Japan’s Emperor Akihito has gone on television, to make an unprecedented address to his beleaguered nation.

The 77-year-old said he was “deeply worried” by the crisis at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in the wake of Friday’s earthquake and tsunami, which he described as “unprecedented in scale”.

The entire country is reeling from what Prime Minister Naoto Kan described as its worst crisis since the end of the Second World War.

Many thousands of people are feared dead.