ABSTRACT
Five months after the devastating earthquake and tsunami the Japanese public remains largely discontent with the pace of reconstruction progress and the national government’s response to the dire needs of the multitude of communities heavily impacted by the disaster. Frustration grew to outright dismay when Matsumoto Ryū, the minister responsible for leading reconstruction in the devastated northeast coast resigned in early July, just nine days in the job, over a scandal in which he was videotaped berating the governor of one of the worst hit prefectures for arriving a few minutes late to a meeting to discuss the recovery e ort. Accompanied with threats to the local media not to print the altercation, Matsumoto sealed his fate and added further complications to the Kan government’s e orts to accelerate progress in dealing with the displaced and dispossessed (Nakamoto 2011). An impatient construction industry is also decrying the slow pace of reconstruction, blaming local governments for delaying e orts to draw up plans for housing and social infrastructure projects, the surplus in construction materials inventory and postponement of the much anticipated reconstruction-led boom (Nikkei 2011).1
