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Sanriku Fukkō NP, Iwate / Miyagi
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
In Minamisanriku’s Tokura district, oyster farmers rebuilt with one-third as many rafts. Less crowding cut growing time from 3 years to 1; in 2016, their farm earned Japan’s first ASC certification.
After 2011, 64 Onagawa students planned warning stones for all 21 beaches, raising ¥10 million in 6 months. Some inscriptions say to run above the stone—and even bring along anyone reluctant to flee.
At Kamaishi’s Unosumai schools, about 570 children survived after joint drills. When a student saw a slope collapse near their first refuge, the group climbed higher again, putting disaster lessons into action.
A 1933 tsunami stone in Aneyoshi, Miyako, says, “Build no homes below here.” Residents kept homes uphill, and in 2011 their houses escaped tsunami damage—an old warning put into practice.
Residents helped choose the Michinoku Coastal Trail in workshops and field surveys. Today it runs 1,025 km through 29 municipalities in 4 prefectures, linking living communities as well as wild shore.
Miyako’s Nakanohama campground preserves its tsunami-damaged toilet and kitchen. A viewing hill made with recycled disaster debris reaches about 15 m above sea level; markers show the wave climbed to about 21 m.
Onagawa’s rebuilt seaside shopping street has a second job: its brick promenade links the station and port while leading toward higher ground as an evacuation route. Shops and restaurants reopened along it after the disaster.
The Unotori and Kuromori kagura troupes keep a village-to-village tradition alive that is over 300 years old. Kuromori Kagura resumed within 3 months of the 2011 disaster, performing in temporary housing and for memorials and recovery.
