It was as if the very earth were now burning. It presented exactly the aspect of a gigantic Christmas pudding over which the spirits were blazing, devouring nothing. For the city was gone. The tragedy prompted countless acts of heroism.
Thomas Ryan, a year-old U. Samuel Robinson, the Canadian skipper of the Empress of Australia , took hundreds of refugees aboard, organized a fire brigade that kept the ship from being incinerated by advancing flames, then steered the crippled vessel to safety in the outer harbor.
Then there was Taki Yonemura, chief engineer of the government wireless station in Iwaki, a small town miles northeast of Tokyo. Hours after the earthquake, Yonemura picked up a faint signal from a naval station near Yokohama, relaying word of the catastrophe. For the next three days, Yonemura sent a stream of reports that alerted the world to the unfolding tragedy.
The wave of good feeling between the two countries would soon dissipate, however, in mutual accusations. The earthquake also exposed the darker side of humanity. Within hours of the catastrophe, rumors spread that Korean immigrants were poisoning wells and using the breakdown of authority to plot the overthrow of the Japanese government. Japan had occupied Korea in , annexed it five years later and ruled the territory with an iron grip. Also murdered were the anarchist Sakae Osugi, his lover Noe Ito and his 6-year-old nephew by military police in the chaos following the earthquake.
The protagonist of what became known as the Amakasu Incident , Lieutenant Masahiko Amakasu, was to serve only a short time in prison for the three murders before being released. Amakasu later became a bigwig in the puppet state of Manchukuo. After the earthquake, Tokyo's road and train infrastructure was completely rebuilt, and parks were established throughout the city to act as areas of refuge in the case of future earthquake disasters.
Kanto is the name of the geographical area of which Tokyo forms the center. In less than three days, a magnitude approximate 7. The disaster did more than destroy. It also compelled reflection and inspired dreams that transformative and lasting changes might result. Many hoped that a grandiose, awe-inspiring capital could be forged from the crucible of catastrophe.
Others conjured up plans for the construction of an infrastructure rich city that would allow the state to better manage its citizens. Still others suggested that moral, economic, and spiritual rejuvenation efforts spurred by reconstruction could be used to arrest the perceived degeneration of society.
Soda claims that he knows them well and that if he left them on the street, it would be like "a cat chasing a mouse" in that they would be instantly killed by other jikeidan groups. In response to the jikeidan's question of whether Soda would take full responsibility if the Korean employees did set fires, Soda agreed automatically. On September 11th with the help of the Setagaya Chief of Police, Soda organized a refuge to protect nearly 1, Koreans bringing firewood, rice, somen noodles, towels, and medical supplies.
His benevolence and dedication inspires the townspeople to act similarly, and they too begin to bring money and vegetables to help the Korean community. Sympathy, rather than hatred and anxiety manifested itself as the townspeople themselves saw the Koreans' "peaceful, quiet faces," tired from injuries and sickness. Concluding the story, a thank-you letter from one of the nearly 1, Korean refugees sent to Soda, is enclosed.
The government used the theme of the hero to convey the idea that the majority of the Japanese population did in fact, act similarly as heroes such as Soda. The story suggests that most Japanese citizens tried to protect the Korean community just as Soda had. The government wished to give the impression that these courageous citizens reflected the majority of the Japanese involved in the Korean massacre and that the violent individuals were the minority.
This was one way the government attempted to reduce the scope of people involved. These heroes were contrasted with a smaller Japanese population, members of the jikeidan , whom the government eventually placed blame on for the massacre. The depiction of Soda's rationality illustrated by his reasoning with the jikeidan is significant as well. It portrays the idea that most Japanese like Soda maintained rationality even in the state of panic and fear.
Thus, it suggests that the massacre was neither the result of anti-Korean sentiments nor of people simply believing unconfirmed rumors. Yet, government-edited accounts such as "The Mayor who sheltered the Koreans" and other similar accounts of the Korean massacre fail to reflect the reality of the situation. None of the government-edited narratives mention the involvement of the Japanese police and army in the massacre.
In fact, at the time, the government intentionally made efforts to criminalize the local vigilantes, the jikeidan , as the sole perpetrators of the massacre during prosecution trials of the murderers. However, the public was well aware that members of the jikeidan were not the only ones responsible for the killings, and responses to these government attempts to free itself of blame initiated some protests from the public including right-wing leaders such as Ryohei Uchida. The Japanese populace had already witnessed the police force encourage the massacre.
Police officers directed people to "kill wild, violent Koreans," and hundreds of armed soldiers arrived in Tokyo declaring that "the enemy means Koreans. The government-edited accounts published in the Taisho shinsai giseki a year later seem to confirm the Japanese government's attempt to deny police and army participation in the massacre as none of the stories mention any hint of their involvement.
The public became suspicious of the government's involvement in the massacre, believing that the widespread dispersion of unconfirmed rumors by Japanese officials at the national, prefecture, county, and village was an indirect, yet significant involvement causing the event.
Police never substantiated reports, encouraging discrimination by putting posters up and distributing leaflets warning the public about the "violent behavior by bands of Korean malcontents. By this time, hundreds of Koreans had already been killed after jikeidan were assigned by the Metropolitan Police Department to protect their community.
There was growing unrest as various prosecutions of members of the jikeidan were taking place while similar crimes committed by the police and army were disregarded. Some Japanese believed that the Japanese government attempted to solve the "Korean problem" by starting the rumors in the first place.
It was well-known that the Japanese government feared Korean nationalism within the colony and the presence of Korean left-wing radicalism. At the time, people had neither composure nor rationality. Although Somekawa Ransen recalls having initial doubts about rumors concerning the uprising of Koreans, soon after witnessing the Japanese attacking a man, "he immediately assumed that the man was a Korean and got angry In fact, I believe the widespread nature of the massacre and the Japanese people's willingness to so easily accept rumors as true and submissiveness to follow such police orders to kill a fellow citizen can equally be blamed as the Japanese government's efforts to instigate the massacre.
Although many Japanese were angered as they later saw not only government association with the massacre, but its denial in participating, it is important that they realize that many did not even think twice about the absurdity of the government's direction and proceeded to kill many fellow citizens with their own hands. In addition, the government efforts to help Korean refugees were not as widespread as the story seems to suggest.
The example of Soda helping the Koreans was a rare account that the government wished to publicize to further objectives of covering up the fact that anti-Korean sentiments played a role in the indiscriminate killings. For example, in a similar incident, two Koreans living with a labor contractor in the village of Shinozaki were not as fortunate as those housed and protected by Soda.
After they were handed over to the Divisional Headquarters for questioning, they were shot to death along the way because they "became a threat to the officers' safety," in that they allegedly began to throw rocks at the officers.
Another incident involved nine Koreans who were seized by police and turned over to the Kameido police station, where they were killed by police or soldiers who were instructed by the government to "maintain public order in the area.
Also, it is important to note that even if the Japanese government denied involvement with the Korean massacre, the Korean massacre still revealed serious insufficiencies in the Japanese government. The government was unable to either stop or control the violence of its own people, with the result that nearly 6, people were brutally murdered. Further, it failed to protect the lives of its minority, but nonetheless a citizenry that deserves the full rights and protections that the rest of the nation was guaranteed, the Korean population of Japan.
Masao's earthquake experiences depicted in "My friend in the hihukusho " differs from the "Mayor who Sheltered the Koreans" in many ways. This narrative is an example of a non-government edited description from the interviews. The University of Tokyo professor, Osamu Hiroi conducted twenty interviews through the format of casual conversation with survivors who ranged in ages six to twenty at the time.
Hiroi researches Japanese earthquakes and the behaviors of people during and after these natural disasters. He published a book entitled Ryugen to dema no shakaigaku The Sociology of False Reports and Rumors , in which he describes the importance of supplying all facts for the prevention of false rumors.
He identifies two types of rumors: the eruptive type , or those that spread quickly such as the malicious rumors about Koreans during the Kanto Earthquake, and the permeating type , or those that spread slowly with time such as those about the "slit-mouth woman" circulating among students since Thus, perhaps Hiroi decided to write the effects of such rumors after hearing so many accounts about the Korean massacre that were never revealed in such detail in government-edited publications such as the Taisho shinsai giseki and Japanese school textbooks.
For many such as Masao, hearing the jikeidan harass passing people, then being stopped by the jikeidan himself, who demanded that Masao and others read a Japanese text on the spot, was a far more terrifying experience than the earthquake itself. Many survivors of the quake whom Hiroi interviewed were young at the time and were shocked and terrified that fellow neighbors could be capable of inflicting violence infused with such aggression against innocent Koreans. The first major difference from the "The Mayor who Sheltered the Koreans" is that Masao focuses a great deal on the story of escape and survival from the earthquake.
As he retraces his route of escape moving from one refuge location to another as fires threatened evacuation sites, he describes his many encounters with death. In the already narrow streets crowded with people fleeing with their unwieldy personal possessions, he would realize that he was stepping over the bodies of those trampled to death.
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