THE deserted white apartment building tells its story floor by floor. The street level has only gaping open spaces where there were once floor-to-ceiling windows. On the second story, pieces of aluminum protrude across some of those gaps. More metal appears on the third floor, delineating parts of window frames. The fourth floor has horizontal and vertical metal bars in the gaps, but no glass. The fifth and top floor reveals what each level of this 40-unit structure used to look like: a parapet of white panels encloses a row of identical apartments with sliding glass doors that open up to balconies.
The building in the city of Rikuzentakata is a vivid if eerie illustration of the power of the tsunami that ripped through the structure's first four floors, the water's force decreasing with height. The city recently decided to preserve the structure as a testament to the devastation wrought by the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan's northeastern coast on March 11, 2011.
Near the apartment building, yellow excavators work through mounds of debris-filled soil, clearing the grounds for new construction. As the region's massive clean up races along with characteristic Japanese efficiency, the local governments face the sensitive challenge of deciding what if any items should be preserved as memorials of the tragedy. It is proving to be a testing process, particularly in the northern area's conservative culture that reveres consensus.
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