JAPAN is "open for business" and "recovering at surprising
speed," from the earthquake that devastated the country on March
11, Takeaki Matsumoto, the country's foreign minister, wrote in
Saturday's International Herald Tribune:  If you imagine that
the whole of Japan is covered by debris, that is completely
wrong. Most of Japan remains unharmed by the disaster, and the
streets have leapt back to life. The major highway that runs
through the most affected Tohoku region was reopened only two
weeks after the earthquake. The Shinkansen, the bullet train
that connects Tokyo and Tohoku region, became fully operational
again on April 29.  This should only be surprising if you've
fallen behind on your Economist.com blog reading. Five days
after the quake, my colleague W.W. over at Democracy in America
surveyed the academic research on economic recoveries in the
wake of disasters. Here's what he found:   There's a big "but":
There is a lot more on all this—including the obligatory
discussion of the broken windows f