Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (known as Koizumi Yakumo after his naturalization as a Japanese citizen), an Englishman born on the Greek island of Lefkada, first introduced it in his novel A Living God. Hearn’s depiction of the Meiji-Sanriku earthquake, which in 1896 took 22,000 lives in the same region as the recent quake, was later included in elementary school textbooks under the title of “The Burning of the Rice Field.”
海啸最初是个日文单词。 出生在希腊莱夫卡斯岛的英国人帕特里克·拉夫卡迪奥·赫恩（加入日本国籍后更名为小泉八云），首次在其小说《活着的神》中提到了海啸。 赫恩笔下1896年的明治三陆地震夺去了同一震区22，000条生命，之后被编入小学课本，命名为“稻丛之火”。