深达63 米防波堤赢得了吉尼斯世界纪录，它的存在给古老的钢城40000户居民带来明显的安慰。
2011年3月11日海啸袭来时，建成五年的防御设施没能保住。海浪冲进来，有10米之高，数以百计的房屋被毁，一千多人死亡。
防波堤把海浪挡住了六分钟，高度减少了六米，但这一切还没有完。
“我们认为我们是在前沿，但海啸比我们预期的高，”釜石市市长野田佳彦说。“最大的教训是，我们应该学习不能自满。”
对于许多关注日本经济的人来说，另一个灾难正在形成。“赤字和债务,” 日本民主党政治家浩平说。“这有点像一个地震。它可能会在明天或10年内到来，但它终究要来。”
日本的经济问题是耳熟能详的。世界第三大经济体的国家债务占GDP的236%，预算赤字的10%。相比之下，英国是一个财政清廉的地方，国家债务占GDP88%，预算赤字的8%，这是国际货币基金组织提供的数字。
如果这还不够的话，日本的老龄化人口正在累积着更大的公共财政的压力。
十年前，社会保障支出是GDP的12%，现在是24%。同时，税收收入从30%减少到28%，生产力缩水。
这个系统迫切需要改革，但政治却停滞不前。
两个主要政党达成平衡的基本预算不早于2020年，产生一个跨党派协议，到2015年增值税从5%提高到10%。
那是不够的。国际货币基金组织说增值税需要上升到15%，福利改革、养老金和医疗保健，姗姗来迟。争论不过才刚刚开始。
在釜石，在剧作家正一领导下一直努力重建社区，大多数人认为债务已得到控制。“人们不了解问题的严重性，”浩平先生说。
日本自我封锁，背后为它特有的债务形态进行辩解，92%政府债券属于日本的银行和金融机构。
防御是为了免遭直接的威胁，但即便是反对改革的保守派，他们的意图也是要废除防御。
三分之一的日本能源目前是由原子能产生。然而，随着福岛反应堆熔毁后激愤的群情，政府承诺到2030年全部淘汰掉核反应堆。
这项政策将会提高石油、天然气和煤的进口——削减贸易顺差的储备和流失到国际债券市场。
当涉及到政治意愿，英国领先日本。但是在其他方面，这种类比是不合适的。
这两个国家遭受了金融危机，就像经济学家所说的那样，给他们留下了僵尸家庭（英国）或僵尸公司（日本），和僵尸银行。
政策也走过了类似的道路。利率降低到接近零，中央银行不得不印钱和尝试“信贷放松”，政府侧重于基础设施建设来治疗增长缓慢， 已经有一个迅速崛起的非正规劳动力——在英国，是兼职者和自由职业者。年轻人被剥夺了权利。
唯一大的差别是，到目前为止，英国一直是避免通货紧缩。
如果日本是英国的未来——这个笑话在东京的学术圈里是“日本在每一个经济问题上都领先”——有多可怕。
日本的问题已经摇身一变，从经济到社会，然后回送到更深的经济问题。
乏力的增长减少了机会，因此，外国投资者已退出，国内企业开始转向海外融资。与此同时，通缩使得极度困难的公司很难管理他们的成本。
这个回应是戏剧性的。日本，终身职业的最后一个火炬手，现在有最大比例的“非正式”合同工人——很少的就业权利和黯淡的职业前景——在这个工业化国家。
年轻人试图抱住行将消失的老一套，一个新时代的保守主义已经生根。
在过去十年中， 根据中央大学社会学教授正浩山田的调查分析，要呆在同一个公司新聘人员，他们的整个工作时间已从五分之一上升到超过二分之一。
越来越的人想要超过应得的年金报酬。不愿意到海外工作。更多的妇女比起老一代来，在二三十岁就想做家庭主妇。企业家越来越少。
虽然在日本我们并不缺乏聪明才智，本田的类人型机器人就是一个例子——活力已经消失。缺少机会已经泯灭了人们的追求。
据一位政府官员说，这种保守主义至少部分是由于债务负担。尽管日本社会禁止任何形式的债务重组。
在神足，志村先生讲到抵押贷款买到的新房子，眼看着被冲走了，什么也没有留下，只留下债务。
银行是不会给你免除债务的，也不会让你无限期拖延。
家庭和朋友一起付贷款——把负担传播出去而不仅仅在表面。
道德风险被用来捍卫道德标准。“我们需要社会的理解——我们不能奖励蚱蜢反对蚂蚁，”同时我说停滞将继续存在，出生率持续下降，这一代人被剥夺了权利，而债务显得越来越繁重。
有一种感觉，在日本，乐观主义和宿命论危险地困惑着。
“日本是乐观的。他们相信那些美好的时光会到来，“ 比较宗教学教授山折哲雄说。灾害发生，随着时间的推移，像季节一样过去了，他解释说。只要传统价值观是坚定的，春天还会再来。
对于政府官员来说，现在是振兴的时候了。英国曾出现过债务危机的顶峰，它们扼杀的不只是经济，而是一代人的希望。
投资基础设施建设并非是解决债务危机之道，他补充道。日本试图构建它的增长方式，但它也只能是满载着债务负担。
避免通货紧缩是至关重要的，但未能解决赤字是最坏的一种自满。
浩平先生最后分析能带来一些安慰。
“日本人民，,”他说。“除非他们经历一个危机，否则他们不认为他们需要做出反应。”
Far beyond the harbour at Kamaishi town in north east Japan, the ravaged remains of its sea defences still rise jagged above the water.
Descending 63m, the breakwater had earned a place in the Guinness book of records as the world’s deepest and its presence offered the ancient steel town’s 40,000 residents visible reassurance.
When the tsunami struck on March 11, 2011, though, the five-year-old defences could not hold. The wave washed in, climbing 10 metres above sea level, levelling hundreds of homes and killing over a thousand people.
The sea wall held the water back for six minutes and reduced the height of the wave by six metres, but the protection had been an illusion.
“We thought we were at the cutting edge, but the tsunami was taller than we anticipated,” Takenori Noda, Kamaishi’s mayor, says. “The biggest lesson we should learn is not to be complacent.”
For many who follow the Japanese economy, another disaster is building. “The deficit and debt,” Kohei Otuska, a politician with the Democratic Party of Japan, says. “It’s something like an earthquake. It may come tomorrow or in 10 years, but it is coming.”
Japan’s economic problems are well-rehearsed. The world’s third largest economy has national debt of 236pc of GDP, and a budget deficit of 10pc. The UK, by comparison, is a bastion of fiscal rectitude, with national debt of 88pc and an 8pc budget deficit, using International Monetary Fund numbers.
If that was not unsustainable enough, Japan’s ageing population is piling even more pressure on the public finances.
A decade ago, social security expenditure was 12pc of GDP, it’s now 24pc. In the same time, tax receipts have dwindled from 30pc to 28pc as the workforce has shrunk.
The system is crying out for reform, but there is political stasis. The two main parties have agreed to balance the primary budget no earlier than 2020, having struck a cross-party deal to raise VAT from 5pc to 10pc by 2015.
It is not enough. The IMF says VAT needs to rise to 15pc and welfare reform, of pensions and medical care, is long overdue.
The debate, though, has barely begun.
In Kamaishi, Shoichi Shimura, a playwright who has been leading efforts to rebuild the community, says most people believe the debt is under control. After all, just 20 years ago Japan had no borrowings at all.
“People don’t understand the scale of the problem,” Mr Otuska concedes.
Japan has barricaded itself behind the defence of its peculiar debt dynamic - that 92pc of government bonds are owned by Japanese banks and institutions.
The arrangement shields it from immediate threat, but even there the political establishment is intent on dismantling the defences.
A third of Japan’s energy is currently nuclear generated. However, with emotions running high after the reactor meltdown at Fukushima, the government has committed to phasing that out completely by the 2030s.
The policy will drive up imports of oil, gas and coal - eroding the trade surplus or even pushing it into deficit, slashing the export-generated savings and leaving the country exposed to international bond markets.
When it comes to political will, the UK is leagues ahead of Japan. But elsewhere, the parallels are eerie.
Both nations suffered a financial crisis that, as economists put it, left them with zombie households (UK) or zombie companies (Japan), and zombie banks.
Policy has also trodden a similar path. Rates have been cut to near zero, central banks have printed money and tried “credit easing”, governments have looked to infrastructure to cure slow growth, and there has been a rapid rise in the non-regular workforce – in the UK, part-timers and the self-employed. The young have been disenfranchised.
The UK may have recapitalised the banks faster and started printing money earlier, but policy action has been largely the same. The big difference so far, has been deflation.
If Japan is Britain’s future - and the joke in Tokyo’s academic circles is that “Japan is the front-runner for every economic problem - there is much to fear.
Japan’s problems have morphed from the economic into the social, which has then looped back into deeper economic malaise.
Weak growth has reduced opportunities and, consequently, foreign investors have withdrawn and domestic companies have started to shift capital overseas.
Shiseido, a cosmetics group that owns the Issey Miyake brand, has rebalanced dramatically in the past 15 years. In 1997, 11pc of sales were foreign. This year it is 44pc.
At the same time, deflation has made it desperately difficult for companies to manage their costs.
The response has been dramatic. Japan, which was one of the last torch-bearers for jobs-for-life, now has the largest proportion of “non-regular” contract workers – with little employment rights and reduced career prospects – in the industrialised world, Shiseido director Carsten Fischer says.
As the young try to cling on to the vanishing old ways, a new age of conservatism has taken hold.
In last decade, surveys analysed by Masahiro Yamada, a sociology professor at Chuo University, have shown the proportion of newly hired workers wanting to stay in the same company their entire working life has risen from one-in-five to more than one-in-two.
A growing number want length of service rewarded over merit. Fewer are willing to find employment overseas. More women in their 20s and 30s want to be a housewife than among older generations. And the number of entrepreneurs is dwindling.
Tax breaks are barely helping, one government official adds.
“Policy was designed to promote start-ups but it hasn’t been successful because people are becoming more and more conservative.”
Toshiyuki Inoko, 35-year-old founder of the successful digital creative outfit TeamLab confirms the anlaysis. He says: “In the last 20 years, the last 10 in particular, we have become very conservative. Whenever something new is being done, you will be crushed.”
Although there’s no shortage of ingenuity in Japan - Honda’s remarkable Asimo robot is just one example - the dynamism has disappeared. Lack of opportunity has stripped the people of ambition.
According to Mr Yamada, the economic malaise has exacerbated Japan’s demographic crisis – the population began to decline in 2007. The fertility rate has fallen because fewer people are getting married.
“They are not marrying because they don’t believe they are in a position to start a family,” Mr Yamada says. The result has been a rise in what he calls the “grass eaters” – “nerds or geeks who are more interested in anime than girls” – and “parasite singles” who live with their parents into their 40s.
According to one government official, this conservatism is at least in part due to the debt burden.
“Once the balance sheet of households or corporates are in difficulty, it is very difficult to address it through monetary or fiscal policy,” he warns.
Another policymaker says: “Balance sheet adjustment is so hard – that’s why we are experiencing such a long period of stagnation.”
Japanese society forbids any form of debt restructuring, though.
In Kamiashi, Mr Shimura told stories of families who had taken out a mortgage only to see their new home washed away, to be left with nothing but the debt.
No forgiveness was forthcoming from the banks, nor was it expected. Families and friends pulled together to pay the loan – spreading the burden wider but shallower.
Moral hazard is invoked to defend the principle. “We need a social understanding – we can not reward grasshoppers against ants,” I’m told
In the meantime stagnation persists, the birthrate continues to fall, a generation is disenfranchised, and the debts loom ever larger.
There is a sense in Japan that optimism and fatalism have been dangerously confused.
“The Japanese are optimistic. They believe the good times will come,” Tetsuo Yamaori, a professor of comparative religion, says. Disasters happen and, over time, pass – like the seasons, he explains. So long as the old values are steadfast, spring will come again.
For the government official, the time for rebirth is now. The UK has been right to get on top of its debts before they choke off not just the economy, but the hopes of a generation.
Infrastructure spending is not the solution, he adds. Japan tried building its way to growth, but it just loaded up the debt burden.
Avoiding deflation is vital, but failing to address the deficit would be the worst kind of complacency.
Mr Otuska’s final analysis provides little comfort.
“The Japanese people,” he says. “Unless they experience a crisis, they don’t think they need to respond.”
