The Japanese mayor who built a floodgate no one wanted — and saved his town from a massive tsunami after his death

Every time this story comes back up its stark how even in Japan, which is generally held up internationally as an exemplar of public investment, people balk at infrastructure built to withstand proven historical necessity because it's for "once/twice in a generation" events. The difference being that they went along with it in this case.

It contrasts harshly with the coverage of the hurricane flooding in Virginia last year where the immediate narrative was "unprecedented" and the later quiet articles were that actually it seems to happen every hundred years or so.

I realize that part of why this village's story is popular is because other adjacent Japanese villages didn't make similar measures. Maybe it's just reinforcement that we need more extraordinary leaders, but that's not super encouraging.

It's funny that most things worth shooting for in politics happen on timescales much slower than the rate of discussion and reelection. The world gets better when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit in. Best we can do is hope for more long-termist politicians who get mocked in their time but follow through anyway.