Fukushima disaster has shown no sings of abating so far. Worse, radioactive water is leaking into the sea from the nuclear plants.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. or TEPCO, which operates Fukushima nuclear plants, is trying in vain to stem the flow by pouring concrete or sawdust into the contaminated pool. Japanese officials indicated that it takes a few months to quell the situation. So, radioactive water could keep on flowing into the sea for at least a few months, which might be enough to nurture Godzilla. It could not be so late for us to see real Godzilla come up from the sea, and deal a fatal blow to stupid human creation.


... and the story changes completely from here.

The markets completely shrugged off a report on Japan's industrial production, which advanced 0.4% in February from January. Analysts expected a slight drop. Also, the latest Tankan survey of the Bank of Japan, which captured business sentiment in March, had no impact on the markets at all, though it showed a sign of improvement from the previous quarter at least before the quake.

Despite of the markets' negligence, those figures indicate that Japan was on the course of robust economic recovery just before the quake. Unfortunately, the world has taken so dramatic a turn after the quake that the pre-quake figures have no meaning at all for now. The dull reaction in the markets is quite understandable given that everybody is seeking to gauge the impact of the quake on the economy.

It's too early to fully evaluate the post-quake economy at this point because there are few sources available at hand other than awful tsunami scenes which ravaged the region, but let me guess a little bit.

According to a Reuters report, Japan's manufacturing plummeted in March.

Japanese manufacturing activity slumped to a two-year low in March and posted its steepest monthly decline on record as a devastating earthquake and tsunami disrupted supply chains and production operations, a survey showed on Thursday.

The Markit/JMMA Japan Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell to a seasonally adjusted 46.4 in March, the lowest since April 2009 and down from February's 52.9.

The data provided one of the first quantitative assessments of the severe damage to production from the March 11 quake and tsunami in northeast Japan, which triggered a nuclear safety crisis and widespread power shortages.

…

The survey, conducted between March 11 and March 25, received only two-thirds of its average number of responses.

I don't know this index so well, but we have to note that it plunged 12% in March from February. It could be staggering if this decline applies to the closely watched Index of Industrial Production. In the Kobe earthquake, which occurred in 17 January, 1995, the Index of Industrial Production dropped only 3% from the previous month. Given that car sales in February 2009, when the index recorded the biggest drop of 8.6% so far since it began in 1978, plummeted 32.4% from the previous year, a double-digit decline in the index looks like inevitable this March, when car sales saw an astonishing fall of 37%.


Today, the BoJ has released the March Tankan survey, which divided the diffusion index by the pre- and post-quake. Obviously, the diffusion index deteriorated after the quake across the board, but not so much as compared to the past.

There are two possible reasons.

First, middle- or small-sized firms in crippled Tohoku area couldn't respond to the survey. Some companies were totally washed away by the tsunami, leaving no workplaces behind. So, the response could be limited to the areas which mostly exclude Tohoku. Second, people might still have difficulty of grabbing what has happened. So, damage would not have been fully felt across the country. We might have to wait to see how deep damage is until the next survey is released in June.

Tough time goes on.