The government set a 10-year period of intensive efforts for reconstruction from the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. In three years, the Reconstruction Agency, launched in 2012 to take charge of rebuilding the areas devastated by the disasters, is set to be abolished. Of course, reconstruction efforts will likely not be over by 2021, and the government will consider a successor organization to take over the agency's function. What's important will be for the government to turn the experience of the post-3/11 reconstruction efforts into know-how to be shared and utilized in responding to and recovering from future disasters.

Seven years after the tragic events of 3/11, infrastructure destroyed or damaged in the disasters has been mostly rebuilt. In the most heavily hit prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima, 99 percent of damaged national roads have been restored and services have resumed on 97 percent of the railway networks. Construction of public housing for people made homeless is 94 percent done. Projects to develop elevated land for housing in coastal communities ruined by the tsunami are 80 percent finished.

Progress on reconstruction varies among the affected municipalities, however. Along with the degree of devastation from the disasters, choices made by municipal governments and local residents on how to rebuild their tsunami-ravaged land and communities have resulted in some mixed outcomes. For example, projects to build up land in tsunami-flooded coastal towns took time — and when they were finally completed, the number of former residents and shop proprietors who returned was significantly fewer than anticipated.