The other day there was another bomb alert in northern Japan, on a Thursday morning in April. Only for half an hour, because the authorities quickly determined that the reported North Korean test rocket did not fly over Japanese territory after all. But that was enough to raise important questions about missile protection in the island state again. Firstly, how seriously do you have to take the so-called J-Alert after there had already been two false warnings in the fall? Second, if it is serious and one really needs to shelter “in a preferably sturdy building or underground” – where exactly is that shelter supposed to take place?
These are troubled times in the Pacific region. Armed China could one day take Taiwan. North Korea’s party dictator regularly fires test missiles. And the peace-loving neighbor Japan is just realizing that 78 years after the Second World War it has no real concept against air raids. The government in Tokyo has said that basements provide better protection against bombs than structures above ground. But this razor-sharp insight doesn’t sit well with Japanese reality.
In Europe, it’s hard to imagine a country not having cellars. There the cellar is an institution, tried and tested as a wine depot, hobby room, marriage-preserving refuge. But in Japan, cellars are actually rare. Because of the hot, humid summers, people traditionally value draft here. They built on stilts or stone foundations. Keller practically did not provide for the building code. It’s different today, but basement construction is not standard and therefore expensive.
City dwellers often have shopping centers with basements or subway stations nearby. In the country, on the other hand, many cannot do anything with the request to crawl underground. And that’s not just because there aren’t any basement apartments. In March, the Kyodo news agency reported after a self-conducted survey: “Only four percent of the evacuation sites designated by local governments in Japan as missile shelters are underground.” In Akita Prefecture, the underground shelters were counted particularly quickly: there weren’t any.
The topic is urgent. A specialist group in Parliament will soon present a law to remedy the situation. Their first plan is to use existing basements for emergencies, following the example of Taiwan and Singapore. If you don’t want to wait, you can help yourself. Since Russia went to war in Ukraine, the Ibaraki-based company Nao Engineering has recorded increasing sales of its Crisis-01 product, a bomb shelter in a practical courtyard format.
The steel capsule is the size of a walk-in closet, is atomic bomb-proof and equipped with a filter system from Israel that keeps out poison gas and radioactivity. Cost: six million yen before installation, the equivalent of 40,700 euros. But the box can be used not only in war. The manufacturer recommends setting it up comfortably for relaxing moments. Perhaps one day the Hofbunker will be to the Japanese what the basement is to the Germans.