1923 Tokyo as a Devastated War and Occupation Zone: The Catastrophe One Confronted in Post Earthquake Japan

Abstract

This article documents how Japan's governing elites confronted the enormous tasks of restoring order over the disaster area of the Great Kantō Earthquake and providing relief and recovery assistance to approximately two million people. It also explores how and why numerous commentators evoked the imagery of war in constructing the 1923 catastrophe. They employed comparisons to war not only to describe the totality of destruction meted out by the earthquake and fires, but also to communicate the commitment that they believed the people of Japan would have to make to expedite recovery, rebuild the capital, and reconstruct the nation. Such an effort, many concluded, would require the mobilized efforts of all Japanese.

Notes

²Ibid.

¹Fukuda, ‘Fukkō Nihon tōmen no mondai,’ 3.

³Forty-five percent of all structures in Tokyo and 90 percent of the buildings in Yokohama were destroyed as a result of the earthquake and fires.

⁴Oliver-Smith and Hoffman, ‘Introduction: Why Anthropologists Should Study Disasters’, 6.

⁵Hoffman, ‘After Atlas Shrugs’, 310.

⁶Allen, ‘The Price of Identity’; Bates, ‘Catfish, Super Frog, and the End of the World’; Borland, ‘Stories of Ideal Subjects from the Great Kantō Earthquake,’ and ‘Capitalising on Catastrophe’; Clancey, Earthquake Nation, and ‘The Meiji Earthquake’; Harada and Shiozaki, Tōkyō Kantō daishinsai zengo; Harada and Iimori, Kantō daishinsai to Nichibei gaikō; Lee, ‘Instability of Empire’; Nakajima, Kantō daishinsai; Nakamura, ‘Shinsai fukkō no seijigaku’; Mochizuki, ‘Kantō daishinsai kenkyū o meguru sho ronten’; Schencking, ‘The Great Kantō Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe’, ‘The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 and the Japanese Nation’, and ‘Catastrophe, Opportunism, Contestation’; Smits, ‘Shaking Up Japan’; Weiner, The Origins of the Korean Community in Japan, and ‘Koreans in the Aftermath of the Kantō Earthquake of 1923’; Weisenfeld, ‘Designing After Disaster’.

⁷Hein, ‘Visionary Plans and Planners’; Ishida, Nihon kindai toshi keikakushi kenkyū; Koshizawa, Tōkyō no toshi keikaku; Mochida, ‘Gotō Shinpei to shinsai fukkō jigyō’; and Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan.

⁸The closest work, written by Matsuo Shōichi, focuses on internal security and military law after the massacre of Koreans that took place in the days after 1 September 1923. Matsuo, Kantō daishinsai to kaigenrei.

⁹United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Morale Division, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese Morale, 9.

¹⁰For accounting purposes, families were defined as comprising at least a married couple but often included extended family members. See Tokyo Municipal Office, The Reconstruction of Tokyo, 9.

¹¹Japan Home Ministry, Bureau of Social Affairs, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 82–85. The Tokyo Municipal Office listed the number of factories at 7,122 while the Bureau of Social Affairs listed the figure as 6,962. See Tokyo Municipal Office, The Reconstruction of Tokyo, 29.

¹²Japan Home Ministry, Bureau of Social Affairs, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 91–92.

¹³Takenobu, The Japan Year Book, 1924–25, 245.

¹⁴Inoue, Inoue Junnosuke ronsō, 195–196.

¹⁵Japan Home Ministry, Bureau of Social Affairs, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 473.

¹⁶After intense and contentious political debates the government agreed to provide long-term, low interest loans of 64 million yen to Japanese insurance companies to settle claims. Under this agreement, however, no claimant received a figure higher than ten percent of the original policy. Japanese insurers paid out a total of 78,181,446 yen from policies that totalled 1,382,772,556 yen in value, a figure that represented 5.65 percent of the total value of the insurance policies held by those in the disaster zone. See Japan Home Ministry, Bureau of Social Affairs, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 485–486, and 495–496.

¹⁷Tokyo Municipal Office, The Reconstruction of Tokyo, 11.

¹⁸Ibid., 11–12.

¹⁹The Tokyo Municipal Office lists the number of government and public offices that were destroyed by the disaster at 3,563. These include offices such as the Police Training Institute, Forestry Office, Central Meteorological Observatory, Tokyo Rice Exchange Office, the Patent Office, Kyōbashi Revenue Office, The Tobacco Monopoly Office, various telephone exchange offices, railway offices and stations, and numerous police and fire stations. See Tokyo Municipal Office, The Reconstruction of Tokyo, 18.

²⁰The impact the 1923 earthquake had on education, school buildings, and the urban landscape around schools is discussed in Borland, ‘Makeshift Schools and Education in the Ruins of Tokyo, 1923’, this issue.

²¹Tokyo Municipal Office, The Reconstruction of Tokyo, 316–318.

²²Japan Home Ministry, Bureau of Social Affairs, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 82.

²³Tokyo Municipal Office, The Reconstruction of Tokyo, 20.

²⁴Ibid., 29.

²⁵Kang and Kum, Kantō daishinsai to Chōsenjin, 91–92.

²⁶Hirakata, Ōtake, and Matsuo, Seifu kaigenrei kankei shiryō, 460–461.

²⁷Japan Home Ministry, Bureau of Social Affairs, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 300–301.

²⁸The only time that martial law had previously been declared over Tokyo occurred in September 1905 in response to the anti-Portsmouth Treaty riots that broke out in Hibiya.

²⁹Takakura, Tanaka Giichi denki, 2: 344–345.

³⁰Yamamoto's recollections are found in Tōkyō Shisei Chōsakai, Teito fukkō hiroku, 8–9.

³¹Ibid., 9.

³²Ibid.

³³Kang and Kum, Kantō daishinsai to Chōsenjin, 92.

³⁴Hirakata, Ōtake, and Matsuo, Seifu kaigenrei kankei shiryō, 461–462.

³⁵Tasaki and Sakamoto, Rikugun kankei shiryō, 166–172. From 2 September until 4 October, aircraft made 499 flights over Tokyo and Yokohama for reasons of reconnaissance, communication, leaflet-dropping, and the transportation of journalists. Total flying times totalled 2,537 hours and 19 minutes. See Hirakata, Ōtake, and Matsuo, Seifu kaigenrei kankei shiryō, 477–478.

³⁶Tanaka, ‘Shitai no nioi’, 76. In many accounts, but not all, government censors removed references to the massacre of Koreans. Often, as in this example, XXX is used to refer to Koreans.

³⁷Weiner, The Origins of the Korean Community in Japan, 173–178.

³⁸Hirakata, Ōtake, and Matsuo, Seifu kaigenrei kankei shiryō, 461–462.

³⁹Ibid., 1: 460–462.

⁴⁰Japan Home Ministry, Bureau of Social Affairs, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 558–559.

⁴¹Kang and Kum, Kantō daishinsai to Chōsenjin, 101.

⁴²Ibid., 101–102.

⁴³This figure includes forces drawn from 59 infantry battalions, 6 cavalry regiments, 6 artillery regiments, 17 engineer battalions, 2 railway regiments, 2 telecommunication regiments, 1 aviation battalion, 1 military balloon unit, and 1 military automobile unit. Hirakata, Ōtake, and Matsuo, Seifu kaigenrei kankei shiryō, 463-465. General Fukuda was eventually replaced by General Yamanashi Hanzō as Commander of the Board of Martial Law.

⁴⁴Takenobu, The Japan Year Book, 1924–25, 275.

⁴⁵Ibid., 249; and http://www.asahi/shimbun/honsya/e/e-history.html.

⁴⁶ Hōchi shinbun, 5 September 1923, 1; Hōchi shinbun, 6 September 1923, 2; Hōchi shinbun, 7 September 1923, 1.

⁴⁷ Tōkyō nichi nichi shinbun, 6 September 1923, 1.

⁴⁸ Tōkyō nichi nichi shinbun, 9 September 1923, 2.

⁴⁹ Otaru shinbun, 2 September 1923, 1.

⁵⁰ Otaru shinbun, 3 September 1923, 1.

⁵¹ Otaru shinbun, 5 September 1923, 1.

⁵² Kyūshū nippō, 2 September 1923, 1.

⁵³Ibid.

⁵⁴This column began in the 8 September edition in which it declared that as of 6 pm on 6 September, 47,293 bodies had been collected. Fukuoka nichi nichi shinbun, 8 September 1923, 1.

⁵⁵ Kyōto hinode shinbun, 3 September 1923, 1.

⁵⁶ Otaru shinbun, 6 September 1923, 1.

⁵⁷ Fukuoka nichi nichi shinbun, 9 September 1923, 1.

⁵⁸ Ōsaka asahi shinbun, 4 September 1923, 1.

⁵⁹ Ōsaka mainichi shinbun, 6 September 1923, 1.

⁶⁰Kagawa, ‘Shinsai kyūgo undō o kaerimite’, 278–279.

⁶¹Anonymous, ‘Shikai no toshi o meguru’, 40.

⁶²Ibid., 40–41.

⁶³Ibid., 41.

⁶⁴Takenobu, The Japan Year Book, 1924–25, 214.

⁶⁵Den Kenjirō denki hensankai, Den Kenjirō den, 536–46.

⁶⁶Japan Home Ministry, Bureau of Social Affairs, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 323. One koku of rice equates to 5.11902 bushels dry measurement.

⁶⁷Ibid., 322–323.

⁶⁸The articles specifically spelled out for requisition included: foodstuffs; water and other beverages; fuel, including oil, gasoline, charcoal and firewood; houses; building materials; medicine; instruments of conveyance including automobiles, ships, railroad freight cars; electrical wiring; and labour. See Japan Home Ministry, Bureau of Social Affairs, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 563–565.

⁶⁹Ibid., 563–564.

⁷⁰Takenobu, The Japan Year Book, 1924–25, 60.

⁷¹Tanaka and Ōsaka, Kaigun kankei shiryō 3–11; Takenobu, The Japan Year Book, 1924–25, 75–76.

⁷²Hirakata, Ōtake, and Matsuo, Seifu kaigenrei kankei shiryō, 480–481.

⁷³Ibid., 474, and 481–482.

⁷⁴Kagawa, ‘Shinsai kyūgo undō o kaerimite, 280–282.

⁷⁵Hirakata, Ōtake, and Matsuo, Seifu kaigenrei kankei shiryō, 483.

⁷⁶Kagawa, ‘Shinsai kyūgo undō o kaerimite,’ 280–281; Japan Home Ministry, Bureau of Social Affairs, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan, 322–323.

⁷⁷Okutani, ‘Kantō no daisaiga wa ikanaru shin'i ka’, 10–11.

⁷⁸Shimamoto, ‘Seishinteki fukkō saku’, 102.

⁷⁹Fukuda, ‘Fukkō Nihon tōmen no mondai’, 5.

⁸⁰Okutani, ‘Kantō no daisaiga wa ikanaru shin'i ka’, 13; Takashima, ‘Hensai o kikai ni’, 71–72; Hoashi, ‘Tenrai no kyōkan’, 27–28; Tsukamoto, ‘Teito fukkō no shinseishin’, 15–17.

⁸¹Nagata, ‘Teito fukkō to shimin no danryokusei’, 25.

⁸²Ibid.

⁸³Karacas, ‘Memorializing the Tokyo Air Raids’, 12.