Ominous views of Japan’s new concrete seawalls

Full photoset at Wired
The severing of our connection to earth and nature is no more apparent than in these photos of Japan’s seawalls. The photographer, Tadashi Ono, says:

“Our richness as a civilization is because of our contact with the ocean. Japan has always lived with the sea, and we were protected by the sea. And now the Japanese government has decided to shut out the sea.”

The walls might also be completely unnecessary: they were built in response to a tsunami but the coastal towns affected by that tsunami have already been moved to higher ground. It’s a classic example of applying a highly disruptive solution before learning about the problem.