Not as current as publication date suggests (3.5 stars)

The official publication date of this book is roughly 1 year after the quake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown of March 11, but the contributions were written much earlier: no later than July or early August 2011. In other words, the articles were written about 4 months after the disasters, but another 7 or 8 had gone by between writing and publication. As a result, very few authors were able to form a perspective that remains meaningful today. While some essays are still useful as chronicles of events close to the time of the tsunami, most of them, or at least big chunks of most of them, have been superseded by subsequent events, revelations and changes of administration. (All of the essays, other than the editor’s, were written while Naoto Kan was prime minister; the editor’s seems to have been completed a couple of weeks into the Noda Administration.)

[MODIFICATION, 2012/07/08: In several comments on US Amazon.com and in separate emails, the editor of this book has taken me to