Japan deserves better - Telegraph Our young century has been battered by earthquakes, from Gujarat in 2001, through Bam, the South-East Asian tsunami, Kashmir, Sichuan and Haiti, to the tidal wave that struck north-eastern Japan a year ago yesterday. The last was not the most devastating in terms of casualties but more than any other has captured the imagination of the world. First, it was recorded on mobile phones in a way that no other natural disaster has been. Second, the damage done to the nuclear power station at Fukushima sent out shockwaves which, in the most extreme case, led Germany to order the closure of all its reactors by 2022. A year on from the Great East Japan Earthquake, the toll of dead and missing stands at about 20,000. More than 320,000 people are living in temporary housing. At Fukushima, radiation levels have dropped but the vulnerable plant must be kept stable for the decades it will take to decommission it. In the meantime, all but two of the country's reactors are closed for checks. The Japanese people have met this double catastrophe with admirable stoicism and, at times, heroism: remember the 50 workers at Fukushima who risked their lives to stabilise the stricken reactors. The same cannot be said for those in authority. Poor management at the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which ran the plant, failure to inform the public of what was happening, lack of liaison between government bodies and bureaucratic delays in producing a master plan for reconstruction can all be laid at their door. The tsunami has underlined a tragic truth at the heart of contemporary Japanese life: that a brave, ingenious, industrious people are being so badly served by their leaders. Such incompetence invites a political revolution that would sweep away a system which has long proved dysfunctional.