After the earthquake, Got Shinpei organized a reconstruction plan of Tokyo with modern networks of roads, trains, and public services. While dreams of constructing a modern, new metropolis may have been shattered by the contentious political and financial disputes, numerous government officials and social commentators thereafter directed their attention toward reconstructing Japans subjects and citizens. The earthquake hit just a few minutes before noon on September 1, measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale. 5 File Number 131-600, "Collection of 1923 Japan earthquake massacre testimonies released", "Ethnic Korean filmmaker ends 30-year hiatus to tackle massacreThe Asahi Shimbun", "Sewage Disposal and Typhoid Fever: the Case of Tokyo 19121940", "The Big Ones by Lucy Jones | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books", "The Great Earthquake and Fire in Japan: An Interpretation", "The 1923 Kant earthquake reevaluated using a newly augmented geodetic data set", 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake Fire Tornado Video, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1923_Great_Kant_earthquake&oldid=1141622422, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Japanese-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2012, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2012, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2017, Articles with trivia sections from August 2020, Commons category link is defined as the pagename, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Aldrich, Daniel P. "Social, not physical, infrastructure: the critical role of civil society after the 1923 Tokyo earthquake. All told, 45 percent of Tokyo burned before the last embers of the inferno died out on September 3. The Emperor and Empress were staying at Nikko when the earthquake struck Tokyo, and were never in any danger. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Varied accounts indicate the duration of the earthquake was between four and ten minutes. Before the Great Kanto Earthquake struck, Japan was full of optimism. An interpretation that the fire-tornado has been caused by passage of a . 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. 8-2earthquake-kanto.jpg 329 315; 73 KB. Writing in journals, both popular and academic, as well as in books and in newspapers, Fukasaku freely admitted that the earthquake presented a unique opportunity by which people could interpret what was natures inevitability as moral inevitability and use it for social, political, and ideological ends.14 When we look back upon the state of the popular mind of our society before the earthquake, he wrote, we can understand that interpreting the disaster as a deliberate divine plan (kami no keikaku ) was not absurd at all. He concluded:15. Although Goun was a Kyoto artist, his scenesseem to be based on first-handobservation. http://content.lib.washington.edu/cdm4/results.php?CISOOP1=all&CISOBOX1=Japan&CISOFIELD1=covera&CISOOP2=exact&CISOBOX2=&CISOFIELD2=title&CISOOP3=any&CISOBOX3=&CISOFIELD3=title&CISOOP4=none&CISOBOX4=&CISOFIELD4=title&CISOROOT=/ic, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2001/08/26/general/hell-on-earth-in-23/#.UeFt9XAXdU1, http://nisee.berkeley.edu/kanto/tokyo1923.pdf, "All My Eyes: Japan's Devastating Earthquake, 1923,". [12] This earthquake destroyed Tokyo, the port city of Yokohama, surrounding prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, and Shizuoka. The Great Kanto Earthquake, also sometimes called the Great Tokyo Earthquake, rockedJapanon Sept. 1, 1923. Just eight years later, the nation took its first steps toward World War II with the invasion and occupation ofManchuria. 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. A total of about140,000 people perished in the disaster. A 60- by 60-mile segment of the Philippine oceanic plate ruptured and thrust itself against the Eurasian continental plate, releasing a massive burst of tectonic energy. In the hours and days following,nationalistand racist rhetoric took hold across Japan. Every year on the same date, drills and other activities are held across . Hours after the earthquake, Yonemura picked up a faint signal from a naval station near Yokohama, relaying word of the catastrophe. [35] Anti-Korean sentiment was heightened by fear of the Korean independence movement. Tokyo-Yokohama earthquake of 1923, also called Great Kanto earthquake, earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9 that struck the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area near noon on September 1, 1923. On the night of A view of the devastation in Tokyo after the 1923 earthquake and fire, seen from the top of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Many people died when their feet became stuck on melting tarmac. The Great Kanto Earthquake obliterated all of that in a single afternoon. Perhaps disasters best amplify and magnify existing tensions, fissures, and issues that grip a society. Buildings across the streets are burning and billowing smoke and flame from an earthquake that hit. The state, he suggested, must use the earthquake as a turning point to reorient society away from the luxurious and extravagant habits, loose morals, and flippancy. Down at the docks of Yokohama, Japans biggest port and its gateway to the West, hundreds of well-wishers were seeing off the Empress of Australia, a 615-foot luxury steamship bound for Vancouver. Omissions? Furthermore, by exploring the ways in which nations, governments, and even the international community have responded to and attempted to use disasters for various political and ideological ends, teachers and students alike can gain significant insight into a wide array of social, political, environmental, religious, and economic relationships within a society exposed by a disaster and the reconstruction processes that follow. The quake struck at 11:58 a.m., so many people were cooking lunch. The result is an odd union of harsh subject matter and his signature gentle style. Although both were devastated, the city of Yokohama was hit even worse than Tokyo. Perhaps a former refugee site devastated by fire, with burnt cars, tires, canisters, and pieces of debris. Both the cities of Yokohama and Tokyo were devastated, but the consequences of the earthquake would turn out to be just as destructive, if not more so. Only 300 of the people gathered there survived. "Voices of vulnerability and resilience: children and their recollections in post-earthquake Tokyo. Fire and tremors together claimed 90 percent of the homes in Yokohama and left 60% of Tokyos people homeless. A collapsing mountainside in the village of Nebukawa, west of Odawara, pushed the entire village and a passenger train carrying over 100 passengers, along with the railway station, into the sea. In the wood-built cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, upended cooking fires and broken gas mains set off firestorms that raced through homes and offices. The unfinished battlecruiser Amagi was in drydock being converted into an aircraft carrier in Yokosuka in compliance with the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. The jolt struck at 11:58 am, when many residents were cooking their lunches over open fires. More than half of the brick buildings and one-tenth of the reinforced concrete structures in the region collapsed. They are provided here in raw scanned quality to preserve as much of the historical value of this document as possible", "The Earthquake and Fires - The Great Kant Earthquake.com", "1923 Kanto Earthquake: Echoes From Japan's Past", "Brother Thinks Consul Kirjassoff May Be Alive", Correspondence American Consulate In Yokohama 1931 Vol. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). About 700 Chinese, mostly from Wenzhou, were killed. [10] Pyrocumulonimbi generated by large fires on rare occasion also develops in a similar way. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. The Great Kanto Earthquake and the subsequent fire are believed to have killed some 142,000 people. [55], Maurice Tourneur's 1924 silent film Torment has an earthquake in Yokohama in its plot, and uses footage of the Kant earthquake in the film.[56]. Then there was Taki Yonemura, chief engineer of the government wireless station in Iwaki, a small town 152 miles northeast of Tokyo. The earthquake, he has written, fostered a culture of catastrophe defined by political and ideological opportunism, contestation and resilience, as well as a culture of reconstruction in which elites sought to not only rebuild Tokyo, but also reconstruct the Japanese nation and its people.. The cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, and surrounding towns and villages, have been largely if not completely destroyed by earthquake, fire and flood, with a resultant appalling loss of life and destitution and distress, requiring measures of urgent relief. The American Red Cross, of which Coolidge was the titular head, initiated a national relief drive, raising $12 million for victims. Your email address will not be published. In less than one week, the 7.9 magnitude earthquake and subsequent fires annihilated most of Tokyo and virtually all of Yokohama. Cookie Settings, Rue des Archives / The Granger Collection, New York, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts, The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird, Dried Lake Reveals New Statue on Easter Island. The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.9 on the moment magnitude scale (Mw),[14] with its focus deep beneath Izu shima Island in Sagami Bay. 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. The police and military in many places stood by for three days, allowing vigilantes to carry out these murders in what is now called the Korean Massacre. In the TV adaptation of the Pachinko Novel by Min Jin Lee, a young Hansu escapes Yokohama with his father's former Yakuza employer, Ryoichi, from the Great Kant Earthquake. 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 1960, on the 37th anniversary of the quake, the government declared September 1 an annual "Disaster Prevention Day". The tidal wave swept out a great section of the village near the beach, wrote Henry W. Kinney, a Tokyo-based editor for Trans-Pacific magazine. Both proved far more difficult to secure than anticipated. Starting in Yokohama, rumors circulated suggesting that bands of lawless Koreans had set fires, looted shelters, shops, and vacant homes, and poisoned wells throughout the Kant region. The earthquake happens just as the marriage between Akiko and her fianc Kiyosu Saionji is announced. Image of Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan, after the September 1, 1923 earthquake. Messervey, letter dated March 5, 1924. Using the post-earthquake reconstruction period opportunistically, politicians implemented a series of anti-luxury tariffs on goods politicians deemed extravagant or wasteful. The earthquake and its aftershocks caused several fires to break out in the city. These start with a whirl of wind, often made visible by smoke, and may occur when intense rising heat and turbulent wind conditions combine to form whirling eddies of air. Kiyosu Saionji is announced opportunistically, politicians implemented a series of anti-luxury tariffs on politicians. Naval station near Yokohama, surrounding prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, public. Eight years later, the city result is an odd union of harsh subject and..., trains, and public services northeast of Tokyo that in a similar way rockedJapanon Sept. 1,.! 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