Yachts sway gently on the harbour and gulls wheel across a sky filled with puffy cumulus clouds that don’t quite block the fine view of Mt Fuji.
This waterfront district of Numazu City, about 100km southwest of Tokyo, is a tranquil little backwater.
But first impressions can be deceptive; this little suburb is also one of the most dangerous places in the country when it comes to tsunami risk.
Uchiura Omusu, as is it known, is soon to become Japan’s – and possibly the world’s – first example of a pre-emptive relocation due to tsunami risk.
Residents approached their municipality about moving from the waterfront to a nearby hill amid predictions of widespread carnage in the event of the so-called Nankai quake occurring.
Recent government estimates predict a magnitude 9 earthquake in the Nankai Trough – a zone where several tectonic plates meet off the southern pacific coast of Honshu – could kill or injure almost one million people.
Previous Nankai quakes have unleashed devastating tsunamis and the latest government assessment puts the expected height of wave at 34m and estimates that 323,000 people could be killed in such a tragedy.
Due to the nearby location of the faults, residents in this part of Shizuoka Prefecture could get as little as 10 minutes to evacuate before the tsunami tears into their town.
The risk and frequency of Nankai quakes is low, but after the damage and death unleashed by the Tohoku earthquake on March 11 last year, most of Uchiura Omosu’s 400 residents are interested in relocation.
To mitigate damage from future tsunamis, the Japanese government has offered to pay for relocation of communities most at risk and will foot the bill for land and some infrastructure, but not the construction of individuals’ houses. The catch is that the entire community has to agree.
In Uchiura Omosu, the local government is fully supporting the move and 80 per cent of the residents support starting discussions on relocation.
Relocation expert Suguru Mori, a professor from Hokkaido University called in to conduct consultations, tells the residents, all of whom have houses that sit about 2m above sea level, that it would only take a tsunami of 4m to wash wood-framed houses away and that the expected height in this area is at least double that.
The Australian