On 15 June 1896, a tsunami generated by the Sanriku earthquake struck the north-eastern coast of Japan. The earthquake itself felt weak, but the waves reached extraordinary heights and killed more than 20,000 people. The disaster left physical tsunami stones and a deep coastal memory.

Japanese tanka, haiku, and local memorial verse absorbed the shock of villages taken by the sea. The event also helped internationalise the word tsunami, giving later poets a precise term for sudden, disproportionate, oceanic grief.