12 ms·

Century-old stone "tsunami stones" dot Japan's coastline (2015)

167 points by janandonly 3y ago

pintxo 3y ago
We are bound to repeat the errors of our ancestors when we forget the lessons they paid for with blood, sweat and tears. Hence why I am afraid of the passing of those who lived through the 1930/40s. I seems we are quickly forgetting lots of what humanity learned during those years.
- dartos 3y ago
  Why do you think that?
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    For one thing, the loosening of the wall between investment banking and deposit banking, which played a role in the 2008 near-collapse. We built that wall after the Great Depression showed that it was necessary. But around 2000, people forgot why, and the banks pushed for it to be removed so they could make more money.
  - pintxo 3y ago
    The recent growing support for far-right parties in Europe?
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  These lessons aren't forgotten, Japan is as aware of its geography as the Netherlands are of theirs. Instead tradeoffs are made. The same way people near forests get their house burned down but rebuild at the same place because they can afford it. Or we deplete underground water because stopping it would be an uphill political battle etc. I can't imagine any recent catastrophe where the core cause of it would be sheer ignorance of the potential for risk.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - thih9 3y ago
    About “I can't imagine any recent catastrophe where the core cause of it would be sheer ignorance of the potential for risk.”, there are a lot of recent examples. E.g.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collaps... > The problems had been reported in 2018 and noted as "much worse" in April 2021. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis > Prior to August 2014, additional chlorine had been added to eliminate bacteria from the Flint River. (...) Following this test, the MDEQ placed Flint on violation notice but did not reveal the information to residents until January 2015. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire > Both the aluminium-polyethylene cladding and the PIR insulation plates failed fire safety tests conducted after the fire, according to the police. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion > A cargo of 2,750 tonnes of [ammonium nitrate] (equivalent to around 1.1 kilotons of TNT) had been stored in a warehouse without proper safety measures for the previous six years after having been confiscated by Lebanese authorities from the abandoned ship MV Rhosus.
  - pintxo 3y ago
    Are they? The Fukushima nuclear power plant should never have been build at that location OR at least should have received a more proper protection against tsunamis. They clearly forgot/ignored the historical knowledge of much higher tsunamis.
    - makeitdouble 3y ago
      There's two things going on for nuclear plants in Japan: - they need water, tons and tons of water, and there's only mountains inland. So any nuclear plant will be on the shore, where tsunamis will hit first. - there is no safe place from natural disaster. Even building a miracle plant on a mountain top would still leave it vulnerable to seisms, typhoons and land slides. All things considered, the main issue is how much the nuclear plant is suppose to be resistant to tsunamis and earthquakes, and the higher the threshold the crazier the expenses become. For Fukushima, it was a classic example of design failure (failsafes were supposed to work except they were badly designed, and there was too few of them), and no proper reaction to earlier warnings of the system in place being too weak. In a way, all the blame is clearly on TEPCO however we put it: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1426 https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1426
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- xyzelement 3y ago
  We do this all over the place. For example, there's the idea that whatever warnings and suggestions are in the Bible are obsolete because we as moderns know better. EG "in the past they needed religion because of X but not we don't." But the idea is flawed in that if the Bible wrote 3000 years ago about certain virtues and dangers, presumably it is because they had seen what the opposite looks like and thought it was important to codify and pass forward that knowledge in a way that had a shot of being still read thousands of years later. In other words, our idea to discard the ideas in the Bible is not novel, it is perhaps the same idea that has led to disaster millennia ago that caused the Bible to be what it is to begin with. It is similar to looking at a "tsunami stone" and saying "why would I heed advice of someone who has never seen a microwave oven when I have modern science."
  - simion314 3y ago
    You mean what? That if we sin (like you know all that giant list of outdated ways to sin like touching a woman when she is menstruating) there will be a giant rain and we will drawn? So did you made your giant boat or first you need to wait for God to tell you to do it in a dream? Sorry , but some people will not follow those outdated rules and also worship a extremely cruel genocidal inhuman God, if my sin will cause you to have to build a boat to save yourself sorry but I don't care.
    - its_ethan 3y ago
      I think if you gave an honest effort at interpreting what he said, you'd find that he's saying there's a reason religion has survived as long as it has. He's not claiming that your actions are going to cause a biblical flood - that's something you're projecting on to him and, in my opinion, just feels like mockery for the sake of mockery. He's suggesting that there are generation-spanning lessons that had been learned, both ethical and practical, that made their way into scriptures. Not all the lessons in the Bible (or other religious text) are going to be pertinent to the modern day. To say it contains nothing of value, and that nothing can be learned from, it proves his point exactly.
      - 3y ago
thih9 3y ago
> Aneyoshi’s tsunami stone is the only one found that explicitly describes where to build houses As for others, “Some act as monuments, giving death tolls from past tsunamis or marking mass graves of the victims. Others offer more direct advice. A tsunami stone in Kesennuma, a city in the Miyagi Prefecture, reads: ‘Always be prepared for unexpected tsunamis. Choose life over your possessions and valuables.’” - source: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tsunami-stones https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tsunami-stones
- kurthr 3y ago
  If you find coral deposited more than 100ft above sea level, it's another marker of danger... although perhaps on a longer time scale. Hawaii has several examples of this (coral found at sites over 500ft) from what are assumed to be Mega-tsunami. https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1610#:~:text=One%20possible%20piece%20of%20evidence,have%20been%20delivered%20by%20tsunami https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1610#:~:text=O....
  - thih9 3y ago
    > another marker of danger Note that tsunami stones, except one, are not markers of danger, at least not in a precise, spatial sense. They’re like memorial plaques, listing past casualties or marking gravesites. See grandparent comment.
barqawiz 3y ago
The tsunami stones of Japan serve as a reminder of the timeless battle between human memory and nature's fury.
- peterleiser 3y ago
  "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Godzilla, Blue Oyster Cult
  - card_zero 3y ago
    "Oh no, there goes Tokyo" — Godzilla, Blue Oyster Cult
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- themaninthedark 3y ago
  Yeah but that is what makes humans go. The fact we take risks.
frozenlettuce 3y ago
In 2011 almost 1k people died after heavy rains in Brazil that caused a whole valley to be flooded (surrounding mountain ranges canalized massive amounts of rainfall into it). On Street View it is possible to see how high the water went, by looking at the stains in the walls https://www.google.com/maps/@-22.3974509,-43.0875373,3a,26.2y,265.74h,91.95t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s95BCanVwmmHPylXnn-Cmrg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@-22.3974509,-43.0875373,3a,26.2... Sadly the region is repopulated again - a mix of people building houses to rent to unaware folks, people unwilling to leave behind decades of work, and general faith that they will survive if that's God's will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2011_Rio_de_Janeiro_floods_and_mudslides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2011_Rio_de_Janeiro_fl...
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago
  People have moved into houses built on the "Love Canal" toxic dump in Niagara unaware of its history as probably the worst toxic waste catastrophe in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/nyregion/love-canal-toxic-homes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/nyregion/love-canal-toxic... (archive: https://archive.ph/UFJ96 https://archive.ph/UFJ96)
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Seattle turned a creosote saturated lakefront area into a city park. And then had to shut it down within a year, scrape all the topsoil off to a deeper depth and replace it. There are actual creosote superfund sites in Puget Sound, from railroad tie manufacture. For some reason the gasworks weren’t one, even though they are a point source of the stuff.
    - divbzero 3y ago
      Gas Works Park is the Seattle city park referenced above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Works_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Works_Park https://www.seattletimes.com/life/50-years-since-gas-works-park-opened-heres-what-it-means-to-seattleites/ https://www.seattletimes.com/life/50-years-since-gas-works-p... The cleanup effort is still ongoing: https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/june-2023/cleaning-up-cleanup-of-shoreline-and-sediment-moving-forward-for-seattle-s-gas-works-park https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/june-2023/cleaning-up-cleanup-of...
stuff4ben 3y ago
> "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," Some similarities to lessons from the 1918 flu epidemic that we relearned in 2020. We should build some "COVID stones" so we don't forget.
- jstanley 3y ago
  What are the lessons from COVID?
  - SandalsAndSocks 3y ago
    I think COVID (and the 2020 events, especially in the USA - I was living in Minneapolis at that time, so I might be biased) increased mental health awareness. For everyone, but especially for "essential workers". Supply chain improvements have been made to increase diversification and resilience. There was a lot of individualism to cast a shadow, but also cooperation and solidarity was shining on a small scale (hobbyist 3d-printing and donating shields and face mask relief thingies), but also globally. Without getting into the healthcare and technology advancements we accomplished as a species.
    - hinkley 3y ago
      I guarantee you stock prices will go up in ten years when new CEOs dismantle all that redundancy in order to improve profit margins for two quarters.
  - huytersd 3y ago
    The best things that came from COVID is increased WFH and mRNA vaccines.
  - stuff4ben 3y ago
    For me, it's being prepared essentially. Having a supply of masks, toilet paper, meds, emergency supplies, etc.
  - deleted 3y ago
helsinki 3y ago
I’ll never forget the first time I saw this phenomenon in Miyakojima, Okinawa. https://photos.app.goo.gl/uJwtiT34si7yK4C56 https://photos.app.goo.gl/uJwtiT34si7yK4C56
ngcc_hk 3y ago
Should mark 2015 as this is old article. As there is a nuclear melt down, guess the mark in history and memory is very different.
logtempo 3y ago
remind me of hunger stones : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_stone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_stone

167 points by janandonly 3y ago

We are bound to repeat the errors of our ancestors when we forget the lessons they paid for with blood, sweat and tears. Hence why I am afraid of the passing of those who lived through the 1930/40s. I seems we are quickly forgetting lots of what humanity learned during those years.

dartos 3y ago
Why do you think that?
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  For one thing, the loosening of the wall between investment banking and deposit banking, which played a role in the 2008 near-collapse. We built that wall after the Great Depression showed that it was necessary. But around 2000, people forgot why, and the banks pushed for it to be removed so they could make more money.
- pintxo 3y ago
  The recent growing support for far-right parties in Europe?
makeitdouble 3y ago
These lessons aren't forgotten, Japan is as aware of its geography as the Netherlands are of theirs. Instead tradeoffs are made. The same way people near forests get their house burned down but rebuild at the same place because they can afford it. Or we deplete underground water because stopping it would be an uphill political battle etc. I can't imagine any recent catastrophe where the core cause of it would be sheer ignorance of the potential for risk.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- thih9 3y ago
  About “I can't imagine any recent catastrophe where the core cause of it would be sheer ignorance of the potential for risk.”, there are a lot of recent examples. E.g.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collapse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfside_condominium_collaps... > The problems had been reported in 2018 and noted as "much worse" in April 2021. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis > Prior to August 2014, additional chlorine had been added to eliminate bacteria from the Flint River. (...) Following this test, the MDEQ placed Flint on violation notice but did not reveal the information to residents until January 2015. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire > Both the aluminium-polyethylene cladding and the PIR insulation plates failed fire safety tests conducted after the fire, according to the police. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion > A cargo of 2,750 tonnes of [ammonium nitrate] (equivalent to around 1.1 kilotons of TNT) had been stored in a warehouse without proper safety measures for the previous six years after having been confiscated by Lebanese authorities from the abandoned ship MV Rhosus.
- pintxo 3y ago
  Are they? The Fukushima nuclear power plant should never have been build at that location OR at least should have received a more proper protection against tsunamis. They clearly forgot/ignored the historical knowledge of much higher tsunamis.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    There's two things going on for nuclear plants in Japan: - they need water, tons and tons of water, and there's only mountains inland. So any nuclear plant will be on the shore, where tsunamis will hit first. - there is no safe place from natural disaster. Even building a miracle plant on a mountain top would still leave it vulnerable to seisms, typhoons and land slides. All things considered, the main issue is how much the nuclear plant is suppose to be resistant to tsunamis and earthquakes, and the higher the threshold the crazier the expenses become. For Fukushima, it was a classic example of design failure (failsafes were supposed to work except they were badly designed, and there was too few of them), and no proper reaction to earlier warnings of the system in place being too weak. In a way, all the blame is clearly on TEPCO however we put it: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1426 https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1426
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
xyzelement 3y ago
We do this all over the place. For example, there's the idea that whatever warnings and suggestions are in the Bible are obsolete because we as moderns know better. EG "in the past they needed religion because of X but not we don't." But the idea is flawed in that if the Bible wrote 3000 years ago about certain virtues and dangers, presumably it is because they had seen what the opposite looks like and thought it was important to codify and pass forward that knowledge in a way that had a shot of being still read thousands of years later. In other words, our idea to discard the ideas in the Bible is not novel, it is perhaps the same idea that has led to disaster millennia ago that caused the Bible to be what it is to begin with. It is similar to looking at a "tsunami stone" and saying "why would I heed advice of someone who has never seen a microwave oven when I have modern science."
- simion314 3y ago
  You mean what? That if we sin (like you know all that giant list of outdated ways to sin like touching a woman when she is menstruating) there will be a giant rain and we will drawn? So did you made your giant boat or first you need to wait for God to tell you to do it in a dream? Sorry , but some people will not follow those outdated rules and also worship a extremely cruel genocidal inhuman God, if my sin will cause you to have to build a boat to save yourself sorry but I don't care.
  - its_ethan 3y ago
    I think if you gave an honest effort at interpreting what he said, you'd find that he's saying there's a reason religion has survived as long as it has. He's not claiming that your actions are going to cause a biblical flood - that's something you're projecting on to him and, in my opinion, just feels like mockery for the sake of mockery. He's suggesting that there are generation-spanning lessons that had been learned, both ethical and practical, that made their way into scriptures. Not all the lessons in the Bible (or other religious text) are going to be pertinent to the modern day. To say it contains nothing of value, and that nothing can be learned from, it proves his point exactly.
    - 3y ago

thih9 3y ago

> Aneyoshi’s tsunami stone is the only one found that explicitly describes where to build houses As for others, “Some act as monuments, giving death tolls from past tsunamis or marking mass graves of the victims. Others offer more direct advice. A tsunami stone in Kesennuma, a city in the Miyagi Prefecture, reads: ‘Always be prepared for unexpected tsunamis. Choose life over your possessions and valuables.’” - source: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tsunami-stones https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tsunami-stones

kurthr 3y ago
If you find coral deposited more than 100ft above sea level, it's another marker of danger... although perhaps on a longer time scale. Hawaii has several examples of this (coral found at sites over 500ft) from what are assumed to be Mega-tsunami. https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1610#:~:text=One%20possible%20piece%20of%20evidence,have%20been%20delivered%20by%20tsunami https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1610#:~:text=O....
- thih9 3y ago
  > another marker of danger Note that tsunami stones, except one, are not markers of danger, at least not in a precise, spatial sense. They’re like memorial plaques, listing past casualties or marking gravesites. See grandparent comment.

barqawiz 3y ago

The tsunami stones of Japan serve as a reminder of the timeless battle between human memory and nature's fury.

peterleiser 3y ago
"History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Godzilla, Blue Oyster Cult
- card_zero 3y ago
  "Oh no, there goes Tokyo" — Godzilla, Blue Oyster Cult
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
themaninthedark 3y ago
Yeah but that is what makes humans go. The fact we take risks.

frozenlettuce 3y ago

In 2011 almost 1k people died after heavy rains in Brazil that caused a whole valley to be flooded (surrounding mountain ranges canalized massive amounts of rainfall into it). On Street View it is possible to see how high the water went, by looking at the stains in the walls https://www.google.com/maps/@-22.3974509,-43.0875373,3a,26.2y,265.74h,91.95t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s95BCanVwmmHPylXnn-Cmrg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@-22.3974509,-43.0875373,3a,26.2... Sadly the region is repopulated again - a mix of people building houses to rent to unaware folks, people unwilling to leave behind decades of work, and general faith that they will survive if that's God's will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2011_Rio_de_Janeiro_floods_and_mudslides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2011_Rio_de_Janeiro_fl...

helsinkiandrew 3y ago
People have moved into houses built on the "Love Canal" toxic dump in Niagara unaware of its history as probably the worst toxic waste catastrophe in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/nyregion/love-canal-toxic-homes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/nyregion/love-canal-toxic... (archive: https://archive.ph/UFJ96 https://archive.ph/UFJ96)
- hinkley 3y ago
  Seattle turned a creosote saturated lakefront area into a city park. And then had to shut it down within a year, scrape all the topsoil off to a deeper depth and replace it. There are actual creosote superfund sites in Puget Sound, from railroad tie manufacture. For some reason the gasworks weren’t one, even though they are a point source of the stuff.
  - divbzero 3y ago
    Gas Works Park is the Seattle city park referenced above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Works_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Works_Park https://www.seattletimes.com/life/50-years-since-gas-works-park-opened-heres-what-it-means-to-seattleites/ https://www.seattletimes.com/life/50-years-since-gas-works-p... The cleanup effort is still ongoing: https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/june-2023/cleaning-up-cleanup-of-shoreline-and-sediment-moving-forward-for-seattle-s-gas-works-park https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/june-2023/cleaning-up-cleanup-of...

stuff4ben 3y ago

> "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," Some similarities to lessons from the 1918 flu epidemic that we relearned in 2020. We should build some "COVID stones" so we don't forget.

jstanley 3y ago
What are the lessons from COVID?
- SandalsAndSocks 3y ago
  I think COVID (and the 2020 events, especially in the USA - I was living in Minneapolis at that time, so I might be biased) increased mental health awareness. For everyone, but especially for "essential workers". Supply chain improvements have been made to increase diversification and resilience. There was a lot of individualism to cast a shadow, but also cooperation and solidarity was shining on a small scale (hobbyist 3d-printing and donating shields and face mask relief thingies), but also globally. Without getting into the healthcare and technology advancements we accomplished as a species.
  - hinkley 3y ago
    I guarantee you stock prices will go up in ten years when new CEOs dismantle all that redundancy in order to improve profit margins for two quarters.
- huytersd 3y ago
  The best things that came from COVID is increased WFH and mRNA vaccines.
- stuff4ben 3y ago
  For me, it's being prepared essentially. Having a supply of masks, toilet paper, meds, emergency supplies, etc.
- deleted 3y ago

helsinki 3y ago

I’ll never forget the first time I saw this phenomenon in Miyakojima, Okinawa. https://photos.app.goo.gl/uJwtiT34si7yK4C56 https://photos.app.goo.gl/uJwtiT34si7yK4C56

ngcc_hk 3y ago

Should mark 2015 as this is old article. As there is a nuclear melt down, guess the mark in history and memory is very different.

logtempo 3y ago

remind me of hunger stones : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_stone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_stone