tsunami stone

noun

A stone which serves to warn of the dangers of tsunamis in Japan.

Meanings

nountsunami stone (plural tsunami stones)

plural tsunami stones

  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 29, 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
    3 more examples

    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

    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along the same coast and considering other warning signals that have fallen into oblivion, such as tsunami stones and historical documents^(3,15), the underestimation of historic and paleo-tsunamis becomes evident.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

    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

Origin

  1. Japanese津波石
  2. Englishtsunami stone

Calque of Japanese 津波石 (tsunami ishi).

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

tsunami stone. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/tsunami%20stone

MLA

“tsunami stone.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/tsunami%20stone. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “tsunami stone,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/tsunami%20stone.

Source: tsunami stone on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.