For me the most enduring images of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami have not been the larger-than-life pictures of nature’s all-too destructive forces. These, certainly, are breathtaking in their scale and horror. Few will soon forget the footage of a 30ft wave, churning like an angry beast up the shore – cars, boats and even entire houses, some of them aflame, tossed in its muddy intensity. Nor will they quickly erase the image of the seaside town of Rikuzentaka in the tsunami’s silent aftermath, its wooden houses shredded into rough-hewn matchstick, a graveyard for the drowned.
在日本地震和海嘯中，給人留下最難以磨滅印象的，並非反映大自然無與倫比的毀滅力量的非凡畫面。這些畫面就其聲勢和恐怖程度而言自然是令人驚心動魄。人們不會很快忘記這樣的鏡頭：30英尺高的巨浪就像一頭憤怒的野獸奔騰上岸，汽車、船隻乃至整幢房屋（其中有的正在燃燒）被混濁的泥水拋來拋去。人們也不會很快忘記海嘯過後海邊小鎮陸前高田市的死寂：木房子被撕成了碎木條，像是胡亂砍成的細木棍，整座城鎮變成了溺斃者的墓地。