A tsunami stone is a stone monument that warns people to move upwards after a large

earthquake An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

to avoid a potential

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from , ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and underwater explosions (including detonations, ...

. They are placed all around the coasts of Japan. Some simply provide this warning, while others list death tolls, are placed near

mass graves A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may Unidentified decedent, not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of exec ...

or say where homes should be built. They have a flat face and some are as high as tall. Some are over 600 years old and some have aged so much that the characters written on them have disappeared. Most were placed in about 1896 after an earthquake and two tsunamis that year caused about 22,000 deaths. The tsunami stone in Aneyoshi says: "High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants. ... Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point." The stones help remind people, as according to

Tohoku University is a public research university in Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. It is colloquially referred to as or . Established in 1907 as the third of the Imperial Universities, after the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, it initially focused on sc ...

professor

Fumihiko Imamura is a Japanese people, Japanese academic, civil engineer, and Director of the International Research Institute of Disaster Science at Tohoku University in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture.Library of Congress Authority File Fumihiko Imamura, n95-80017/ref> ...

, "It takes about three generations for people to forget. Those that experience the disaster themselves pass it to their children and their grandchildren, but then the memory fades." As some coastal towns have modernised and have built

seawall A seawall (or sea wall) is a form of coastal defense constructed where the sea, and associated coastal processes, impact directly upon the landforms of the coast. The purpose of a seawall is to protect areas of human habitation, conservation, ...

s, some citizens have started ignoring the stones as they have started believing that the sea walls will protect them. Japan lies on the

Ring of Fire The Ring of Fire (also known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Rim of Fire, the Girdle of Fire or the Circum-Pacific belt) is a tectonic belt of volcanoes and earthquakes. It is about long and up to about wide, and surrounds most of the Pa ...

, which experiences about 80 per cent of the world's major earthquakes and tsunamis. In Japan, about 1,500 earthquakes strong enough to be felt by humans occur every year, with about 18 per cent of the world's earthquakes occurring within the country or in close proximity to it. The stones are viewed as outdated by many Japanese people. After the

2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami On 11 March 2011, at 14:46:24 Japan Standard Time, JST (05:46:24 UTC), a 9.0–9.1 Submarine earthquake, undersea megathrust earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peninsula of the Tōhoku region. It lasted approx ...

, it was suggested that some tsunami-ruined buildings be preserved to serve as warnings. This is similar to the

Hiroshima Peace Memorial The , originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, and now commonly called the Genbaku Dome, , is part of Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan, and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. The building ...

which was preserved after the

bombing of Hiroshima On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, during World War II. The aerial bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civili ...

in 1945.

References

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External links

*
Tsunami Stones: Ancient Japanese Markers Warn Builders of High Water
' (15 August 2016, article by Kurt Kohlstedt, ''

99% Invisible ''99% Invisible'' is a radio show and podcast produced and created by Roman Mars that focuses on design. It began as a collaborative project between San Francisco public radio station KALW and the American Institute of Architects in San Franc ...

)'' Tsunamis in Japan Monuments and memorials in Japan

See also

References

External links