Disaster contingency plans lagging to assist Tokyo's foreign visitors

With the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign tourists have been converging on Japan with a vengeance. Since visits to Japan have been made even more affordable thanks to the lowered value of the Japanese yen, from around last summer the neologism "enbound" (or yenbound) -- substituting the "in" in "inbound" with "en," which is how yen is pronounced in Japanese -- began appearing in the media.  

Unfortunately, there's a potential downside to the present tourist stampede. 

"If an earthquake were to occur directly beneath the capital," writes the Nikkei Marketing Journal (Dec 2), "major confusion would likely result, and for this reason there's need to plan for emergency measures specific to foreign visitors."

The way things stand now, such measures are clearly insufficient. Earlier this year, the Nikkei MJ's parent organization, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, conducted a survey of local governments to determine what measures, if any, had been put in place to assist foreign visitors in the event that Tokyo is struck by a powerful earthquake or other major natural disaster. Out of Tokyo's central 23 wards, only six -- Arakawa, Chiyoda, Chuo, Koto, Shibuya and Toshima -- gave positive responses. 

Reviewing what occurred in Tokyo following the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami on March 11, 2011, the greatest problem  was a breakdown in public transportation, which prevented millions of workers in the central parts of the city from returning home -- thereby transforming them into "disaster refugees." 

A 2022 projection estimated that a major temblor directly beneath the Tokyo metropolis could result in as many as 4.52 million people being stranded. In such an event, priority would be given to emergency vehicles, and the basic plan would urge people to stay in place and avoid unnecessary travel. 

Among visitors from abroad, one key concern would be that people who have not experienced earthquake phenomena in their own countries, such as swaying buildings and so on raises the possibility of their panicking, and this could be easily exacerbated by misunderstandings due to the language barrier. 

"Special, different types of assistance will be needed for foreign visitors,"  Sunkyong Choi, a special lecturer at Institute of Science Tokyo told Nikkei MJ. 

A pressing issue relates to providing instructions on how to evacuate. It is widely known among Japanese that in the event of a disaster, people should evacuate to nearby schools. For those not aware of this, evacuation is likely to be difficult. 

According to the Nikkei survey results, all of Tokyo's 23 wards have multilingual websites, but only six wards operate tourist information centers, and two wards have telephone call centers. None of the six are prepared to send vehicles equipped with loudspeakers onto the streets. 

"It's the role of local governments to issue detailed information immediately following a disaster," Professor Choi insists.  

Another problem is that personnel available to assist in such tasks are limited. Tokyo's Arakawa Ward informed the Nikkei that "Working in cooperation with the police, we can direct people to temporary facilities, but doing this in multiple foreign languages will be difficult." 

Chuo Ward noted that "Smooth evacuation guidance requires community-wide efforts that involve railway operators, private businesses and others."

In its response to the survey, Toshima Ward noted that "it's difficult to obtain a grasp of the number of travelers present at any given moment, because their numbers vary widely, depending on the day of the week or time of day."

Other localities are not entirely without measures. Tokyo's Taito Ward, for example, has collaborated with the Asakusa Sightseeing Information group to conduct annual disaster drills. Foreign students at Japanese-language schools have been enlisted to advise visitors on how to  evacuate. Intuitive multilingual signs directing people to safe areas in the event of disasters have also been posted.

As travel restrictions due to the COVID pandemic gradually lifted, visitors to Tokyo from abroad increased sharply this calendar year. The 5.57 million visitors  who came during the January-March period represented a 34% rise over the same period of 2019. 

Seismologists have projected a 70% chance of a major earthquake hitting the capital within the next 30 years. 

By the end of the present decade, Tokyo anticipates 30 million annual visitors, a 50% rise over 2023. In order to attract foreign visitors to Japan as a travel destination, the article concludes, it will necessary to create measures and conduct repeated drills so that people will feel they can evacuate safely in the event of an emergency. One idea being floated calls for the Tokyo metropolitan government and the 23 wards to work together, setting up a forum for discussions similar to what Yamanashi, Nagano, Shizuoka, and Niigata prefectures organized from October.

© Japan Today