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 fallacy—in W.W.'s post and over at the Econbrowser blog. How can you best help Japan recover from the massive damage and devastation caused by the quake? Mr Matsumoto's advice may make you uncomfortable, but it's also correct: you can buy Japanese products and spend your tourism dollars visiting the country.

What you shouldn't do is give money to charities that are raising money off the disaster. The New York Times' Stephanie Strom explained why last month:

[W]ealthy Japan is not impoverished Haiti. And many groups are raising money without really knowing how it will be spent — or even if it will be needed. The Japanese Red Cross, for example, has said repeatedly since the day after the earthquake that it does not want or need outside assistance. But that has not stopped the American Red Cross from raising [tens of millions of dollars] in the name of Japan's disaster victims.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't give money to charity at all—you should just make sure that the money you do give isn't earmarked for a specific disaster. As Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says, aid to a country should not depend on whether it's in the media spotlight. If you think a charity's work is important, you should be willing to let them use your donation wherever it can do the most good. Reuters' Felix Salmon has more on this.

Any commenters spend any time in Japan post-quake? Leave us your impressions of the rebuilding in the comments.