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Sanriku Fukkō NP, Iwate
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Built in stages from 1934 to 1978, Taro’s double seawall stretched 2,433 metres and stood 10 metres high. Its X-shaped plan earned it the nickname “Great Wall.”
After 1933, officials proposed moving Taro uphill. Village leaders chose a seawall instead: about 500 households needed relocation, but there was no suitable high ground—and fishing families needed the shore.
Taro’s wall was meant to slow a tsunami and buy time, not promise safety. After 1933, streets ran straight toward the hills, while clipped intersection corners improved sightlines and made quick turns easier during evacuation.
Masaki-yaki looks like takoyaki, but its chewy center is a stem from Taro’s prized Masaki wakame—not octopus. The seaweed-filled local specialty even won the Sea-Class Gourmet Grand Prix.
In 1934, Taro’s elementary school published a practical tsunami handbook featuring children’s own accounts. March 3—the anniversary of the 1933 disaster—also became a day for evacuation drills, turning remembrance into practice.
Taro storyteller Yoshi Tabata survived the 1933 tsunami as a child, then turned her experience into the paper-story show “Tsunami.” For nearly 40 years, she took it to schools to teach children the importance of escaping to safety.
The 6-story Taro Kanko Hotel survived, though the tsunami flooded its 4th floor and stripped the lower 2 floors to columns. Visitors can see footage filmed by the hotel’s owner from its 6th floor.
Glass negatives showing damage in Taro after the 1933 tsunami were swept away by the 2011 tsunami. They later returned to their owner and became a Miyako City cultural property.
Taro’s first seawall was completed in 1958. Just 2 years later, a tsunami from Chile crossed the Pacific; the wall helped keep damage in Taro to a minimum.
In 2011, the tsunami overtopped Taro’s two seawalls. The inland line avoided catastrophic failure but sank 0.8–1 metre with the ground; it was restored, while the seaward line was raised to a new 14.7-metre design height.
Nearby Taro fishing harbor was built at the Tashiro River mouth in an island form so it wouldn’t block salmon swimming upstream. The port also supports local net fishing and wakame and kelp farming.
Taro’s signature Masaki wakame was first sold under that name in 1975. The 2011 tsunami wrecked farms and processing facilities, but growers put new seaweed lines in by October and restarted production.
Taro’s “Manabu Bosai” learning tours began in 2012, guiding visitors among the seawall and tsunami remains. By February 2022, about 200,000 people from Japan and abroad had taken part.
