The Land of the Rising Sun copes with seismic shakes some 1,500 times a year. The Sendai temblor and tsunami on March 11 were unquestionably disastrous—about 18,400 killed, an escalating nuclear crisis, $235 billion in estimated damage—but the catastrophe would have been orders of magnitude worse were it not for Japan’s long history of seismic science and ultra-preparedness.