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However the researcher, Yuichi Namegaya, told the AP that while more time was needed to determine the extent of the risk, the danger was evident. "The studies on a Fukushima tsunami were clear, even before my research," he said. As early as June 2009, Yukinobu Okamura, a tsunami expert at the same government institute, warned about the need to look more closely at new evidence that a major tsunami called Jogan had hit northeastern Japan in the 9th Century. "I would like to ask why you have not touched on this at all," Okamura demanded of a panel on nuclear regulatory policy. "I find it unacceptable." Kobayashi, the regulator, said he called for the March 7 meeting after hearing about research on the Jogan tsunami. He described the meeting as a polite, perfunctory affair at his agency that lasted 30, maybe 40, minutes. The document included three diagrams. One was TEPCO's estimate of the maximum tsunami risk, based on 2002 guidelines from the Japan Society of Civil Engineers that were the government-approved standards. The other two were more recent academic projections that suggested the possibility of the higher tsunami. Kobayashi recalled the meeting after the March 11 tsunami. "The numbers I saw were bigger than what we had earlier assessed," he said. "It had happened, and I felt bad."
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