In the film adaptation of Japan Sinks, Nihon Chinbotsu, the Sagami Trough ruptures in a massive earthquake called "The Second Great Kanto Earthquake". Transforming perception into reality required two key ingredients, namely political authority and money. The death toll would be about 140,000, including 44,000 who had sought refuge near Tokyos Sumida River in the first few hours, only to be immolated by a freak pillar of fire known as a dragon twist. The temblor destroyed two of Japans largest cities and traumatized the nation; it also whipped up nationalist and racist passions. Parliamentarians from rural districts who comprised the majority of Japans legislative representatives feared that a radical reconstruction of Tokyo would markedly reduce the amount of funds available for previously agreed upon and all future rural public works and infrastructure projects. The earthquake broke water mains all over the city, and putting out the fires took nearly two full days until late in the morning of September 3.[26]. Fire and tremors together claimed 90% of the homes in Yokohama and left 60% of Tokyo's people homeless. In 1703 and 1855 Ed, as Tokyo was formerly called, experienced extensive destruction from earthquakes and fires as a result of the Philippine Sea plate subducting directly beneath Tokyo Bay.5 Japan is, as many commentators have suggested, an earthquake nation.6. [33][34] The Home Ministry declared martial law and ordered all sectional police chiefs to make maintenance of order and security a top priority. [26] It was the first known fire whirl in Australia to have EF3 wind speeds on the Enhanced Fujita scale. As early as mid-afternoon on September 1, the day of the quake, reports, and rumors started that the Koreans had set the disastrous fires, were poisoning wells, looting ruined homes, and planning to overthrow the government. Preparing for a massive quake. The Great Kanto Earthquake turned 93 on 1st September 2016. [citation needed] In some towns, even police stations into which Korean people had escaped were attacked by mobs, whereas in other neighborhoods, civilians took steps to protect them. Disasters, he wrote, take away the falsehood and ostentation of human life and conspicuously expose the strengths and weaknesses of human society.1 The disaster in question was the Great Kant Earthquake, the anniversary of which todaySeptember 1all Japanese know as Natural Disaster Prevention Day. WHOLE CITY ABLAZE WITH NUMEROUS CASUALTIES. In the weeks after the calamity, direct relief and recovery initiatives gave way to two other important phenomena that invariably accompany major natural disasters: interpretation and opportunism. h0_e0>I+.-hUUEE%(kUTA!H;dm. Nevertheless, there are parallels. Ethnic Koreans were massacred after the earthquake. "The Great Kanto Earthquake in Japan, 1923." 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. A tsunami with waves up to 10m (33ft) high struck the coast of Sagami Bay, Bs Peninsula, Izu Islands, and the east coast of Izu Peninsula within minutes. [13] Extensive firestorms and even a fire whirl added to the death toll. Ultimately, the disaster sparked both soul-searching and nationalism in Japan. A map detailing where the firestorms erupted and the areas that they consumed can be found in Tokyoshi. Congestion of refugees fleeing their homes in the Ueno vicinity in Tokyo. As the evening of the quake approached, Kinney observed, Yokohama, the city of almost half a million souls, had become a vast plain of fire, of red, devouring sheets of flame which played and flickered. [35] Anti-Korean sentiment was heightened by fear of the Korean independence movement. 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. Of the 3,000 Koreans taken into custody at the Army Cavalry Regiment base in Narashino, Chiba Prefecture, 10% were killed at the base, or after being released into nearby villages. The earthquake's force was so great that in Kamakura, over 60km (37mi) from the epicenter, it moved the Great Buddha statue, which weighs about 121 tonnes, almost 60 centimeters. At the heart of these plans were a series of wide roads and public transportation networks, which many planners believed would serve as the arteries of the capital. In doing so, this study will not only provide a multifaceted window into interwar Japan, but will also provide historical context to the ideological and manipulative use of disasters and catastropheswhether natural or manmadethat occur in the world today. If one were to pour money to earthquake sufferers, why not also direct some to impoverished rural communities as well, asked MP Miwa Ichitar. The Great Kanto Earthquake obliterated all of that in a single afternoon. In July 1924, Japans parliament placed sizeable tariffs on a wide range of items, including pearls (2,000 percent increase), furs (200 percent), tooth powder, toiletries, and perfumes (200 percent), items made from coral (250 percent), tortoise shell (200 percent), artificial spices and essences (500 percent), and embroidered fabrics (250 percent).27 Moreover, many social commentators sought to encourage all Japanese to reflect upon and integrate the experiences of the earthquake into their daily lives. 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. A fire whirl or fire devil (sometimes referred to as a fire tornado) is a whirlwind induced by a fire and often (at least partially) composed of flame or ash. 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. [2] Fire whirls become frequent when a wildfire, or especially firestorm, creates its own wind, which can spawn large vortices. The innovative design used to construct the Imperial Hotel, and its structural fortitude, inspired the creation of the popular Lincoln Logs toy.[51]. @4[`It ??~yXF\9IXS~nqBW%$|P9xXI}AoT@? document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Incredible set of photos. The Great Kanto Earthquake in Japan, 1923. It narrowly survived and assisted in rescuing 2000 survivors. [11][1][12][13], There are currently three widely recognized types of fire whirls:[14], There is evidence suggesting that the fire whirl in the Hifukusho-ato area, during the 1923 Great Kant earthquake, was of type 3. Disasters are sites of destruction, devastation, and in some instances desolation, as images of Aceh after the Indian Ocean tsunami or the 2001 Gujarat earthquake remind us all too well. Lr endstream endobj 646 0 obj <>stream All rights reserved. Otis Manchester Poole, a 43-year-old American manager of a trading firm, stepped out of his largely still-intact office near the Bund to face an indelible scene. Over 570,000 homes were destroyed, leaving an estimated 1.9 million homeless. In the vicinity of the badly damaged Manseibashi Train Station in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Sheldon Garon, Fashioning a Culture of Diligence and Thrift: Savings and Frugality Campaigns in Japan, 19001931, in Sharon Minichiello, ed., Susanna Hoffman, After Atlas Shrugs: Cultural Change or Persistence After A Disaster, in. 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. 2007 The Association for Asian Studies. Part of the story in the manga and anime Taisho Otome Fairy Tale (by Sana Kirioka) happens during the earthquake. One of the "Scenes of the 1923 Earthquake" by Japanese artist Nishimura Goun Ninety-three years ago today, the Great Kanto Earthquake rocked Japan, destroying Tokyo and Yokohama and wreaking widespread damage. It was calculated to have horizontal winds of 160mph (260km/h) and vertical air speed of 93mph (150km/h), causing the flashover of 300 acres (120ha) in 0.04 seconds. Then again, I'm also here because of the pogroms illustrated elsewhere on this site. Order returned to Tokyo after 50,000 Imperial Japanese Army troops fanned out across the city to implement stabilization, recovery, and relief operations. The destruction, dislocation, and devastation caused by the quake, in the words of Tenriky relief worker Haruno Kiichi, not only defied description, it simply surpassed imagination.2. Some discreet memorials are located in Yokoamicho Park in Sumida Ward, at the site of the open space in which an estimated 38,000 people were killed by a single fire whirl. The phenomenon was first verified in the 2003 Canberra bushfires and has since been verified in the 2018 Carr Fire in California and 2020 Loyalton Fire in California and Nevada. The Taisho Emperor and Empress Teimei were on holiday in the mountains, and so escaped the disaster. The Kant Massacre began on the day of the earthquake. [16] A broader classification of fire whirls suggested by Forman A. Williams includes five different categories: [17] From Washington, President Calvin Coolidge took the lead in rallying the United States. Most horrifying of the immediate results was the fate of 38,000 to 44,000 working-class Tokyo residents who fled to the open ground of the Rikugun Honjo Hifukusho, once called the Army Clothing Depot. The radio man flashed the news across the sea at the speed of sunlight, reported the New York Times, to tell of tremendous casualties, buildings leveled by fire, towns swept by tidal wavesdisorder by rioters, raging fire and wrecked bridges.. [44] Socialists such as Hirasawa Keishichi[ja] (), anarchists such as Sakae sugi and Noe It, and the Chinese communal leader, Kiten[ja] (), were abducted and killed by local police and Imperial Army, who claimed the radicals intended to use the crisis as an opportunity to overthrow the Japanese government. It moved Tokyo into the ranks of world metropolises., University of Melbourne historian J. Charles Schencking sees the rebuilding of Tokyo as a metaphor for something larger. The single greatest loss of life was caused by a fire whirl that engulfed the Rikugun Honjo Hifukusho (formerly the Army Clothing Depot) in downtown Tokyo, where about 38,000 people were incinerated after taking shelter there after the earthquake. In the background is the gutted domed building Kokugikan, National Sumo Wrestling arena, in the Ryoguku district. 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. Even smaller scale reconstruction plans that ranged from 1.3 billion to 3 billion yen were met with labels of reckless, dangerous, or problematic by financial and political officialsincluding the Minister of Finance, Inoue Junnosuke.19 An adherent to the classical liberal economic view that times of depression or recession warranted a retrenchment of government expenditures, Inoue refused to raise new taxes for Tokyos reconstruction and, in 1924, only after considerable pressure, agreed to release public bonds to finance reconstruction.20 Moreover, Inoue required that all other ministries of state prune their proposed budgets for 1924 and 1925 to cover part of the anticipated costs for reconstructing Tokyo. Although both were devastated, the city of Yokohama was hit even worse than Tokyo. The first known fire whirl in Australia to have EF3 wind speeds on the Enhanced Fujita scale and even fire! 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