MIYAKO, Iwate Prefecture--In a sobering tour, sightseers wandered through the ruins of the Taro Kanko Hotel, one of the thousands of structures destroyed in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
Yusuke Fujii, a 30-year-old office worker from Suwa, Nagano Prefecture, and his 34-year-old wife, Risa, were among those who visited the shattered hotel in the city’s Taro district on April 2.
The couple gasped at the sight of fallen ceilings and twisted rebar as they climbed an outdoor staircase. When they reached the top level on the sixth floor, they were shown a video of the approaching tsunami that was shot by Yuki Matsumoto, the president of the hotel.
The footage captured images of the ocean and the destroyed seawall as the black waters of the tsunami inundated everything in its path.
“A real object like this, like the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, has so much to convey,” Fujii said. “Being here has given me the sense of distances, which has allowed me to get a more real feel.”
The Miyako city government on April 1 began accepting visitors to the ruins of the Taro Kanko Hotel, the first among the destroyed structures that were approved by the central government for preservation.
Still standing and covered with vivid scars from the ravaging waves, the ruins offer mute testimony to the power of the tsunami.
On March 11, 2011, a towering 20-meter wave spilled over a gigantic seawall and slammed into the hotel. The six-story structure was flooded to the fourth level, and the walls on the first three floors were destroyed.
The city government acquired the land and the ruins of the hotel after it decided to preserve the site, along with the seawall, and use them to pass down memories of the disaster.
The hotel became the first officially recognized ruins of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, a status that allows the central government’s reconstruction grants to be spent on preservation work.
The city government has preserved the hotel’s exposed steel frame to retain visible marks of the tsunami damage.
It has also conducted anti-seismic retrofitting and rustproofing on the building, as well as creating parking lots and restrooms for visitors.
City officials estimate that maintenance, such as preservation of the steel frame and repair of outer walls and other components, will cost about 78 million yen ($706,000) over the next two decades. The city plans to use its tsunami remnants preservation fund and solicit donations for covering those expenses.
Tours of the interior are allowed only to participants of “Manabu Bosai” (Lessons on disaster management), a tour program operated by the Miyako Tourism Cultural Exchange Association.
Sightseers are asked to pay 4,000 yen per person to help fund tour guides.