No Tsunamis In Aneyoshi Poem by gershon hepner

NO TSUNAMIS IN ANEYOSHI

In Aneyoshi in Japan
an ancient stone declares: "Don't build
below this point your homes." No man
by huge tsunamis has been killed
in Aneyoshi, for this warning
on its weathered face prevented
many deaths and massive mourning.
Such warnings often are resented
by reckless people, but we all
can learn from this stone how prevention
has the power to forestall
disasters, causing their abstention.

Every time that you see armies
carrying away the dead
from disasters like tsunamis
keep Aneyoshi in your head,
but remember, too, that though
old stones like Aneyoshi's may
prevents disasters, we should know
disasters face us every day
in ways that we cannot prevent,
because we do not understand,
not smart enough or negligent,
that we have built our homes on sand.

Composed on 4/24/11, but revised on 11/5/12, while the eqastern seaboard is still recovering from Hurricane Sandy, a disaster whose catastrophic effects might have been prevented if New York City had built a seawall, as Amsterdam and London have done, and is discussed by Meghan Fellman of Northwestern University.
Martin Fackler ("Tsunami Warnings, Written in Stone, " NYT,4/20/11) writes:
The stone tablet has stood on this forested hillside since before they were born, but the villagers have faithfully obeyed the stark warning carved on its weathered face: "Do not build your homes below this point! "
Residents say this injunction from their ancestors kept their tiny village of 11 households safely out of reach of the deadly tsunami last month that wiped out hundreds of miles of Japanese coast and rose to record heights near here. The waves stopped just 300 feet below the stone.
"They knew the horrors of tsunamis, so they erected that stone to warn us, " said Tamishige Kimura,64, the village leader of Aneyoshi.
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. But modern Japan, confident that advanced technology and higher seawalls would protect vulnerable areas, came to forget or ignore these ancient warnings, dooming it to repeat bitter experiences when the recent tsunami struck.
"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."…
For most Japanese today, the stones appear relics of a bygone era, whose language can often seem impenetrably archaic. However, some experts say the stones have inspired them to create new monuments that can serve as tsunami warnings, but are more suited to a visual era of Internet and television.
One idea, put forth by a group of researchers, calls for preserving some of the buildings ruined by the recent tsunami to serve as permanent reminders of the waves' destructive power, much as the skeletal Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima warns against nuclear war."We need a modern version of the tsunami stones, " said Masayuki Oishi, a geologist at the Iwate Prefral Museum in Morioka.
Despite Aneyoshi's survival, the residents are in no mood for rejoicing. Four of the village's residents died last month: a mother and her three small children who were swept away in their car in a neighboring town. The mother, Mihoko Aneishi,36, had rushed to take her children out of school right after the earthquake. Then she made the fatal mistake of driving back through low-lying areas just as the tsunami hit.
The village's mostly older residents said they regretted not making more of an effort to teach younger residents such tsunami-survival basics as always to seek higher ground. "We are proud of following our ancestors, " the children's grandfather, Isamu Aneishi,69, said, "but our tsunami stone can't save us from everything."

11/5/12 0 #11799