Disaster riddled Japan has a new hot commodity: Toilet Paper!

Sept. 3, 2014 10:39 PM EDT

TOKYO — A mes­sage Japan began deliv­er­ing Mon­day is a bit unusu­al, but true enough: Don’t wait until it’s too late to think about toi­let paper.

The gov­ern­ment and paper com­pa­nies kicked off a “Let’s stock­pile toi­let paper!” cam­paign to mark Dis­as­ter Pre­ven­tion Day, warn­ing of a pos­si­ble cri­sis because near­ly half of the sup­ply comes from one of Japan’s most earth­quake-prone areas.

Offi­cials said peo­ple imme­di­ate­ly think of food and water as emer­gency sup­plies, but eas­i­ly for­get toi­let paper, and get des­per­ate when it’s too late.

“After run­ning out of toi­let paper, peo­ple start using tis­sue, and that could clog up pre­cious work­able toi­lets,” said Toshiyu­ki Hashimo­to, an indus­try min­istry offi­cial in charge of paper products.

As part of the cam­paign, mak­ers are offer­ing a tight­ly rolled, 150-meter- (490-foot-) long, sin­gle-lay­er toi­let paper that lasts more than twice as long as a reg­u­lar roll. A fam­i­ly of four should be able to sur­vive for a month on a six-roll pack, priced at 460 yen ($4.40) and with a five-year expi­ra­tion date, said Satoshi Kurosa­ki, chair­man of the Japan House­hold Paper Indus­try Association.

Gov­ern­ment and indus­try offi­cials said 41 per­cent of the coun­try’s toi­let paper sup­ply comes from Shizuo­ka pre­fec­ture in cen­tral Japan, where experts say there is a high­er than 80 per­cent chance of a major off­shore quake in the next 30 years.

Offi­cials warned of a nation­wide toi­let paper short­age for about a month in such a dis­as­ter, based on lessons learned from the dead­ly March 2011 earth­quake and tsuna­mi in north­ern Japan. Nine months after that dis­as­ter, toi­let paper was added to a list of rec­om­mend­ed items that includ­ed food, water, portable toi­lets and a first-aid kit, under the gov­ern­men­t’s Basic Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Plan.

“Along with food, toi­let paper was among the first items that dis­ap­peared from store shelves dur­ing the dis­as­ter, even out­side dis­as­ter-hit areas,” Hashimo­to said in front of a pub­lic dis­play in the min­istry entrance hall, dec­o­rat­ed with cam­paign posters, includ­ing one say­ing “Be pre­pared and no regrets!”

The cam­paign involves near­ly 40 toi­let paper com­pa­nies, includ­ing indus­try lead­ers Nip­pon Paper Cre­cia Co., Oji Nepia Co. and Mit­subishi Paper Mills Ltd.

“Toi­let paper is an indis­pens­able part of dai­ly life,” Kurosa­ki said. “And yet 41 per­cent of the sup­ply comes from the extreme­ly high-risk zone. So we should be prepared.”

Japan takes dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness seri­ous­ly, espe­cial­ly since the 2011 earth­quake and tsuna­mi, which killed about 19,000 peo­ple. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple take part in an annu­al drill every Sept. 1, the anniver­sary of the 1923 Great Kan­to Earth­quake, which killed more than 140,000 peo­ple in Tokyo.