The earthquake hit in the early afternoon off the coast of Honshu, Japan’s most populous island, triggering unprecedented destruction. Ninety percent of the houses in a score of seaside towns collapsed in seconds. Passenger trains fell off railway bridges and plunged into the sea. A few minutes later, a 35-foot-high tsunami rolled in, sweeping away cars, houses and thousands of people, and burying entire towns in mud. Then came fires, fanned by winds and fueled by flimsy wooden houses, reducing much of what remained to ashes.

The date was Sept. 1, 1923, and the event was the Great Kanto Earthquake, the worst calamity in Japan’s history. Largely forgotten, even by most Japanese, the quake leveled the great port city of Yokohama — home to a population of 5,000 expatriates — and burned down more than sixty percent of Tokyo. All told, 145,000 people died, including about 150 Americans, and some 40,000 mostly poor Japanese who were incinerated by a “dragon twist,” a freak tornado of fire that swept over a makeshift camp ground near Tokyo’s Sumida River. Read more…

TOKYO — As I type this at my home here, every television channel here is devoting almost all of its coverage to reports of the staggering damage caused by the earthquake that occurred Friday off the Pacific Coast of northeastern Japan. The shaking itself, and the tsunami and fires caused by the quake, have combined to cause staggering damage. Based on past experience, it will be several days before the scale of the disaster fully emerges, as communication with the most damaged areas is still cut off.

The largest earthquakes occur where plates converge. Stress builds up, and from time to time is released by large earthquakes like this one. Earthquakes roughly comparable in size to Friday’s have occurred four other times in the past 100 years: 1952 off Kamchatka, Russia; 1960 off Chile; 1964 off Alaska; and 2004 off Sumatra, Indonesia. Unfortunately, predicting the specific time, place, and size of particular large earthquakes is impossible at present, and is probably inherently impossible. Read more…

TOKYO — The first thing I was worried about was where to put my tea. I’d been sitting on the heated carpet in my apartment, working on a blog post about Japanese chewing gum. I stood up few seconds after the room started to sway. The TV was jumping. Buildings outside were swaying. A six-foot tall cabinet full of books was rocking. Things were falling in the kitchen and water was sloshing over the edge of the balcony, spilling from something above. I moved out from under the light fixtures and held onto a small table. I wanted to put down my tea cup, but there were no stable surfaces. Things were sliding around the floor.

After maybe three long minutes of shaking, it stopped and I tried to call my boyfriend, Jim, at work. The phone didn’t ring. It didn’t make any sounds at all. I tried a few times and gave up. I sent text messages to say I was O.K. and to ask how he was, knowing they probably wouldn’t go through.

Then I turned to Twitter. When there’s a quake, everyone who uses Twitter tends to tweet about it. (The United States Geological Survey has even announced that it will start monitoring these reports as part of its surveillance.) This time I waited until the first round of shaking had died down. Then I wrote: “That rearranged my kitchen.” It had. Drawers were open. Bottles had hit the floor. Read more…

TOKYO — I looked at my co-workers and then dove for cover. I thought that’s what one did during an earthquake. But no matter how I contorted my 6’3” frame, my legs jutted out from under my child-sized desk. The shaking lasted a long time. I prayed it would end, hoped it wouldn’t get worse. To calm myself, I thought about my niece and nephew back in Maryland.

When I finally emerged, a colleague told me that the earthquake was centered in northern Japan. Peering at her computer screen, I fixated on a news report’s color coded map of the country. The north was red; Tokyo was orange. (May I never know what red feels like.)

It was only about 3 p.m., but I asked my colleagues if they were leaving. They didn’t know. One asked me if I’d heard the warning on the loudspeaker two minutes before the quake. But as a foreigner who is struggling to learn Japanese, I hadn’t noticed it, or didn’t understand. I began to fear that I was missing the information I needed to make an educated decision on what to do. No one else had a clear plan either. Then the ground shook again.

Another colleague told me that it wasn’t an aftershock, but another quake, closer to Tokyo this time, but still not as bad as the 1923 quake that devastated the region. After the ground settled, I was amazed to find that none of my co-workers were leaving the office. I couldn’t tell if it was dedication to work, fear or confidence that the worst was behind us. I feared it was only indecision; I left. Read more…

BEIRUT — On the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 11, I received a text message from a colleague. The dinner she was hosting would be delayed a hour “on account of revolution.” The delay was not a surprise since everyone I know had been riveted by the dramatic events shaking the Arab world. As scholars of Middle East politics and culture we have been following them since long before 9/11. And in recent weeks, we have formed a transnational social network tracking, taking part in and commenting on events in real time.

Like most of our American academic friends, both my wife and I have lived in various countries in the Middle East — including Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. It was largely a desire to more closely follow and experience the ongoing geopolitical changes in the region that drove me last September to relocate from a previous academic position in Baltimore to the American University of Beirut. It is both challenging and exhilarating to teach international relations and U.S. foreign policy here. The students come from many different national backgrounds and political orientations. Lessons about war and geopolitical change are not abstractions here; they penetrate our fears and hopes on a daily basis.
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Mohamed El DahshanThe Mubarak subway station has been renamed “Martyrs of the Revolution of the 25th” by demonstrators.

CAIRO — The former president of Egypt was not the statue-building kind, or else we’d have already seen a few Baghdad-like images of marble icons being brought down by jubilant masses after his abdication on February 11. (Come to think of it, I wish we had a few statues to bring down.) But after three decades of rule, and with a particularly auspicious name — Mubarak means “blessed” — the number of buildings, roads and projects named after him is impressive; and as Egyptian society is endeavoring to repair the damage of his corrupt regime, it’s a different task altogether cleaning up the expressions of the blessed one’s megalomania.

For instance, the subway station underneath Ramses Square, Cairo’s most important transportation hub and home to the capital’s train station, is actually  — and confusingly  — named after the ex-president. There’s the Mubarak “axis” (a highway) and the Mubarak Bridge. There’s at least one Mubarak street in every city in Egypt. There’s a Mubarak Educational City in the suburb city of the 6th of October, and a Mubarak City for Science and Technology in the Mediterranean city of Burg El Arab, whose stadium is also called the Mubarak Stadium.
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CAIRO — The days of our revolution were given various and expressive names. Jan. 28 was the Friday of Rage; Feb. 2, the Day of the Camels, when we were attacked by N.D.P. thugs riding horses and camels; and of course Departure Friday, when we, well, gently nudged the president to pack up and leave.

Mohamed El Dahshan People in waving a gigantic Egyptian flag across Tahrir Square.

Most recently, Feb. 18 has been called Victory Friday by some, but it is difficult sum up this day in a single phrase. It was both joy and sorrow, mourning and celebration. I joined hundreds of thousands who took to the street today to commemorate our first Mubarak-free week, and to remind the military that we, the People, are watching their every move — as well as to pay respects to the friends we’ve lost throughout this revolution to the brutality of the police and its thugs.

Oh, and there were people selling flags of all sizes. And vuvuzelas. Which did not quite sound like the South African ones. At all. Many of the banners at the square had an unequivocally strong and optimistic tone. One small sign said “Egypt is better than Japan.”
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Mohamed El DahshanCairo, Feb. 3. The Egyptian army gained the trust of some by not using force against protesters.

CAIRO — In December 2007, six weeks before Kosovo’s independence I was privileged to sit in Pristina with a group of young, idealistic rising stars in the Kosovar political scene, as they tirelessly discussed their thoughts, hopes and plans for their nation to be born strong, democratic, dynamic, and politically mature. And I felt jealous. And I hoped I would, one day, I would too have such an animated discussion on the future of my country.

Fast forward to Feb. 11, 2011. Mubarak abdicates and, in the midst of our jubilation, Egyptians regain control over their country’s destiny. We are given the chance to shape our country into what we dreamt it could be.
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This is the writer’s third post from the Tahrir Square protests.

CAIRO — This was supposed to be Tunisia fast-forward.  It took them about a month to oust their president, but to some of us it felt like Mubarak had pretty much left the country on day one of the revolution.

For some, it was witnessing the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party ablaze in flames three days later.  For others, it was looking at the day-after images of violence in Tahrir, or watching Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who played a role in the the Facebook page that may have started it all, being interviewed on a private TV station. Ghonim spoke with a great deal of dignity and heroic self-effacement hours after having been released from prison, then broke down in tears and left the interview after hearing of those killed by the regime while he was in state custody. In short, the number of those of us inhabiting a post-Mubarak time zone has been increasing by day, no doubt about it. And yet, something is amiss.
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