The Wave: Tōhoku Earthquake & Tsunami
2011 · event
The strongest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history sent a wall of water into towns that had stood for centuries. Nearly twenty thousand people were lost. In the towns that rebuilt, stone markers now read: "Do not build below this point."
The earthquake was so powerful it shifted the Earth's axis by centimetres and shortened the day by a microsecond. But it was the water that took the towns, waves up to forty metres, arriving within half an hour of the shaking.
Along the coast stand century-old stone tablets carved by survivors of earlier tsunamis: "Do not build your homes below this point." The towns that obeyed them survived. After 2011, Japan carved new stones, so that the memory itself becomes the warning system.