Something so immense has befallen Japan that it almost defies contemplation, let alone expression. It is a watershed event, shattering lives and the ground they are lived on; challenging also one of the unspoken (and unproven) assumptions underlying civilized life — that konton (混沌, chaos) is the stuff of nightmares, not waking reality.

It is surreal to recall now the major news story immediately prior to the Higashi Nihon Dai Shinsai (東日本大震災, East Japan Great Earthquake). It concerned (you're forgiven if you've forgotten) a 19-year-old yobikōsei (予備校生, prep school student) caught kanningu (カンニング, cheating) in a nyūgaku shiken (入学試験, college entrance exam).

Japan has astonished the world before, and is astonishing the world now. How reisei (冷静, calm) the hisaisha (被災者, victims) seem in the midst of their crushing adversity. Thousands dead, tens of thousands missing, hundreds of thousands homeless — and yet chitsujo (秩序, order) remains intact. Ryakudatsu (略奪, looting), the first thing you hear about in almost any natural disaster once the numb shock wears off, hardly happens here at all. Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye, coiner of the term "soft power," meaning moral influence, said Japan's soft power, long at a low ebb, might rise on account of the extraordinary example it is setting.