A Study in the Cyclical Features of Natural Disasters, Building Materials and Contemporary Life In Light of Minamihama in Ishinomaki, the Coastal Flatland Wiped out by 2011 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami
by Yang Yang (stud5616), Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability
Abstract: It has been four years since the Higashi-Nihon Dai-Shinsai (Great East Japan Earthquake) took place on 11th March 2011. The cities destroyed by the earthquake but spared by the following tsunami have almost been rebuilt. However, the Japanese government estimates that the cities hit by the tsunami, like Ishinomaki, need ten to fifteen years, even up to forty years, to recover. And yet, even before the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Ishinomaki was a decaying city. The population was decreasing and aging. The economy was stagnant. Now, after being hit by the earthquake and the tsunami and undergoing a painful reconstruction, Ishinomaki is facing tremendous challenges and is at a critical turning point.
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A Study in the Cyclical Features of Natural Disasters, Building Materials and Contemporary Life
In this essay, I set out to discover some of the possibilities and opportunities of Ishinomaki through a zoom-in study of Minamihama, one of the city centres of Ishinomaki before 2011 and became the most damaged area in Ishinomaki during the earthquake and the tsunami. I aim to examine elements that I found at Minamihama from a cyclical point of view. Natural disasters, namely earthquakes and tsunamis, have certain cyclical features as they are reoccurring events in Japan. People in Japan have been living under the threat of an anticipated natural disaster since forever, only the exact time of the happening of the next disaster is unknown. The cycles of reed — a particular building material that is local to the site, will also be studied. It has a certain cycle as a building material. It also has a certain growing cycle when it is cultivated. And it takes a certain life span when it is constructed and destructed. There are also life patterns of people, daily, weekly, seasonally and annually. Contemporary people live a different life from ancient people. Farmers live a different life from industrial workers. People living in small villages live a different life from people living in metropolitan cities. The cycles to be studied also interact with each other rather than working all alone by themselves. They sometimes include each other, sometimes overlap with each other and sometimes influence each other from a distance. I claim that by manipulating the cycles or the interactions between the cycles of the natural disasters, building materials and contemporary life of the chosen site, an architectural strategy could be identified to help people escape from the damages by future earthquakes and tsunamis. And even further, the anticipated earthquakes and tsunamis could contribute to solve the existing social-political problems of the community. 2
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It was a sunny afternoon.The gentle sea breeze from the harbour was making ripples on the surface of the little pond. Moving closer to the pond, there was another layer of ripples, circular ripples, caused by some insects moving and jumping on the surface of the water. From time to time, there were fish jumping out of the water, chasing plankton. A heron was deeply hiding in the middle of the reeds, staring at the fish and waiting for the perfect timing to prey. The light is getting dim. Dusk was falling rapidly. A cat marched close to the pond and drank water from it. If we ignored the baskets floating on the water, an abandoned fridge resting on the bank and the tiny island in the centre of the pond with distorted white rectangle marks indicating that there had been a car park, this small pond would have been a tabula rasa for nature to work on. Thanks for the mild and humid climate of the Pacific coast, the pond would expand in size, breed more species of insects and fishes, attract various kinds of birds and beasts, maybe not only herons but also ducks and swans; not only cats but also monkeys and amphibians. And eventually, this small pond would reach other expanding ponds at the place, join each other and become a wetland.
Japan is a country facing the threat of frequent natural disasters. It is located at the edge of the Eurasian Plate, where the Pacific Plate meets the Eurasian Plate and continuously moves toward the Eurasian Plate. Therefore, pressure builds between the two major plates and occasionally releases as an earthquake. The Japanese mythology of the Namazu (giant catfish) reflects ancient Japanese people’s intuitive feeling of living at a constantly moving place where earthquakes could happen any minute. Take Onagawa, the small town sits next to Ishinomaki, for example, since its establishment in 1923, it had encountered the 1933 Sanriku Tsunami, the 1960 Great Chilean Earthquake and Tsunami and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. It had been destroyed three times and rebuilt twice and is currently undergoing its third-time of reconstruction. The science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem provided a story I see as a metaphor of this circular history of inhabitation elimination - reinhabitation in Japan. Due to the instability of the three planets orbiting around each other, catastrophes were inevitable but unpredictable. The civilizations had been eliminated completely thousands of times on that planet, but every time after the elimination, a new kind of civilization was established at the same place. Japan is an island nation with a large population but very limited arable land. So people have no choice but to live on the coastal flatlands that are vulnerable to tsunami. Moreover, the Japanese law regulates that the lands permanently belong to a family. Therefore people are willing to come back to their land to establish their new life even after their houses had been destroyed by the tsunami. So I consider the cycle of the inhabitation elimination - reinhabitation is a theme of Japanese history. The tsunamis that hit Japan are identified into two categories — Level 1 tsunamis and Level 2 tsunamis. Level 1 tsunamis 3
A Study in the Cyclical Features of Natural Disasters, Building Materials and Contemporary Life
and Level 2 tsunamis. Level 1 tsunamis are events with a return period of several decades to slightly over 100 years. These tsunamis would generate relatively shallow inundation depths, typically less than 7-10 m. Level 2 tsunamis are events that are considered far rarer, typically taking place at intervals between every few hundred and a few thousand years. The tsunami inundation depths would be much larger, typically over 10 m, some times could reach 20-30 m1. The 2011 Great East Japan Tsunamis falls into this category. This categorization works as a base when the Japanese government makes reconstruction plans of the tsunami affected areas. However, by making figure 1 according to the historical tsunami data posted by Japan Meteorological Agency2, I
figure 1 / Tsunamis happened at northeast Japan in the history.
1 Vicente Santiago-FandiĂąo, Yevgeniy Kontar and Yoshiyuki Kaneda Post-Tsunami Hazard: Reconstruction and Restoration (Springer 2015), 134. 2 Japan Meteorologic Agency Website: http://www.jma. go.jp/jma/en/menu.html
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Not so far away from the pond, there was a little farm. The farmer was an old man who drove a small Nissan to the place every morning, to take care of the vegetables that he had planted on the land where once had been a clinic and an apartment building. He had grown beets, radishes, green onions, eggplants, chilies, tomatoes, sunflowers, cabbages and potatoes. He came to sow, to place fertilizer and sometimes to harvest. It wouldn’t be difficult to imagine that, with the Japanese’s habit of growing vegetables and rice in their backyard and on every bit of land that could grow food, the wasteland of Kadonowakicho and Minamihamacho would attract more people to come to farm. While the farms were expanding their territory, the wetland was also expanding. Wetlands would become the perfect place to grow rice and to cultivate fishes and poultry. An integrated farming system would then come to place. Steps away from the little farm, it reached the coast. The coastline had been drastically changed by the tsunami. But by then, the straight artificial coastline was newly rebuilt, buttressed by levees and sandbags. In the middle of the water, the small rectangular fish-boat pier that had been flooded
found that, at the north-east Japan coast, Level 2 tsunamis happen more frequently than described above. Take the most recent three Level 2 tsunamis for instance, they happened at 1896, 1933 and 2011. The intervals were 37 years and 78 years. The tsunami records further back in the history are rarer. It is highly possibly because of that the records had not been made in the old days, rather than because of the happening of tsunamis are rarer in the old days. Therefore, the interval of Level 2 tsunamis is an estimated average number based on a limited set of events and insufficient data. The actual return period of Level 2 tsunamis might be shorter. Although we have a rough idea about the interval between the tsunamis, especially the Level 1 tsunamis of which intervals are more accurately documented, the exact time when the next tsunami happens remains unpredictable. The area that a tsunami could effect is enormous, including the entire coast and even the coast on the opposite side of the ocean. Therefore, the cycle of tsunami is a colossal cycle on both spatial and temporal dimension but also a vague cycle with a blurry boundary. However, within this cycle, the interval between the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami caused by the earthquake is predictable. As long as the level and the location of the earthquake is identified, a precast of the arrival time of the tsunami could be made. Also, this is the most precious time that people could take advantage of to save their life from the otherwise uncontrollable, inescapable and unpredictable event of the reoccurrence of earthquakes and tsunamis. Back to our site at Minamihama, the contractors hired by the Japanese government are still cleaning the debris of buildings destroyed by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and 5
A Study in the Cyclical Features of Natural Disasters, Building Materials and Contemporary Life
Tsunami. A large amount of the debris was also washed away by the tsunami and had reached other coast — even as far away as at the other side of the Pacific Ocean, and clouds of debris could be seen from satellite at North American coast. The Japanese government planning of future Minamihama is a large memorial park and several public housings. The reconstruction of Minamihama could take optimum 5 to 10 years as the debris of the buildings destroyed by the last tsunami hasn’t been cleaned year and the constructing new buildings also takes time. In the vast but vague cycles of the reoccurring natural disasters, the damages of one hit of earthquake or tsunami will be reduced if a type of architecture that has very small and clear cycles could be identified. If the architecture is extremely transient that takes no time to built and decompose, it won’t left any debris after being destroyed by an earthquake or a tsunami, and it will be rebuilt very quickly. Then, the influences of the disaster last very short time. If the cycles of the architecture are so small that it operates thousand times within the interval between two catastrophes, even though it is completely removed by the disaster, people only loose onethousand share of their effort that they have been put within the period. If people build a “permanent” architecture that can stand thousand years, they risk all of their effort in front of the hit of a disaster. Therefore, living within the theme of inhabitation - elimination - reinhabitation, I suggest that a transient type of architecture can help people reduce the influence of the reoccurring natural disasters. Then I noticed the reed growing on this post-apocalypse site, at the shoreline of a small pond. The pond wasn’t there until the land sunken in the 2011 earthquake and the sea water came in. Since then, it has been four years, thanks to the 6
away by the tsunami was reconstructed. The eco-system down in the sea was recovering from the disaster. The seabed was reforming, and fishes were coming again. There were some fishing boats anchored in this small harbour, although far less than before the tsunami. Once the fish market was reopened and the fishing activity resumed, the small harbor would soon become crowd again. And the harbour might regain its prosper of the old days. Or even better than the old days, seafood restaurants and entertainments might emerge at the bank and on the water. Roads and railways might be built to transport the tourists to the harbour and fish from the harbour.
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At the north bank of the harbour, some workers were working in a boat factory, busily repairing and painting fishing boats that were hanging above the ground by chains. This factory is among the several buildings that had not been flooded away by the tsunami, although the ground they stand on had shifted and sunken. Although there were far less fishing boats to be repaired or built, the boat factory was operating as usual, which could become the engine of the industrial development of the place. Once the fishing activities resumed, the demand of building and repairing fishing boats was going to increase. Then the boat factory would run a better business, and the demand for raw materials like steel, paints and wood would increase. Thus, the workers at the now abandoned steel factory next to the pond would resume their daily business. Even more, a new paint factory and wood factory might also be built near the boat factory. The growing of boat building industry would catalyze the development of fishing activities, but would fight for land with the wetlands and the farms. While the human activities were increasing on the land, the desire of making a “claim” of the territory was growing as well. There was a temple
mild climate of Japan, the pond has neither disappeared nor shrunk. The reed grows prosperously around the pond. The reed is called Yoshi in Japanese. Its Latin name is phragmites. It is a traditional construction material in Japan. It is not only one of the most commonly used thatching materials of traditional Japanese houses3, but also an important material to build ritual symbols of Shinto. Early historic texts mentioned Japan as the “land of the wide reed beds”4. It is also the perfect description of the current Minamihama, “land of the wide reed beds”. Most of the things had been washed away by the tsunami while the reed beds became the primary image of the site. The reed is the first element emerged in a new cycle of inhabitation. When reed is used to build cultic symbols, they are reconstructed annually. People build the symbols to “make a territorial claim”5. It is not inhabitable, but it is the meta stage of the establishment of a settlement. The material itself could stand much more than just one year, but the cycle isn’t only determined by the physical features of the material itself. People remake the form of the reed structure “to maintain the claim”6. Therefore, the cultic symbols are always remade when the “building material” grows again. 3 Another two most commonly used thatching materials in Japan are Yamakaya and Susuki. They are the general names of various species of grass growing on the mountain and on the field. 4 Nold Egenter, Architectural Anthropology: Semantic and Symbolic Architecture, (Structura Mundi 1994), 60 5 Nold Egenter, Architectural Anthropology: Semantic and Symbolic Architecture, (Structura Mundi 1994), 27 6 Nold Egenter, Architectural Anthropology: Semantic and Symbolic Architecture, (Structura Mundi 1994), 27 7
A Study in the Cyclical Features of Natural Disasters, Building Materials and Contemporary Life
When reed is used as a thatching material, they are replaced in a cycle around 15 to 35 years. The cycle of thatched roof is decided by the physical features of reed. The materials are blackened and lose their waterproofing and insulating ability after so many years and then they should be replaced. In the old days, when Irori was commonly used in Japanese houses7, the life span of a thatched roof could be stretched to 30 to 40 years, as the smoke from the Irori dries thatches on the roof and protects them from decaying. While in a house where people live a contemporary life (without any Irori or traditional kitchen that produces smoke), the thatches must be replaced every 15 years. Reed is perennial herb, but could be harvest every year. They are usually harvested in November and December in northeast Honshu Island (the main island of Japan) where my site is located. After dried for a winter, they are used on the new thatch roof in March of the next year. In some cases, the harvested reed could also be stored (must be kept dry) for several years until they are placed on thatched roofs. Reed is a costly material when used as covering. The thickness of the thatch must be not less than 30 centimetres, normally 40 centimetres to keep the roof waterproofing. This requires 16 to 18 bundles (the bundles are 50 to 60 centimetres diameter) of reed for every square metres roof area (not floor area). Thus, to build a thatched roof for a medium size houses (50m2 floor area, roof area should be around 80m2), it needs 1360 bundles of reed. This amount of reed weighs
7 Traditional Japanese houses are called “Minka� in some books, as their Japanese pronunciation. 8
that had been half flooded away by the tsunami, which marked the spiritual centre of the site. The temple was surrounded by a graveyard, where the number of tombs had grown after the tsunami. The temple itself had lost all its walls and partitions. What had been left were the timber columns, the stone foundations of the columns, several broken stone statues, a roof with dark red ceramic tiles, a stone terrace with distorted steel handrails, the faded tatami mats, books on the mats that clearly had been soaked in water and dried, and a trophy on which characters weren’t recognizable. From a distance, it looked like a pavilion with a disproportionally large canopy. People would start to rebuild the temple. New
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walls and doors would be build and new wood would be transported to the site to replace the broken columns. Monks might come to live in the temple again, and they would build their residential buildings. While the activities of farming, fishing and industrial production were growing, people would be more and more likely to spend a night on the site. They would start to build new houses on top of the ruins of the houses that had been destroyed by the tsunami. Workers would come to the place to build houses. Workers’ temporary houses would be built first. As the same time of constructing the new residential buildings, roads and other infrastructures would be rebuilt, maybe even better than before the tsunami. Thus, it would be possible for people to settle down at this site. With more people living here and better infrastructure, the industry would grow rapidly. Entertaining places would emerge, maybe at the side of the harbour close to the seafood restaurant. However, the growth of the industry, housing and entertaining facilities would be fighting for land against the farmer and the creatures living at the wetland. The wetland and the farm would be shrinking or disappearing.
7 tons! (100 bundles of reed weigh 0.5 ton)8. If one hectare reed bed could produce 50 tons of thatch per year, it could provide thatches for 7 thatched roof houses each year. 105 houses can be built within 15 years until at the 16th year the houses that are built in the first year require a replacement of thatches. That is to say, reed grows on one hectare wetland can sustain 105 medium size thatched roof houses that used in a contemporary way. The construction cycle of thatched roofs is small. The most time consuming part of thatching is harvesting. They are traditionally and still harvested by hand. Japanese architect Terunobu Fujimori speaks of his experience of reed harvesting in his book as “grasp, cut, put aside, repetitive move…after four hours work, the harvested reed formed small hill…but the small hill disappeared after only a thin layer of roof was made, as when binded to bundles, the volume of the reed shrink one-third”9. According to Fujimori’s description, it takes one person around 30 days to harvest enough reed to build a thatched roof for a medium sized house (50m2 floor area). When it comes to the thatching process, the community always works together to get a thatched roof done within 2 to 3 days. But if the owner hired a thatching company to replace the thatches, it takes around two months (5 to 6 people workers). The destruction cycle starts even before the construction cycle starts. Same as other organic materials, the decomposition 8 Data is from Nanbukaya thatch merchant. Their website is http://nanbukaya.jp/inquiry/qanda.html 9 Terunobu Fujimori (藤森照信), 天下無雙的建築學入 門, (暖暖書屋文化 2014), 79 9
A Study in the Cyclical Features of Natural Disasters, Building Materials and Contemporary Life
process starts right after the reed is cut. To slow down the decomposition process, people keep the material dry or, as mentioned before, smoke the roof by Irori. However, the life of the materials will inevitably comes to an end and people will have to replace them. Thus, a cycle ends another cycle starts. I consider the transition of the cycles of reed could be defined as three situations. Most of the time, the replaced old thatches are made to fertilizer and put back to the farmland. It takes one and a half month to convert the used materials to fertilizer10. And when the they are spread back to the land. In this situation, the two cycles slightly overlapped and the end of the cycle of the used material influences (nurtures) a third cycle. In some situation, like the Ise Shrine, when the new shrine is built, the old shrine is left as it is, continuing blackening and decomposing until the “new” shrine also gets “old”, and the place shall be cleared to construct the third shrine. In this case, the cycles are always half overlapped. The third situation mostly happens in cultic festivals, the symbols built by reed are always burned at the end of the festival. Thus the two cycles don’t meet each other. Are the cycles always operate as perfect circles? Egenter said “yes”, at least in the field of cultic symbols. “It is eternally young and ever the same”11. He considers material tradition (Sachtradition) is better preserved than ideal tradition. It is true in a sense but the cycle of material tradition is only relatively perfect comparing to the cycle of ideal tradition. Both the cycle of material tradition and the cycle of ideal 10 Soramai’s Organic Agriculture Website: http://soramai. jp/column/column_02.html 11 Nold Egenter, Architectural Anthropology: Semantic and Symbolic Architecture, (Structura Mundi 1994), 67 10
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tradition are transforming surreptitiously. The forms of both the cultic symbols and the Ise Shrine are not the same as when they were initially established. The cycles evolve generation by generation because flaws are unavoidable. Unnoticeable differences accumulate to apparent differences. The cycles operate more like spirals rather than circles.
figure 2 / reed harvesting in central Japan12
Minamihama had been wiped out by the 2011 tsunami, and the most dominant element of current Minamihama, if see from a satellite, is the road frame. Ishinomaki is a city where people move by cars. Public transportations are rare. And people seldom cycle. It suggest that people move in higher speed and with less contact. The city layout tend to be looser and uniformer when the city is based on automobiles. This 12 Chuji Kawashima, Minka: Traditional Houses of Rural Japan, (Kodansha International , 1986), 16 11
A Study in the Cyclical Features of Natural Disasters, Building Materials and Contemporary Life
habit mostly has a negative influence on forming a cohesive community, especially for a city like Ishinomaki where the whole community is lack of confidence for the future of the city and young people are moving out. Could the anticipated natural disaster brings any opportunity to Ishinomki? To live with the reoccurring disasters, I suggested “small cycle” architecture. Will the periodically remaking of architecture bring any difference to the community? In ancient Japan, the annual replacement of reed symbols is a “claim of territory”. Can we bring this “claim” to the city through the periodically
figure 3 / villagers lifting a prefabricated cultic symbol together in a festival. 13
13 Shiralawa-go Education Commission, The Construction of Gassho-style Houses 12
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rebuilding activity? Reed is a material that suggest people to build by hand — tying and plaiting. Can we establish an architecture that requires the community to work together by their hands therefore establish their identity? Will the simple periodically repetitive body movement also change people’s mind?
Bibliography: Books Liu Cixin, English Translation by Ken Liu, The Three-Body Problem, Tom Doherty Associates, 2014 Vicente Santiago-Fandiño, Yevgeniy Kontar and Yoshiyuki Kaneda, Post-Tsunami Hazard: Reconstruction and Restoration. Springer, 2015 Nold Egenter, Architectural Anthropology: Semantic and Symbolic Architecture, Structura Mundi, 1994 Chuji Kawashima, Minka: Traditional Houses of Rural Japan, Kodansha International, 1986 Shiralawa-go Education Commission, The Construction of Gassho-style Houses Terunobu Fujimori (藤森照信), 天下無雙的建築學入門, 暖暖書屋文化(臺北), 2014 Websites Japan Meteorologic Agency Website: http://www.jma.go.jp/ jma/en/menu.html Nanbukaya Thatching Company Website: http://nanbukaya. jp/inquiry/qanda.html Soramai’s Organic Agriculture Website: http://soramai.jp/ column/column_02.html 13