Abstract Summary
In Japanese traditions there is continuity between nature and culture in so far as the sense of a place speaks directly to the intricate interplay between human and natural forces. This continuity is most clear in the historical practice of naming utamakura—storied places shared through literature and art, imbued with geologic history, human history, and cultural meaning. Since the 869 tsunami along the Sanriku coast of northern Japan, communities erected stone tables which perform a dual function; they are warnings–markers of the edges of inundation, they indicate where to build and where to flee when oceans rise; and, they are memorials, erected as part of a ritual that memorializes events and those lost. These markers make manifest geologic forces from past and certain events of the future. Now surveyed and mapped, this network of historical environmental data at the scale of 1:1 along the coast of Japan is legible elsewhere. These tablets—technologies of linear marks in stone—have a pressing relevance that is too important to be simply a marker of a past event or a memorial to lives lost. These tablets—each like utamakura—are part of a multivalent knowledge exchange through time and space, and with hundreds of tsunami stones planned in the coming years to commemorate the 2011 tsunami, and as Japan continues to build almost 14,000 kilometres of seawalls, they are critical in establishing an understanding that the crisis facing coastal landscapes is an ongoing project, not limited to the aftermath of emergency.
