Silver Linings in The Ruins: Hope, Humanitarianism, and Beautiful Tales Following the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Disasters destroy, kill, and turn the worlds of survivors upside down. With that same extraordinary power, however, catastrophes can also inspire hope, foster humanitarianism, and nurture humanity. This panel explores how wide cross sections of those touched by seismic calamity—children, elites, writers, and people a world away from the epicentre—re-constructed Japan’s most deadly natural disaster in ways that offered hope and humanity in the wake of devastation. Recent publications on the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 have illuminated many aspects of this disaster, but have not emphasized the imperial or international contexts of the quake’s aftermath, nor looked at disaster through the eyes of some of Japan’s most vulnerable subjects: children.

This panel seeks to interrogate the potential and limitations of mobilizing catastrophe for visions of national, imperial, and transpacific peace and prosperity. Schencking identifies new perspectives on U.S.-Japan relations in the post-earthquake “relief tsunami”, and asks why this humanitarianism failed to secure the lasting peace envisioned on both sides of the Pacific. Borland explores how forward-looking post-quake writings by children were mobilized by officialdom as blueprints for a bright national future. Finally, Haag considers the hope that “beautiful tales” (bidan) of imperial harmony amidst ethnic panic and mass murder might paradoxically bring Japan and Korea closer, by rehabilitating the image of colonizer and colonized. In each of these contexts, the papers reveal a search for silver livings in horror that was informed by both genuine optimism and cynical opportunism.

Area of Study

• Northeast Asia

Session Organizer

• Andre Robert Haag, University of New Mexico

Chair

• J. Charles Schencking, University of Hong Kong

Individual Presentations

• Transpacific Humanitarianism, Hope, and Gratitude following the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 - J. Charles Schencking, University of Hong Kong

• “My Hopes for Tokyo,” and Other Children’s Stories from the Great Kantō Earthquake - Janet Borland, University of Hong Kong

• Imperial Hopes Amidst Horrors: Beautiful Tales of the Kantō Earthquake Korean Massacres - Andre Robert Haag, University of New Mexico

Discussant

• Minako Jen Yoshikawa, Kyoto University