Rethinking History: Beyond the 1923 Kanto Earthquake Narrative

The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. This applies particularly to history. What we are not told or is purposely withheld from view cheapens history and adds to our misunderstanding. Revanchists go on to exploit half-a-loaf history for their own ends.

Such is the case of the Korean residents killed following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. According to The Asahi Shimbun and other mainstream media, the narrative goes that Koreans in Tokyo were slaughtered by paranoid racists in the aftermath of a horrible natural disaster.

From this narrative, the mainstream media goes on to chide the current Japanese for not showing sufficient remorse for this event. The supposed slaughter of the Koreans in 1923 is added to the long list of episodes illustrating how "fascist" Japan was at the time and how horribly the poor, enslaved Koreans were treated by the Japanese.

That many Korean residents at the time of the earthquake were destitute is undeniable. Undeniably wrong, however, is that they were "enslaved," as they were alleged to have been before and during World War II.

The Japanese government needs to go beyond its current non-response to this issue. In fact, it is difficult to determine the government's position. Then again, perhaps the government should remain silent, as its garbled responses to previous historical issues, such as the military comfort women, have led to further, unending complications.

The Realities of Korean Migrants

Better, then, for Japanese historians to write the truth just as the documents within Japan show. For the most part, though, Japanese historians have sanctified Korean resident victims as martyrs for Korean liberation. Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, and many historians in Japan adopt a simplistic liberation narrative to explain that past.

The truth is more complicated, though. Most historians in Japan offer little to no explanation as to why the Japanese responded as they did following the Kanto Earthquake.

*People carrying futons and clothing were evacuated to the plaza in front of the Imperial Palace after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. (© Sankei)*

*Professor J Mark Ramseyer of Harvard University gives a keynote speech at a trilateral symposium on the comfort women issue in Nagatacho, Tokyo, on July 10. (©Sankei by Takao Harakawa)*

Thus, the burden falls on those outside of Japan to sift through Japanese-language records. Professor J Mark Ramseyer of Harvard Law School pointed out that Korean residents at that time were mostly young, poor, single, and undereducated males who migrated to the Japanese islands looking for unskilled work, as there were few employment opportunities for them on the Korean Peninsula.

Professors Richard Mitchell of the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and Michael Weiner of Soka University of America concur. They argue that many of the immigrants had less than a rudimentary understanding of the Japanese language and customs.

As the goal of these young men was to stay long enough to secure employment, accumulate some money, and then leave, assimilation was a low priority.

Social Capital Deficits

Most of these young Korean males at the time were isolated from the rest of Japanese society due to their poverty and lack of what Ramseyer and others called "social capital." In other words, connectivity to others within the group through networks of "kinship, social, religious, and economic bonds."

There was also a lack of fulfilling community obligations. The community failed to effectively monitor socially acceptable behavior or punish socially unacceptable behavior. As Ramseyer and others have noted, "(Financial) stress from…unemployment places a profoundly depressing effect on social involvement." With diminished social capital and a lack of intragroup monitoring, antisocial and criminal behavior rises.

Compared to Japanese and other foreign residents, young, poor male Korean residents at the time were, on average, more likely to be arrested and sentenced for violent crimes.

Mobilization certificate photo of Park Dongfu (Japanese name: Yamamoto Towa).
said to be taken at the time he was mobilized to the Kawasaki Steelworks in Iwate Prefecture. No year of photography is recorded. It is smiling in front of a massive machine. (Courtesy of Ryosuke Nagatani)

Ramseyer has shown that in the early 1920s, Korean residents (males and a small number of females) in Japan were about 4 times as likely as Korean males in Korea to be sentenced for "criminal code violations." Interestingly, the rate of sentencing of Koreans in Korea is about half of the rate of sentencing for Japanese in Japan.

The numbers suggest that there is nothing intrinsically criminal about young male Koreans. But they do suggest that those who do migrate to Japan were, in the words of a missionary in Japan, "not Korea's best."

Nationalism Meets Communism

What bonds some members of the Korean underclass made were with the charismatic, opportunistic elites, which included Korean anarchists, communists, nationalists, and educated Koreans studying in Japan. These self-styled elites claimed to be the voice of all Korean residents. The Korean underclass also aligned with opportunistic Japanese leftists, who, while sympathetic to Korean nationalism, saw Koreans as useful tools in advancing their own agenda of overthrowing the Japanese political system.

Indeed, in 1920, prior to the establishment of the Korean and Japanese Communist Parties, the Communist International called on "revolutionary proletariats" "revolutionary workers," and "oppressed peasants" in Japan and Korea as well as in Western colonial possessions to wage a "holy war for the liberation of all mankind from the yoke of capitalism and imperialist slavery…!"

The Manifesto of the Korean Communist Party in Shanghai (1921) stated that Koreans were in a state of war with Japan. Its goals, the manifesto noted, were to establish a "Korean soviet government under the dictatorship of the proletariat" and to "destroy all the existing systems [capitalism and imperialism]…"

The November 1922 platform of the Japanese Communist Party demanded, among other things, "abolition of the imperial system," overthrow of the existing government, and expropriation of lands belonging to the "emperor, big landlords and temples."

Assassination Plots to Terrorism

Some Korean residents did what they could in the name of Korean liberation. In 1920, So San-han threatened to assassinate the Korean crown prince, Yi Un, and his consort, Princess Nashimoto no miya Masako (later Yi Bangja) in Tokyo.

The Japanese Governor General of Korea, Makoto Saito, was a target of several assassination attempts by Korean terrorists both within Japan and Korea. In mid-1923, Korean resident and anarchist Pak Yol and his Japanese lover and fellow anarchist, Fumiko Kaneko, were implicated in a plot to assassinate Crown Prince Hirohito.

Back in the homeland, before annexation in 1910, tens of thousands of Korean insurgents "were killed fighting to liberate Korea from the Japanese yoke." Nearly 70,000 Korean guerrillas engaged Japanese troops in 1908 in a "determined military effort to expel the Japanese invaders."

From 1907 through 1910, guerrilla attacks were widespread. At one point, guerrilla leader Yi Inyeong and 10,000 guerrillas "officially declared war against Japan" and "came close to evicting the Japanese colonizers from Seoul."

However, "Japanese occupation forces… proved formidable." By 1910, about 2,000 freedom fighters were reduced to staging low-level terrorism on the northern Korean border from bases in Manchuria and the then Soviet Union until Japanese capitulation in August 1945.

Slum Life and Rising Tensions

The Korean residents in Japan, already caught up in a tense geopolitical situation, focused on proximal goals — make money and go home. They also did what young men everywhere do when away from home: drink, fight, and generally run with the wrong crowd.

According to Reverend R A Hardie, a Methodist missionary to the Koreans, those with some extra money purchased sake "by the tub" and gathered "in large groups to feast and drink, often terminating the day by a general fight in which it is said men are sometimes killed."

Buildings near the Ginza 4-chome intersection in Tokyo were damaged and destroyed by the Great Kanto Earthquake in September 1923. The wreckage of cars and streetcars rolls around. (By Nippon Telegraph Communication)

Korean residents cavorting with communists and anarchists ensured that the Korean underclass would not develop strong connectivity with the surrounding Japanese community. Furthermore, unemployed Japanese, who lived in the same slums as Korean residents, resented the presence of Korean immigrants, who worked for wages below those of the Japanese.

It should be remembered that following the economic boom spurred by World War I, a decade-long period of "chronic depression" ensued. This period was marked by the failure of numerous prominent banking institutions in 1922, the year before the Kanto earthquake.

Given the insular world of the Korean underclass and the view that Korean residents were undercutting Japanese wages during an extremely difficult economic climate, it should not be surprising that some Japanese viewed them with hostility, fear, or mistrust.

Lawlessness Follows Disaster

There were reports of "isolated malpractices" by "disorderly" Koreans taking advantage of the post-disaster chaos, including a "suspicious-looking Korean" loitering near the only serviceable water tap in Kikukawa-cho, Honjo, with what turned out to be poison.

The Tokyo Asahi Shimbun, October 21, 1923, reported individual criminal acts committed in the wake of the earthquake by Koreans and documented numerous acts of violence against Koreans as well. Reports indicated that Koreans committing arson were supposedly praised by nationalist Korean leftists in Shanghai.

Adding to this toxic brew, Prime Minister Tomosaburo Kato had died on August 24, 1923, leaving Japan without a prime minister on the day the earthquake struck, a Saturday. The Home Ministry, which was to have played a key role in responding to the earthquake, as well as the Metropolitan Police Department and other ministries, were obliterated in the quake.

Police, firefighters, and the military were simply overwhelmed and unable to communicate and respond promptly following the earthquake. At partially aflame Negishi Prison in Yokohama, guards freed 1,000 prisoners, including "many" Korean convicts.

More than a Simple Narrative

A prominent feature of Japan since the Tokugawa era was the formation of community bands to perform services the government was unable or unwilling to handle, such as firefighting and policing. Similar bands emerged after the earthquake, taking on tasks like food distribution and the collection of bodies that the government could not manage.

Some of these bands took on the duties of judge, jury, and executioner and murdered whomever they captured. That included law-abiding Koreans and Japanese thought to be Korean.

History is complicated, but politics is easy and cheap. Today, the tragedy of Korean residents serves as yet another wound Korean nationalists can pick at to keep resentment against Japan alive.

Providing context to this tragic and complex story will not bring back the victims who were senselessly murdered. However, examining the full panorama of the tragedy can help today's and future generations recognize warning signs, such as economic crisis and a poverty-stricken, isolated minority group, which might prevent similar disasters in the future.

Author: Dr Aldric Hama

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