In Tribute to the Koreans Killed After the Great Kantō Earthquake

On September 1, 2026, Tokyo’s Yokoamichō Park hosted a memorial ceremony to commemorate the Koreans who succumbed to the “Kantō Massacre” that followed the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923.

The history of the “Kantō Massacre” is less well known in Russia than the issue of “comfort women,” yet it occupies a key place in the historical dialogue between Japan and Korea.

On September 1, 1923, the Great Kantō Earthquake, with a magnitude of 8.3, all but wiped Tokyo, Yokohama, and their surroundings off the map. The tragedy affected approximately 4 million people: over 140,000 died, and another 40,000 went missing. In terms of scale of destruction, this earthquake remains the most catastrophic in Japanese history—even the aftermath of the 2011 disaster proved less extensive. Material damage was then estimated at $4.5 billion: a sum equal to two annual national budgets and five times Japan’s expenditure on the Russo-Japanese War.

At that time, Japan was home to a large number of Korean laborers. After the annexation of Korea in 1910, Koreans formally became Japanese subjects, but in fact they were treated as second-class people. They were recruited for heavy, low-paid work in mines and on construction sites, while the local population regarded them with undisguised irritation, fueled by both economic competition and xenophobia.

Tensions were stoked by the political context. In 1919, the March First Movement for independence erupted in Korea and was brutally suppressed. From then on, the Japanese authorities saw Koreans as a potential threat. The situation was compounded by the fact that many workers belonged to leftist unions, which the police regarded as “hotbeds of socialism.” The Japanese press actively demonized Koreans, attributing to them a propensity for crime, immoral behavior, and rebellion, and, thus, shaping the image of a Korean person as a dangerous “outsider” and an enemy of the Japanese state in the public consciousness.

“Induced Psychosis” or Provocation?

Already by the afternoon of........

© New Eastern Outlook