There are some more optimistic forecasts. A report by the World Bank to be released Monday predicts that growth in Japan and its East Asian neighbors would pick up in the second half of this year. The country’s past experience, the report said “suggests an accelerated reconstruction effort” that will limit the short-term impact.

Indeed, some disruptions, even in Japan, could prove of short duration. Nissan said on Sunday it would reopen five of six plants in Japan this week, and Toyota and Honda are also in various stages of resuming production. Analysts expect Japan to cobble together a workable energy grid in the next few weeks. That will allow dockworkers to unload those pallets of pork and steak, not to mention bags of corn and soybean.

Japan’s appetite for American meat is considerable. It consumes 30 percent of American pork exports. “American hog prices took a real fall here this week,” said David Miller, research director for the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation. “But supermarket shelves are pretty empty in Japan; we could see a surge in demand soon.”

The global economy remains an adaptive animal. But the speed and efficiency of this adaptation is easily overstated. Japanese electronics, auto adhesives, and silicon-production facility require highly skilled labor and cannot take root overnight in another southeast Asian nation.

Nor is the speed of the global economy, and its intricate interlacing, necessarily a comfort. General Motors last week announced that it would suspend product at its 923-employee factory in Shreveport, La., which manufactures Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon models, because it has already run short of Japanese made parts.

The human face of this disaster presents its own challenge. Many European and American companies in Tokyo dealt last week with a double emergency: They tried to cobble together supply chains even as they evacuated native-born workers to southern Japan, and repatriated foreign workers to their homelands.