Japan on Tuesday commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Kumamoto earthquake, a series of tremors in 2016 that killed 278 people in southwestern Japan. Around 80% of those deaths were classified as "disaster-related deaths" — fatalities caused not by the quake itself but by the physical and psychological toll of evacuation and displacement. The issue remains unresolved, with a similar pattern of disaster-related deaths recorded after the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake, underscoring the need for stronger measures to protect survivors in the aftermath of major disasters.