Dictionary

tsunami stone en · NOUN

Etymology

Calque of Japanese 津波石 (tsunami ishi).

Meanings

1. A stone which serves to warn of the dangers of tsunamis in Japan.
   • I have seen the Aneyoshi ‘tsunami stone’ that [Richard] Hamblyn refers to and these are indeed powerful reminders of the devastation caused by earlier events 2015 December 14, James Goff, “Richard Hamblyn, Tsunami: Nature and Culture, Reaktion Books Ltd: London, 2014; 184 pp.: 9781780233475, £14.95 (pbk)”, in Progress in Physical Geography, volume 39, number 6, Sage Journals, →DOI, →ISSN, page 856:
   • I mention the tsunami stones, many of which had been ignored in the burst of economic activity in Japan that followed World War II. Commerce grows along dangerous places, on rivers and coastlines. Is it possible, I ask, that there's a value to forgetting? 2011 September 5, Brendan Greeley, “The God Clause”, in Bloomberg Businessweek, number 4244, Bloomberg, via EBSCOhost, →ISSN, page 67:
   • Even environmentally problematic buildings may serve as warning examples, akin to ancient Japanese “tsunami-stones” that warn future generations about the reach of destructive waves. 2024 November 29, Matti Kuittinen, Sanna Lehtinen, Panu Pihkala, “Architecture: Cause or Cure for Eco-Anxiety?”, in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, volume 319, IOS Press, →DOI, →ISSN, page 354:
   • Transferring this knowledge to the sedimentary record of past tsunami inundations along the same coast and considering other warning signals that have fallen into oblivion, such as tsunami stones and historical documents^(3,15), the underestimation of historic and paleo-tsunamis becomes evident. 2021 April 26, Piero Bellanova, Mike Frenken, Yuichi Nishimura, Jan Schwarzbauer, Klaus Reicherter, “Tracing woody‑organic tsunami deposits of the 2011 Tohoku‑oki event in Misawa (Japan)”, in Scientific Reports, volume 11, Nature, →DOI, →ISSN, page 1:

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