Anthropological Approach to Vulnerability and Major Hazards - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 297

unilaterally catastrophic manner. It was also considered as a windfall
(a resource), as the hinge of a plot subject to the enjoyment of
narration and pictorial depiction of a “humorous” character, and as a
factor that forced the authorities and the merchants to relinquish their
fortunes to meet the essential needs of the impoverished survivors.
From a mesological perspective (that is to say, one that takes account
of the human milieu concerned), this interpretation can be translated
as an “ideogram of catastrophe”. This can constitute a tool that
displays, in a synoptic manner, the ambivalence that appertains to all
major disasters: its concrete and complex expression. It also allows us
not to give way to the attractions of the ever-present catastrophism
and to observe carefully the resources and benefits, attractions and
desires, pleasures and hunmorous aspects which, whatever one says,
irrevocably remain the result of disasters.
Figure 7.11. Print by Katsuhiko Hokusai called “the Waves”
7.5. Tsunami or tidal wave?
Let us observe in detail this famous print (Figure 7.11) that the
artist Katsuhiko Hokusai painted in 1830 and 1831. Extremely fine