Great Kanto earthquake

At 11:58 a.m. on September 1, 1923, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the Kanto plain, which holds Tokyo and Yokohama. Shaking lasted several minutes. Because it came at lunchtime, many families were cooking over open fires in wooden houses, and fires spread across the cities, driven by winds. In Tokyo's Honjo district about 38,000 people sheltering on open ground near the Army Clothing Depot died in a fire storm within minutes. About 105,000 people were dead or missing by the modern Japanese count (older sources say over 140,000), and much of Tokyo and Yokohama was destroyed.¹²

The Kanto region lies where the Philippine Sea plate dives beneath Japan, and large earthquakes recur there. Fifty years of rapid growth since the Meiji Restoration of 1868 had packed millions into wooden neighborhoods with narrow streets and few firebreaks, and a typhoon off the coast fanned the flames. A tsunami struck the coast, and landslides destroyed villages in the hills.¹²

In the chaos, false rumors spread that Koreans were poisoning wells and plotting violence. Vigilante groups, police and soldiers killed Korean residents and some Chinese and other people mistaken for Koreans. Estimates of the Korean dead range from hundreds to several thousand, and the events remain a painful subject in Japan and Korea. The government's reconstruction plan, led by Goto Shinpei, rebuilt Tokyo with wider streets and parks, and Japan revised its building rules. September 1 is now Disaster Prevention Day in Japan.²³⁴