This last worry has been vindicated by polls of household confidence, which fell off sharply after the disasters. More recent research by media outlets indicates that even the results following the disasters are likely to have been too optimistic. The extent of the damage to the manufacturing sector and the power grid were not fully evident until after the central bank completed its analysis, but with more information available it is likely that the June Tankan will show a much sharper downturn in business sentiment. This is yet another reason to fear that the post-earthquake economic slowdown may last longer than the single quarter that many economists initially reckoned.