Like everyone else I’m stunned by the devastation in Japan. But I’m puzzled by those who believe that sharing video and photos of the disasters constitutes sympathy. This weekend one of the local news programs ran footage of the tsunami and compared it to computer-generated imagery from one of last summer’s Hollywood movies. It just wasn’t right.
The sense of physical loss made me think of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, from 1923, which survived the great earthquake of that year only to sink steadily on its own foundations until it was razed in 1968. Known mainly through a series of grainy black and white photos, the structure looks like a splendid mash-up of Craftsman, modern and Mayan styles. It’s gone but still present.