"[27], Prewar narratives by Koreans frequently appealed to a Japanese readership to heal the wounds which were caused by ethnic divides, while in the immediate postwar period the "emperor system" was blamed for brainwashing massacre participants to act against their better instincts. Police regarded the labor union as a "nest of socialists" and were likely unsettled by the well-organized food relief program. J. Charles Schencking. Most troubling to Yamanashi, however, was the fact that parts of Tokyo had descended into anarchy within hours of the disaster helping to transform a natural disaster into a human catastrophe. Maurice Tourneur's 1924 silent film Torment has an earthquake in Yokohama in its plot, and uses footage of the Kantō earthquake in the film. [21]:107 When word of the massacre did reach the Korean peninsula, Japan attempted to placate the Koreans by distributing films throughout the country showing Koreans being well treated. [19][5]:110 In July 1924 he was sentenced to two years in prison; it is unknown if he survived his imprisonment. Some Koreans sought safety in police stations in order to escape the slaughter, but in some areas vigilantes broke into police stations and pulled them out. They also tried to properly pronounce shibboleths such as "十五円" and "五十銭" (15 yen and 50 sen), with difficult elongated vowels. Great Kantō Earthquake- Flock of Refugees. Now, almost a year after the Japan earthquake, scientists say the hard lessons learned will go a long way toward being better prepared next time. Copyright © 2013 Great KantÅ Earthquake.com. Built into school curricula since kindergarten, many adults told me that their children were the most risk-informed of all of their family members. In 2014, non fiction writer Katō Naoki documented the massacre in his book September on the Streets of Tokyo (Kugatsu, Tōkyō no rojō de 九月、東京の路上で). The Great Kanto Earthquake was one of the deadliest earthquakes in Japanese history that killed an estimated 142,800 people. Janet Borland. Individuals and members of certain neighborhood vigilance groups [jikeidan], police and military units responded to these rumors with violence. Great Kantō Earthquake- The Wreckage of Kyobashi and Shinbashi Areas 1923. Chapter 2. Nothing prepared the soldiers—or others who ventured to Tokyo to assist with recovery—for the sights or smells that greeted them or the tasks at hand. Largely forgotten, even by most Japanese, the quake leveled the great port city of Yokohama — home to a population of 5,000 expatriates — and burned down more than sixty percent of Tokyo. City officials began constructing temporary barrack housing that would eventually accommodate nearly 150,000 people by 24 September. Physical desolation defined the landscape of post-disaster Tokyo. Out of the City of Tokyo’s 2.26 million inhabitants, 1.38 million were rendered homeless by the disaster. Racism, hatred, resentment, and criminal opportunism all contributed to this tragedy. Manseibashi Station, after the earthquake, 1923. In the hours and days following, nationalist and racist rhetoric took hold across Japan. Shimbashi, (Kasumori), c. 1920. “The Price of Identity: The 1923 Earthquake and its Aftermath.” Korean Studies 20 (1996): 64-93. Korean laborers in Yokohama had joined a stevedore union led by the Japanese organizer Yamaguchi Seiken. The death toll is estimated to have been 142,800. [21]:182 In 1927, an official history of Yokohama City claimed that the rumors of Korean attackers had "some basis in fact. Both vigilantes and Japanese Army troops burned Korean bodies in order to destroy the evidence of murder. Manseibashi Station, c. 1910. skips 1923 Korean massacre anniv. In 1986, a Japanese playwright, Fukuchi Kazuyoshi (福地一義), discovered his father's diary, read the account of the massacre which is contained in it and wrote a play which is based on his father's account. [5]:97 Towards the end of his life, Nishizaka told an interviewer that "someone must have said that 'Korean malcontents' were dangerous in such a time of confusion. Nearly 6,000 refugees established residences at the Meiji Shrine, 9,500 at Ueno Park, and 7,000 at Hibiya Park. Finding housing for the displaced disaster sufferers was a longer-term problem in post-disaster Tokyo. It had a magnitude of 7.9. Forty-eight percent of all homes in Tokyo Prefecture (the homes of 397,119 families) were either destroyed or classified as uninhabitable as a result of the Great KantÅ Earthquake and fires. The major institutions of the city and prefecture as well as the police have ceased to operate and wild rumors and crimes have largely unsettled the population. This natural disaster is referred to today as the Great Kanto Earthquake. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 was one devastating event after another. The earthquake that hit Tohoku area on March 11 has already resulted in more deaths than the Kobe earthquake, and the property damage will also be larger. Rumors, Anarchy, and Murder amidst the Ruins. Beginning on September 18, the Japanese government arrested 735 participants in the massacre. [7]:76 Two Koreans who personally escaped Tokyo and rushed to Seoul to report the news were arrested for "spreading false information" and the news report about them was completely censored. Some orders were conditional, such as killing Koreans who resist arrest, but others were more direct: "kill any Koreans who enter the neighborhood" or "kill any Koreans you find. The Great Kanto Earthquake turned 93 on 1st September 2016. J. Charles Schencking. The death toll from the temblor was estimated to have exceeded 140,000. When we reached the 1923 great Kanto earthquake, our eyes were fixated on one photograph. As part of the recovery efforts after the earthquake, three new large parks were established—Hamachō Park, Sumida Park, and Kinshi Park—along with a … “Makeshift Schools and Education in the Ruins of Tokyo, 1923.” Japanese Studies 29:1 (May 2009): 131-143. In addition, the number of the deads of the Great Kanto Earthquake is over 100,000 people, but a lot of them were killed by the suspicious fire that occurred after the second day.In other word,tens of thousands of Japanese citizens might have been killed in Korean arson. The Great Kanto Earthquake Part 3 On September 1st., 1923, a massive earthquake struck the nation’s most populated area. Using figures published by the Japanese government, the total amount of cash contributed to Japan following the disaster amounted to roughly 22 million yen from which America provided 15.4 million yen (roughly 70 percent). In the 1923 Kanto earthquake, some M7 class aftershocks occurred immediately after the M7.9 main shock. Fukazawa emphasizes that the narrator is driven to discover this history out of anxiety rather than having any preexisting historical understanding.[28]. The event caused great damage to Tokyo and the Kanto region. As destructive and dislocating as the earthquake and aftershocks were to people of eastern Japan in 1923, a far more deadly phenomenon erupted shortly after the initial seismic upheaval: fire. The Tokai segment last ruptured in 1854, and before that in 1707. [22] The Governor-General also published and distributed propaganda leaflets with "beautiful stories" (bidan 美談) of Japanese protecting Koreans from lynch mobs. Only thirty-two received formal sentences. [5]:94, Yamaguchi was publicly blamed by Japanese officials for starting the rumors of Korean mobs, but this logically incoherent charge was never formalized. To the deaths caused by collapsing buildings, tsunami and fire we must also add the organized killings in the aftermath of the quake by Japanese civilians, police and the military of Koreans, Chinese, labor and political activists, and others, in a wave of violence that began on September 1 and went on for some time. [11] The arrival of foreigners and other people in Tokyo meant death. September 1 is designated as Disaster Prevention Day – a memorial to the 140,000 estimated victims of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Given the destruction, upheaval, and chaos that ensued after the disaster, the new Yamamoto GonnohyÅe cabinet declared a state of martial law over what was left of the capital on 2 September. [24] Beginning 2017, Tokyo mayor Yuriko Koike broke decades of precedent by refusing to acknowledge the massacre or offer condolences to the descendants of survivors, saying that whether a massacre occurred is a matter of historical debate. The pattern is pretty stark: a Tokai earthquake has happened about every 110 years, plus or minus 33 years. The epicenter of the earthquake was eighty kilometers southwest of Tokyo, near Oshima Island in Sagami Bay. The last day that City of Tokyo officials distributed food to needy sufferers took place on 10 April 1924. We wait with grateful anticipation for the arrival of more military forces.”. "[5]:98–99 Also on the night of September 2, as police organized a vigilante band to kill Koreans in the Noge region of Yokohama, one of the organizing police officers told a newspaper reporter that Koreans had been caught with a list of neighborhoods to burn, carrying gasoline and poison for wells. In Yokohama, 90 percent of all homes were damaged or destroyed while 350,000 homes met the same fate in Tokyo, leaving 60 percent of the city's population homeless. On October 21, almost two months after the massacre began, local police arrested 23 Koreans, simultaneously lifting the ban so that the initial reporting on the full scale of the massacre was mixed with the false arrests. [9] Those who failed these tests were killed. As historian Michael Weiner has illustrated, such rumors spread as far as HokkaidÅ, 800km from Tokyo. Tales that bands of lawless Koreans had started fires, looted shops and homes, poisoned wells, murdered women and children, and had even organized an assault on what remained of the capital found adherents. Director Oh Chongkong (吳充功, 오충공) made two documentary films about the pogrom: Hidden Scars: The Massacre of Koreans from the Arakawa River Bank to Shitamachi in Tokyo (Kakusareta tsumeato: Tokyo aragawa dote shūhen kara Shitamachi no gyakusatsu 隠された爪跡: 東京荒川土手周辺から下町の虐殺, 1983) and The Disposed-of Koreans: The Great Kanto Earthquake and Camp Narashino (Harasagareta Chōsenjin: Kantō Daishinsai to Narashino shūyōjo 払い下げられた朝鮮人: 関東大震災と習志野収容所, 1986). The quake struck at 11:58 a.m. on September 1, 1923. The incident created national outrage and Amakasu was sentenced to ten years in prison, but he served only three. “In the course of three days …. The quake is remembered by Japanese authors as the Great Kanto Earthquake, Kanto being the name of the region which includes Tokyo. The Great Kanto Earthquake is a superb work of historical scholarship and a major contribution to our understanding of modern Japan and modern natural disasters. "[5]:116 In 1996, historian J. Michael Allen remarked that the massacre is "hardly known outside Korea. [25] In July 2020, Koike was re-elected as mayor of Tokyo in a landslide victory. Conservative estimates therefore put the total amount of cash and goods donated at about $USD 20 million, which was roughly 2.4% of America’s Gross Domestic Product. A ban on reporting the death count was obeyed by all newspapers, while officials claimed only five people had died. This plan was executed in the following months. eulogy for 2nd year, raising denial worries", https://www.asahi.com/senkyo/tochijisen/2020/kaihyo/, "関東大震災と朝鮮人虐殺「なかった」ことにしたい集会、誰が参加するのか？（石戸諭） – Yahoo!ニュース", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kantō_Massacre&oldid=1020231760, Articles containing Japanese-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 27 April 2021, at 23:42. Using figures published by the Japanese government, the total amount of cash contributed to Japan following the disaster amounted to roughly 22 million yen from which America provided 15.4 million yen (roughly 70 percent). This article is more than 9 years old. The Kantō Massacre was a mass murder which the Japanese military, police and vigilantes committed against the Korean residents of the Kantō region, Japan, immediately after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. General Yamanashi HanzÅ, the individual appointed to direct Japan’s Martial Law Headquarters on 20 September 1923, was no stranger to demanding administrative or military tasks. Japan’s government tallied cash donations from America as follows: 12.7 million yen contributed by natives and foreign residents and 2.8 million yen by resident Japanese nationals [dÅhÅ or zairyÅ« hÅjin]. In November, the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun reported that during the trials, the defendants and the judges were both smiling and laughing as they recounted the lynchings. However, the government had no intent of sentencing the participants as they would murderers. There have been several plays about the massacre. In fact when I typed with the keyword “Great Kanto Earthquake”, it even came out with different category of newspaper companies during the colonial period: It contained primary sources of 6 different Korean newspaper companies that talked about Korean massacre right after the Kanto Earthquake. Overseeing restoration of political order, relief, and recovery in eastern Japan following disaster was more challenging than anyone, including Yamanashi, anticipated. The prosecution recommended light sentences. After being held in prison for several months he was finally prosecuted only for redistributing food and water from ruined houses to earthquake survivors without permission of the homeowners. General Yamanashi later concluded that it took ten days for stability, peace, calm mindedness and public order to return. From the U.S. … In the 2015 novel Green and Red (Midori to aka 『緑と赤』), by Zainichi novelist Fukazawa Ushio [ja] (深沢潮), the Zainichi protagonist learns about the massacre by reading about it in a history book, which serves to give excess weight to her fears over anti-Korean sentiment. The twenties and thirties of the twentieth century left a sad memory in Japan. Damage was around 30 percent of GDP in eastern Japan to restore order, assist killings. Or Chinese were murdered on the street of Tokyo in a well Japanese Koreans. As the Great Kanto Earthquake, rocked Japan on September 1, 1923, a Great Earthquake and its ”... 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