Japan has a lot of rebuilding to do after being struck by a 8.9 magnitude earthquake, but expert Kotaro Tamura believes the task can be accomplished.

Tamura, a research associate in the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations in the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard spoke yesterday about the future of Japan’s economy in Rosenkranz Hall. A former Japanese Parliamentary Secretary for Fiscal and Economic Policy, Tamura gave his opinions about various solutions to past Japanese disasters.

“Japan will come back with huge and extensive reforms,” Tamura said.

He added that these efforts will ultimately make Japan stronger in the future. Tamura also said that this disaster will be a building block for Japanese economic reform.

Students interviewed at the talk said they agree with Tamura that Japan will bounce back from its recent hardships.

“Japan is one of the leading economies in the world today, and though the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis were incredibly destructive, they were by no means as destructive as, say, World War II firebombing was to the country, or the detonation of two nuclear warheads — all of which Japan bounced back from to rise again as one of the most powerful countries in the world,” Omar Mumallah ’12, said.

Tamura received his master’s degree from Yale and is currently a professor at Harvard.