In a recent report weighing responses to major Nankai Trough quakes, which will affect vast areas of the Pacific coast stretching from Shizuoka to Kyushu, a panel of experts from the government's Central Disaster Management Council said it is difficult to predict the occurrence of an earthquake with a high degree of certainty. It thus called for a review of anti-disaster measures based on the assumption that quake forecasts are possible — an idea presumed by the Law On Special Measures Concerning Countermeasures for Large-Scale Earthquakes. The panel's new position represents a step in the right direction because past experience, including the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and the Kumamoto quakes of 2016, suggests that it is impossible to predict major quakes.

At the same time, the report called on the government to work out a system for advance evacuations in case such phenomena as crustal movements and foreshocks that can be linked to major quakes are detected. The government plans to launch a project to choose several model districts in areas that can be potentially hit by Nankai Trough quakes and study procedures for evacuations before the quakes hit.

The panel fell short of calling for abolishing the law on large-scale earthquakes, putting off a conclusion on the matter. What the government should do, however, is scrap the law and divert the funding, manpower and administrative energy spent on quake forecasts to beefing up disaster response measures to get people to be better prepared to cope with big quakes that can strike out of the blue.