The major highway that runs through the most affected Tohoku region was reopened only two weeks after the earthquake.
It will be a big missed opportunity if the plans do not create more vibrant places, with facilities for elderly people, jobs for the young, and new ways of enticing visitors.As well as revitalising devastated Tohoku, this public spending should benefit the whole economy in 2012.
Places like Tokyo, with their vast needs, could use a variety of sources.As for Tohoku, some believe that it should set the tone for a national energy policy that is increasingly self-reliant and efficient.
Cutting the red tape that ties up construction projects could speed up the creation of all sorts of businesses.The most substantial change could be to make Tohoku a free-trade area.
I'd like to come up with a way to build inexpensive but not cheap—sustainable, collaboratively designed homes using alternative energy, solar and wind.Not to be disrespectful of the Tohoku disaster, but while there I had a foretaste of how a ruined earth might appear.
If the onerous rules on converting farmland to other uses were waived in Tohoku, land (often wrongly) suspected of being contaminated from the nuclear leak could be turned into fields of money-spinning solar panels.
But he must get around such pettiness.In this section The world's most dangerous border Damned On a mission Don't bully Boeing, Barack There is no alternative Reprints Related items Japan's post-quake economy: Casting about for a futureMay 19th 2011Carpe DietTo do so, Mr Kan needs to craft a message as substantial as the challenges Tohoku faces.
The government may end up on the hook for many of its liabilities, but a break-up could help spur long-overdue deregulation of the energy sector.More broadly, Mr Kan should seize the national mood of solidarity with Tohoku to persuade people to accept difficult reforms.
He has yet to spell out deregulatory proposals that would encourage private companies to invest, in Tohoku and elsewhere.His excuse is politics: with a divided Diet, it is tough to be bold.
In Tohoku the outflow of young people has been accelerated by the disaster, which destroyed local industries.
Private economists are forecasting a boom in 2012 and 2013, as the rebuilding of the devastated Tohoku region in north-eastern Japan acts as a big stimulus, which will offset slower growth in America and Europe.
