Voices of Vulnerability and Resilience: Children and Their Recollections in Post-Earthquake Tokyo

ABSTRACT

Tokyo’s school children began writing essays about the Great Kantō Earthquake within weeks of the disaster as a simple pedagogical exercise. These remarkable accounts provide a panoramic view into children’s first-hand experiences of Japan’s worst natural disaster and daily life in the aftermath. Their usefulness, however, does not end there. In the period following the 1923 earthquake, children possessed a new and different utility to the state as the future generation to be listened to, learned from, and inspired by. Children’s essays struck a fine balance between reflecting on the past and dreaming of a better future. Moreover, they were ideal role models of resilience in an era of spiritual and physical reconstruction. Their promises to study hard, save money, and reconstruct Tokyo ‘even better than before’ represented exactly the kind of values that government officials wanted to cultivate in 1920s Japan.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Charles Schencking, Peter Cave, L. Halliday Piel, Aaron Moore, Sandra Wilson and two anonymous readers for their helpful comments on this article. Research for this article was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council General Research Fund [Project ID: 740413]. An early version of this article was presented at the conference ‘Childhood, Education, and Youth in Imperial Japan’ at Kyoto University, 11–12 January 2014. I would like to thank the conference organizers and acknowledge funding provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) research grant [AH/J004618/1] which supported my participation.

Notes

¹ As reported in Japan Weekly Chronicle, 4 September 1924, 339–40; and, Tokyo Asahi shinbun, 3 September 1924, 6.

² For example Tōkyōshi, Shinsai kinen; Tōkyōfu, Taishō shinsai biseki.

³ Tōkyō shiyakusho, Tōkyō shiritsu shōgakkō jidō: Shinsai kinen bunshū, hereafter referred to as SKB.

⁴ ‘Tōkyōshi gakumuka’, 17.

⁵ For children’s recollections of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, see Kanie and Satō, Fukushima no kodomotachi; Mori, ‘Tsunami’ no kodomotachi.

⁶ Stearns, ‘Challenges in the History of Childhood’, 35–36; Heywood, A History of Childhood, 6.

⁷ For example, Jones, Children as Treasures; Uno, Passages to Modernity.

⁸ Uno, ‘Japan’, 503.

⁹ Schencking, The Great Kantō Earthquake; Weisenfeld, Imaging Disaster; Bates, ‘Authentic Suffering’.

¹⁰ Jones, Children as Treasures, 4.

¹¹ Ibid., 2.

¹² Ambaras, Bad Youth.

¹³ Okano Shigeru, ‘Daishinsai’ [The Big Earthquake], SKB, vol. 3, 198–99.

¹⁴ Japan Weekly Chronicle, 28 August 1924, 298.

¹⁵ Nihon Tōkei Fukyūkai, Teito fukkō jigyō taikan, vol. 1, part 5, 6.

¹⁶ Dai Nihon Kyōiku Tsūshinsha, Kantō daishinsaishi, 190.

¹⁷ Borland, ‘Makeshift Schools’, 139.

¹⁸ Kashiba, ‘Chichi toshite no kurushimi’.

¹⁹ Tōkyōshi, Shinsai kinen, 461–76.

²⁰ Ibid., 434. One phrase not on this list, but which appeared in many children’s essays, was ‘living hell on earth’ (ikinagara no jigoku).

²¹ Onda, ‘Jishin’.

²² Kanzō Ikutarō believed students should be encouraged to express the trauma they witnessed. Citing the work of Freud, Kanzō warned that memories never disappear from the subconscious and if left untreated they could resurface as mental illness. Kanzō, ‘Saigaichi no shōgaku kyōiku’.

²³ Tokyo Municipal Government, Education in Tokyo, 61–66.

²⁴ Gebert, ‘The Writing Subject’, 13–21.

²⁵ Yoshida Ryūichi, ‘Tsuzurikata no dai o sagasu made’ [Searching for a Topic to Write About], SKB, vol. 4, 159–61.

²⁶ Masuko and Sakai, Taru o tsukue toshite, 52–53.

²⁷ Chō Tessei, ‘Tsuzurikata’ [Writing Composition], SKB, vol. 2, 213–14.

²⁸ Takenaga, ‘Shōgakkō tenrankai’, 20.

²⁹ ‘Horori to saseru’.

³⁰ Nagata Hidejirō in SKB, vols 1–7, foreword.

³¹ Ibid.; also Yomiuri shinbun, 1 September 1924, 1.

³² ‘Tōkyōshi gakumuka’, 17.

³³ Tōkyōshi, Dai nijukkai Tōkyōshi tōkei nenpyō, 150–73.

³⁴ Okano Shigeru, ‘Daishinsai’ [The Big Earthquake], SKB, vol. 3, 198–99.

³⁵ Katsumi Sei, ‘Osoroshikatta koto’ [Frightening Things], SKB, vol. 3, 33–34.

³⁶ Takahashi Takenobu, ‘Shinsai no omoide’ [Earthquake Memories], SKB, vol. 4, 22.

³⁷ Shimada Eiji, ‘Kugatsu tsuitachi’ [September 1], SKB, vol. 3, 235.

³⁸ Katō Tsune, ‘Tatekawa no naka de’ [In Tatekawa Canal], SKB, vol. 6, 535–36.

³⁹ Nakamura Kuni, ‘Watashi no imōto’ [My Little Sister], SKB, vol. 4, 415–16.

⁴⁰ Schencking, The Great Kantō Earthquake, 24–26.

⁴¹ Tomikura Kō, ‘Osoroshiki hi kugatsu tsuitachi’ [That Terrible Day 1 September], SKB, vol. 6, 528–30.

⁴² Okaniwa Saku, ‘Otōsan ga nakunarimashita’ [My Father Died], SKB, vol. 4, 427–28.

⁴³ Kitamura Sachiko, ‘Daishinsai no toki no hifukusho no naka’ [In the Clothing Depot During the Great Disaster], SKB, vol. 5, 460–62.

⁴⁴ Tōkyō Hyakunenshi Henshū Iinkai, Tōkyō hyakunenshi, 1118.

⁴⁵ Iwata Tsune, ‘Kaji’ [Fires], SKB, vol. 1, 266–67.

⁴⁶ Ishii Mikio, ‘Fushigi ni tasukatta watashi’ [How I Survived Is a Mystery], SKB, vol. 3, 418–19.

⁴⁷ Kondō Fujio, ‘Aa Taishō jūninen kugatsu tsuitachi’ [Ah, 1 September 1923], SKB, vol. 5, 491.

⁴⁸ Maruyama Yoshirō, ‘Daijishin’ [The Big Earthquake], SKB, vol. 3, 269–70.

⁴⁹ As reported in the Japan Weekly Chronicle, 11 September 1924, 370.

⁵⁰ ‘When Quakes Come: What To Do and What To Avoid’, Japan Weekly Chronicle, 4 September 1924, 323.

⁵¹ Fujinuma Fukuo, ‘Watashi no ie’ [My House], SKB, vol. 4, 24–25.

⁵² Wakai Kiyoko, ‘Yaketa haregi’ [My Burnt Kimono], SKB, vol. 3, 355–56.

⁵³ Tanaka Michie, ‘Yaketa ningyō’ [My Burnt Doll], SKB, vol. 3, 283–84.

⁵⁴ Furuyama Sada, ‘Ame’ [Rain], SKB, vol. 3, 8–9.

⁵⁵ Sonobe Zen’ichi, ‘Kotoshi no oshōgatsu’ [New Year Festival This Year], SKB, vol. 3, 322–23.

⁵⁶ Tanaka Shōzō, ‘Kotoshi no shōgatsu’ [New Year Festival This Year], SKB, vol. 3, 98.

⁵⁷ Katō Motoyasu, ‘Fukkō no oshōgatsu’ [The New Year of Reconstruction], SKB, vol. 4, 108–09.

⁵⁸ Borland, ‘Capitalising on Catastrophe’; Borland, ‘Stories of Ideal Subjects’.

⁵⁹ Maruyama Masao, ‘Daishinkasaijū no bidan’ [Beautiful Stories From the Great Earthquake and Fires], SKB, vol. 4, 189–90. The story about the school principal is contained in Monbushō Futsū Gakumukyoku, Shinsai ni kansuru kyōiku shiryō, vol. 3, 22–23.

⁶⁰ Nagata, Kukaku seiri, 3–4.

⁶¹ Reported in The Japan Times and Mail, 2 September 1924, 4.

⁶² ‘Tōkyōshi gakumuka’, 17.

⁶³ Tanaka Hajime, ‘Watashi no gakkō’ [My School], SKB, vol. 3, 68–69.

⁶⁴ Aoki Kazuhide, ‘Bokutachi no tsukue’ [Our Desks], SKB, vol. 2, 74–75.

⁶⁵ Takeda Hisako, ‘Shinsaigo no watashi no gakkō’ [My School After the Earthquake], SKB, vol. 4, 25–26.

⁶⁶ Saitō Naka, ‘Kono goro no kanji’ [My Feelings These Days], SKB, vol. 4, 24.

⁶⁷ Kakiuchi Aiko, ‘Ken’yaku’ [Thrift], SKB, vol. 4, 45–46.

⁶⁸ Endō Michiko, ‘Shinsaigo’ [After the Earthquake], SKB, vol. 3, 317–18.

⁶⁹ Aoki Sada, ‘Atarashii Tōkyō’ [New Tokyo], SKB, vol. 3, 296–97.

⁷⁰ Yasukawa Setsuko, ‘Tōkyō kara’ [From Tokyo], SKB, vol. 4, 14–15.

⁷¹ Suzuki Suzuko, ‘Teito fukkō ni tsuite watashi no kibō’ [My Hopes for the Imperial Capital Reconstruction], SKB, vol. 4, 294–96.

⁷² ‘Lessons of the Quake’.