Been watching eyewitness footage of the 2011 Tohoku tsunami, a few interesting things there.

First, I guess in my mind a tsunami was like a slap from one really big wave but this all just seemed to be the water level just steadily rising until it spilled over seawalls and became a molasses slurry of lumber and cars and burning houses, buildings collapsed not when the water hit but when the flow pushed another building through them.

A few videos had bits where as the water continued to rise the people observing and filming from the safety of higher ground suddenly realized they had to get to even higher ground and set off in a scramble. All made it, of course, seeing we have their footage.

Several shots of someone clearly doomed that all cut away before the moment. It’s not like the Japanese have some monopoly on squeamishness about death, but just the regularity of this, the videographer making a focus of the elderly couple doddering down the street before the woodslide or the family scrambling up the hill, but then consistently drifting off before they’re overtaken and aiming at nothing in particular until they find another plot thread - it’s different from other things I’ve seen.

You hear about “face” and saving and presenting it, the ubiquitous “いや、見ないで!“, but there’s something really striking about watching people in crisis situations scrupulously exercising a duty not to witness others’ misfortune.

Also, Japanese women are totally capable of shrieking and wailing in a normal tone of voice. Who knew?