The Kumamoto Earthquake Update Made Me Uneasy About My Own Reaction: Why Did Thirteen Deaths Feel “Low”?

The Morning After the Earthquake

One day after the major earthquake in Kumamoto, updates began arriving one after another from early in the morning.

Given the frightening intensity of 7 on Japan’s seismic scale, I had honestly prepared myself for reports of hundreds of casualties.

At the time of writing, however, the reported death toll stands at 13.

Of course, I do not mean to suggest that the loss of 13 lives is “small.” When I think of those who died and the families they left behind, that is not a word I can use lightly.

Even so, I caught myself thinking that the damage was less severe than I had expected.

An Explosion at a Shopping Mall

I was also shocked by the news that the earthquake had caused an explosion at a large shopping mall.

The explosion appears to have been caused by a gas leak. Customers had reportedly evacuated beforehand, but several employees lost their lives.

The moment I saw the footage, I braced myself for news of a catastrophe. When the details emerged, I found myself thinking that the outcome could have been even worse.

But people still died. It was by no means a minor accident.

When Did Thirteen Deaths Start to Feel Like a Relatively Small Number?

As I watched the news, one question began to bother me.

When did I start assuming that an earthquake of this intensity would kill hundreds of people—and that a death toll in the teens represented relatively limited damage?

By any ordinary measure, an incident that claims 13 lives is a major tragedy.

And yet the thought that “it was only a little over a dozen” briefly crossed my mind.

We Judge Numbers Against a Reference Point

Psychology tells us that people often judge events not by absolute numbers, but by comparing them with a reference point.

Some research explains this tendency through concepts such as anchoring and reference dependence.

In my mind, the expectation that an earthquake measuring 7 on Japan’s seismic scale could cause hundreds or even thousands of casualties had become the benchmark. Against that expectation, a death toll of 13 felt lower than anticipated.

If I heard that 13 people had died in a traffic accident, I would immediately regard it as an appalling disaster.

The number would be identical, but a different reference point would completely change how it felt.

Adaptation or Numbness?

Japanese people are often described as unusually accustomed to earthquakes.

We have lived through the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, the Great East Japan Earthquake, the Kumamoto earthquakes, the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, and many others.

Experiencing so many major disasters may have altered our very frame of reference for the phrase “seismic intensity 7.”

In some ways, that familiarity may help us remain calm.

At the same time, it can lead us to evaluate the loss of human life in relative terms.

Is that a useful form of adaptation, or a dangerous kind of numbness?

Honestly, I still do not know.

What I do know is that human perception is less reliable than we tend to believe.

The most unsettling part of yesterday’s news was not the earthquake itself. It was the moment I caught myself thinking that a death toll in the teens was somehow “low.”