This research began over three years ago when I stumbled upon the report of Shibusawa Motoji (1876-1975), an electrical engineer, in the library of my hometown. I was looking for original documentation about the Great Kantō Earthquake for my master dissertation, which I never came to use, until now. This search for new documents or new approaches intended to include one way or another, an already well studied subject that interest me so much. In a way, this report became the piece of was looking for and evidence for the intuitions I had about the link between energy, society, and vulnerability.

In Japanese history itself, the access or not to energy under the form of fossil fuels conditioned the adaptative margin of societies in case of socio-natural disaster^[1]. For example, the 1943 Tottori earthquake occurred in one of the worst timings possible amid the Pacific War^[2]. With a crisis within a crisis, the authorities had to put up with limited resources and fuel supplies to cope with the effects of the catastrophes. Plus, the earthquake stroke in a remote and difficult of access area of Honshū, further hindering the relief efforts in the immediate aftermath.

Nowadays, the question has gained even more momentum since the energy crisis due to the Russo-Ukrainian War, underlining how industrialized societies became reliant on easily available energy to fuel their economy^[3]. Indeed, the matter goes beyond the simple scope of economics by affecting societies in their globality. Our vulnerability, as industrialized populations, became even more blatant in the face of climate change, primarily caused by a massive consumption of fossil resources for the last 150 years^[4].

How about societies from an earlier stage of industrialization and set in an East Asian background? Was the Japanese society of 1923 a less reliant on non-renewable energy sources than ours? How important the matter of energy was important in the vulnerability of the overall society of Tokyo and in the process of recovery? This article will aim to answer all these inquiries by exploring firstly the report of Shibusawa Motoji and the Investigation Report on the Great Kantō Earthquake by exploring in a second instance a corpus of documents (written or iconographic) related to the consumption of energy or energy policy related to the Earthquake.

The article is segmented in four parts: 1. The historiography of energy and disasters 2. Electrification and its role on social vulnerability of the Kantō region, 2. The analysis of the 1923 Earthquake effect on the energy supply lines, 3. The implication of energy in the rebuilding process 4. The global implications of the same process, plus its consequences on the longer term.

The short study of a subject such as the effects of energy consumption patterns on disasters resiliency combines two historiographies with a large literature in the Japanese context, having in common the exploration of the ways societies on the Japanese Archipelago interacted with their environment and an interest in circulation of different sorts^[5]. In the first common dimension, the link is obvious between both literatures even though each differs in their approach of the matter. In the latter, the circulation concerns different elements, one with materials or vectors of the energy.

Energy history, in the multiplicity of existent works, mainly aimed to assess how human societies were shaped and shaped the world around them through the lens of the laws of thermodynamics. With matter, energy is what composes most of the universe, making it ubiquitous. It explains why energy played such an important role in human histories. One avenue of considering the importance of energy has been by observing how societies managed energy as a resource and how it shaped cultures throughout time. The specificity of energy history is to underline the omnipresence of such a parameter and the deep roots it had in the ordinary life of humanity^[6].

We shall not forget as well a more global approach to environmental history of the Japanese Archipelago, whose literature saw an impressive increase in recent decades. Notably within Western scholarship, the works of Conrad Totman were seminal. In recent years, we can mention the volume directed by Fujihara Tatsushi that brought in important addition to the existing scholarship^[7]. In Japan itself, the scholarship on environmental history began really to take off during the 1990’s. Some works even were published earlier, like Iijima Nobuko on pollution^[8].

For the history of disasters, the focus is turned to how human societies interacted with phenomena of different natures but whose main characteristic is their potentially destructive nature. Disasters could be defined as an experience and one type of interaction with the environment which occurs destructive for humans and at variable potentiality. Along with that definition, disaster history sought to understand how populations understood those experiences and how those societies coped with such events^[9]. As for its distinctive feature, disaster history tends to engage in a reflexive history of its subject and about the society of its readers. Disasters commonly question the place of societies in a larger context and question our own relationship with the environment, at the era of the Anthropocene^[10]. In this regard, the Great Kantō Earthquake holds a special place in the historiography of Japanese disasters. Being the deadliest earthquake in Japanese history, the 1923 tremor caught the attention of multiple researchers, among them Charles Schencking or Alexandre Bates^[11]. The main challenge is then to find new angles for such a well-known event. For a more visual studies-oriented approach of the 1923 earthquake, Gennifer Weisenfeld furnishes a granular picture of the aftermath of the disaster as well as the social healing process^[12].

More importantly, technology and its cultural underpinnings could be considered as the link connecting energy and disasters. For energy, technology acted as a mean to gather energy or heat, to convert it and finally to transport it to its consumption place. Moreover, technology could be accepted as the knowledge transmitted or transformed throughout generations to keep society functioning by finding the best methods to collect energy^[13]. Whereas for disasters, technology could be either a tool, a cause, a method of coping or a factor depending on the type of catastrophe met by societies^[14].

Technology comes to cover both types of literature when we consider the history of infrastructures, more precisely territory management by different societies to suit their needs. Infrastructures, even more in during the industrial era, are both critical element in the production or transport of energy and in the vulnerability or resistance of a territory during disasters^[15]. In the context of industrial Japan during the 19th century onward, the acceleration of the economic growth and the augmentation of industrial output led to a deep transformation of the landscape and ecosystems at different levels. The deep political, social, and economic changes translated into the land by the deepening of harbors and ports, by the constructing of railways all over the country or the construction of a comprehensive network for the transport of wide array of things at the national level^[16]. In a more common manner, these are called “lifelines” and are eloquent representations of the developments needed for the industrializing society of Japan. In a way, these systems, and the connection they furnish between different parts of the Japanese mainland are the vascular system of the studied society, up to this day^[17].

The geographical extension and density of such transformations of the landscape vary from one region to another and due to the rugged geography of Japan. Such geographic features laid ground for the political divisions of the archipelago during its history. The mountainous terrains with three separate coastal plains suitable for agriculture, where most of the population concentrated would make the constitution of a unified political, administrative, and economical structure particularly challenging^[18]. Moreover, the main centers of fuel production were located on the periphery in Kyūshū and Hokkaidō of the industrial core of Japan led to higher costs for coal of energy and transport^[19]. The result of this situation was to increase the need for the State and other actors to invest heavily in the land transformation, the fact was especially true for inland roads, ports, and railroads, on which Japan depended for its intra-connection and for its connection with the rest of the global economy. The search for a stable and cheap source of coal or fuel was well studied by Victor Seow in his work, stressing the efforts of a technocracy trying to control and rationalize the governance of Japan’s coal resources^[20].

Trying to cross different historiographies with their own method and preoccupations could become somewhat difficult. The combination of environmental history, disaster sciences and history of technology requires a common ground and subject of scrutiny. Once found, the methods of investigation consist mainly in a contextualization of primary documents by considering the region of Yokohama-Tokyo metropolitan area as a technical macro-system where goods, capitals, people, and energy flow at variable paces^[21]. Said otherwise, the employed approaches are: 1. a critical analysis of the primary sources 2. a complex-system approach 3. a pictorial analysis and contextualization 4. an interest in utility networks 5. historical seismology 6. an observation of the biosystems concerned by the studied events.

Electrification comes hand in hand with industrialization, mostly with the Second Industrialization in the latter half of the 19th century^[22]. The process of electrification consists in a socio-technical phenomenon where a society is progressively integrated into a network and market of electric energy. Electricity is socially translated as well by the profound modification of the lifestyle and behavior of a given society. It was both a quantitative and qualitative transformation that fed itself in a positive feedback loop and connecting to other sector of the society. In the study case of Japan, the advent and reinforcement of electricity accelerated the pace of industrialization of the archipelago, relying more heavily on electric current for different segments of its economy than the Euro-America did at the beginning of their own industrialization process^[23]. Muscular energy, water and steam took the lion’s share for the energy sources of the First Industrialization.

The advantage Japan had was to learn from the lessons experienced by Western (mostly French, English and American) industries and somewhat leaped directly into the Second Industrialization^[24]. Taking inspiration from the outside allowed to industrialize with greater speed or better tools but needed as translation process, since one technology could not simply transfer from one cultural context to another. The several technologies brought from the outside were translated and modified to meet the constraint of the Japanese context and by fusing with indigenous industrial and factorial processes^[25]. As a matter of fact, Japan starting from 1890 approximately carved its own path of Industrialization by combining different technical tradition into its own matrix depending on the sectors of the economy.

As mentioned previously, the volcanic and mountainous nature of the Japanese geography represented an important obstacle to the development of energy consuming industries. It is no wonder that light manufacture blossomed first in the metropolitan areas from a protoindustrial core, before transitioning to heavier industries during the Meiji to Shōwa period^[26]. This geographic makeup formed an incentive to be as logistically and technically autonomous as possible from Euro-American powers, in addition of the very aggressive approach of Western powers^[27]. Hence, the Japanese tried to secure as much as possible potential sources of good quality coal in their vicinity, colliding directly with Russian Imperial ambitions on the continent, especially Korea and Manchuria^[28]. Furthermore, the development of hydroelectricity mostly for the industry led to a concentration process of different fluxes around a coal and hydropower complex. In both Japan and its later colonies, the development of hydroelectricity and coal-powered electricity went typically in pair; it even often boosted the consummation of energy due to a feedback loop effect^[29].

Both were used always in a joined fashion because of the complementary nature of both industries, coal could produce a good deal of energy but was more expensive and less flexible than water. On the other hand, hydropower furnishes a lot of current when the turbines are in service, but hydroelectricity’s productivity is not consistent throughout the year due to the hydrology of Japan’s rivers. Seasonality significantly influences the amount of water mobilizable for energy generation^[30]. From March to June, the melting of snowcaps leads to a sudden increase in water later, whereas the rain season from June to July would bring copious volume of rainwater. The drier season spans between late August to October, where temperatures are at their highest in the heart of summer; occasionally interrupted by intense typhoons coming from the Southwest. With Autumn and colder months, rainfall augment a little under the form of rain or snow depending on the region or altitude.

Plus, we must take into consideration the consequences of technological evolutions that motivated such choice at critical technical bifurcations, which would have repercussions a long time after the actual decision was taken. The invention of the turbine and ameliorations made in electric engineering were two major breakthroughs in the river management policy of the Kantō region. Using electricity over thermal power or other types of energy generation was the possibility to separate the place of production from its final consumption market^[31]. In addition to its dissociative nature, the use of alternate current for energy transport represented an advantage over direct current for an array on reasons. Among them, alternate current could be better scaled up for small power stations, especially when the locus of production was far from its consumption ground. The second reason was its cost efficiency, alternative current had the benefit of lesser losses of energy by distance compared to direct energy, depending on the cases. These technical implications motivated government officials and entrepreneurs to look for this more practical solution. For this purpose, they turned their scrutiny to the United States, France, or Great Britain^[32]. The choice, at the dawn of the 20th century, was made for a system developed by Thomas Edison and his peers for the New York metropolitan area. The system used alternate current and constituted a cohesive grid with an already densely populated zone. In the case of the East Coast too, the development of the electric market was marked by high voltage electricity transport over long distances.

The main watersheds concerned with the canalization of the rivers for hydropower were the Tama, Sumida, Edo, Ara, and Tone River systems, mostly in the higher valleys of the Kantō region^[33]. The concerned rivers take their source in the prefectures of Gunma, Shizuoka, Yamanashi, or Saitama, while the most urbanized and industrialized zones situate in the lower parts of the Kantō plain (Kanagawa, Tokyo and Chiba). We can already see here a pattern that would be determining during the aftermath of the earthquake. The geography of the Kantō region defined how its subdivision was integrated into a larger energy network that was organizing itself at the turn of the 20th century and gaining momentum after the Russo-Japanese War. With the characteristic disconnect between the center of production and utilization, the noticeable trend was a concentration of the technological chain of hydropower, which in turn led to a specialization of highlands and lowlands of the Kantō in each end of that cycle: production and transport for the highlands and intake for the lowlands^[34]. Even though we could feel subordination relationship between both urban core and its periphery, we must not forget that this relationship wasn’t totally vertical. Both components sustained a relationship of codependency for energy, manpower and foodstuff, as well as water.

In fact, the control of watersheds and river systems belonged to a greater endeavor of the Meiji government to canalize and assert control over the different great rivers of the regions. Prior to the Meiji period, one must not forget that the dikes, artificial ponds, and irrigation canals was already well mastered ^[35]. Those measures had a threefold aim: to ameliorate flood control in the plain, irrigation for multiple purposes and hydroelectricity. Due to this intersection of different stakes, the control of water resources raised a lot of interest from the government and the principal private actors. In this aim, the first hydropower commercial dam constructed in Kantō was the Hakone Power Station in 1892. The commercial nuance is here important because the energy produced this way could be exported on a larger market, mainly for lighting, industry, or transportation^[36]. The rising demand for electricity with the rise in these different key-sectors became an interest outlet for the nascent utility companies.

Before the first commercial dams, the electricity or thermal energy necessary to factories were mainly produced in-house by each industrial operation, somewhat autonomous and decentralized. Two reasons for this situation were the relative absence of a market outside of their own consumption and the technical and financial difficulty to transport high voltage electricity over long distances^[37]. The advent of electric lighting instead of gas or the multiplication of electric small-scale motors in industry and the multiplication or urban railways accelerated the need for energy, mainly hydropower for its adaptation to the Japanese sociocultural context^[38]. Chronologically speaking, the key-moment in the organization of an energy market due to this synergetic augmentation to the need of industry after the Russo-Japanese war.

Conversely, electrification and water resources management transformed profoundly the cityscapes of Japan, more particularly the agglomerations of the Kantō region. In this instance, Tokyo and Osaka played a pioneer role in this transition from proto-industrial cities to fully bloomed industrialized cities^[39]. Both played the role of experimentation grounds for the new styles of urban planning and urbanism. Moreover, both cities played the role of showcases to a Western audience about the “modernization” of Japan. In this instance, Paris played the role of Japan for urban planners in the modification of the new capital to suit the needs of the Meiji monarchy^[40]. For example, we may cite the Ueno or Ginza districts in Tokyo, most of them concentrating in the waterfront of the capital for an increased accessibility to transportation. After WWI and in the beginning of the Shōwa era, the Keihin industrial belt began to take form as an important contiguous industrial system from Tokyo to Kawasaki^[41]. The Great Kantō Earthquake devastated much of factories and manufactures of the region. Moreover, its destruction gave the opportunity to certain companies to modernize and transition from a light industry to a heavier industry with the rise of the military industry^[42].

Tokyo and Yokohama became after the Meiji Restoration, based on the works of André Sorensen, a hub for the architectural and urban reforms^[43]. Both cities, especially the new capital city, was thought as the showcase of the modernization ambitioned by the regime, mainly the oligarchs in the entourage of the Meiji Emperor. Partly inspired by the works of the Haussmann Baron on Paris. Tokyo saw the enlargement of a few streets into grander avenues mostly at the core of the capital, in the district of Chiyoda and Ueno, among others. We must cite the Ginza Bricktown as well, a new neighborhood built as an architectural experiment with the use of bricks in the Japanese cityscape^[44]. The most profound changes happened more discretely, with the creation of the first true water waste management in Tokyo. In the premodern epoch, wastes or “night soils” were mainly managed by a corporation of collectors, mostly of the eta or hinin class of citizens defined by the socio-professional status linked to “pollution” (kegare)^[45]. Water and flood management system was a significant achievement for the constitution of the modern landscape of Tokyo or Yokohama.

Moreover, the second priority for the municipality of Tokyo and the Meiji Oligarchy was flood management. In contradiction to earthquakes, floods stroke with a certain regularity based on different cycles: during the spring with the melting of the snowcaps of the Kantō highlands and during summer with the monsoon rains or with typhoons^[46]. However, their intensity varied due to climatic variations. Being crossed by multiple rivers, the municipality of Tokyo conducted several public works to canalize and straighten the flow of the Sumida, Edo, Tone and Tama rivers. Before 1923, the 1894 earthquake didn’t awake much reaction of the authorities, being less destructive than its successor.

The tremor shook the Kantō region on the 1st of September 1923, shortly before noon. At this time of the day, the Keihin (Tokyo-Yokohama) metropolitan area was bustling with activity. Urbanites parkoured the cities to their destination at different spaces such as Ginza, Shibuya, or Chiyoda. No one thought at this moment that their life would be so brutally and durably altered by plate tectonics. During two long minutes, wave after wave, districts and neighboring blocks were shaken by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the consequence of the subduction of the Pacific Plate sliding under the Eurasian and North American plates. The tremor was violent enough to collapse whole blocks, especially in the most unstable grounds of the urban areas, gained on the sea^[47]. The ripples weren’t limited to the Keihin metro area alone but had effects felt until in the countryside and to the neighboring regions. In the coastal areas, the tremor wrought havoc when tidal waves came to shore, destroying whole ports and entire hamlets or havens^[48].

Though, the worst was yet to come… the inhabitants of Tokyo and Yokohama were preparing for lunchtime or for a tea break. Cooking food and water require heat furnished most of the time by ovens or stoves fueled either coal or wood. Since most of buildings were built with paper, wood, and ceramics, they could easily withstand the test of tremors but were very vulnerable to fire. “Fires and quarrels are the flowers of Edo” (Kaji to kenka wa Edo no hana) as the saying goes, the fires and other conflagrations were very frequent events in the long-time history of the urban regions of Japan, due to the materials used by traditional architecture.

Chronology of the most destructive fires of Tokyo during the Edo period to the Taishō era

Year	Name	Casualties
1657	Great Fire of Meireki	107’000
1683	Great Fire of Tenna	830-3’500
1772	Great Meiwa Fire	14’700
1834	Kōgo Fire	4’000
1855	Ansei Fire	4’500-26’000
1881	Great Ryōgoku Fire	36’000 people homeless
1923	Great Kantō Earthquake	100’000

The combination didn’t fail to occur, and many fires started at the locations where a burning stove met flammable material, say collapsed buildings. To make things worse, strong winds blew the day of the tremor and during the three next days, fanning the fires and spreading the flames beyond normal^[50]. The strong tempestuous gusts were current due to the seasons of typhoons where storms or strong winds were common. Per say, this disaster was a perfect storm.

As Charles Schencking and many others sum up very well, the next three days were for people of the Keihin area lived through what felt like hell. Firestorms burned more than 70% of the constructed areas, making about 300’000 victims and many more without shelter^[51]. This was by far the worst disaster ever endured by the Japanese people since the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate. This cataclysm hit the Empire at its core, the Kantō region was subsequently put under state of emergency and martial law^[52]. The resulting devastation was so tremendous that some commentators of the time compared the scorched ruins to the lunar landscapes of the World War I’s no man’s lands. Even though the scale wasn’t the same, the degree of the traumatism was surely like Japanese eyes when the dust settled^[53]. The devastations due to the fires weren’t uniform, and for multiple explanations. Apart from the change in wind regimes, the geography of the stricken areas demonstrates two realities: a social and an energetic reality. The most afflicted zones were the most fragile in the first place, those districts were placed in the lower districts of Tokyo, the Marunouchi or Shitamachi. The lower city concentrated the dense habitats with narrow streets and were built with the most affordable materials available. Here lived the population who toiled and where most of the economic life of Tokyo took place. Originally, these quarters such as Asakusa, Shitaya or Fukugawa were built on landfill won from the bay of Tokyo. Hence, the spaces were more prone to instability due to soil liquefaction^[54].

Energetically, industrialization and urbanization led to the concentration of different inflammable substances at the heart of an urban matchbox. Despite knowing the vulnerability of the capital city and the surrounding urban areas, why were they kept there? The answer was that this situation revealed to be a necessary evil. This was indeed the condition to maintain a sociotechnical system, itself the fruit of choices made long before the earthquake stroke. To keep trains running or homes heated, significant amounts of coal or oil had to be stocked somewhere, in storage areas scattered around the metropolis^[55]. Chemicals and ruptured gas conducts are blamed for caused fires in the first place as well^[56]. Moreover, even though the danger of conflagrations were well known in urban Japan since the Edo period of even before; the sheer scale of this catastrophe had been underestimated by authorities. By adopting the paradox of having dangers of conflagrations in a flammable cityscape, many actors chose to pay the price for having the bedrock of “modernity” and industrialization^[57].

To further push this analysis, we must mention the testimonies of residents of the international districts of Tokyo and Yokohama, whose houses and infrastructures were thoroughly destroyed as well. In a report of the direct aftermath of the earthquake from Canadian and American residents for the League of Nations, one eyewitness mentions the interesting presence of burning layer of boat fuel floating on the waters of the port of Yokohama. They write: “On Sunday morning most of the fires on shore were dying down but the surface of the harbor was covered with large pools of oil which had escaped from the exploding tanks. The oil was burning at various points, the largest fire, however, being directly against the shore in front of the Bund about half a mile from the ship […] It became apparent, from the accumulation of oil around the ship and in many pools on the surface of the harbor, that with the approach of the fire from the shore the ship would have to move immediately”^[58]. Even though this detail might seem to be anectodical at first sight, in comparison to the much vaster devastation provoked by the earthquake, the observation is the sign of the profound evolution of Japan in its consumption of energy, namely of carbonated sources. These layers could either be leaks from a fuel storage facility or coming from the tank of the broken ship. In both cases, this is an indicator of this change as much as an accelerator of the fires that spread all over the Keihin metropolitan area. Consequently, the international community temporarily relocated in Kobe, near the second socio-economic lung of Japan, Ōsaka area.

Despite coal and electricity being the main source of energy for the Japanese economy, the products manufactured or transformed by those industries were important as well. Amongst the causes advanced for the starts of fires, beyond charcoal ovens in regular Japanese houses, seemed to be the combustion of flammable products in factories or in storage spaces of those materials where it malfunctioned. According to Edward Seidensticker, the main causes of fires were suspected to be, contrary to the theory of ovens, chemicals, electrical wires, and burners^[59]. Both propositions are probably valid, but it is difficult to establish if one generated more fires than the latter. But if we look closely at the map of the devastation and the start of those conflagrations, several fires ignited at places that tend to confirm such hypotheses. For example, two fires started near the military arsenal of the Hōrakuen garden, in the Hongō district^[60]. Furthermore, the warehouses from the port area in the bay of Tōkyō and along the Sumida River, tend to confirm the postulate of fires caused by a concentration of chemicals and other materials. Some other materials accelerated the fires sparked by those chemicals too. The Honjō military depot, where about 30’000 people died, serves as a good example of the boosting role of material such like cotton or other kind of fibers.

In the weeks and the months following the cataclysm began the slow healing process from the scars left by the earthquake and fires. The first steps were taken in finding the guidelines for the reconstruction of the city and the research of an answer to an essential question: how did such a disaster happen in the first place? Multiple hypotheses coexist to explain the causes of such an event of that dimension. Among others, there were moral, social, political, meteorological, and geological explanations advanced by different social groups on the origins of the earthquake and the subsequent conflagration. Often, we could see a combination of different factors, reflecting the complexity of the stakes and the composite nature of the 1/9 Earthquake. As underlined by Charles Schencking, the political underpinnings of the longer outcome of the earthquake came with the way the major actors integrated the causes of the tremors in a larger narrative. By doing so, the political actors tried to further their agenda to shape the uncertain post-disaster context to fit their vision of society^[61].

What would interest us here in particular is the official discourse about the earthquake and its consequences. The reason behind is mainly driven by the documents at our disposal for the analysis of the intersection between energy, disaster, and resiliency. The array of available document is much wider and had been already thoroughly covered by multiple historians cited above. Consequently, the discourse of the different bodies of the imperial government wasn’t consistent and depend on which department or ministry emitted which discourse. Despite the contradiction observed in different part of the official discourse, we could see some recurring pattern. The main strategy in common, used by various government bodies, was to evacuate the responsibility of the authorities by stressing exterior technical factor and to serve as mediator between different actors implicated in the disaster recovery process^[62]. Thus, the debate became more technical than political. Another option was to put forward the efforts deployed by the government to put under control the effects of the geological phenomenon on their administered. It shows how the government bodies are reacting vigorously and fulfilling their civic duties^[63].

In this array of strategies, the document that sparked this investigation, A description of the damages done by the great earthquake of Sept. 1, 1923, to the electrical installations in Japan, jointly written with the Earthquake Investigation Committee (Shinsai yobō chōsakai) for Electrical Installations. This report was published in 1925 in English and Japanese, a mere two years after the catastrophe. The document was intended to show how the electrical installations of the Kantō region were impacted by the 1923 tremor. Moreover, the report detailed in its final part how the electric infrastructure recovered relatively quickly after the earthquake^[64]. It is written as follows: “Restoration Conditions. Fig.24 show the progress of restoring to normal. It will be noted that it required a full year for the complete recovery of the railway system, but full service was practically resumed within six months. The reason it required such a long time is because of the damages of the tracks and rolling stock. It must be remarked that the recovery of electric power supply to the electric railways was rather quick as the power they required was small compared with that of other lightning and power services, therefore, if needed, it could have been furnished by the middle of September 1923.” Before coming to this conclusion, the report reviewed with a grand deal of scrutiny the various types of technical installations damaged by the vibrations. After a brief description of general damages, the authors described the damages according to the cycle of electricity, from the production devices, sorted by types, and going forth with the electricity distribution installations. In later chapters, the more specifical themes of link between of fires and electricity was considered before moving to the damages done to railways.

The typology of damages due to the earthquakes on electrical installations didn’t differ in the functions they provided, for the most part for lifelines, utilities, and mobility^[65]. They distinguished themselves however in their diversity, reflecting of the multiplicity of the infrastructures and installations for conveying or producing energy. For example, into this category would fit something as distinct as a collapsed high-tension line tower or the degradation of the transformers contained in power stations. Moreover, on the final mail of the chain are the poles for telephone and electricity fallen on the ground leading to an overall seizure of one of Tokyo metro area’s lifelines.

One of the most important parts was the sub-chapter focusing on the main conclusion that led all this detailed inventory of the impacted infrastructures^[66]. The stake of this part was to give the proof that the installations linked to electricity didn’t start the fires. What are the clues mobilized for such a demonstration? The main clue concentrated on a peculiar type of these electrical infrastructures: circuit breakers and battery cells of the main power stations of the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area. The fear of a fire starting due to an electrical malfunction doesn’t come out of nowhere. Several fires for the past decades were known to begin with a dysfunction from those very parts^[67]. Mostly failures of preventing a short circuit and a surge in electrical tension, provoking sparks and finally the conflagration. One way to prevent one of those two issues was to use circuit breakers, whose role is to release tension in case of an excess charge.

The authors of the reports were mostly composed of technicians. The main writer and chairman of the committee, Shibusawa Motoji, was an electrical engineer graduated from the Imperial University of Tōkyō^[68]. The 59 other members of the committee “all being engineers selected from the electrical utility concerns and Government officials within the affected area”^[69]. Most of those members came from the associations that formed the committee: the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan (Denki Gakkai), the Japanese Electro-technical Committee (Denki Kikaku Chōsakai Katsudō) and the Electrical Association of Japan (Nihon Denki Kyokkai). On the side of the Earthquake Investigation Committee, the profile of officials implicated in the committee were for the most part geologists, architects, or engineers as well. If we focus on the main author, a wealth of information could be gathered on the personnel and their position about the importance of electricity at the time.

Born to the Shibusawa family in 1876 in Chiaraijima, Saitama prefecture, the young Motoji benefited from the start of an advantageous position. In 1895, he graduated from secondary school to enroll in the Imperial University of Tōkyō, also known as Tōdai, in engineering school^[70]. The interesting part here is that he formed, along with his comrades, one of the first classes of the engineering school of Tōkyō not to have been educated abroad for its original education. It showed indeed how the academic system in Japan was slowly taking shape during the last decades of the 19th century and thus gaining in autonomy. After graduating from University, Shibusawa was employed as a professor of electrical engineering in his alma mater and in the later part of his carrier at the University of Nagoya. Between 1901 and 1906, Shibusawa spent his time in different European countries and the United States at miscellaneous universities and factories to acquire some experience^[71]. At the turn of the 20th century, the need for qualified electrical engineers soared due to the boom of the electrical energy sector in the years before and after the Russo-Japanese War, as mentioned prior^[72]. It is unknown to which extent this circumstance oriented him in the choice of his future vocation. He came to be an important specialist in his field, in Japan, and certainly why he assumed the main position of in this document.

During his long academic carrier, Shibusawa Motoji wrote a certain number of publications, adopting at the same time political, scientific, and technical stances. The common factor between those works were the prominence of his field. Electricity played a significant role in the Japanese society and promoted electricity as a major part in the future of Japan, as he wrote^[73]. His opinion in an article of the Fukuoka Nichi Nichi Shinbun is the following: “Regarding the future of the electricity industry, the increasing use of electricity is a natural consequence of cultural advancement in any nation. In the future, not only large businesses but also ordinary households should have access to inexpensive electricity. Currently, electricity is mainly used for lighting, but it should be extended to domestic uses such as cooking. The prices of coal and oil are unlikely to decrease in the future, which underscores the importance of developing the electricity industry and providing affordable power to all households. In conclusion, the benefits of hydropower application are evident, but its implementation requires substantial investment. Therefore, it is essential to progress step by step toward this goal.” In this regard, the point of view of Shibusawa didn’t differ too much from other promoters of technology as a factor of favorable societal change. The faith in progress, in the form of technological change would be key in the vision of a successful country. Overall, this discourse inherited from the technocratic views adopted by the higher ladders of the Meiji administration^[74]. The values brought by the bunmei kaika doctrine placed in technology and progress a significant amount of trust for mitigating socio-political issues, as in the case of Ashio Copper Mines. Contrarily to the one great traumatism of WWI for European countries, Japan encountered multiple instances where trust in the positive force of technology crackled. As mentioned by Gregory Clancey in Earthquake Nation, the Nōbi Earthquake of 1891 undermined the credit the Japanese engineers and architect had in the suitability of steel and bricks for the Japanese context^[75]. With the Great Kantō Earthquake, the delusion had an even bitterer taste because this time the “Japanized” Western knowledge about seismology and architecture wouldn’t save Taishō-era Tokyo from calcination^[76].

The beginnings of electrification in its various uses in during the Second Industrialization didn’t go as smoothly as one could think because of the very risks implied by the utilization of electricity. In the context of the other industrial countries, the main problems that arose from electrification was its reliability to fulfill its assigned technical function. The first issue the consistence of the electric flow, which couldn’t be turned on or off at will. The second issue linked to the major risks of conflagration caused by sparks or a sudden charge of heat. While being seen as a mysterious and almost magical energy, electricity had at the same time a dangerous reputation^[77]. Japanese urban landscapes were particularly at risk, being especially vulnerable to fire. Electricity would be than seen as a sign of modernization paired with a fiery gambit. However, it was than difficult to identify exactly the cause of fires from a retrospective sight mostly from the lack of traces and the predominance of domestic fires as well.

How did the rhetoric of beneficial electricity of Shibusawa adapt to this context of crisis? As a seen above, the investigation of the electrical installations led to the conclusion that those didn’t provoke the conflagration that burned about half of the city^[78]. The facts fortified then the main argument on Shibusawa’s side: its safety. Amidst the worst natural catastrophe that Japan encountered so far, the electrical system had been affected but held well and didn’t contribute seemingly to the fires. The responsibility of the fires went instead, in the final reports of the Home Ministry, to other factors such as cooking fires and the flammability of the traditional Japanese houses such as the machiya and nagaya^[79]. By underlining the non-responsibility of electric systems, Shibusawa could be understood as a booster pushing for further electrification of the Japan based on different arguments, adding safety to his argumentation. His argumentation intervened in the period of fuel shortage, due to the growing reliance of the Home Islands on its colonial fuel supply and on its imports of foreign coal^[80].

On the longer aftermath of the 1923 earthquake, we might assume that the catastrophe must have had long lasting effects on the energetic trajectory of the Kantō region, mostly the Keihin Metropolitan area. The long-term effects of the tremor are in fact more nuanced than one could expect. The most visible outcome was to the momentaneous stoppage of the utility grid, followed by a drop in the overall energy electric consumption of the Tokyo-Yokohama area. The situation was mainly explained by a major part of the grid being out of service for a variable time^[81]. The long-lasting results of the calamity on the energy production and consumption pattern is deeper than what we might expect as well.

Chart for the electric demand of Japan from 1904 to 1930

	Contracts (1000) 1)			Kilowatts contracted (1000kW)			Electric power consumed (million kWh)
	Total 2)	Demand for electric light 3) 4)	Demand for electric power 3)	Total 2)	Demand for electric light 3) 5)	Demand for electric power 3)	Total	Public utilities 6)	Demand for electric light 6)	Demand for electric power 6)	Specified-scale demand	Self-consumption by industrial plants 7)	(regrouped) 9 Electric power companies
C.Y.1903	...	...	...	...	...	3	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1904	...	...	...	...	...	4	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1905	...	...	...	...	...	4	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1906	...	...	...	...	...	6	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1907	197	195	2	...	...	8	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1908	300	296	4	...	...	13	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1909	420	415	5	...	...	17	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1910	576	569	7	...	...	24	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1911	988	978	10	...	...	33	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1912	1612	1595	17	...	...	51	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1913	2206	2181	25	...	...	77	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1914	2763	2731	32	...	...	117	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1915	3091	3052	39	...	...	137	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1916	3793	3744	49	...	...	176	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1917	4301	4243	58	...	...	235	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1918	4930	4861	69	...	...	291	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1919	5781	5695	86	...	...	346	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1920	7078	6976	102	...	...	409	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1921	6556	6434	122	...	...	454	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1922	8033	7900	133	...	...	522	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1923	8447	8305	142	...	...	544	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1924	9154	8977	177	...	...	639	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1925	9848	9652	196	...	...	689	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1926	10385	10166	219	...	...	766	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1927	10799	10547	252	...	...	803	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1928	11124	10847	277	...	...	854	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1929	11472	11171	301	...	...	915	...	...	...	...	-	...	...
1930	11671	11352	319	...	...	957	12618	10878	2780	8098	-	1740	-

Source: Statistics Bureau, Historical Statistics of Japan, Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 1996, Chapter 10.

The most surprising fact about the subject is the rapidity of the recovery in terms of consumption for electricity. Based on the report directed by Shibusawa Motoji, the consumption and hence the output that rendered possible the first came back almost to its original pre-earthquake level right after a year! A recuperation that fast found its origins in multiple factors, both in the engineering of the electrical structures and the political decisions taken right after the catastrophe. For example, the electrical lifeline seemed not to have been the most stricken structures, compared to others such as the sewage and water distribution networks^[82]. Moreover, the components of electrical or energy production and transportation were thus less damaged than other types of installations. However, the same could not be said for the installations of electric railways, that sustained more damage than the actual energy supply for the trains.

It is during these turbulent urbanistic times that the Tokyo underground network came to be. The Tokyo Underground Train Company (Tōkyō Chikatetsu Kabushiki Kaisha) was established in 1920, attesting that the metro wasn’t a fruit of the earthquake’s aftermath^[83]. The Great Kantō Earthquake without a doubt hindered severely the construction works of first metro line and stations. The first line was opened in 1927 between Ueno and Asakusa, connecting two of the busiest points of the metropolis^[84]. The need for an underground commute system could be explained by several reasons: the demographic expansion of the city, the spread of an urban area necessitating a transportation system for workers to travel between home and their workplace and the symbolical need to develop a transport system to show modernity of the imperial capital. Thus, the Tokyo Underground became the first metro network in Asia.

The most determining impact of the disaster on the elaboration of the Tokyo Metro was during its immediate aftermath. As seen prior, the underground network was already in elaboration when the earthquake struck. With the Reconstruction Plan proposed by then Mayor Gotō Shinpei, the modernization measures mainly focused on widening the existing roads rather than creating a supplementary communication network^[85]. Due to the following downsizing of the initial plan, the option of an underground to fight the congestion of the roads and the traumatism of a new humanitarian disaster during the worst hours of the day surely motivated the promoters of the Underground Option for its adoption.

Overall, one interesting conclusion to take from the consequences on the long run of the Great Kantō Earthquake is that how dire the destructions were, it represented merely a short hiatus in the patterns of energy consumption on the long term. The trend in question consists in the augmentation of the consumption of energy, more precisely electricity or heat. This need for energy originates from the several roots, among those was the augmentation of the population in the Tokyo-Yokohama area alimented by rural depopulation and the attractivity represented by the job opportunities in the area. As Janet Hunter pointed out in her article about the economic impacts of the earthquake on Japan, the direct consequences of the disaster were surprisingly short-term^[86]. However, the indirect negative effects of the earthquake had a deeper impact on the economy by disrupting different supply chains but also with a lack of labor in different sectors a well. To a certain extent, the financial panic of 1927 (Shōwa Kin'yū Kyōkō) was partially due to the earthquake bonds created by the government was increasingly difficult to pay off for the major banks and by bond shareholders^[87].

The consumption pattern energy in Japan overall and in the Keihin, area resumed in rising trend begun with the WWI industrial boom. As stressed by Janet Hunter, the direct economic consequences of the earthquake were absorbed swiftly by the local economy, whereas the indirect consequences had a more durable effect^[88]. Overall, the rise of industrial output, of the population in the Tokyo-Yokohama area coincided with an automatic augmentation of the energetic consumption in general, including electricity. The rhythm of consumption was furthermore pushed up by the progressive shift of the industry away from the light industry to heavy industry, more specifically during the economic depression of 1929 onwards^[89]. Moreover, this change in the industrial makeup was accelerated by the buildup of the military power of the Imperial Army and the Navy, whose demand in equipment rose.

Besides the tendential rebound of the economy on the long run, the gargantuan task of rebuilding the city of Tokyo was marked as well by the modification of energy patterns in the (re)construction industry. The important and sudden need for housing for infrastructure and housing for millions of citizens necessitated enough power to accomplish an endeavor of such a scale. The mechanization and industrialization of the building sector was a response among others to this challenge^[90]. The use of motorized tools allowed a much greater deployment of work for the same amount of power, whose labor was replaced partly by construction machinery. Or at least this was one could assume the phenomenon such as mechanization led in some cases to an increase of the workforce as well.

Before even using any power tool, the shape and the cost of the reconstruction had yet to be answered. The matter of the budget was one of the bitterest battles fought between the socio-political actors of the restauration/ reconstruction (fukkyū/ fukkō). Charles Schenking, in his book on the aftermath of the earthquake and the social struggles that followed, explained eloquently the clash of ideologies between on the reformist or maximalist and a more conservative approach to the rebuilding question^[91]. The main supporter of a profound reform of the city was no other than the mayor of Tokyo himself, Gotō Shimpei (1857-1929). His grand vision was to take an ambitious approach to the problem, where the capital would be reformed to suit its politico-administrative position. The envisioned price for the somewhat pharaonic plan of Gotō Shinpei was estimated to 3.2 billion yens. Eventually, parts of the former plan were kept however downsized to a more bearable total, for an already weakened economy, for a total budget of 150 million yens^[92]. The adopted plan and hence realized afterwards comprised in priority to rationalize the cityscape of the Keihin area but to create a maximum of escape spaces, in form of green spaces and by widening the roadways. The number of bridges crossing the many rivers of the capital were multiplied, Seidensticker numbers around 400 new bridges^[93]. Among them, eleven were built with concrete floors to sustain the rising traffic in the metropolitan area of Tokyo. As an aquatic city, Tokyo and her many waterways were used for some as dumps for the rubbles, whereas were filled in Nihonbashi and Kyōbashi^[94]. Later, most of the rivers altogether were canalized and hidden under the urban landscapes after WWII.

What about Yokohama or other stricken areas of urban Kantō? The main fear of the officials was that the port-city would forgotten in favor of the nearer Tokyo. In prevention of such scenario, catastrophic for Yokohama, the Major Watanabe and other officials campaigned for governmental support by underlining the role of the port city in the national economy^[95]. After securing the funds for the reconstruction, the efforts focused on the port itself to upgrade and modernize the infrastructures. The construction works went well into the 1930’s and weighted significantly on the budget of the municipality, as a counter effect of the municipals’ ambition. Beyond the port, important swaths of the city were redesigned and the streets grid simplified and widened with a system of trunks and secondary roads. We may cite other cities to undergo the same process such as Odawara^[96].

The use of motor-powered tools ushered the public works that led to the metamorphosis of Tokyo to an intermediary state of the tentacular city we know today. Most parts of the remains of Edo and early-Meiji Tokyo were reduced to ashes and now discarded as rubble. Seidensticker pointed out this disappearance of the old-Edo especially in the Marunouchi-area: “The opinions of the best-informed and most sensitive are not unanimous. Most of what survived from Edo had been in the Low City, because that is where most of Edo was. Therefore, most of it disappeared. So much is beyond denying. It is in the matter of the rebuilding and the changes it brought to the physical, material city and to its folkway changes in spirit, we might say—that opinion varies”^[97]. The closing of the major waterways, such as the Sumida River and the Edo-gawa, and Tama-gawa led now to a more mineral cityscape than it did in the past, these once open waterways were put under a blanket of concrete. The creation of new parks, on both banks of the Sumida River in Asakusa planned to be new open spaces for the population to flee in case of earthquake-induced great fires^[98]. It was safe to say that the heydays of the nagaya house were over, proven far too inflammable.

Moreover, entire blocks of the Low City changed of face. Famous neighborhoods such as Ginza, already known its brick town, was once again transfigured to a modernist and financial quarter^[99]. One important measure taken by the metropolitan government was as well to build block of affordable housing for the 3.9 millions of displaced people, which was a pressing matter. The metropolitan and central government built in a first instance temporary housing in the form of shacks and barracks, built mainly of wood or paper and other light materials. A temporary law allowed exceptionally to construct buildings that weren’t in the norms, to answer to the demand that would exceed the offer in regular terms. In a second instance, the Home Ministry (Naimushō) oversaw a corporation whose responsibility was to provide collective housing to the inhabitants still living in precarious housing in 1924^[100]. Called the Dōjunkai apartments, these were fabricated in reinforced concrete, which was fire and tremor resistant in Tokyo and Yokohama. Pretty new for the Japanese architectural context, the ambition of this project was to provide modern amenities to the largest number in the safest conditions possible, such running water and electricity. The corporation erected a total of 16 apartment complexes, the last of whom was completed in 1934^[101].

Energy wise, along the daunting task of reconstructing the city, the Dōjunkai apartments offer a vantage point of the industrialization of the construction sector. This implies a shift of the sector to a carbon-based functioning and its mechanization. For example, the use of reinforced concrete meant beforehand the calcination of limestone to create cement plus the manufacture of steel reinforcements, requiring themselves a great amount of energy brought from coal or electricity^[102]. On the construction site proper, the building process necessitated manpower as well as the use of cranes or other machines to complete its erection. These multiple examples testify of the benefits brought by the transition to an industrialized and carbon-based society to disasters, beyond its drawbacks. Though more reliant on outer resources and subject to complications, this model can mobilize faster a greater number of resources due partially to a better access to energy and capital^[103].

As mentioned above, the reconstruction efforts launched under the initiative of Gotō Shinpei among others was sustained by the strategic position of Tokyo in the Japanese Empire. If not, the city wouldn’t have been probably the subject of an ambitious urban planning and improvement program. Let us dig a little deeper in the economic and material trails that bolstered the reconstruction of Tokyo.

The first trail we must explore is construction wood, one of the most important materials of the reconstruction process. According to David Fedman, a part of the timber used in rebuilding was sent from the Western Coast of North America, which was a boon for the local timber industry^[104]. We must not forget wood coming from the colonial proper as well, such as Taiwan and Sakhalin, who were known for the quality of timber, fir for Taiwan and cedar for Sakhalin. The native timber industry was massively solicited as well for that endeavor and represented a true business opportunity based on the sheer volumes of wood necessary for the reconstruction process, we may cite forested areas such as Hokkaido or the neighboring Aomori prefecture^[105].

The second trail is the one of coal or fuel. In the industrializing economy of Japan, coal, or any other fossil fuel a determining importance for the necessary heat for difference transformation processes. Beyond the energy required for the smelting of steel and the transformation of limestone to cement, coal is used in other aspects of the social life of the reconstruction. We might cite for example generators used coal engines or simply coal-fired steam locomotive transporting building materials from one hub to the different stations of work areas of Tokyo. The main mining areas of the home islands were in the mines of northern Kyūshū, notably Miike and Mitsui mines or in central Hokkaidō, especially in the Yūbari area. For the Japanese colonial empire, the main areas were the Kawakami deposits in Sakhalin and northeastern China, in the Fuxun mines. Underlined by Victor Seow, the Fuxun coal mine had one of the largest outputs compared to the rest of the realm controlled by Japan^[106]. Some coal was imported from the England and the United States as well, notably from the regions of the Midlands and from the Appalachians for the latter.

The third trail was iron and steel. Japan proper already had steel mills, notably in Kamaishi (Iwate) and in other parts of Japan such as Northern Kyūshū and the industrial belt of Osaka^[107]. If we look further to the colonial empire, minor metal production centers could be found in Korea and leased territories of the Kwantung peninsula, on the Asian mainland. If we look at the global level, steel and iron could come the main metal production centers, unsurprisingly, such as central Germany, the industrial coffin of the United Kingdom or the Rust Belt region of the United States. Japan was dependent as well on other regions for iron ore, Southeast Asia for example^[108].

For more specific materials, the Great Kanto Earthquake Memorial Museum located in Tokyo collected objects or materials that were used in relief or reconstruction efforts. We may find for examples of relief support sent mainly by the American Red Cross, such as kettles or medical material^[109]. These are the most concrete examples of material traces of interactions giving to the Earthquake a transnational aura. For raw materials, one document helps us understanding better the contribution of the colonial empire and foreign aid in the reconstruction effort: the “Report on Temporary Supplies” (Rinji Busshi Kyōkyū Jigyōshi) published by the Reconstruction Bureau in 1926^[110]. For instance, the aid in construction material wood was estimated to 7’270’000 kokus for the United States and to 2’020’000 kokus coming from Siberia, Kwantung leased territory, Karafuto and Hokkaidō^[111].

The economic traces of the Great Earthquake recovery are even harder to retrace to their full extent since it is global network and that the economic implications of the disaster were extremely vast. We will not look at the economic ripples of the tremors, because it has already been treated by Janet Hunter in her articles on the matter^[112]. We shall take into consideration the capital that were necessary to achieve the reconstruction and all public works necessary to amend the cityscape of the Kantō region. The historical reconstruction of the funding efforts to reconstruct the capital has been done among others by Charles Schencking, one of the most prominent researchers on the subject^[113]. Concerning foreign assistance, the funds mainly came from the United States whose contribution was of 15.4 million yen out of a total of 22 million yen of international aid. Other major contributors were the United Kingdom, the Chinese Republic, and the Netherlands. Concerning the domestic side, the total for Japan and its depending territories rose to 74’471’380 yen. The highest relief giving prefectures were Tokyo proper (15’891’545 yen), Osaka (4’585’715 yen), Hyōgo (2’929’962 yen), Kyōto (2’304’101 yen) and Hokkaidō (2’005’300 yen)^[114].

Table of the financiary assistance brought by foreign countries to Japan after the Great Kantō Earthquake

Country	Relief (yens)	Total
U.S.A.	15’400’000	22’000’000
U.K.	1’320’000	-
Chinese Republic	4’090’000	-
Netherlands	340’000	-
Belgium	190’000	-
Mexico	130’000	-

On the longer term, the budget for reconstruction and urban readjustment of the Keihin urban area, voted by the Japanese Diet, was of 744 million yen. The origin of this reconstruction budget is mostly domestic, coming from the treasury of the State. Among the economic inputs of the Japanese government, we found for the main tax incomes of the 1920’s: taxes on revenue, tax on imported goods, taxes on alcohol and drugs for example^[116]. The postwar bust represented an overall loss for the Japanese economy, whose economy was mainly turned to export. By ripple effects, the gains of the government shrank accordingly. This factor can explain the reluctance of the Diet to allocate enormous sums when its finances were fragile. Plus, the reconstruction and urban reforms competed for other spending spots for the State. Among the main competitors in the State apparatus were the Navy and the Ground Forces for example. We might cite too the different colonial possessions of Japan, such as Korea, Taiwan or Kwantung leased territories. Those territories were for certain almost independent financially, but the central government tried to reinforce this tendency by reducing subventions and thus making the governorates the most budgetarily independent as possible^[117].

A well-known fact that is worth to note is the emission of earthquake-bounds by the government, whose purpose was to finance the reconstruction effort. Furthermore, the insularity of Japan increased the price, due to its importation expense. These obligation bonds, literal chunks of the State, were subject of a financial speculation problem. Their value came notably from the fact that possessors could either sell their parts to the highest bidder or to become a stakeholder from the State. However, in 1927, a sudden drop in the value of the earthquake-bonds led to a financial panic, like a foretaste to the New York stock market 1929 to years later^[118]. The main consequence was to restructure deeply the Japanese economy by an intense concentration project, with the creation of grand conglomerate, later to be known as zaibatsu^[119].

As we could see, the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 is a disaster with multiple implications on a plethora of dimensions: social, environmental, political, and economic. Through the lens of history, this disaster acts like a revelator of the fragilities traversing the Kantō region and the Japanese society during the interwar period.

The centennial commemoration gave a new breath to its study and the further investigation of other catastrophes. We can only strive to see an increase in the literature on different disasters of all nature of the course of Japanese history.

Sources

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Anonymous, “Chemicals Blamed for Starting Fire”, in: Japan Times & Mail, 14th September 1923.

John W. Doty and W.W. Johnston, Report on the Earthquake and Fire Which Occurred in the Vicinity of Yokohama and Tokyo, September 1, 1923, “Recent earthquake in Japan - Communicated by Dr. Mitobé - transmits copy of a report on the earthquake and Fire Which Occurred in the Vicinity of Yokohama and Tokyo, September 1, 1923.”R679/12/33574/30666, United Nations Library & Archives Geneva.

Morihiko Fujisawa, The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan/ Compiled by the Bureau of Social Affairs, Home Office Japan, Bureau of Social Affairs, Home Office, Tokyo, 1926.

Home Ministry Social Bureau, Report on the Taishō Earthquake/ Taishō Shinsai Shi, Home Ministry Social Bureau, Tokyo, 1926.

Masuteru Murosaki, Cabinet Office, “Chapter 1: Presentation of the Capital’s Reconstruction/ Dai 1 shū Teito Fukkō no Tenkai”, in: Report (1923 Great Kantō Earthquake)/ Hōkokusho (Kantō Daishinsai dai 3 hen), Vol 3, 2009.

Reconstruction Bureau, “Report on Temporary Supplies/Rinji Busshi Kyōkyū Jigyōshi”, Reconstruction Bureau Economic Section, 1926, Tokyo. -, Report on the reconstruction of the Imperial Capital/ Teito Fukkō Jigyōshi, Reconstruction Bureau, Tokyo, 1931, Volume 2.

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Motoji Shibusawa, “Electrification of railways is a global trend (1,2): Japan is rich in hydraulic power/ Tetsudō denka ha sekai sūsei (ue, shita): suiryoku denki ni tomeru Nihon”, in: Fukuoka Nichi Nichi ShinbunI, Vol. 15, Num. 98, 10.08.1920. View source, accessed on the 13.01.25. -, Earthquake Investigation Committee for Electrical Installations, A description of the damages done by the great earthquake of Sept. 1, 1923, to the electrical installations in Japan, Japanese Electrotechnical Committee, Tokyo, 1925.

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