I think the point is that indeed Japan is known for earthquakes & tsunamis, and yet they still failed to do the work of making their reactors tsunami-proof. Thus people think that if Japan, with a reputation valuing "high quality", takes such brazen shortcuts, can their own government be trusted to responsibly operate nuclear power? It's quite tragic since nuclear is a great technology in many cases, especially where there is high density populations but not much land for renewables.

Re. the low death toll, perhaps it's quite low because people were forced to evacuate. Evacuation and the marking of land as contaminated by radioactivity is considered a very high price to pay.