2023 | 10 min read
The Tokyo Memorial Hall is an unusual clash of styles. On the outside, it’s a Buddhist temple sculpted in heavy concrete. Inside, it’s an airy basilica, Mediterranean in its white-walled simplicity. The exterior was designed to appease the Buddhist groups across Japan that raised half the funds for construction. The other half came from the national purse, and the interior corresponds to some notion of what mourning should look like in a modern state.
The Memorial Hall was opened on September 1st, 1930 and marked the end of the reconstruction effort following the Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1st, 1923. The quake struck under Sagami Bay just before noon and claimed more than 100,000 lives. It swept entire communities into the sea and toppled Asakusa’s 68m-high Ryōunkaku, or Cloud-Surpassing Pavilion, the Skytree of its day. But most deaths occurred in the fires which swept Tokyo for three days after the quake. The location of the Memorial Hall here in Sumida Ward is both practical and symbolic. This is where the worst of the fires spread between densely-packed wooden homes, forcing panicked residents to jump into the Sumida River. There were no disaster evacuation sites back then.
Some 50,000 residents took sanctuary in the area’s one large open space: a compound that had previously housed the Honjo Clothing Depot of the Imperial Japanese Army. These evacuees brought with them as many valuables as they could carry in handcarts or on their backs: kimonos, clocks, bedding, even wooden chests. When sparks carried by strong winds fell on the compound, they found plenty to ignite there. Only one in four people managed to escape the compound that day. An estimated 38,000 people were burned alive. The loss of life was so great that, rather than move the charred remains, officials began using the compound as Tokyo’s main crematorium in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.
The site of the compound is known today as Yokoamicho Park and is home to both the Memorial Hall and a small museum. Since 1951, it has also been a place of remembrance for the 100,000 victims of the Great Tokyo Air Raid of March 10th, 1945. The air raid by several hundred B-29 bombers of the US Air Force targeted the same part of Tokyo which had burned 22 years earlier. It burned just as fiercely again, just as US military strategists knew it would, the post-quake reconstruction having been something of a fudge.
The earthquake and bombings were two quite different calamities, though lessons learned from one might have helped prevent the other. But in 1951, Japan and the US having undergone some pretty intense relationship counselling, it made good sense all around to conflate the two events. Today, many Tokyoites are only vaguely aware that their city suffered a double misfortune in the first half of the 20th Century. It was a truly awful day that must never be forgotten, whichever of the two it was.
One thing the Great Kanto Earthquake can teach us is that Japanese citizens weren’t stoic in the face of disaster. They panicked en masse, fled with their possessions, jumped into rivers, formed vigilante groups, and murdered in cold blood a Korean-born population they saw as a threat within. Calm and orderly conduct in the face of adversity would be nurtured later through civic and moral education. Meanwhile, the events of September 1923, just like the events of March 1945, continue to occupy a place somewhere between official memory and official forgetting.
Yokoamicho Park, like many urban parks in Tokyo, has a surface of fine white gravel that reflects the sun into your eyes. Another legacy of the Great Kanto Earthquake is the network of small neighbourhood parks and playgrounds that double as evacuation sites. September 1st is designated as Disaster Prevention Day, when evacuation drills are held in schools and other public buildings. It’s 2023, the earthquake’s centenary year, and a banner reminding people of this fact is strung from the school built just metres from the Hall, on the site where 38,000 perished. There’s no space for squeamishness in today’s Tokyo, where a psychic, not physical, distance is maintained.
However, a very different Tokyo might have emerged after the quake. In the months that followed, a reconstruction plan was proposed that would have transformed Tokyo into an imperial capital of broad avenues and vast parks modelled after Washington DC. The chief architect of the plan didn’t make it to the 1930 opening ceremony of the Memorial Hall. He died in 1929, five years after being declared insane and thrown out of politics for good. His vision of a new Tokyo had been trampled on by some familiar old foes: bureaucratic intransigence and an ageing political leadership that preferred its legacy to be one of stability, not change.
Born in 1857 to a minor samurai family, Shinpei Goto became a fervent moderniser and an advocate for the expansion of Japanese power overseas. Between 1898 and 1906, Goto served as the first Civil Administrator of colonial Taiwan. During this period, he nurtured a passion for infrastructure, recruiting engineers to build roads and dams, telegraph and postal systems, and making the colony self-sufficient economically. Later, as head of the South Manchurian Railway Company in northeastern China, Goto used land appropriation to promote urban development, which was paid for by leasing the land back to private companies. He wasn’t just a skilled hand at this infrastructure thing, he knew how to finance it too – in the right kind of circumstances at least.
After returning to Japan, Goto served in the Cabinet during World War One and then as Mayor of Tokyo during 1920-23, when all of his ambitious plans for urban development were thwarted by political opposition and the private property rights enshrined in the Meiji Constitution. The colonial architect had become just another frustrated local politician. Goto left the mayoral office five months before the Great Kanto Earthquake. On September 2nd, 1923, with the nation reeling, he accepted an offer to rejoin the Cabinet as Home Minister. At long last, Goto appeared to have found his destiny: to be the main architect of the post-earthquake reconstruction plan for Tokyo.
The initial plan presented by Goto to fellow members of the Cabinet caused a commotion. It required all land in Tokyo affected by the quake, which is to say the entire city east of the Imperial Palace, to be purchased by the nation at a cost of 4.5 billion yen. The plan included wide avenues and parks that would act as firebreaks, massive government buildings at the centre, and all of the glorious museums, universities and other public buildings expected of a global power.
Goto’s reconstruction plan ran into immediate opposition from other ministries, which had no intention of letting the Home Ministry dictate policy over other functions of state. The Finance Minister gently suggested that the cost, several times the national budget, might be a little too high. Political leaders of the day were, like Goto, men of advanced age, but they shared none of his appetite for reform. Having spent decades climbing the rungs of power, these elder statesmen regarded themselves as custodians of the status quo. As they saw it, Goto was a madman for not prioritising a quick return to normalcy.
After three months of parliamentary debate, an amended plan was passed with a budget of just 468 million yen. Most of this was to be spent on widening roads, with no fundamental changes to the layout of the city. The rest would be spent on work that could be carried out alongside road-widening: sewers, bridges and small parks. None of the grand schemes that might have transformed Tokyo into an imperial capital were approved. There were, however, major improvements in sanitation and some subtle changes to the urban fabric that continue to define Tokyo today.
In practice, the reconstruction plan meant that all property owners and tenants in the affected areas were asked to give up 10% of their land in return for wider access roads and better infrastructure. City blocks were rationalised into rectangular plots, and the maze-like alleys within each block were replaced by straight access roads. Structures that had survived the fires were rebuilt on the new plots, or in some cases lifted on rollers and transported there.
The work took the remainder of the decade to complete, but Goto himself had no further involvement. In 1924, questions were raised about his state of mind and fitness for office. In the last five years of his life, Goto threw himself into the Boy Scout movement, becoming the first Chief Scout of Japan. Young minds would be easier to colonise than the calcified craniums of senior politicians.
Starting from the Memorial Hall and striking out east towards Kinshicho, you quickly understand why the eastern wards of Tokyo have been spared the kind of urban development that has transformed the rest of the city. The entire eastern side of Tokyo is one vast uniform matrix of streets enclosing small blocks of land. The reconstruction work following the Great Kanto Earthquake didn’t only widen the roads, it also shrank the city.
The euphemistic Japanese term for road-widening means “land readjustment”. One hundred years after the quake, land readjustment is still in progress all over Tokyo. The telltale signs are short stretches of virgin asphalt covered in strange formations of crash barriers. But the rationale for widening Tokyo’s roads – deadly fire risk and rising car ownership – has long since disappeared.
Here in the shitamachi, or low city, blocks are divided into small plots under different ownership – ideal for workshops, coffee shops, and other small businesses. The only vehicles are the occasional taxi and delivery truck. Kids run free, green man permitting. Stroll a few blocks and you get used to waiting at yet another set of lights. The city slows you down to its pace. It invites you to look and notice.
It’s this gentle urban fabric that gives Tokyo its liveable reputation. Most Tokyoites don’t want to live in distant suburbs or waterfront towers. They prefer densely populated and richly textured neighbourhoods full of restaurants and supermarkets, some old, some new. The right balance of modern convenience and retro charm. That combination of density and history feels solid to Tokyoites, even though the next Kanto earthquake is overdue and could flatten this area all over again.
What kind of legacy will the next earthquake leave? One man’s natural disaster is another’s real-estate opportunity. Urban development in Tokyo has long been national economic policy, but it stalled on the reclaimed lands in the bay and has few places left to go within the Yamanote circle. Could it turn east? To do so, it would need to make another compelling case for land readjustment.
For at least a decade, the shitamachi has been undergoing a quiet rebrand from an “uncultured” working-class district into something more artisanal and aspirational. The kind of place where, you know, rich people might want to live. The rebranding effort is already helping to raise land values in areas like Nihonbashi – even if only notionally shitamachi – and the big trading companies are of course on board.
Arriving on foot at Kinshicho Station, the scene is a lovely one of open skies, friendly commerce, and families at play. You’re reminded that it’s not the buildings that make Tokyo, it’s the people, the activity, the signs. Will places like this survive another 100 years? Or will the next big earthquake unleash a new wave of urban development?
The low-lying eastern wards of Tokyo are vulnerable not only to seismic events, but also to potential climate disasters. The urban planning solution this suggests will not be a reconstruction plan, but a preparation plan. It’s no longer enough to be stoic in the face of disaster. Residents will be encouraged to make sacrifices in advance.
Picture, on these lands, a privately-owned, climate-controlled Shitamachi City offering not only protection but a complete lifestyle solution for 100,000 residents. Its centrepiece is an artisanal shopping mall where climate migrants cosplay as Edo craftsmen, watched over by Secom robots. Most Shitamachi City residents are employed as content creators by the company that manages this particular brand of urban development and is planning to bring the concept to a city near you.
Next: Incinerator Tour