The Great Kanto Earthquake
Friday, September 1, 2023 is the 100th anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake (“kanto daishinsai”), also called the Tokyo-Yokohama Earthquake, which struck beneath Sagami Bay southwest of the capital at 11:58 a.m., destroying Yokohama and Tokyo and killing an estimated 140,000 people. Since then, Japanese have been waiting for the next ‘Big One’ in the capital region. The March 11, 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, centered under the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast, was not it. Sure, it was a Big One, but not the Big One that Tokyoites are waiting for. The one Tokyoites are waiting for will once more be focused beneath Sagami Bay. Some say it’s already overdue.
In 1923, much architecture was still wooden. The quake happened just at noon as housewives were preparing noontime meals over cooking fires. Collapsed houses created fuel for a blaze that burned for days, creating fire tornados, in a holocaust not matched until the American incendiary bombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945. The great metropolis was reduced to ash.
Beginning in 1960, September 1st has been called “bosai no hi,” Disaster Preparation Day, or Disaster Prevention Day, when school children practice emergency response protocols - protocols for earthquakes, but for other natural disasters as well, like typhoons, floods, fires, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, mudslides, and Godzilla.
There have been many great, and worse natural disasters in the modern world: the 1970 Bhola cyclone in Bangladesh that killed up to 500,000; the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake in China that killed almost a quarter million; and, the 2004 Boxing Day Earthquake, a.k.a. the Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami, a.k.a. the Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake that also killed a quarter of a million. Less destructive to human life, but still incredible seismic events include the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, the 1952 Kamchatka Earthquake, the 1960 Valdivia Earthquake, a.k.a. the Great Chilean Earthquake, and the 1964 Alaska Earthquake. (The Great Chilean Earthquake is the strongest earthquake ever recorded.) So, the Great Kanto Earthquake is not at all either the biggest or the deadliest seismic disaster. But it is one of the outstanding incidents of modern Japanese history, and it is well remembered because it was well documented. Probably few in the West have ever heard of it.