The Great Kanto Earthquake, sometimes called the Great Tokyo Earthquake, rocked Japan on September 1, 1923. The city of Yokohama was hit even worse than Tokyo was, although both were devastated. It was the deadliest earthquake in Japanese history.
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| The Akasaka district, one of Tokyo’s residential areas, lies in ruins after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake on Sept. 1, 1923. |
The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.9 on the moment magnitude scale with its focus deep beneath Izu Ōshima Island in Sagami Bay. The cause was a rupture of part of the convergent boundary where the Philippine Sea Plate is subducting beneath the Okhotsk Plate along the line of the Sagami Trough.
The total death toll from the disaster is estimated at about 142,800. The quake struck at 11:58 am, so many people were cooking lunch. 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.
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| People walk in the devastated area of Yuoguku in Tokyo, Japan, after the earthquake that struck on Sept. 1, 1923. In the background is the gutted domed building Kokugikan, National Sumo Wrestling arena, in the Ryoguku district. |
Fire and tremors together claimed 90 percent of the homes in Yokohama and left 60% of Tokyo’s people homeless. The Taisho Emperor and Empress Teimei were on holiday in the mountains, and so escaped the disaster.
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. Flames surrounded them, and at about 4:00 in the afternoon, a “fire tornado” some 300 feet tall roared through the area. Only 300 of the people gathered there survived.
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| A view of the devastation in Tokyo after the 1923 earthquake and fire, seen from the top of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. |
These archival images, drawn from the U.S. Geological Survey, AP, and Brown University’s Dana and Vera Reynolds Collection, show the horrifying wreckage.
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| The remains of the famous Maruzen bookstore located in Nihombashi district of Tokyo after fire. The Maruzen bookstores was the largest bookstore and main provider of Western and European literature in Tokyo. |
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| A view of destruction in Tokyo, seen from the top of the Imperial Hotel, which was the only hotel in the region that survived the 1923 earthquake. “A good idea of the tremendous devastation in Tokyo wrought by earthquake and fire.” J.H. Messervey, from a letter dated March 5, 1924. Image of Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan, after the September 1, 1923 earthquake. |
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