Tenriky Priest Okutani Fumitomo suggested that Tokyo, as the center of many western-inspired, foreign ideologies and behaviors, was singled out by Gods (kamisama ) fury. In revealing, disasters give students and scholars wonderful insights into human nature, cultural and social constructions, and illuminate the many relationshipsbetween man, nature, state, and even the cosmosthat define our existence. Fortunately, this area did not suffer from fire. If one were to pour money to earthquake sufferers, why not also direct some to impoverished rural communities as well, asked MP Miwa Ichitar. Tokyo is located near a fault zone beneath the Izu Peninsula which, on average, causes a major earthquake about once every 70 years,[54] and is also located near the Sagami Trough, a large subduction zone that has potential for large earthquakes. [4] They are usually 1050m (33164ft) tall, a few meters (several feet) wide, and last only a few minutes. And the quake may have emboldened right-wing forces at the very moment that the country was poised between military expansion and an embrace of Western democracy, only 18 years before Japan would enter World War II. Attracting entrepreneurs, fugitives, traders, spies and drifters from every corner of the world, the port rose like a mirage in the desert, wrote one Japanese novelist. At two minutes to noon a magnitude approximate 7.9 earthquake toppled structures, crushed people, and unsettled everyone who survived. The smiles vanished, remembered Ellis M. Zacharias, then a young U.S. naval officer, who was standing on the pier when the earthquake hit, and for an appreciable instant everyone stood transfixed by the sound of unearthly thunder. Moments later, a tremendous jolt knocked Zacharias off his feet, and the pier collapsed, spilling cars and people into the water. Only 300 of the people gathered there survived. A good idea of the tremendous devastation in Tokyo wrought by earthquake and fire. Once in place, soldiers established relief camps, temporary medical facilities, constructed seventy-four temporary bridges, cleared 130 miles of roads for the transportation and distribution of food and water from neighboring prefectures, and collected and burned the corpses of the dead. By the way, I didn't mean to say hurricane I meant to say earthquake On this day in 1923, a great fire sweeps through the streets and narrow alleyways of Tokyo. On 1 September 1923 Tokyo's vulnerabilities were exposed unambiguously. It was the deadliest earthquake in Japanese history. Before the Great Kanto Earthquake struck, Japan was full of optimism. All told, 45 percent of Tokyo burned before the last embers of the inferno died out on September 3. As a result, many expressed reservations, if not clear antipathy, to plans both in public and on the floor of Japans elected assembly, the Diet. This video is to revive those. Messervey, from a letter dated March 5, 1924. These winds caused fires to spread rapidly. One hundred and thirty separate fires began in Tokyo less than an hour after the quake, with many clustered in the densely populated eastern and northeastern wards of Asakusa, Nihonbashi, Kanda, Kybashi, Fukagawa, and Ginza. Particularly, the tendency of sexual slackness was deplorable: there were so many scandalous events, and, some part of the society obviously acknowledged it affirmatively. Privacy Statement Szczepanski, Kallie. On September 2, 1923, he assumed the position of Home Minister and soon thereafter became President of the Reconstruction Institute. Koizumi Tomi, Hifukush seki snan no ki [Meeting with Disaster at the Site of the Clothing Depot], in Kaizsha ed.. Michael Allen, The Price of Identity: The 1923 Earthquake and its Aftermath, Korean Studies, 20 (1996), 6493; Michael Weiner, For example, see: Janet Borland, Stories of Ideal Subjects from the Great Kant Earthquake,, Okutani Fumitomo, Kant no daisaiga wa ikanaru shini ka [In what ways was the great Kant disaster Gods will?]. Moreover, army personnel likewise took the lead in constructing relief camps which, by October, housed more than 105,000 refugees. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Collapsed Remains of the Azuma Bridge on the Sumida River. In the words of social welfare advocate and bureaucrat Nagai Tru, the new Tokyo would respond to the needs of the new era materially and spiritually and thus allow the state to renovate society.18 By October 1923, it became clear that the vast magnitude of destruction caused by the September 1 earthquake and fires was matched by an equally expansive sense of opportunity. People take refuge on a Nihonbashi street in Japan in 1923. Japan's ancient capital atKamakura, almost 40 miles from the epicenter, was inundated by a 20-foot wave that killed 300 people, and its 84-ton Great Buddha was shifted by roughly 3 feet. In the historical fantasy novel Teito Monogatari (Hiroshi Aramata) a supernatural explanation is given for the cause of the Great Kant earthquake, connecting it with the principles of feng shui. Reconstruction processes as well as disasters can change landscapes. As it is expected that a massive earthquake will hit the . A total of about140,000 people perished in the disaster. Alternate titles: Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. Welcome to the National Museum of Asian Art. In Yasunari Kawabata's 1930 novel The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa several chapters deal with the Great Kant earthquake. Vigilante groups set up roadblocks in cities, and tested civilians with a shibboleth for supposedly Korean-accented Japanese: deporting, beating, or killing those who failed. Like the 1923 quake, this one unleashed secondary disasters: a tsunami that washed away dozens of villages; mudslides; fires; and damage to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that emitted radiation into the atmosphere (and constituted the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986). 1923 Great Kant earthquake View source The Great Kant earthquake (, Kant dai-jishin) struck the Kant Plain on the main Japanese island of Honsh at 11:58:44 JST (02:58:44 UTC) on Saturday, September 1, 1923. On the night of As of August 2, 2018, a preliminary damage survey, led by the National Weather Service (NWS) in Sacramento, California, rated the July 26th fire whirl as an EF3 tornado with winds in excess of 143mph (230km/h). Natural disasters are often used by elites for political, ideological, or economic purposes, and Japan in 1923 was no exception.13 Many Japanese elites, including bureaucrats and politicians, religious leaders, social commentators, and journalists, publicly described the earthquake as divine punishment for clear political and ideological purposes relevant to the time. In several documented cases, soldiers and policemen participated in the killings,[45] and in other cases, authorities handed groups of Koreans over to local vigilantes, who proceeded to kill them. As moments when societies are at their most vulnerable, disasters give opportunists the illusion that a clean slate exists or that a brave new world or unprecedented beginning awaits a city, people, a nation, if only the opportunity is harnessed and used correctly. Everyone must remember that many of us ran to flippancy; lacked steadiness; lapsed into luxury; and forgot diligence and frugality. As Vice President of the Reconstruction Institute, Miyao Shunji, later lamented, plans for a great, new, awe-inspiring Tokyo were ignored or bypassed out of financial necessity. ", Hunter, Janet. The Akasaka district, one of Tokyos residential areas, lies in ruins after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake on Sept. 1, 1923. okyo and Yokohama, Japan, Earthquake September 1, 1923. Twenty expatriate regulars at the Yokohama United Club, the citys most popular watering hole, died when the concrete building pancaked. [6] These can also aid the 'spotting' ability of wildfires to propagate and start new fires as they lift burning materials such as tree bark. Soon, the entire city was ablaze. qT }17GGiHKzB>EW"B =-UJ6)wt^!0&tlMLl;b7"^k+D}; gYCSK The SS Dongola's captain reported that, while he was anchored in Yokohama's inner harbor: At 11.55 a.m. ship commenced to tremble and vibrate violently and on looking towards the shore it was seen that a terrible earthquake was taking place, buildings were collapsing in all directions and in a few minutes nothing could be seen for clouds of dust. Here and there a remnant of a building, a few shattered walls, stood up like rocks above the expanse of flame, unrecognizable.It was as if the very earth were now burning. The 7.9 magnitude earthquake, centered just over forty miles south-southwest of Japans capital, released energy equivalent to the detonation of nearly 400 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs. Fueled by high winds and increased temperatures, leaking gas mains, and an abundance of combustible material, five large whirlwind firestorms erupted and consumed large parts of Asakusa, Higashi-Ueno, and Honjo, the latter burning and suffocating nearly 40,000 citizens who had taken refuge at the infamous Honjo Clothing Depot.7 Survivors from the Honjo Clothing Depot virtually all referred to this locale as Hell, a site inhabited not by humans, but a place teaming with Hungry Ghosts, red inflamed bodies, black swollen bodies, bodies partially buried, endless rows of charred bodies, and bodies piled higher than one could imagine.8 Tawara Magoichi, future Minister of Commerce and Industry (19291931) confessed that what he saw with his own eyes was more devastating than what I had heard in the rumors. A fire whirl can reach up to 2,000F (1,090C). My own view is that by reducing the expatriate European community in Yokohama and putting an end to a period of optimism symbolized by that city, the Kanto earthquake accelerated Japans drift toward militarism and war. Joshua Hammer is a contributing writer to Smithsonian magazine and the author of several books, including The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts and The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird. In reconstructing the city, the nation, and the Japanese people, the earthquake fostered a culture of catastrophe and reconstruction that amplified discourses of moral degeneracy and national renovation in interwar Japan.[49]. Heaven (ten), he suggested, had illustrated its displeasure with society, and the people were to blame. Just eight years later, the nation took its first steps toward World War II with the invasion and occupation ofManchuria. While such concerns were not entirely new, the earthquake significantly increased the cacophony of alarmist voices in Japan, amplified their resonance in elite circles, and gave perceived cosmological legitimacy to previously voiced concerns about the moral degradation of Japanese society. J. Charles Schenck, "The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe and Reconstruction in 1920s Japan", "Source process of the 1923 Kanto earthquake inferred from historical geodetic, teleseismic, and strong motion data", "The energy release in great earthquakes", "Fault models of the 1703 Genroku and 1923 Taisho Kanto earthquakes inferred from coastal movements in the southern Kanto erea", "Tsunami Behavior of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake at Atami and Hatsushima Island in Sagami Bay", "Aftershock Activities for Two Days after the 1923 Kanto Earthquake (M=7.9) Inferred from Seismograms at Gifu Observatory", "Mortality Estimation by Causes of Death Due to the 1923 Kanto Earthquake", "Magnitude and location of historical earthquakes in Japan and implications for the 1855 Ansei Edo earthquake", "English: THIS IS AN IMAGE THAT IS PART OF A RAW IMAGE COLLECTIONGreat care should be taken to remove whitespace and captions before using these in a Wiki project. 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