Dennis Hollingsworth

The Tsunami Stones

Apropos of the Fukushima Ring, read this article from Martin Fackler in the NYTimes (Foto credit: Ko Sasaki, via BLDGBLOG, an excellent architecture blog by Geoff Manaugh):

Hundreds of so-called tsunami stones, some more than six centuries old, dot the coast of Japan, silent testimony to the past destruction that these lethal waves have frequented upon this earthquake-prone nation.
[snip]
?The tsunami stones are warnings across generations, telling descendants to avoid the same suffering of their ancestors,? said Itoko Kitahara, a specialist in the history of natural disasters at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. ?Some places heeded these lessons of the past, but many didn?t.?

The flat stones, some as tall as 10 feet, are a common sight along Japan?s northeastern shore, which bore the brunt of the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11 that left almost 29,000 people dead or missing.
[snip]
?We need a modern version of the tsunami stones,? said Masayuki Oishi, a geologist at the Iwate Prefectural Museum in Morioka.