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→1923 Kanto earthquake
====1923 Kanto earthquake====
====1923 Kanto earthquake====
Ar noon on Saturday 1 September 1923, the eathquake hit, registering 8.3 on the Richter scale. The epicentre was in Sagami Bay, about 80 km south of Tokyo. The earthquake was followed five minutes later by a huge tsunami, with a height of about 12 meters. As fires swept across the city, 75% of all buildings suffered severe structural damage. The quake cut most of the water mains. About 100,000 peopl
Ar noon on Saturday 1 September 1923, the eathquake hit, registering 8.3 on the Richter scale. The epicentre was in Sagami Bay, about 80 km south of Tokyo. The earthquake was followed five minutes later by a huge tsunami, with a height of about 12 meters. As fires swept across the city, 75% of all buildings suffered severe structural damage. The quake cut most of the water mains. About 100,000 people were killed from an urban population of about 4.5 million.<ref> Estimates of deaths vary widely, from 70,000 to 140,000.</ref> Some 40,000 refugees died in one location at the Honjo Military Clothing Depot on the banks of the Sumida River. They were huddling together in the building as the cyclone of superheated air passed overhead and sucked out their air so that they died instantly of suffocation. Property damage came to two per cent of Japan's total national wealth. Two million people were homeless.
Angry Tokyoans took revenge on resident Koreans, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands. Animosity toward Koreans was fueled by rumors of Korean wrongdoing after the quake. Some non-Koreans were murdered as well, but Koreans became the specific targets because of their distinct Korean identity, rather than simply because they were not Japanese. The Japanese colonial occupation of Korea provided the backdrop to this extreme example of the explosion of racial prejudice into violence, based on a history of antagonism. To be a Korean in 1923 Japan was to be not only despised, but also threatened and potentially killed.
In contrast to London, where typhoid fever had been steadily declining since the 1870s, the decline in Tokyo did not begin until the late 1920s in Japan. Within the city of Tokyo, the rate of typhoid morbidity was higher in the upper-class residential northern and western districts than in the densely populated working-class eastern district. An explanation is the decline of waste disposal, which became particularly serious in the northern and western districts when traditional methods of waste disposal collapsed due to urbanization. The great Kanto earthquake (1923) had a major long-term impact on the city's rate of typhoid morbidity. Although the level of morbidity rose to a record high due to unsanitary conditions following the earthquake, it prompted the establishment of antityphoid measures and the building of urban infrastructure.<ref> Takeshi Nagashima, "Sewage Disposal and Typhoid Fever: the Case of Tokyo 1912-1940." ''Annales De Démographie Historique'' 2004 (2): 105-117. Issn: 0066-2062 </ref>