An enormous banner hung at the iconic scramble crossing in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward is prompting pedestrians to imagine the unimaginable.
The red line on the banner shows the maximum height--16.7 meters--of the wall of waves that devastated coastal areas of the Tohoku region eight years ago.
"If the tsunami had hit Shibuya, water would have reached this height," reads the vertical banner hung on the side of a building facing the intersection.
The red line on the banner, set up by search engine provider Yahoo Japan Corp., indicates the highest level of waves triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, as recorded in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture.
"The Heisei Era (1989-present) is about to come to a close and we will move on to the next era, but let us not forget what happened on that day,” the message says.
The project, which will continue until March 14, is intended to encourage people to visualize the sheer force of the tsunami.
Yahoo Japan posted a similar advertising message in 2017 on the then Sony Building in Tokyo's Ginza district.