The year 1923 stands out as a turbulent moment in modern Japanese history because of the catastrophic Great Kanto Earthquake that brought Tokyo and surrounding regions to their knees.
Yet even as tens of thousands perished under collapsed buildings or in raging infernos, a more insidious tragedy unfolded with the systematic targeting and murder of Koreans who lived in the region.
The attacks were brutal and widespread, and exposed deep prejudices that had long simmered beneath Japan’s veneer of progress at that time. Even today, more than one hundred years later, the fate of Koreans caught in that deadly post-quake frenzy remains a solemn reminder of how fear, misinformation, and xenophobia can combine to produce horrifying violence.
In an era that prided itself on modernizing at breakneck speed, the massacre has stood as a moral stain that continues to demand critical reflection, both in Japan and in the broader global community, that grapples with questions of how to reckon with historical injustice.
To understand the chain of events that led to the massacre, it is important to place the Korean community in Japan within its broader historical context. By 1923, Japan had already annexed Korea for more than a decade, a process that had begun in earnest with the imbalanced Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910.
Under the colonial Japanese regime, Koreans were subjected to institutional marginalization and, in many cases, outright oppression. Japan’s imperial administrators imposed severe economic policies that disrupted agrarian life on the peninsula, leading many Koreans to migrate to the main Japanese islands in search of steadier work.
Finding employment opportunities in large urban centers like Tokyo, Yokohama, and Osaka, these migrants often took up jobs in construction, factory work, or dock labor. Although their labor contributed tangibly to Japanese economic growth, Koreans found themselves trapped at the bottom rungs of the social hierarchy, isolated by the language barrier, discriminated against because of their ethnicity, and sometimes resented by native Japanese for reasons both cultural and economic.
As the number of Koreans in Tokyo and other cities grew, so did societal tensions. The growing presence of a minority population whose language and customs many Japanese did not fully understand proved a convenient scapegoat for national anxieties.
Periodicals of the era sometimes ran inflammatory stories depicting Koreans as potential troublemakers or agitators, an attitude exacerbated by colonial propaganda that framed Japan as the rightful caretaker, or conqueror, of Korea.
Though many Koreans tried to form close-knit enclaves, they carried the burden of knowing that distrust and suspicion followed them daily. Even before the natural disaster struck, countless Koreans found themselves on the receiving end of prejudice. It was within that environment of lingering resentment and suspicion that the Great Kanto Earthquake struck, unleashing far more than just physical devastation.
On the morning of September 1, 1923, an earthquake with a magnitude believed to be around 7.9 rattled the Kanto region. The timing, around midday, was calamitous. Families were cooking over open flames, and buildings of wood and paper construction were prone to fire when an earthquake’s tremors disrupted daily life.
Many structures collapsed outright, trapping residents under rubble. Fires erupted across city blocks, merging into unstoppable infernos that consumed neighborhoods and raged for days. The official casualty estimates range from about 100,000 to 140,000 dead, with a significant portion of those fatalities attributed to the fires.
Tokyo’s infrastructure lay in ruins, communication lines were cut, and the general population lived in shock and uncertainty. Disasters often breed misinformation in the vacuum left by the collapse of reliable communication, but the Great Kanto Earthquake stands as a particularly grim example.
Almost immediately, rumors spread that Koreans were poisoning wells, setting fires, or inciting riots in the aftermath of the quake. Whisper campaigns linked every societal ill, lack of food, destruction of property, and missing loved ones, to nefarious plots purportedly orchestrated by Koreans.
With newspapers crippled by the quake’s ravages, word-of-mouth chatter traveled unchecked, and paranoia took deep root among a population already on edge from grief and fear. Local authorities, tasked with maintaining law and order but themselves rattled by the destruction, did little to quell these rumors. In fact, some local constables and police officers repeated them, likely believing that pockets of Koreans were indeed engaged in subversive acts.
Vigilante groups sprang up in Tokyo and the outlying areas. Some were loosely affiliated with patriotic or right-wing organizations, while others were ordinary citizens banding together in a misguided effort to protect their neighborhoods. They stopped Koreans on the streets, demanded they prove their ethnicity or allegiance, and in many cases savagely beat, stabbed, or executed them on the spot.
The brutality was such that many Koreans fled their homes, seeking refuge wherever they could, in shelters, with sympathetic Japanese acquaintances, or simply trying to hide in the ruins of decimated neighborhoods.
Some scholars estimate that thousands of Koreans lost their lives in that wave of targeted violence, though exact figures remain a subject of debate due to incomplete records, government obfuscation, and the chaotic nature of events. Certain accounts even suggest that other minorities, such as Chinese laborers or Japanese who looked foreign, fell victim to the mobs, underscoring the broader xenophobic sentiment that had taken hold.
Amid such a grim atmosphere, there were stories of courage. Some Japanese civilians refused to participate in the hysteria, offering sanctuary to their Korean neighbors at great personal risk. Certain local officials attempted to counteract the rumors, urging calm and emphasizing that the real threat lay in fires and structural instability, not foreign saboteurs.
But as the quake’s devastation receded, the bodies of many murdered Koreans were discovered, laying bare the scope of violence that had erupted in what should have been a moment of collective national mourning. In the immediate weeks and months following the tragedy, the Japanese government sought to downplay the scale of the atrocities, suppressing some details of the violence in official reports.
Public attention was diverted to the pressing need to rebuild the shattered capital and restore international confidence. Nonetheless, whispers of the massacre, supported by survivor accounts, eyewitness testimonies, and investigative journalism, reverberated through Korean immigrant communities. Those accounts also circulated among certain segments of the Japanese public who were horrified to learn of the extent of xenophobic killings.
Over time, the narrative became harder to obscure, and calls for recognition of the atrocities grew louder. But official acknowledgment from the Japanese state would remain elusive, arriving only in partial and carefully worded statements decades later.
The period that followed the Great Kanto Earthquake set the stage for further challenges in Japan’s relationship with its Korean subjects. By the late 1920s and 1930s, Japan intensified its imperial ventures, not just in the Korean Peninsula but throughout East Asia. Growing militarism overshadowed efforts to address the painful truths of the 1923 massacre.
Koreans continued to be viewed with suspicion and hostility, even as Japan’s imperial ambitions expanded. The social, economic, and cultural oppression of Koreans both in Korea and in Japan persisted. It was a dark period that offered little room for reflection or atonement.
Over the ensuing decades, especially after Japan’s defeat in World War II, the fate of Koreans in Japan entered a new phase. Some returned to a Korea itself devastated by colonial exploitation and the subsequent internal conflict between divided regions. Others remained in Japan, forming the basis of what today is a multi-generational Korean-Japanese community.
Throughout the postwar period, the 1923 massacres retained an almost spectral presence, an event publicly spoken of in only hushed tones, or relegated to footnotes in official histories. Yet among Korean-Japanese families, stories of the violence were passed down through grandparents and parents and became a crucial element of cultural memory, shaping a communal identity forged in both tragedy and survival.
Today, scholarly research has helped to shed light on the violence that followed the earthquake, and activist groups continue to press for broader public awareness. It remains a complex chapter in Japan’s history, often overshadowed by the quake’s raw destructive power or by other major historical events, such as the Second World War.
However, for anyone who focuses on issues of ethnic discrimination, state-sanctioned violence, and minority rights, the massacre of Koreans after the Great Kanto Earthquake stands out as a stark warning of how societal panic and prejudice can intersect to unleash catastrophic harm on vulnerable groups.
Efforts at commemoration have taken various forms over the decades. Memorial services, organized by civil society groups and supported in some cases by municipal governments, have offered tribute to those who lost their lives. Historians and educators have produced material in both Japanese and Korean to ensure that students of all backgrounds understood the context of what happened in 1923 and why it was able to occur.
Those efforts have continuously faced resistance from nationalists who see the mention of the massacre as tarnishing Japan’s global image. Some segments of Japanese society also argue that discussing the event exacerbates divisiveness, and suggest it is better to “move on” so as to avoid accepting an uncomfortable truth. However, burying the memory of such violence risks ignoring the lessons it offers about the consequences of xenophobia and unchecked rumor.
Part of the legacy of the 1923 tragedy involves a broader conversation about how nations, especially those with histories of empire, come to terms with their wrongs. Japan has often struggled with how to remember its imperial past. The post-quake massacres of Koreans is one of many historical events that challenge the narrative that Japanese society prefers to believe.
For Koreans in Japan today, some of whom are the descendants of those who endured 1923, the massacre is not a distant historical footnote. It is part of a lived legacy. While subsequent generations have found ways to navigate identity in a Japanese society that has grown more diverse, discrimination and tensions still surface.
Hate speech directed at Korean residents is not a relic of the past but an ongoing issue that authorities struggle to control. In that sense, the memory of the massacre serves as a stark reminder of the damage wrought by ignorance and bigotry. The quake may have been the catalyst, but the social conditions that turned Koreans into targets were already deeply embedded in Japan’s colonial hierarchy.
When remembering the Great Kanto Earthquake, it is vital not to allow the enormity of the disaster to overshadow the killings of Koreans that took place in its immediate aftermath. While natural tragedies can be explained in geologic or meteorological terms, the horrific violence visited upon the Korean community resulted from choices made by regular people driven by panic and prejudice.
The ghosts of 1923 will continue to haunt generations of Koreans and Japanese, but they also cast a shadow over the global community. The darkness of humanity has shown what any hateful society can unleash. The issue of immigration in the United States, specifically the targeting of Hispanic communities, is only the most current example.
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Everett Collection, Manuel Ascanio, Edu Snacker (via Shutterstock)
