The world ought to bow to Japan

The biblical scale of the devastation began to emerge from the crack of dawn: landslides, floods, minor earthquakes, mass evacuations and, worst of all, the ever-rising death toll.

The typhoon’s monstrous dirty work could be seen wherever they looked, images of destruction which included the ghastly sight of the nation’s engineering phenomenon, the Bullet trains, as they had never been seen before — a fleet of seven all washed up and waterlogged in their station.