The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 6 | Number 4 | Article ID 4270 | Feb 09, 2015

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Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’sGreat Earthquake of 1923 震災をイメージ化する　東京と1923年関東大震災のヴィジュアルカルチャー

Gennifer Weisenfeld

Taishō 12.9.1 Actual Conditions of the Great TokyoEarthquake: Twelve Stories.

Disaster is an ever-present, and ever-timely,issue both in Japan and around the world. Thetriple disaster of 3.11 and its extensive mediacoverage are a vivid reminder not only ofdisaster's critical and catalytic role in history,but the dynamic agency of images in mediatingour experiences of natural or man-made eventsto produce that history. The 1923 Great KantōEarthquake, which devastated the major citiesof Tokyo and Yokohama, as well as five othersurrounding prefectures, was one of the world'sworst natural disasters of the early twentiethcentury. In terms of loss of life and materialdamage, with an estimated 140,000 deaths andcountless homeless, it is still Japan's worstnational disaster. Having marked the 91th

anniversary of the quake on September 1st, wehave an opportunity to learn anew from themedia scale of this catastrophe, how different

m e d i a p r o d u c e m o d e s o f s e e i n g ,understanding, and, eventually, remembering.Only by analyzing contending visual responseswithin disaster communities and how they arecodified into collective memory to form anational narrative can we ult imatelyunderstand how major events like the GreatKantō Earthquake-or 3.11-become history.

In the brief excerpt below and the fullmonograph, Imaging Disaster examinestraditional and modern image making practicesfrom the Ansei-era Edo earthquake of 1855 tothe wartime media event of the Russo-Japanesewar, and then up through the 1923 temblor, theofficial reconstruction of Tokyo in 1930, andeven the atomic bombings of the Asia-Pacificwar, to illuminate the intermedia nature ofdisaster images that all, regardless of medium,process observable phenomena through theimagination, blurring the boundaries betweenthe real and the fantastic. This promiscuouscommingling of fact, fiction, documentary, andmelodrama to produce the visible evidence ofhistory, reminds us of the inherent scopicpleasure of disaster spectatorship, and how foreverything that is made visible in the imagingof catastrophic events, many things are madeinvisible.

The Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina,the Sichuan and Haiti earthquakes-theexperience of disaster is both universal andparticular. Most of us understand these horrificevents through a complex matrix of media,most of them visual, that attempt to record andascribe meaning to destruction, chaos, andtragedy. Images mediate our experiences. How

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the visual functions in relation to disaster,however, requires close critical examination.The visual culture of disaster can produce anexploitative aesthetics of horror and spectaclethat transforms viewers into unwitting voyeurs.At the same time, people can use images toreclaim disaster sites for social and politicalpurposes. Images can impart emotional valueto an event by humanizing, heroizing, andmonumentalizing it. They can also erase orjustify aspects of it. Images act on us, or asW.J.T. Mitchell has written, pictures "want"things from us and for themselves.i

Focusing on one landmark catastrophic eventin the history of an emerging modern nation-the Great Kantō Earthquake that devastatedJapan's imperial capital and its surroundingareas in 1923-I explore how different mediaproduce modes of seeing, understanding, and,eventually, remembering. Major disasters focusthe social energy of diverse media on onecritical event. Such moments create a densityand intensity of visuality that make them idealto explore the influence of imaging practices.ii

But media do not exist in isolation. As Idemonstrate through the excavation of tropesand motifs that circulated widely, visual cultureconstitutes an intermedia dialogue to whicheach medium brings a distinct yet criticalinflection. In 1923, viewers encounteredphotography and film, and visualizations ofscientific information, alongside hand-renderedprints, paintings, sculpture, and cartoons. Theyexperienced a public visual sphere in whichobjective and subjective values wereinextricably fused. Images played a central rolein constructing the earthquake as a nationalevent, rather than simply a local tragedy, thatdemanded solidarity from all Japanese people.Mass media and new scientific technologiesglobalized Japan's tragedy, inviting empathyfrom the world. Images of disaster erected aframework of visual authority that legitimatedthe state's responses to this nationalcatastrophe. Yet the disaster was not the solepreserve of the state. A range of public and

private entities, from the imperial household tothe leftist avant-garde, used the earthquake toadvocate their own visions for the future.

Although proceeding from natural causes, the1923 earthquake became a metaphor for therelentless destruction of tradition by modernity.For many Japanese , the earthquakerecapitulated and accelerated the ruptures anddislocations of modernization, which had beensubjects of intense debate long before thetemblor hit. The disaster not only crystallizedthese debates but also demonstrated thefragility of modern society: the greater thetechnological achievement, the morespectacular its destruction. The shock of thequake became the shock of the modern.

Disaster images do not emerge ex nihilo,however; they are part of a cumulative historyof visual production. Images draw from localgenealogies and pictorial traditions that includesecular and sacred representations. As timegoes on, they become imbricated in a globalnetwork of image making. My interest in thisprocess, and the images, spaces, anddiscourses that it produces, has led me to writethis book.

Similarly, disaster is not static. It is anunfolding temporal landscape within whichvisual production must be historicized. Inexploring diverse reactions to the Kantōearthquake over time, I identify the multiplicityand changing nature of this traumaticexperience for the Japanese. Only by analyzingcontending visual responses within disastercommunities and how they are codified intocollective memory to form a national narrativecan we ultimately understand how major eventslike the Great Kantō Earthquake becomehistory.iii

The Media Scale of Catastrophe

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September 1, 1923, has beenstamped indelibly on the mind ofthe Japanese nation, for on thatday, at noon, Tokyo and six otherprefectures in Kanto were visitedby a terrific earthquake, the firefo l lowing which devouredhundreds of thousands of houses,d e s t r o y e d a l l m e a n s o fcommunicat ions, ran up anincalculable death list, created amill ion and a half refugees,destitute of homes, food, orclothing, and shattered family ties.

Tokyo and Yokohama, the twogreatest cities in the districtsaffected, of whose great buildingsand cultural equipment the wholenation has been proud, changedinto masses of fire-swept debris,the only remains of the seat ofcivilization of the Far East.

Japan, however, will not succumbbefore nature's ravages; such a dayof national calamity marks thebeginning of a test of the nation'sstamina.

T h e O s a k a M a i n i c h i h a su n d e r t a k e n t o p u b l i s hphotographs, taken at great riskand sacrifice by members of thephotographic corps of the paper, toenable the readers to realize thedamage wrought by the calamity,and supply the public with a costlysouvenir of the greatest calamity inthe world-a souvenir that can bep a s s e d d o w n t h r o u g h t h egenerations.

Foreword to Ōsaka MainichiShinbunsha, Kantō shinsai gahō

(Kantō Earthquake Pictorial), vol.1, 15 September 1923

When the Ōsaka Mainichi Shinbunshapublished its bi l ingual three-volumephotographic pictorial of the Great KantōEarthquake just two weeks after the event, thecalamity had already been captured inthousands of images that circulated on anational and international media highway.C o m m e r c i a l p h o t o g r a p h e r s a n dphotojournalists produced the most abundantand immediate images of the quake, whichwere transmitted in newspapers, special-issuenewspaper pictorials, commemorativephotography collections, illustrated survivors'accounts, and sets of commemorativepostcards. These photographic imagesfunctioned as both news and souvenirs,rendering their consumers/viewers, inside andoutside the devastated locale, into bothwitnesses and voyeurs. Images in the newsmedia and those issued by respected publishinghouses carried the visual authority of supposedfacticity. As such they both produced andbecame the historical record of the event.These photographs also heroized the vision oftheir producers, who pointed out that they hadtaken them "at great risk and sacrifice" toassist the world in comprehending the event.Many photodocumentary images quickly wentfrom being indexical to iconic through theirrepeated reproduction and circulation, evensetting the grammar for visual responses inother media such as prints and painting. Anintermedia dialogue emerged based on thep u r p o r t e d v e r i s i m i l i t u d e o f t h ephotodocumentary as a touchstone fornarrating the event, but it revealed theinadequacy of any one medium, including the"realistic" mode of photography, to express thetotality of the disaster. I examine how theextensive photodocumentary coverage in themass media allowed people throughout Japan(and throughout the world) to share vicariouslyin the plight of Tokyo residents living out a life-and-death drama on the streets of the capital, asupreme example of what Paul Virilio hascalled "the media scale of catastrophes andcataclysms that dress the world in mourning."iv

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I argue that these visual images helpedcollectively produce the event known as theGreat Kantō Earthquake by codifying the tropesand motifs that would form an enduring visuallexicon of disaster. By asserting visualauthority, the diverse perspectives of thephotographic eye and its technologicallymediated vision had an enormous impact onpeople's perception of the event. Together withthe camera, other scientific and technologizedmodes of visualization, including cartographyand seismography, produced visible evidence tobuttress this visual authority. In its socialimpact, disaster photography embodied a civilcontract that forged multilayered powerrelationships. It simultaneously inscribed andpointed to the limits of visual authority byrevealing the heterogeneity of viewingexperiences. At a psychological level, theimagery sought to instill national resilience andempathic mourning yet still unavoidablyindulged the eye in the perverse pleasures ofdisaster viewing.

The sublimated iconoclasm of poststructuralismhas generated an overwhelming distrust ofimages and vision in theoretical discourse inthe past few decades. And popular culturaltheorists such as Susan Sontag havemaintained a critical skepticism whileacknowledging the power of images to evokeempathy for those touched by calamity.According to Sontag, "Nonstop imagery(television, streaming video, movies) is oursurround, but when it comes to remembering,the photograph has the deeper bite. Memoryfreeze-frames; its basic unit is the single image.In an era of information overload, thephotograph prov ides a quick way ofapprehending something and a compact formfor memorizing it. The photograph is like aquotat ion , or a maxim or proverb.…Conscripted as part of journalism, images wereexpected to arrest attention, startle, surprise.…The image as shock and the image as cliché aretwo aspects of the same presence."v Yet theimage fatigue of the late twentieth-century

visual world of which Sontag spoke grew out ofa mass culture that was radically different fromthat of the 1920s, when photography stillretained its spectacular aura for mimeticreproduction and the mass media had beencirculating photographic images of disasterglobally for only a little over three decades. In1923, the imaging of disaster ultimatelyattested to the Japanese nation-state's survivaland its tenacity in the face of adversity. Thiswas highly signif icant because of theunprecedented, "historic" nature of thecatastrophe. In the first few days after thequake, there were rumors throughout Japanand abroad that Tokyo and Yokohama had beencompletely obliterated. Visible evidence provedotherwise. The cyclical nature of destruction inJapan precluded an apocalyptic vision, evenwhen the nation was seemingly on the brink oftotal annihilation (this would change in thepostwar period after the introduction of theatomic bomb).

The photographic eye is not singular and theprint media are not univocal. In fact, theimaging of the Kantō disaster displays acacophonous world of widely divergingexperiences and objectives, perhaps notsurprising in a heterogeneous society, althoughit is not always immediately evident from themany rhetorical efforts to galvanize thepopulace through a moralistic, unifyingdiscourse of resil ience and optimism.Therefore, one must tease out the strands ofmeaning in these visual representations andascertain how the visual became imbued withsocial significance.

Technologies of Seeing and VisibleEvidence

Before the advent of popular radio, print newsm e d i a w e r e t h e p r i m a r y m e a n s o fdisseminating information throughout Japan.For the most part, the Kantō quake destroyedall telecommunications like the wireless and

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the telephone.vi While the publishing industryand the news media were devastated, theyrecovered quickly.vii At least twelve newspaperswere being published in Tokyo at the time, andtwo of the five major papers, Hōchi shinbunand Tōkyō nichinichi shinbun, were able toresume printing by the fourth day after thequake. Others, such as the Tōkyō asahi shinbunand Yomiuri shinbun, were up and runningagain by 12 and 15 September, respectively.However, this brief break did not stop thedissemination of information. Although stillpredominantly a regional business, newspapersfrom throughout the nation publishedinformation about the quake-some fact, somefiction-that streamed out of the capital. Therewere also numerous public official statements(kanpō) providing updates about the areas ofdestruction (including regions surrounding thecapital), locations of refugee facilities, state oftelecommunications and transportation, statusof foreign aid, and activities of internationaldignitaries, such as the American ambassador.Even in the first month after the earthquake,news publications collectively began to parsethe visual lexicon of Japan's massive naturaldisaster and to codify the tropes that woulddefine it.

Some of the earliest press images of thedisaster were from the areas surrounding thecapital and ran in Osaka-based news outlets.The coverage indicated how difficult it was forjournalists to get close to the center of thedevastated region. It marked the suddenstream of attention inward toward the capitaland the flow of refugees outward away fromthe devastation. The Ōsaka mainichi shinbunwas one of the first newspapers to publishphotographs of the disaster in a special edition.With its reporters unable to reach Tokyo, thenewspaper featured scenes of the city ofNumazu in Shizuoka prefecture. On the dayafter the event, the front page pictured largef issures in the ground, a house roofdramatically in ruins, and a close-up ofdisplaced refugees waiting at a train station.

The second page featured Osaka residentspreparing supplies to send to the strickenregion and a pilot boarding his airplane to fly toTokyo to provide assistance. Subsequent issueshad aerial shots of billowing clouds of smokefrom the smoldering landmass of the city andground shots of all aspects of the destroyedcityscape.viii Some formal portrait lozengeswere scattered throughout the images ofdestruction, spotlighting well-knownindividuals who had perished or been injured inthe disaster.

The photographic eye directly affectedperception. Aerial photographs of the damagedareas dwarfed the people on the ground,emphasizing the expanse of devastation. Suchimages inherently express scale and magnitudeand speak more of civilizational and urbanisticdestruction than of individual lives lost.Photographs of burning land seen at a distancehave their roots in the print images of Edo. Forexample, images in Ansei-Era Observations(Ansei kenmonshi) show Edo from a bird's-eyepanoramic view, highlighting large swaths ofbillowing smoke rising from the burning city.The new heights achieved in aeronautictechnology amplified the vastness of thephotographic gaze and further depersonalizedthe connect ion between v iewer anddevastation. They also added a layer oftechnological mediation, interposing theaircraft as well as the camera. Aerialphotography was already an importantstrategic technology in war and disasterreconnaissance imaging abroad. The "logisticsof military perception" developed during WorldWar I, according to Virilio, had as much tacticalimportance as the timely supply of ammunition.As a "watching machine," the aerial cameraturned the photographic eye into a weapon.ix

Moreover, when catastrophe struck, aerialphotography became not merely a reproductivetechnology but also a critical method ofdisaster management: relief operations benefitenormously from immediate information aboutthe extent of damage and the unfolding

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destruction and are better able to deployemergency fire and rescue teams efficiently.Aerial photography is still a critical means ofidentifying priorities in postearthquake reliefoperations, providing information for logisticalplanning and, critically, for determining accessroutes.x

While drawing attention to the devastatingextent of the damage, aerial photography'scommanding view also communicated acontrolling gaze in images of the 1923 quake: ifthe disaster could be presented in its totality, itcould somehow be controlled. However, mediaefforts to establish a commanding vision alsoarticulated the limits of such control as criticalsites still in jeopardy remained concealed fromview. On the cover of Asahi Graph's (Asahigurafu) special pictorial issue "Full Record ofthe Great Earthquake" (Daishinsai zenki) (fig.1), which proclaimed itself "the most well-organized record and pictorial report," a singlelarge official aerial photograph of the burningcapital taken by a naval aircraft shows whitesmoke gusting off the page, obscuring two-thirds of the ground.xi The ordered grid of thecity and the pronounced roadways, the onlyidentifiable details from this height, seem aboutto be consumed by the unstoppab leconflagration. The same photograph,reproduced in the Ōsaka asahi shinbun with thecaption "Raging fires consuming the imperialcapital," injects the scene with more ominousportent by adding the critical descriptive detailthat the white smoke is shrouding the ImperialPalace-the home of the empire's divine ruler-and thereby calling into question the survival ofthe nation's leadership.xii

Some aerial photographs, such as the iconicphotograph of the Marunouchi district that ranin the Hōchi shinbun (fig. 2), emphasized thetechnological mediation of the photographiceye by incorporating the wing of the airplane asa framing device. Such views reinforced boththe tremendous expansion of modernity'svision, literally and figuratively, and its ever

more disastrous consequences. Nevertheless,the state again tried to instrumentalize thetotalizing vision of aerial film in 1926, when itsought to demonstrate the success of large-scale urban reconstruction in the fifteen-minutefilm Reconstruction of the Imperial CapitalSeen from an Airplane (Kokusen nite fukkō noteito e). (The film was shot by well-knowncameraman Shirai Shigeru and produced by theMinistry of Education [Monbushō]).xiii Throughmovement, film increased the temporal andspatial expansiveness and impact of the aerialvision. Yet while the semblance of totality wasuseful for the Japanese government, it wasdeceptive, because no view could encompassthe full implications of the event or theramifications of reconstruction.

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Figure 1. Aerial photograph of the burning capital, frontpage. "Full Record of the Great Earthquake" (Daishinsaizenki), special issue, Asahi Graph, October 1923.

Figure 2. Marunouchi Seen from an Airplane (Hikōkiuekara mita Marunouchi), photograph. Hōchi shinbun, 20September 1923, A.M. ed., 7. By permission of YomiuriShinbun.

Figure 3. Map of Tokyo-Area Fires and Victim GatheringSites (Tōkyō kasai chiiki oyobi risaimin shūdan chizu), withhatches indicating areas of destruction. Dai Nihon

Yūbenkai Kōdansha, Taishō Daishinsai daikasai (The GreatTaishō Earthquake Conflagration) (Tokyo: Dai NihonYūbenkai Kōdansha, 1923).

Schematic maps of surviving transportationnetworks, refugee faci l i t ies, and thedeployment of military personnel throughoutthe region affected by the quake also visuallysupported the authority of the state by implyingcontrol over a vast area of devastation. Likeaerial photography, such maps were a powerfullogistical weapon. The detachment conveyed bythe scale and magnitude of aerial photographywas echoed in the many chillingly clinicalgeographical mappings of the disaster, whichcovered the region with red hatches indicatingthe complete destruction of vast, blightedsections (fig. 3). Many Taishō maps, building ontheir increasingly detailed late-Edo precursors,were scientifically cartographic, delineating theexact layout of the metropolitan area, and thegraphic red hatching overlaid on the schema ofthe city is utterly dispassionate in marking thedecimation of nearly half of its land area,lending visual authority through apparentfacticity.xiv The technique of blotting out largeareas of the city with red pigment to indicatefire damage was common in late-Edo mapping.For example, it appears in the news kawaraban(broadside) maps of fire-blighted areas of Kyotodestroyed during the Kinmon or HamaguriRebellion (Kinmon no Hen or Hamaguri Gomonno Hen) of 1864, when the Tokugawa shogunalforces quashed an uprising by antiforeignimperial loyalists.xv The 1923 maps refined thispractice. Yet they are not entirely lifeless, forthe small patches of red indicating safe havensfo r re fugees l ook eer i l y l i ke b loodhemorrhaging across the image.

In photographs, the subtle differences inperspective among elevated and panoramicscenes of the devastated cityscape give hints tothe scope of the disaster. Some images visuallyextended the horizon line of the urban ruins,giving Tokyo the look of a never-endingpostapocalyptic wasteland (fig. 4). These open,

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decimated vistas expose recently inhabited landto the observer and show new views born out ofthe destruction; where a dense metropolitancityscape previously blocked the gaze anddirected it along the axes of major boulevards,now one's gaze can extend for mi lesunobstructed. This new visibility is reinforcedthrough the picturing of areas commonlyknown for their urban density and largebuildings: Nihonbashi, Ginza, Maruouchi,Kanda, and Kyōbashi, for example. In areaswhere the burned-out carcasses of monumentalWestern-style edifices remained, the viewer cansee through their empty, charred shells into thedistance (fig. 5 top). The known scale of thesebuildings established a visual benchmark forperceiving the magnitude and enormity ofdestruction, and the transformation of thesolid, opaque structures into open screensreiterates the evisceration of the city itself.

Figure 4. Ningyōchō Street (Ningyōchō dōri), postcard,1923. Ishii Toshio Collection. By permission of JapanPublishing Copyright Association.

Figure 5. The Burned Expanse toward Ginza That Lookslike Ruins (Haikyo no yōna Ginza hōmen no yakeato)(aerial view, top); Burned Skeletal Remains of Trams andCars Lying across the Road (Zankotsu o romen niyokotaeta densha to jidōsha) (ground view, bottom),photographs. Ōsaka Asahi Shinbunsha, Daishinsai shashingahō (Photographic Pictorial of the Great Earthquake), vol.2 (Osaka: Ōsaka Asahi Shinbunsha, 25 September 1923),9.

Figure 6. Ginza Street (Ginza dōri), showing a lonelyfigure on the once-fashionable boulevard, postcard, 1923.Ishii Toshio Collection. By permission of Japan PublishingCopyright Association.

In contrast to the aerial images, photographstaken from a ground perspective invited theviewer to identify with figures making theirway through the treacherous rubble (fig. 5bottom). These images reduce the city tohuman scale, thereby acquiring emotionalresonance and allowing the viewer to identifywith the plight of the survivors. In onephotograph (fig. 6), a single male figure holdingan umbrella and walking away into the murkydistance amid the ruins of the formerlyfashionable Ginza district imbues the scenewith pathos. Such images of the city carry atragic irony in their contrast with the myriadfamiliar images of well-dressed ladies andgentleman sauntering down the elegant

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commercial boulevards of the Ginza, Tokyo'sequivalent of the Champs-Élysées in Paris orFifth Avenue in New York. The popular leisureactivity of "strolling in the Ginza" (a practiceknown as ginbura), past its fashionable shopsand department stores, is profoundlytransformed in these photographs; clearly therewas no window-shopping to be done here.Postquake ginbura was a promenade throughruins.

The Postcard Album as Visual Archive

To supplement the excerpt above, I would liketo offer a close-up view of a valuable visualarchive for disaster: the postcard album. Afterthe Great Kantō earthquake there was abooming market for disaster postcards. Newswas often indistinguishable from souvenirs, andthe same photographs were widely circulatedin the form of commemorative postcards, oftensold in sets. Postcards were introduced toJapan in 1873 with the new national postalsystem. They were a vivid symbol of Japan'smodernity, marked by the inauguration of anew communications system in the Meijiperiod. Already a very popular medium fordepicting scenes from the Russo-Japanese War(1904–5), postcards of natural disasters werecommonplace in Japan by the time of the 1923quake. Extant envelopes for sets indicate thatKantō earthquake postcards were produced farand wide, from Hakata on the southern islandof Kyushu to Osaka in the western Kansairegion. Printed in collotype, offset, andgravure, many photographic postcards, alongwith original photographic prints, werecommissioned by Tokyo publishers (hanmoto),which had been burned out of business butrecognized the potential profit in earthquakeimages. Hundreds of varieties of postcardswere issued. Publishers sold most of them onthe street, and many of the images sold outquickly. The intimate, pocketsize format of thepostcard lent itself to personal consumption.

Since the vast majority of 1923 disasterpostcards that survive have no writing on them,they were likely treated more as collectiblesthan as a form of postal communication. Manywere put into albums, creating new ways tocombine images and create visual cultures ofdisaster for home viewing. Accordion-stylealbums, such as the example pictured here,allowed for personalized, serial organization ofimages that produced unique, imagisticnarratives of the event. The album pages werealso two-sided and could be stretched out toview a series of images on recto and verso (fig.7). These miniature collections form individualarchives that provide vivid windows into theearthquake viewing experience.

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Figure 7. Example of a postcard album.

Figure 8. The Actual Wretched Conditions of the GreatTokyo Earthquake: Ginza Street seen from an Airplane.

Figure 9. Metropolitan Police Department and theImperial Theater in the Ferocious Flames

Postcards mirrored the photographic eye in thepictorial volumes, surveying the damage bothfrom distant aerial perspectives (fig. 8) andfrom the ground (fig. 9). However, they oftendistinguished themselves through thewidespread addition of color, which wasthought to enhance the verisimilitude whileaestheticizing the image. Although stillphotographs could not capture the spectacle ofthe quake in real time, hand or machineapplication of color tinting to black-and-whiteimages that were mass printed sought toprovide an immediacy and layering to theotherwise largely static scenes. The dynamic"ferocious flames" (mōka) were added tophotographic postcards to lend movement tothe images, yet the stillness of the picturesspeaks of an inability to reenact the event in atemporal or visceral way; rather, it reinforcesthe irretrievability and distance of history.Similarly, images of streets engulfed in flames,tinted to communicate imminent danger andterror, are perhaps more striking because oftheir inability to convey the true nature of theexperience.

Figure 10. Taishō 12. 9. 1 (Great Tokyo Earthquake)Pitiful Azumabashi Bridge Destroyed by Fire and Beforethe Quake.

Figure 11. Corpses lined up for identification after theearthquake

Figure 12. Taishō 12, 1 September, 11:58a.m. GreatTokyo Earthquake Yoshiwara.

Other postcards make the before-during-and-

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after temporal frame of the disaster explicit bysuperimposing inset photographs of famoussites before their spectacular destruction suchas seen in this dramatic pair of images showingthe fate of Azumabashi bridge in Asakusaviolently twisted by the temblor and engulfed inflames (fig. 10).

Photographic representations of mass carnagewere repeated throughout the locales of thecity, particularly in postcards, emphasizing thewidespread loss of life, capitalizing on thetragedy, and inflaming public sentiment (fig.11). The voyeuristic relationship between theviewer and the image, the living and the dead,is thrown into greater relief in a widelycirculated news and postcard image of thepond in the Shin Yoshiwara l icensedprostitution quarter (fig. 12), where thousandsof women who worked in the brothels perished,unable to get out of the gated district. Likemany victims throughout the city who soughtrefuge from the fires in the extensivewaterways of Tokyo, numerous women ofYoshiwara drowned or were literally boiledalive when they fled into the district's largepond Benten ike.

Figure 13. (Taishō 12, 1 September) The Great KantōEarthquake: Great Chaos of Refugees in the Vicinity ofUeno Station.

Figure 14. Taishō 12. 9. 1 Actual Conditions of the GreatTokyo Earthquake: Nippori Train Station. Refugees on theplatform trying to flee the city.

Figure 15. (Taishō 12, 1 September) Wretched Conditionsof the Great Tokyo Yokohama Earthquake. Refugees atUeno Hirokōji.

Images of refugees focused on oceanic crowdsfleeing the destruction and raging fires (figs.13-14), and on more intimate, sympatheticportraits of family groups, particularly mothersand children, gathered in temporary shelters(fig. 15).

GENNIFER WEISENFELD, Professor in theDepartment of Art, Art History, and Visual

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Studies at Duke University, received her Ph.D.from Princeton University. Her field of researchis modern and contemporary Japanese arthistory, design, and visual culture. Her firstbook Mavo: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931 (University of CaliforniaPress, 2002) addresses the relationshipbetween high art and mass culture in theaesthetic politics of the avant-garde in 1920sJapan. And her most recent book ImagingDisaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture ofJapan's Great Earthquake of 1923 (Universityo f C a l i f o r n i a P r e s s , 2 0 1 2(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0520271955/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20), Japanese edition Seidosha,2 0 1 4(http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4791768000/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20)) examines how visualcul ture has mediated the h is tor ica lunderstanding of Japan's worst nationaldisaster of the twentieth century. In addition toco-editing the volume Crossing the Sea: Essayson East Asian Art in Honor of ProfessorYoshiaki Shimizu, with Gregory Levine andAndrew Watsky (Princeton University Press,2012), she has written a core essay on MIT'saward-winning website Visualizing Cultures onthe Shiseido company's advertising design. Sheis currently working on a new book on thehistory of Japanese advertising and commercialdesign titled The Fine Art of Persuasion:Corporate Advertising Design, Nation, andEmpire in Modern Japan.

Recommended Citation: "On Imaging Disaster:Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan's GreatEarthquake of 1923", The Asia-Pacific Journal,Vol. 13, Issue 6, No. 2, February 9, 2015.

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Notes

i W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? TheLives and Loves of Images (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 2005).

ii I use the term visuality here to indicate "thesocial construction of the visual field, and thevisual construction of the social field,"reciprocal processes that structure thesubjectivity and agency of the viewing public.W.J.T. Mitchell, "Responses to Mieke Bal's'Visual Essentialism and the Object of VisualCulture' (2003): The Obscure Object of VisualCulture," Journal of Visual Culture 2, no. 2(2003): 252. For an expanded discussion ofvisuality and visual studies, see Mitchell,"Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture,"Journal of Visual Culture 1, no. 2 (August2002): 165-81.

iii Collective memory tends to reflect masternarratives of an event forged by leading socialand political groups to become "dominantmemory." Daniel J. Sherman, The Constructionof Memory in Interwar France (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1999), 7.

iv Paul Virilio, Unknown Quantity (London:Thames & Hudson; Paris: Fondation Cartierpour l'art contemporain, 2003), 63.

v Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003),22–23.

vi The earliest information about the disasterwas sent by wireless from survivors on shipsmoored at Yokohama. This information wasrelayed throughout the country and abroadthrough the hero i c e f fo r t s o f l oca ltelecommunications operators in regionalstations throughout Japan, particularly theoperator at the Iwaki wireless station inFukushima. The Kantō earthquake dramaticallydemonstrated the importance of wireless for

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national security, and Japan's experienceconvinced many governments to fund thet e c h n o l o g y a s a p r i o r i t y m o d e o ftelecommunications. Joshua Hammer,Yokohama Burning: The Deadly 1923Earthquake and Fire That Helped Forge thePath to World War II (New York: Free Press,2006), 178–88.

vii Shinbun Shiryō Raiburarii, Kantō Daishinsai(Great Kantō Earthquake), vol. 1 (Tokyo:Ōzorasha, 1992).

viii Because of the difficulties getting access tothe devastated Kantō region, aer ia lreconnaissance was critical in relayinginformation about the nature and extent ofdamage to coordinate external rel iefoperations. The Japanese army flew thesemissions out of its base in Nagoya. J. CharlesSchencking, "1923 Tokyo as a Devastated Warand Occupation Zone: The Catastrophe OneConfronted in Post Earthquake Japan,"Japanese Studies 29, no. 1 (2009): 117n35.

ix Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics ofPerception (London: Verso, 1989), 1–3, 11.

x Illah Nourbakhsh et al., "Mapping DisasterZones," Nature 439, no. 7078 (2006).

xi "Daishinsai zenki" (Full Record of the GreatEarthquake), special issue, Asahi Graph,October 1923; Nihon Shinbun Hakubutsukan,ed., Daishinsai to hōdō-ten: Kantō daishinsai80-shūnen kikaku (Exhibition of the GreatEarthquake and the News: Plans for the 80th

A n n i v e r s a r y o f t h e G r e a t K a n t ōEarthquake)(Yokohama-shi: Nihon ShinbunHakubutsukan, 2003), 29.

xii Ōsaka Asahi Shinbunsha, Daishinsai shashingahō (Photographic Pictorial of the GreatEarthquake) (Osaka: Ōsaka Asahi Shinbunsha,15 September 1923), 1:3.

xiii Shirai Shigeru (cameraman), Reconstructionof the Imperial Capital Seen from an Airplane(Kokusen nite fukkō no teito e) (Tokyo: Ministryof Education, 1926). Kamera to jinsei: ShiraiShigeru kaikoroku (Camera and Life: TheMemoirs of Shirai Shigeru), (Tokyo: YuniTsūshinsha, 1983), 51–58.

x i v Edo-period earthquake maps werepredominantly topographical maps thatcommunicated the location of fires orschematic maps of the layout of the city aroundthe shogunal castle that had arrows indicatingthe direction of fires, which were called"direction marker maps" (hōkaku-zuke). Tōkyō-to Edo Tokyo Hakubutsukan Toshi RekishiKenkyūshitsu, Kantō Daishinsai to Ansei EdoJishin (The Great Kantō Earthquake and theAnsei Edo Earthquake), Tōkyō-to Edo TokyoHakubutsukan Chōsa Hōkokusho, vol. 10(Tokyo: Tōkyō-to Edo Tōkyō Hakubutsukan:Tōkyō-to Rekishi Bunka Zaidan, 2000), 41, 190;Kinoshita Naoyuki et al., Nyūsu no tanjō:Kawaraban to shinbun nishikie no jōhōsekai/The Birth of the News, Visual Media in19th-Century Japan, Tōkyō Daigaku korekushon(Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Sōgō KenkyūHakubutsukan, 1999), 162–63, 78–79; MiyataNoboru and Takada Mamoru, Namazu-e:Shinsai to Nihon bunka (Catfish Pictures:Earthquakes and Japanese Culture) (Tokyo:Ribun Shuppan, 1995), 78–79.

xv Kinoshita et al., Nyūsu no tanjō, 175–77.