What will be the consequences of the triple earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan? Before the tragedy, Japan had already been laboring under the burden of an economic slowdown for the past two decades, along with an ineluctable demographic decline and loss of its regional leadership to China. Could this disaster be the final straw? Claude Meyer, one of France's leading experts on Japan, refuses to bow to such pessimism. He argues that Japan has the financial means to recover and also that the country remains the undisputed global leader in advanced technology. Thirdly, the Japanese people are used to natural disasters and will find the will to recover and rebuild. The only unknown is the nuclear factor. If the leak from the Fukushima power plant has tragic consequences, who can predict the reaction of a nation still scarred by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945?