{"id":741,"date":"2022-10-14T17:04:22","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T17:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/?p=741"},"modified":"2022-10-14T17:12:05","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T17:12:05","slug":"blank-pages-the-great-kanto-earthquake-and-japanese-occupied-manchuria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/2022\/10\/blank-pages-the-great-kanto-earthquake-and-japanese-occupied-manchuria\/","title":{"rendered":"Blank Pages: The Great Kanto Earthquake and Japanese Occupied Manchuria"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Great Kanto Earthquake which leveled much of Tokyo and Yokohama in 1923 created an opportunity for reconstruction on an enormous scale and caused a shift in the population distribution as well as the aesthetic standards of the city.\u00a0 The utopian approach to rebuilding Tokyo after the earthquake mirrors Japanese attitudes towards Manchuria while also serving as a stark contrast of utopian ideals.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The event was described in the September 1923 issue of the American publication <\/span>Japan Society<\/span><\/i> as \u201cThe Greatest Disaster in History.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup> The earthquake and subsequent fire left \u201c298,000 houses burned and 336,000 more shaken down,\u201d in the journal\u2019s initial report.2<\/a><\/sup> A final estimate of its destruction was that around 45 percent of the structures in Tokyo were leveled, transforming it \u201cfrom a bustling metropolis and imperial capital to a seemingly extinct city.\u201d3<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"4<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The scale of the destruction was interpreted at the time as \u201ca moral wake-up call if not an outright act of divine punishment\u201d but also, contrastingly, as a \u201cgolden opportunity.\u201d5<\/a><\/sup> <\/span>At a time when utopianism and grand visions of urban planning were circulating in books like Ebenezer Howard\u2019s <\/span>Garden Cities of Tomorrow<\/span><\/i>, the earthquake essentially rendered Tokyo a blank slate upon which to rebuild.\u00a0 It literally flattened the city, creating \u201cnot only a unique, perhaps unparalleled opportunity to reconstruct Tokyo but the chance to arrest the perceived moral and ideological regress of Japan.\u201d6<\/a><\/sup> Efforts to not only reconstruct, but to renovate, beautify, and modernize Tokyo began.\u00a0 By 1930 the products of these initiatives could be visibly traced on a series of maps produced by the Tokyo City Government which illustrated the results of projects dedicated to restoration and new construction of parks, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, and electrical facilities.7<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"8<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to government efforts to rebuilt the city itself, the earthquake triggered a flight from the city center to the areas surrounding Tokyo, increasing the suburban population and decreasing the density of the city.\u00a0 The suburb of Denencho\u0304fu, planned and constructed in the years just before the earthquake, was modeled after the utopian vision of Howard\u2019s garden city.\u00a0 The timing of its construction (completed in 1923) and its location outside Tokyo caused its population to increase dramatically after the earthquake.9<\/a><\/sup> This suburban population boom was widespread according to <\/span>Japan Society\u2019s<\/span><\/i> December 1925 issue, which predicted that \u201cUnder the Greater Tokyo system, in which all of these suburban towns will be included in the City of Tokyo\u2014and it is expected that this can be realized within the next decade or so\u2014the City of Tokyo will have a population equalling that of London.\u201d10<\/a><\/sup> <\/span><\/p>\n

Denencho\u0304fu serves as an example of the change in Tokyo\u2019s population distribution as well as a new emphasis on the aesthetic qualities of the city\u2019s spaces.\u00a0 The architects of Denencho\u0304fu placed a high value on the natural beauty of the development in accordance with Howard’s garden city ideal.11<\/a><\/sup> T<\/span>he Tokyo government likewise invested in natural surroundings in its efforts to rebuild as evidenced by the excerpt in <\/span>Japan Society\u2019s<\/span><\/i> May 1925 issue stating that \u201cThe Park Section of the Tokyo Municipality will plant 3,000 trees along streets in various sections of the city in May as part of the program to beautify the city.\u201d12<\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

This utopian conception of Tokyo post-earthquake as a blank slate on which to modernize infrastructure, disperse the population, and beautify the city parallels how some Japanese planners and intellectuals envisioned Manchuria.\u00a0 The Japanese conquest of Manchuria after 1931, \u201cprovided a blank slate, or as city planners in Manchukuo put it, a white page, hakushi, on which ideal designs might be realized.\u201d13<\/a><\/sup> <\/span>Ideal designs such as the Agricultural Immigrant Plan which envisioned utopian agricultural villages populated by Japanese farmers in northern Manchuria.14<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 In fact, \u201cMore than a few planners disillusioned by the resistance their plans faced in postearthquake Tokyo found planning on what they considered to be \u2018blank pages\u2019 in colonial Manchukuo more rewarding.\u201d15<\/a><\/sup> While the Agricultural Immigrant Plan was never realized, many architectural projects and modernization efforts were carried out in Manchuria.16<\/a><\/sup> Like Tokyo after 1923, it served as a place in which to test utopian ideals.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite certain similarities in the conception of utopian plans, one of the stark contrasts between the \u201cblank slate\/page\u201d of utopian planning in 1923 Tokyo and 1931 Manchuria was the ideology which accompanied it.\u00a0 Unlike the aftermath of the Kanto earthquake in which the perceived \u201cmoral regress\u201d included socialism, for those censored for their contrary politics in Japan, Manchuria offered a blank slate of a different kind.<\/span><\/p>\n

  1. Japan Society, About Japan 1920-1928<\/i> (Internet Archive, 2021), https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/about-japan-1920-1928\/page\/n5\/mode\/2up. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. Ibid.<\/span> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. <\/span>Charles Schencking, \u201cThe Great Kanto Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe and Reconstruction in 1920s Japan\u201d, in <\/span>The Journal of Japanese Studies<\/span><\/i> 34, no. 2: (Summer 2008), <\/span>296. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  4. Zenjir\u014d Horikiri, <\/span>1. Areas afflicted by the earthquake and fire disaster, places where fire broke out and circumstances driving the spread of the fire<\/span><\/i> [map], Tokyo City Government, 1930, https:\/\/www.davidrumsey.com\/luna\/servlet\/detail\/RUMSEY~8~1~334402~90102430?qvq=q%3Apub_list_no%3D%2210808.000%22%3Blc%3ARUMSEY~8~1&mi=11&trs=38. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  5. Schencking, \u201cThe Great Kanto Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe and Reconstruction in 1920s Japan\u201d,\u00a0297. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  6. Ibid., 297. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  7. Zenjir\u014d Horikiri, Teito Fukk\u014d Jigy\u014d Zuhy\u014d<\/em>, David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Tokyo City Government, 1930. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  8. Zenjir\u014d Horikiri, <\/span>5. Program for the reconstruction of the imperial capital<\/span><\/i> [map], Tokyo City Government, 1930, https:\/\/www.davidrumsey.com\/luna\/servlet\/detail\/RUMSEY~8~1~334398~90102426?qvq=q%3Apub_list_no%3D%2210808.000%22%3Blc%3ARUMSEY~8~1&mi=7&trs=38. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  9. Ken Tadashi Oshima, \u201cDenencho\u0304fu: Building the Garden City in Japan\u201d, in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians<\/i> 55, no. 2: (June, 1996), 146. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  10. <\/span>Japan Society, <\/span>About Japan 1920-1928<\/span><\/i>. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  11. Oshima, \u201cDenencho\u0304fu: Building the Garden City in Japan\u201d, 144. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  12. Japan Society, About Japan 1920-1928<\/i>. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  13. <\/span>David Tucker, \u201cCity Planning without Cities: Order and Chaos in Utopian Manchukuo\u201d, in <\/span>Crossed Histories<\/span><\/i> (Honolulu, 2005), 55. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  14. Ibid., 53. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  15. Schencking, \u201cThe Great Kanto Earthquake and the Culture of Catastrophe and Reconstruction in 1920s Japan\u201d, 323. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  16. <\/span>Louise Young, \u201cBrave New Empire: Utopian Vision and the Intelligentsia\u201d, in <\/span>Japan\u2019s Total Empire<\/span><\/i> (Berkeley, 1998), <\/span>242. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Great Kanto Earthquake which leveled much of Tokyo and Yokohama in 1923 created an opportunity for reconstruction on an enormous scale and caused a shift in the population distribution as well as the aesthetic standards of the city.\u00a0 The utopian approach to rebuilding Tokyo after the earthquake mirrors Japanese attitudes towards Manchuria while also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,83,82,78],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-japan","tag-manchuria","tag-urban-planning","tag-utopia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":750,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions\/750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}