Amid the scores of shoddily built high-rises connected to disgraced architect Hidetsugu Aneha, the fraud scandal may have had one positive outcome -- reawakening society's sense of urgency to prepare for a major earthquake.
"The Aneha fraud raised people's awareness of quake-resistance technologies," said Nagahide Kani, executive director of the Japan Society of Seismic Isolation, an industry group engaged in developing quake-resistant technology. The Aneha scandal that has rocked the nation involves the construction of dozens of structures built using faked quake-proofing data.
In the past year through October alone, Japan experienced more than 1,120 earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 4.