Sonia Ryang: The 1923 Tokyo Earthquake and the Massacre of Koreans
[Sonia Ryang is associate profesor of anthropology and international studies and C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and Korea Foundation scholar of Korean studies at University of Iowa. Her most recent book is Love in Modern Japan: Its Estrangement from Self, Sex, and Society (Routledge 2006) and forthcoming book is Diaspora without Homeland: Being Korean in Japan (University of California Press 2008), co-edited with John Lie.]
... September 1, 1923, 11:58 a.m. The earthquake of magnitude 7.9 violently shook the Kanto region encompassing Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, and other prefectures. That day a total of 114 tremors were felt. In Tokyo alone, 187 major fires broke out, quickly wrapping the metropolis in flames, burning down homes, industrial facilities, and public infrastructure. The death toll reportedly exceeded 100,000. This was the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the most dreaded memory of natural disaster of its kind in Japan to this date, far surpassing in its destructive power the January 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake that struck the Kobe region.
In the absence of reliable information and effective relief measures, panic and confusion reigned and rumors flew. On September 2, 1923, the government proclaimed martial law and from that moment, attention focused on one group of people as endangering the public order—these were Koreans.
Beginning with a police report from Tokyo’s Hongo Komagome station, received at 2:00 p.m., September 2, reports of Korean crimes began flooding into police stations all over the capital. The inventory of crimes included arson, gang rape, murder, armed robbery, kidnapping, and poisoning the public water supply, among others. The reports also described vigilante activities in neighborhoods where Korean crimes were reported, with citizens taking the initiative to punish Koreans, in some instances mob rule leading to death. Bodies began to appear in street corners and along riverbanks, bodies of which the causes of death differed from those killed by the earthquake and the subsequent fire. These were murdered bodies, many with hands tied behind the back and vivid marks of torture manifesting—these were not, however, Japanese bodies, but Korean bodies. By contrast, material evidence of the crimes allegedly committed by Korean criminals was, and remains, hard to locate.
The mass killing of Koreans was carried out not only by civilians but also by uniformed officers—both military and police. Right-wing leader, Uchida Ryohei, later vehemently protested police attempts to criminalize the citizens’ vigilantes as the sole perpetrators of Korean killings. He wrote: “the whole city witnessed police officers running around, shouting “when you see a Korean behaving violently, you may beat him to death on the spot.”” Hundreds of armed soldiers were dispatched to Tokyo under the slogan: “The enemy is in the imperial capital” and “the enemy means Koreans” (Kang and Keum 1963: xv).
Massacres ensued. In Honjo township of Saitama prefecture, Koreans who were in “protective custody” in the police station were murdered. The town was a center of silkworm cultivation and many factories employed Korean migrant workers. From the early evening of September 3, Koreans were relocated to the Honjo police station. On September 4, the first truck arrived, carrying Koreans—in handcuffs. Having been attacked on the way by mobs, many were injured and bloody. Trucks continued to arrive at the police station. News of the Koreans’ arrival attracted vigilantes to the station. The men, armed with swords, carpentry tools, and other homemade weapons such as bamboo spears, attacked the Koreans. An eyewitness described how the mob lined up children in front of parents and cut their throats; they then nailed parents to the wall by their wrists and ankles and tortured them to death. One Japanese man sawed off the arm of a living Korean man. Most, this witness reported, did not resist. All night long, the massacre continued. Were the police overpowered, or could they have stopped the mob by the use of arms or with the help of the army? The record has it that about one hundred Koreans were killed inside the Honjo police station that night (Kumagaya Shiritsu Toshokan 1994: 92-94, 101)....
I shall say this much at this point: whereas Japanese socialists and anarchists were seen by the authorities as elements that needed to be eliminated, Koreans were seen as killable.
And this leads me to ask; what does it mean, or more precisely, what do we see when some humans are killed as a matter-of-fact, and this killing is not deemed to be murder? And when the tongue—its movement, manipulation, and musculature—is used to distinguish the one-killable from the one-not-killable, how is language positioned in relation to this killing? What is the function of this language?...
The reader will have anticipated by now: in the newly emerged Empire, in 1923, Koreans in Japan did not have koseki in Japan, i.e. did not number among the Emperor’s subjects. Their topos as homo sacer is closely connected to their ambivalent position vis-à-vis the Emperor. The Emperor himself—along with members of the Imperial family—is not included in koseki (the rule applyies to this day). As sovereign, he cannot belong in the list of His people. The Emperor and the Koreans in Japan, both devoid of koseki, did not belong in the ordinary order, as they were sacer, one sacred and the other, accursed. This topology was unraveled under the extraordinary circumstances of natural disaster and national emergency. The subsequent martial law froze this denouement, exposing the killability of Koreans.
This leads me back to the parallel between the sovereign sphere and martial law. As Carl Schmitt stated: “Sovereign is he who decides on exception” (Schmitt 2006: 5). In the aftermath of the September 1, 1923 disaster, it was in close connection to the Emperor, his sacred being, that martial law was proclaimed, that is, on the basis of fusho no jihen, a cursed event. Cursed and sacred—if the Emperor was the most sacred being in Japan in 1923, then who/what was the most cursed being? The Emperor is the sacred sovereign who makes the law. He decides on his own exception: he is above the law, yet at the same time, he is the law. This topological paradox is to a great extent shared between this supreme sacred being and homo sacer: neither belongs to the human order or the divine order and the killing of neither constitutes the ordinary homicide....
Read entire article at Japan Focus
... September 1, 1923, 11:58 a.m. The earthquake of magnitude 7.9 violently shook the Kanto region encompassing Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, and other prefectures. That day a total of 114 tremors were felt. In Tokyo alone, 187 major fires broke out, quickly wrapping the metropolis in flames, burning down homes, industrial facilities, and public infrastructure. The death toll reportedly exceeded 100,000. This was the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the most dreaded memory of natural disaster of its kind in Japan to this date, far surpassing in its destructive power the January 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake that struck the Kobe region.
In the absence of reliable information and effective relief measures, panic and confusion reigned and rumors flew. On September 2, 1923, the government proclaimed martial law and from that moment, attention focused on one group of people as endangering the public order—these were Koreans.
Beginning with a police report from Tokyo’s Hongo Komagome station, received at 2:00 p.m., September 2, reports of Korean crimes began flooding into police stations all over the capital. The inventory of crimes included arson, gang rape, murder, armed robbery, kidnapping, and poisoning the public water supply, among others. The reports also described vigilante activities in neighborhoods where Korean crimes were reported, with citizens taking the initiative to punish Koreans, in some instances mob rule leading to death. Bodies began to appear in street corners and along riverbanks, bodies of which the causes of death differed from those killed by the earthquake and the subsequent fire. These were murdered bodies, many with hands tied behind the back and vivid marks of torture manifesting—these were not, however, Japanese bodies, but Korean bodies. By contrast, material evidence of the crimes allegedly committed by Korean criminals was, and remains, hard to locate.
The mass killing of Koreans was carried out not only by civilians but also by uniformed officers—both military and police. Right-wing leader, Uchida Ryohei, later vehemently protested police attempts to criminalize the citizens’ vigilantes as the sole perpetrators of Korean killings. He wrote: “the whole city witnessed police officers running around, shouting “when you see a Korean behaving violently, you may beat him to death on the spot.”” Hundreds of armed soldiers were dispatched to Tokyo under the slogan: “The enemy is in the imperial capital” and “the enemy means Koreans” (Kang and Keum 1963: xv).
Massacres ensued. In Honjo township of Saitama prefecture, Koreans who were in “protective custody” in the police station were murdered. The town was a center of silkworm cultivation and many factories employed Korean migrant workers. From the early evening of September 3, Koreans were relocated to the Honjo police station. On September 4, the first truck arrived, carrying Koreans—in handcuffs. Having been attacked on the way by mobs, many were injured and bloody. Trucks continued to arrive at the police station. News of the Koreans’ arrival attracted vigilantes to the station. The men, armed with swords, carpentry tools, and other homemade weapons such as bamboo spears, attacked the Koreans. An eyewitness described how the mob lined up children in front of parents and cut their throats; they then nailed parents to the wall by their wrists and ankles and tortured them to death. One Japanese man sawed off the arm of a living Korean man. Most, this witness reported, did not resist. All night long, the massacre continued. Were the police overpowered, or could they have stopped the mob by the use of arms or with the help of the army? The record has it that about one hundred Koreans were killed inside the Honjo police station that night (Kumagaya Shiritsu Toshokan 1994: 92-94, 101)....
I shall say this much at this point: whereas Japanese socialists and anarchists were seen by the authorities as elements that needed to be eliminated, Koreans were seen as killable.
And this leads me to ask; what does it mean, or more precisely, what do we see when some humans are killed as a matter-of-fact, and this killing is not deemed to be murder? And when the tongue—its movement, manipulation, and musculature—is used to distinguish the one-killable from the one-not-killable, how is language positioned in relation to this killing? What is the function of this language?...
The reader will have anticipated by now: in the newly emerged Empire, in 1923, Koreans in Japan did not have koseki in Japan, i.e. did not number among the Emperor’s subjects. Their topos as homo sacer is closely connected to their ambivalent position vis-à-vis the Emperor. The Emperor himself—along with members of the Imperial family—is not included in koseki (the rule applyies to this day). As sovereign, he cannot belong in the list of His people. The Emperor and the Koreans in Japan, both devoid of koseki, did not belong in the ordinary order, as they were sacer, one sacred and the other, accursed. This topology was unraveled under the extraordinary circumstances of natural disaster and national emergency. The subsequent martial law froze this denouement, exposing the killability of Koreans.
This leads me back to the parallel between the sovereign sphere and martial law. As Carl Schmitt stated: “Sovereign is he who decides on exception” (Schmitt 2006: 5). In the aftermath of the September 1, 1923 disaster, it was in close connection to the Emperor, his sacred being, that martial law was proclaimed, that is, on the basis of fusho no jihen, a cursed event. Cursed and sacred—if the Emperor was the most sacred being in Japan in 1923, then who/what was the most cursed being? The Emperor is the sacred sovereign who makes the law. He decides on his own exception: he is above the law, yet at the same time, he is the law. This topological paradox is to a great extent shared between this supreme sacred being and homo sacer: neither belongs to the human order or the divine order and the killing of neither constitutes the ordinary homicide....