Why is Japan the World Leader in Disaster Resilience? Decoding Lessons on Designing Life, Cities, and Society to Stand Firm When the World Shakes

Few nations face a landscape of risk as relentless as Japan. Earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, and floods are unavoidable realities of life on the archipelago. Yet, what is truly remarkable is that Japan does not merely "survive" these threats, it “thrives” alongside them.

In this article, Techsauce explores the Japanese approach to disaster management—a model that propels the country forward amidst uncertainty. We dive into these insights through the lens of Professor Miho Mazereeuw, a director at the MIT Urban Risk Lab who has studied Japan through an ethnographic lens for over 20 years and authored the book "Design Before Disaster: Japan's Culture of Preparedness."

We seek to answer: What makes Japan so resilient, and what can Thailand learn from the recent flood crisis in Hatyai?

‘Resilience Culture’: The Heart of Survival

Prof. Miho Mazereeuw explains that the key to Japan’s survival is a ‘Resilience Culture’ woven into every fabric of society—from the spiritual level down to physical infrastructure. This is a central theme systematically detailed in her latest book.

Her inspiration stems from personal trauma: the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake (Kobe Earthquake). The disaster devastated Kobe, including her parents' workplace, and forced Japanese society to realize a painful truth:

Engineering alone cannot solve everything. Without supporting ‘cultural and community systems,’ recovery cannot be sustainable. True recovery relies on the decision-making of local people.

This realization drove her to establish the Urban Risk Lab at MIT to bridge innovation, experimentation, and on-the-ground community engagement. After countless field studies, she concludes that Japan’s success comes from accepting a fundamental reality:

“We cannot eliminate disasters, but we can design life to coexist with them safely.”

Seikatsu Bōsai: When Preparedness is a Lifestyle

The core of this Resilience Culture is a concept known as Seikatsu Bōsai (Daily Life + Disaster Prevention). Japan doesn’t wait for the sirens to wail before acting; they have embedded preparedness into their lifestyle and traditions for centuries.

Traditional Flood-Proof Community Design (Waju)

Since the Edo period, communities have utilized ring-shaped levee systems to protect settlements. Houses were designed with flow-through capabilities to allow water to pass without destroying the structure. They featured elevated storage rooms for valuables, pulley systems to hoist ancestral shrines into attics, and small boats kept permanently under the eaves.

Religious Traditions Designed for Safety

Shrines are often constructed on hillsides. Cultural festivals frequently involve parading sacred objects up these hills, naturally familiarizing locals with evacuation routes. During the 2011 tsunami in Minamisanriku, many lives were saved simply because people evacuated to these shrines, a route ingrained in their muscle memory.

Dual-Use Architecture In urban management

Japan employs Dual-Use Design principles: structures must function effectively in times of peace and times of crisis.

Schools: Suginami Elementary School in Tokyo is designed with zones corresponding to residential neighborhoods. This ensures that when evacuated, neighbors stay together, reducing stress and making community care easier.

Commercial Spaces as Shelters: The Aeon mall group allocates vast spaces as official evacuation sites without disrupting business, building immense public trust. Similarly, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo has an MOU with the government to transform into an evacuation center instantly, utilizing hotel staff’s hospitality skills to manage displaced persons.

Super-Levees: Massive river embankments where the top surface is developed into parks and housing. These serve as recreational spaces daily and critical high-ground shelters during floods.

5 Principles of Anticipatory Design: Designing Before the Disaster

To reduce urban vulnerability, Prof. Miho proposes integrating Adaptation, Mitigation, and Preparedness into the disaster lifecycle through five key principles:

1. Top-down and Bottom-up Placemaking: Collaboration between the state and the community is vital. For example, the COPIN (Community-led Preparedness Intervention) project by the Urban Risk Lab in Thailand uses LINE Chatbots and RiskMaps to gather data on local resources and community leaders. This identifies adaptation opportunities at the local level that government maps often miss.
2. Social and Spatial Integration: We must build people along with the city. This means training citizens to use infrastructure so that when a crisis hits, these tools are used to their full potential.
3. Everyday and Disaster Dual Use: Infrastructure must be part of daily life so that its emergency use becomes intuitive and instinctive.
4. Engineering and Ecology: Stop fighting nature; instead, use engineering designs that work in harmony with the ecosystem.
5. Holistic Disaster Cycle: Disaster design must view the entire cycle—from immediate response and recovery to future mitigation. All teams must communicate; silos must be broken.

Lessons from the Hatyai Crisis and Thailand’s Path to Immunity

The Hatyai flood crisis of November 2025 exposed critical weaknesses in Thailand’s disaster response system: outdated designs, the loss of water retention areas, and a lack of social and spatial integration.

Prof. Miho identifies urgent flaws Thailand must address, particularly the lack of proper urban planning, which has led to development in unsafe zones like wetlands. She also emphasizes the need for quick and clear communication—translating technical disaster levels into everyday context so citizens can make faster evacuation decisions.

“Instead of looking at maps, people understand better if they see physical spaces they know.”

When asked how Thailand should adapt, she suggests leveraging the country’s strengths: traditional wisdom and strong social networks. These should be integrated with modern design, reinforced by a mindset of personal responsibility. We must balance progress with self-reliance and embed Seikatsu Bōsai principles into our education system and daily lives.

“Every $1 invested in resilience today prevents up to $33 in future economic losses.”

Prof. Miho views investment in “design before disaster” not as a cost, but as an investment in stable economic growth. It is the only way to transform our nation into a resilient society, ready to stand firm against the next wave of natural disasters.