ABSTRACT
While history may repeat itself, it does not always do so, as Karl Marx once said, fi rst as tragedy, then as comedy. Anyone who watched the unfolding of the 2011 Tōhoku disaster on the television screen will feel a shock of recognition when looking at the photographs of the 1891 Nōbi Earthquake or newsreels of the 1923 Kantō Earthquake. One sees the same desolate landscapes, the same shattered structures, the same rising columns of smoke, the same piles of splintered wood and rubble, and the same dazed and frightened faces. The visual evidence vividly illustrates how often history as tragedy has repeated itself.
