Pathway to Japanese Literature

*Impressions of Disaster*

(September 1923)

I.

Suppose that an authoritative seismologist had predicted a great earthquake would occur in the Kanto region around 1923.
In that case, could a great disaster such as this one have been avoided?
The Omoto-kyo sect had prophesied a great earthquake two or three years prior, unsettling us to some degree, but lacked the power to spur preparations against it.
But this was because Omoto-kyo failed to present sufficient grounds to convince us.
If scholars had advocated the imminence of a great earthquake based on statistics from past earthquakes and studies of seismic zones, would people not have prepared in advance for those tremors and fires?

I think that people likely would not have been moved even by this prophecy. For human beings are loath to believe what they do not wish to believe. While knowing full well that death is an inevitable fate, many of us live each day with a sense that it remains distant from ourselves, and we do not prepare for death until the day we are confronted by it, stunned with shock. In the same way, people adopt an attitude of trying as much as possible not to think about a once-in-a-century catastrophe. Theories induced from past earthquakes do not possess sufficient power to make people believe in things of this sort that they are reluctant to believe. In the end, the scholars’ prophecies would likely have been treated no differently than those of Omoto-kyo.

If humans had been sufficiently foresighted to immediately begin renovating buildings for earthquake and fire resistance and establishing firebreaks—or at least organizing volunteer fire brigades that could be mobilized instantly in emergencies—upon hearing scholars’ prophecies, then from the very beginning, they should not have needed such prophecies or emergency measures in the first place.
The Ansei Great Earthquake remains fresh in our ears—whether through the accounts of elders, the ukiyo-e prints of that time, or other records.
That Tokyo is a dangerous land located in an earthquake-prone region has long been known.
When constructing the water supply, it should have been recognized that this system would be ineffective against conflagrations caused by earthquakes.
After the Sino-Japanese War, and particularly after the Russo-Japanese War, when Tokyo began to rapidly expand, how dangerous this unrestricted increase of wooden structures was against great fires should already have been taken into consideration.
In short, had humans been wise enough to heed the prophecies of earthquakes, they would never have committed the folly of complacently constructing a vast city devoid of any defenses against great fires.

When looking back after the event had finally occurred, it became clear that humans were fundamentally foolish creatures.
And this foolishness was not limited merely to the single fact of having failed to install fire prevention equipment.
The very fact that the metropolis expanded so rapidly that all rational measures could not keep pace, and so hastily that rational measures were forgotten, was itself foolishness.
We cannot help but recall the words that the metropolis is a tumor of civilized society.
Recent Tokyo was indeed a mass into which the Japanese people’s weaknesses and flaws had condensed.
From there, all manner of malodorous currents spread to infect the simple, unadorned countryside.
If we trace the causes of the catastrophic fires, we will ultimately encounter the folly of humans who congregated densely in one place to construct such a metropolis.

But I had no right to ridicule that foolishness.
I myself was also one of those fools.
I was one who knew foolishness yet could not reform it, who knew danger yet failed to prepare for it.

The earthquakes of Kanto occur in roughly periodic cycles, and it had already been about ten years since I first heard of the theory that their time was gradually drawing near.
After that, I harbored no doubts regarding the possibility of an impending Great Kanto Earthquake.
When Omoto-kyo prophesied a great earthquake, I placed no trust in the basis of that prophecy, but I could concur on the single point that a great earthquake could occur in the near future.
In particular, the frequent and powerful earthquakes over the past two or three years had been more than sufficient to instill a sense of unease in me.
As for my family, I first became concerned about the ground on which our house stood.
It was a narrow lowland along a small river between the hills of Sendagaya, and at a time when most of this lowland had been rice paddies, the area around my house had been a damp garden with a large pond.
Having heard that reclaimed land fared poorly in earthquakes, I thought that this house would collapse instantly in a great earthquake.
Moreover, I grew uneasy at having stored the entire collection of books in my second-floor study.
For it seemed that if the second floor were heavy, collapse would occur all the more readily.
And so, whenever I met a construction expert, I inquired as to how much weight on the second floor would not be dangerous.
However, despite feeling such anxiety, I did not attempt to move.
Nor did I move the books downstairs.
Although I believed a great earthquake could occur in the near future, it was because such a catastrophe somehow felt distant from myself.
And it was because such nebulous anxieties made the troublesome tasks of moving or rearranging books seem somehow comical.

Fortunately, my groundless anxiety did not come true.
In the lowlands between the hills too, collapsed houses were relatively few.
Yet had this anxiety proven justified, I—while anticipating a great earthquake—would have taken no measures against it and might have perished beneath my collapsed house.

As for myself individually, while I feared earthquakes, I did not fear fire.
That was because I lived in the sparsely populated suburbs.
But had I lived in downtown with closely packed houses, I would have feared fires caused by earthquakes more than the earthquakes themselves.
Fearing it yet not daring to move, I would have been burned in this fire.
The fact that I could not live in the bustling downtown and sought a residence as close to nature as possible was, I think, ultimately rooted in my character—but when it comes solely to my attitude toward earthquakes and fires, I am just as foolish as those who were burned.
It was by no means because I had foresight regarding earthquakes and fires that I was able to avoid this disaster.

As for my family—something I could have easily managed through my own will—I was exactly as described above.
Therefore, I cannot ridicule the foolishness of those people who congregated without restraint and built that enormous city devoid of any defenses against great fires.
However, whether we mock that foolishness or not is not what matters now.
Whether we fully comprehend our own foolishness, so starkly revealed through such a wretched spectacle, is what truly matters.

Looking back, last spring’s powerful earthquake was a warning laden with portents for us.
At that time, the damage had been limited to the destruction of the aqueduct leading to the water supply reservoir, but the mere fact that this single act of destruction had stripped two million citizens of their drinking water left us astonished.
At this time, we could not help but imagine the calamity that would occur in the event of a stronger earthquake.
In the event that dozens of fires break out simultaneously due to an earthquake, could waterless firefighting efforts truly contain them?
Even supposing a great fire does not occur, how could citizens obtain water, fire, and food if gas supplies were cut off and railways destroyed?
If mutual aid organizations to address urgent needs had been created among the citizens themselves, that would be one thing—but in the current egoistic state, citizens can only fall into chaos.
—I too felt such things along with many others.
In hindsight, politicians should have resolutely embarked on installing firebreaks, formulating firefighting plans for conflagrations, conducting fire prevention training during earthquakes, and organizing small autonomous groups for emergency response.
Even those of us without specialized knowledge keenly felt the necessity of these measures.
Those responsible for managing the city should have felt and contemplated this necessity with far greater intensity.
Moreover, at this time, those who gave voice to this were a few scholars unconnected to actual governance, and among the politicians, not a single one treated it as a serious issue.
They likely considered emphasizing such preparations to be overly sensitive and impractical—in other words, idealistic theories or academic pipe dreams.
However, the facts proved that it was not impractical.
Here lies the great lesson we—and particularly politicians—must learn.
If societal defects are recognized, even if society appears safe at present, efforts must be made to eliminate those defects as quickly as possible.
Even if they appear to be impractical idealistic measures, once their necessity is recognized, efforts must be made to realize them.
The temperament of politicians that dismisses idealistic theories or academic pipe dreams must be discarded.
The foolishness of not heeding last spring’s earthquake warning was demonstrated all too tragically before us.
As for the various warnings regarding social earthquakes, this folly must no longer be repeated.

II

Our lack of foresight was not confined solely to the period preceding the earthquake.
Even after the earthquake had struck, we remained unable to grasp that such a monumental catastrophe was unfolding.
We knew great earthquakes brought conflagrations in their wake, yet never imagined this instance would prove no exception.
Like patients unaware their incurable malady spells certain death, we too failed to recognize this as the very calamity we had long dreaded.

When the initial shaking began, I was about to finish lunch with my family.
It was precisely the invitation day for the Nikakai and Bijutsu-in exhibitions, and I was having lunch a little earlier than usual to attend them with my eldest daughter.
When the shaking began, I stood up and went out to the veranda.
At that moment, I recalled last spring’s strong earthquake and thought another one of similar scale had arrived.
Back then, I had rushed out into the garden holding the infant, but today I resolved not to repeat that impulse.
At that instant, the house began shaking with unexpected ferocity.
I bellowed “Get outside!” and reflexively leapt down into the garden.
This psychological state in those initial moments seems to me to schematically encapsulate our experience of this disaster.
First we interpret events through recent experience; when that framework fails, we lose composure and resort to reflexive action.

When I landed in the garden, I immediately asked the family members descending afterward where the younger child was. The child was said to be on the second floor with the maid. I looked up at the second floor but saw no sign of them. The entire structure swayed sideways so violently that it seemed it might shift three shaku at any moment. Feeling my failure to rush upstairs immediately as some grave error, I began frantically circling around the autumn grass planting. Between the veranda leading to the staircase and my position ran a narrow bed of autumn grasses—had I cut straight through it, I could have reached the veranda instantly—yet I chose to detour around its perimeter rather than trample the plants. This might have stemmed from being barefoot and unconsciously avoiding the planting, but regardless, it resulted from panic. By then I could no longer walk properly. Staggering unsteadily, I managed two ken along the planting's edge when my foot slipped on rain-dampened earth from that morning. Nearly falling, I desperately clutched aster stems—limp from the quaking ground—but between their weakness, my sliding feet, and the violent shaking, I couldn't right myself immediately. (I would later notice a two-inch-wide crack less than a foot from my feet spewing reddish-brown mudwater.) Just as I struggled to regain balance, every glass door along the veranda clattered outward in collapse. How many seconds this took I cannot recall—the paralysis of body and mounting dread made it feel interminable—though in truth it must have been brief, for had I taken the direct path through the planting, I would have met those falling doors head-on. At that moment I didn't consider this quake strong enough to level houses—though had ours collapsed, this would have been when it happened. All the while my wife sat in the garden shouting upward for them not to descend—a position I later realized lay precisely where roof tiles would strike if dislodged, and where collapsing eaves would crush her should the house tilt gardenward.

The moment the glass doors collapsed, I noticed that the other maid—who should have been in the kitchen—was standing beneath the staircase on the second floor.
Thinking “Ah, dangerous!”, I called out “Get outside!”, but by that time my body had already regained its balance.
I jumped up into the tatami room and ran up the stairs.
The maid was holding onto a pillar at the top of the stairs, clutching the child.
Later, I heard that the maid had been calling out to us at the top of her voice up until then, but we had not heard her at all.
I took the child and hurriedly made the maid go downstairs.
At that moment, I had intended to take the child out onto the roof through the window at the top of the stairs, but as I clung to the window and observed, the tremors seemed to be gradually weakening, so I instead descended the stairs and rushed outside.
I then led everyone out to the vacant lot on the other side of the garden.

While it was fortunate that the house did not collapse, had it done so, those inside would have been the two maids and younger child, while we—the couple and eldest child—had fled outside. Yet it remains unclear who might have been crushed. Perhaps those outside might have suffered worse injuries. Still, the fact that we escaped while the maids remained indoors tormented me throughout the initial tremors. That my body refused to obey my will due to the shaking only deepened this anguish. My failure to exercise judgment—that fatal reflex to rush outside—meant recovery became impossible by the next instant. Immediately afterward, I remembered Fujita Tōko’s crushing death. They say Tōko dashed inside to save his mother and was struck by a beam. He too must have first fled reflexively, then realized his mother’s plight and charged back in. Had he reached her room when the shaking began, rescue might have been possible. But in this moment, I felt profound kinship with that “too late.” For one fleeting instant, instinctive fear paralyzes judgment. Even if resolve to risk one’s life comes in the next breath, the first impulse remains mindless flight. And for this “abandonment of self,” retribution follows swift. I believe countless souls endured such trials during this disaster. Those claiming human nature as egoistic will cite this primal terror as proof. Yet paralyzed judgment marks not our nature’s revelation, but its eclipse. When true nature reawakens, even initial fears lose their grip. Then—in place of selfish desire—the instinct for mutual aid roars to life. This phenomenon blazed briefly yet brilliantly: in tear-inducing acts between individuals; among the masses; in organized relief from Osaka and Kobe to every city and region nationwide. The true flaw lies not in our nature, but in vulnerability to panic that severs us from it—if only for an instant.

I believe there certainly were people without such weakness—truly resolute individuals—but this weakness was shared by the majority.
I believe there were by no means few cases where this exacerbated the disaster.

When we reached the vacant lot and were prompted to look, we saw that two houses across from it had collapsed.
I thought I might hear voices calling for help, but there was only an eerie silence.
Seeing that, I realized for the first time that this truly was a Great Earthquake.
Soon, an eerie low rumbling began, and everything started shaking violently.
The women couldn’t remain standing and sat down on the grass.
When I looked, the eggplant field beside me was undulating and swaying sideways in a striking manner.
My body swayed as if aboard a ship.
At this moment, seeing the house being shaken as if tossed about, I thought for the first time that it might truly collapse.
When I asked if the fire was under control, they said there was no fire in the kitchen.
But at that time, the possibility of a great fire breaking out had not yet entered my mind.
The first thing I recalled was a story I had heard from someone who had been in Miyazaki Prefecture during the Sakurajima eruption.
I thought: Back then, they had camped out for about a month—given how things were going this time, we’d likely have to camp out for around a month too; this has turned into a dire situation.

The first time three cannon-like blasts were heard from the south—this was indeed around that time—I believe they served as some sort of signal.
Later reflection suggested these were likely chemical explosions somewhere, though such possibilities never crossed our minds at that moment.

When the second tremor somewhat subsided, I warily approached the house and retrieved my geta and umbrella.
The day had begun with stormy morning weather, but before noon the rain stopped completely—by now the sky shone clear with brutal sunlight.
Only as my initial shock faded did I finally register this scorching heat.
By the third violent tremor I'd regained enough composure to study with interest how waves moved through the undulating eggplant field.
The house no longer seemed likely to collapse.
I steeled myself for extended outdoor survival.
My sole remaining concern became preventing my children from falling ill.
Thus I gradually settled into this calm resolve.

Before long, smoke from a fire rose in the northern direction.
When I saw that, I felt as though I were witnessing the natural course of things—that of course earthquakes should be accompanied by fires.
But the fires I had imagined at that time were those I had experienced before—fires that would burn for tens of minutes or several hours before eventually being extinguished.
Since it seemed nearby, I went out to the street to look and inquire—they said it was Shinjuku.
The people on the street were not worried that the fire would reach Sendagaya.
I too, of course, was relieved that it would soon be extinguished.
(Moreover, this fire actually died down in about two hours.
(...which is why I could not imagine a fire that couldn’t be extinguished even late into the night.)

What surprised me more than the fires were the rumors of Ōshima’s eruption.
I heard this from a man who appeared to be a craftsman of printed *happi* coats.
When he alerted me to look, I saw a pure white cumulonimbus cloud swelling thickly to an extraordinary height in the southern sky, flowing northeastward until it stretched due east like a mountain range.
Against the deep blue sky, these radiant white cloud peaks appeared truly beautiful.
Indeed, the massive cumulonimbus cloud at the southern edge seemed roughly aligned with Ōshima’s direction.
Yet even so, I found it strange that Ōshima’s volcanic smoke could reach Tokyo in such a brief span—at that moment, I believed barely ten or fifteen minutes had passed since the initial tremor.
For even if the southern smoke originated from Ōshima, what flowed eastward must undoubtedly have been over Tokyo itself.
But at that time, I could conceive no other explanation for these clouds.
Thus I concluded those explosive booms must indeed have been Ōshima’s eruption.
I believe both the spread of these rumors and our readiness to accept them stemmed from our recent knowledge of Sakurajima’s eruption.

As for what the towering cumulonimbus cloud that appeared high in the south was—I later made various inquiries, but it remains unclear to this day.
There are those who say that was smoke from Yokohama; perhaps it might have been so.
Yokohama’s buildings nearly all collapsed during the initial tremors.
Simultaneously, countless flames erupted.
Therefore, it seems the great fire broke out in Yokohama earlier than in Tokyo.
That smoke first coalescing into towering cumulonimbus clouds and being visible from twenty-eight to thirty-one kilometers away was not beyond possibility.
In that case, the cumulonimbus clouds that appeared from southeast to east were not those that had drifted from the south, but smoke that had risen from beneath each—that is, from the city of Tokyo.

But at that time, having decided that the white cumulonimbus clouds were volcanic smoke, I considered only the faintly dark smoke rising from their base to be from fires. When I looked, there was one plume rising in the south and another in the east. To gain even a slightly better vantage point, I climbed onto the highest railway tracks in the area. With trains halted, people already streamed along the rails like ants. I stopped one of them to ask about the fires’ locations. We concluded the southern smoke came from Aoyama—though in truth I still don’t know its actual source, for Aoyama itself should have remained unburned. (Considering direction, it might have been Takanawa Goten’s smoke.) As for the eastern plume, undiscernible at the time, it likely merged Tameike’s fire with Hibiya’s to appear as one mass. Yet I remained unalarmed, convinced fires would subside—what startled me was learning my informant had been at Ana Hachimangu during the quake’s peak violence. He described how its sturdy hall shook as if collapsing any moment, then remarked, “Look how many roof tiles survived here—Takada fared far worse.” Then it struck me: Had that much time truly passed since the initial tremor? Time enough for him to walk here from Ana Hachimangu? Calculating this revealed three or four times my perceived duration had elapsed—had I lost all sense of time? Only then did I realize how thoroughly my mental state had shattered. Yet by this realization’s dawning, the quake’s violence had already subsided. Surveying rooftops—most houses standing intact, the Fourth Regiment’s brick structure still towering undamaged—I even felt a twinge of anticlimax: “So this earthquake wasn’t so catastrophic after all.”

I returned home, told my family about Ōshima’s eruption, grumbled about the fierce direct sunlight, and passed the time aimlessly—carefree yet purposeless—waiting for what might come next.
A notice had been circulated warning of strong tremors at two and five o’clock, but since we were in a safe open space, I felt no anxiety beyond worrying whether the house might collapse.

III

Meanwhile, while we in the suburbs were passing time in such carefree fashion, a ferocious fire had already begun raging throughout Tokyo.
However, from what I later learned, even those caught in the firestorm's vortex seemed not to have initially comprehended that an unprecedented conflagration was unfolding.

Kanda's unstable ground had caused an extraordinary number of collapsed houses.
Flames consequently erupted from countless locations.
When I later questioned Mr.T from Iwanami's shop, he recounted how shortly after evacuating during the initial quake, he had spotted smoke rising one or two blocks south—but with so many collapsed buildings between that point and the shop, he had convinced himself the flames would never reach them.
During a lull in the violent tremors, a maid courageously crawled through alleyways to reach the innermost kitchen of a rear house and shut off the gas lines.
Others warned her against this recklessness with such urgency that it revealed how thoroughly earthquake anxieties dominated everyone's thoughts.
Iwanami, certain his aged Koishikawa home must have crumbled, pedaled furiously on his bicycle while agonizing over his children's safety.
Warehouse guards who fled their collapsing building miraculously leapt onto the roof of an opposite house mid-collapse, narrowly escaping death.
Publishing staff who initially sheltered beside a safe were spared crushing when its toppling form caught on unexpectedly splayed doors.
In their adrenalized state, people likely lacked mental bandwidth to properly evaluate the spreading fires.
Yet soon smoke plumes appeared beyond the tram lines.
Flames erupted from an alleyway skirting the shop's rear.
The blaze swelled with alarming speed.
Workers frantically retrieved manuscripts and ledgers, but before completing their salvage, flames already licked the skylight's awning.
Though more items could have been saved, someone might have been injured in the attempt.
When Iwanami returned breathless from Koishikawa and halted operations, everything beyond the documents was reduced to ashes.
The exact timing remains unclear, but a clock recovered from the ruins reportedly stopped at 1:15.

According to Ms. N, who was in Morishita district of Fukagawa, when people fled during the earthquake, nearby residents kept mutual watch against fires together, so no blazes broke out in the neighborhood. However, drawing from last year’s experience, she anticipated that the water supply would cease again and, during a lull in the tremors, rushed into the kitchen to draw and store as much water as possible. When the regular tradespeople hurried over, Ms. N’s mother was saying she wanted them to send a roofer as early as tomorrow. But before long, fire broke out from across the tram street. With the flames advancing swiftly, they had no moment to retrieve anything and were forced to search for a boat to escape. The boat they had initially secured became unusable, so they obtained a much smaller one instead. Boarding it were her seventy-something-year-old grandfather, mother, and herself—Ms. N’s entire family—and they had the boatman row them down the Ōkawa River. Owing to the multitude of evacuation boats, had they boarded the larger vessel initially, they would have become stuck at Aioi Bridge; but thanks to the smaller craft, they managed to reach the rough open waters offshore. Thus they fled to the vicinity of the fish farm and endured several days without food or drink.

In the areas of Nihonbashi and Kyobashi, the ground being apparently stable resulted in few collapsed houses and consequently few fires breaking out.
Therefore, for several hours after the earthquake, they did not worry about fires.
According to Mr. K, who had been in the Kasima Building across from Shirokiya, when he encountered the earthquake in his fourth-floor office and looked out the window while bracing against a bookcase, he saw—through the fourth-floor window of the adjacent Nozawa-gumi Building—the figure of a woman frantically running past. In the instant he registered this sight, the building abruptly sank downward and vanished into a sudden puff of billowing dust.
When some time had passed and the dust thinned, the former building was no longer visible.
And as far as the eye could see, roofs with tiles fallen off stretched endlessly.
When the tremors had somewhat subsided, Mr. K fled to the rooftop of the seven-story building with his colleagues, but by that time flames were already rising in three locations.
One in the direction of Hibiya, one near Honcho in Nihonbashi, and one toward Asakusa.
But soon, within what seemed barely ten minutes, the number of blazing sites had multiplied to twelve.
After a short while, it had increased to approximately twenty-four.
From Kuramae Kōkō rose a terrifying pillar of fire, while Jūnikai spewed flames from its very top.
(How much the fire sources had increased afterward—Mr. K must not have counted them, or perhaps could not have through the smoke.) Yet even Mr. K, who had observed such a conflagration, did not consider for a moment that the building might burn when he left it around 3:30.
When he returned to the suburbs around five o’clock, what occupied his mind was not the great fire but solely the earthquake’s damage.

Generally speaking, it appeared that even locals who had witnessed countless flames never imagined those large buildings around Nihonbashi could burn. At Mitsukoshi, reportedly convinced it would not burn around four o'clock, they sent their employees home. The shops lining Nihonbashi did not even attempt to flee until hearing Mitsukoshi had caught fire that night. Maruzen's staff left around six o'clock equally certain their store would survive, yet by ten it had burned down. Those who abandoned their shops for the suburbs fared well, but residents clinging to belief in their neighborhood's safety—waiting until flames arrived—found themselves either dying in smoke-choked chaos amid carts piled with belongings or discarding possessions to flee bare-handed. According to Mr. S, who fortunately reached Marunouchi, pulling a cart through Uogashi's three or four blocks took over an hour. My relative M recounted similar conditions in Ginza. The nearest fire raged in Hibiya, separated from them by a canal. Nobody imagined flames could cross it. Thus when evening brought fire leaping the waterway and they fled in panic, they barely salvaged belongings before their homes ignited. Yet even then, never dreaming flames would reach Tsukiji's Suikosha building beyond two moats, they transported salvaged goods there alongside Ginza's shops—only to see everything reduced to ashes.

No one comprehended that the intense heat of the great fire could scorch objects several blocks away, that the violent winds stirred by the conflagration could capriciously shift direction, or that these forces could escalate into massive whirlwinds powerful enough to lift freight cars.
The deaths of many people in Honjo were likely also a result of this.
It was reported that police officers rode bicycles around announcing, “Flee to the site of the Clothing Depot!”
Undoubtedly, that was an appropriate recommendation anyone would have approved beforehand.
However, for the intense heat of that great fire raging through countless wooden houses, an open space of about three blocks square or a river two blocks wide amounted to nothing.
The people who happened to live in Honjo became victims of this human ignorance, but those in the unscathed Yamate area were no different in their lack of understanding.

In this way, because people initially failed to comprehend that a great catastrophe had occurred, they were gradually engulfed by ever-larger disasters.
However, there was yet another misfortune that compounded this.
This lay in how people’s spirits, shaken by the earthquake, had lost all capacity for resistance from the outset.
The fires that broke out across various locations after the quake could have been partially extinguished if addressed swiftly.
Yet instead of uniting to combat the flames, people thought only of flight.
The earthquake had already compelled their minds toward “escape.”
This collapse of resilience, coupled with their failure to grasp the fire’s true scale, appears to have fueled the conflagration’s growth.
In other words, one might say their initial impulse to flee ultimately forged an inferno so vast that no escape remained possible.

If the Tokyo earthquake had been as violent as those in Yokohama and Shonan region—causing most houses to collapse—what would have happened? It was exactly lunchtime when countless homes contained active hearths．Fires must surely have erupted across dozens of locations within a single ward．Conflagrations matching Yokohama’s rapid spread during this disaster would have consumed Nihonbashi，Kyobashi，Kanda，Asakusa，and Shitaya．Encircling these districts，Yamate’s lowlands—Shiba，Azabu，Akasaka，Yotsuya，Ushigome，Koishikawa，Hongō—would likewise have ignited．Wouldn’t Honjo’s tragedy then have repeated across all downtown areas？Wouldn’t multitudes perished in fire whirlwinds like those at the Clothing Depot？Our escape from catastrophe owed nothing to human agency—only fortune’s whim that tremors stayed below critical force．Yet stronger quakes may strike decades hence．We now hold knowledge hard-won through fire．I maintain no moment exists but now to commence averting such disasters．

IV

It was much later that we in the suburbs became aware of this great fire.

We, who had mistaken the cumulonimbus cloud visible to the south for Ōshima's eruption smoke, had assumed it would naturally drift from south to north.
However, probably past two o'clock, an even larger cumulonimbus cloud appeared northeastward from Sendagaya.
We could not consider that eruption smoke either, so we speculated among ourselves that it was likely just an ordinary evening storm cloud.
Before long, a roaring sound resembling thunder emerged from within that cloud.
Unable to enter our homes for fear of earthquakes, we thought it unbearable to be caught in an evening shower there.
So we watched this cloud with unease.
When observing the cloud's movement, it did not seem to approach us at all.
Yet it moved neither right nor left.
The head portion remained nearly stationary, while clouds around what might be called its chest area appeared to drift left to right.
No sooner would we notice this than some clouds seemed to move right to left.
After some time passed, we began sensing something strange about these cumulonimbus formations.
When I considered this while observing, the intermittent roars lacked thunder's deep reverberation, nor could we distinguish whether these were storm clouds or if the earlier ones had truly been Ōshima's eruption smoke.
Both appeared identical in nature.

I went out to the street again to investigate the situation.
There, though I forget whom I heard it from, I was told that the smoke to the south was from an explosion at Meguro’s gunpowder warehouse and that the smoke to the northeast was from an explosion at the artillery arsenal.
It was later discovered that both explosions were fabrications, but at that moment, I immediately believed in the Meguro warehouse explosion.
That seemed far more reasonable than Ōshima’s eruption.
Of course Ōshima’s smoke couldn’t have arrived so quickly—I thought—it was my own ignorance that had mistaken smoke one mile away for smoke thirty miles distant.
As for the artillery arsenal, I thought I had heard the explosion after noticing that new cumulonimbus cloud; while there were aspects that didn’t quite add up, in the end I believed that too.
Thus, for about an hour, I had been satisfied with this explanation.

However, the dusky smoke from fires visible at the base of these explosion plumes showed no sign of abating, no matter how much time passed. Rather, it seemed only to grow more intense. And so—probably around three-thirty or four o’clock—I went out to the railway crossing to ask those streaming back from Tokyo about the state of the fires. There, the old crossing guard relayed what he had heard from passersby: Kanda was engulfed in a great fire; Hibiya too burned fiercely; Nihonbashi, Asakusa, Hongo, Kojimachi—all were aflame. That cloud was fire smoke.

It was at this moment that I was dumbfounded by the great fire.
So that cumulonimbus cloud might indeed be smoke from the fires.
This was no ordinary conflagration.
There was no water in the water supply.
They could not be extinguished.
There was no telling how far they would spread.
But even as I thought this, I still could not imagine that the fires were so ferocious.
I clung to the belief that they would stop where there were moats and that fireproof buildings would not burn.

Around this time, rumors of fires began to spread.
We heard these rumors half in doubt—that fires were spreading in all directions centered on Suda-cho; that the Metropolitan Police Department and Imperial Theater were burning; that the university in Hongo had burned down.
Yet on the other hand, threatened by the earthquake, we did not even feel inclined to walk to the fire site to confirm it ourselves.
We could only gaze up at the cumulonimbus-like smoke from the fires, shut in by an indescribable sense of unease.
The sky was beautifully clear, and the sun shone brightly.
The wind was a faint breeze, barely perceptible against the skin.
There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary visible in the surroundings.
Yet this ordinarily quiet nature seemed somehow eerie.
It was an eeriness akin to a beautiful courtesan who would later reveal her monstrous true nature.
Since noon, our sense of time had been thrown into disarray, leaving us with a peculiar feeling—as though time itself had halted at some fixed point and stagnated, or as if bound by a sorcerer’s incantation.

By evening, the great cumulonimbus cloud to the south had vanished unnoticed, while the towering cumulonimbus cloud in the northeast shifted slightly eastward and swelled ever larger.
As the sun sank lower, the cloud bases began to flush red.
After sunset, the lower half of smoke clouds stretching from south to northeast glowed crimson across their entire breadth, while at their roots flames surged with dreadful force.
The area spanning east to northeast proved especially horrifying.
When we later pieced it together, this direction overlapped with Nihonbashi, Kanda, Asakusa, Honjo, and other districts.
People terrified by this spectacle traded rumors of encroaching fires—so much so that even their families packed evacuation bundles while they were out surveying the flames.

After hanging a mosquito net beside a tree in the vacant lot and putting the children to sleep, we spent the night blankly gazing at this fire by the eggplant field.
It was precisely the sixteenth night of the lunar month. The moon, having revealed its crimson form through the smoke, now cast its white light upon the massive cloud masses crowning the smoke after breaking free from it.
In this area under the forest shade too, the moonlight and the brightness of the fire’s flames intermingled.
With shrunken hearts, we could only cling to the hope that this fire would diminish, but rather, it seemed to grow increasingly fierce and spread further.
For the first time, we came to comprehend the true ferocity of what a great fire could be.
At this rate, it would burn everything without leaving a single thing behind.
Human power could no longer achieve anything.
So this was what earthquake fires truly were.
That was something entirely different from the fires we had imagined—it was a full ten hours after the conflagration began that we first began to grasp this truth.

V

The next morning, Neighbor Mr.F—who had gone to Hongo during the night—returned and told us that Koishikawa and Kojimachi were burning.
Shinjo, a neighbor who had gone to Marunouchi to search for relatives in Nihonbashi, described the tragic scene of burned corpses lying piled at Gofukubashi.
He also said that the fire in Kojimachi was spreading toward Yotsuya.
When we looked, smoke from the fires still rose vigorously.
We imagined flames engulfing the entire Yamanote area—through Hongo, Koishikawa, Ushigome, and Yotsuya.
When we stepped outside, exhausted evacuees trudged past—some carrying children on their frail backs, others clutching bundles while leading small children by the hand.
Some had loaded handcarts with belongings and perched elderly relatives atop them.
All bore a dusky gray stain on their clothes and skin—perhaps from passing through smoke.
Seeing them filled me with heartrending pity even as I felt dread that we too would soon flee like this.
The great fire’s horror now pressed upon us as reality.

When we later went to see, we found that by walking along the outer moat from Yotsuya Mitsuke to Iidabashi, one could pass without seeing any burned ruins. Furthermore, from Aoyama-dori Avenue through Roppongi to Shiba Park, it was also possible. However, we did not know this then. Having heard that the Edogawa River banks had burned through, we believed that the elevated areas on both its banks—Koishikawa and Ushigome—were now burning. We became convinced that from Kojimachi-dori Avenue the fires were spreading through Yotsuya, and southward to Shiba and Azabu. We went to the railway crossing multiple times and questioned passersby, but every account reinforced this belief. Even when we heard martial law had been declared and the military was working to fight the fires, we who trembled before the great conflagration found it utterly inconceivable that these flames could be contained. Thus we feared the fire would reach Sendagaya—approaching from Yotsuya on one side and through Akasaka on the other. Though we told ourselves it couldn’t be possible, this dread steadily mounted until evening on the second day.

On the other hand, on this day we had already been alerted about the food shortage.
Rice was no longer obtainable.
American flour was useless too.
Only a small amount of dried udon and sweet potatoes had been secured.
Even if these weren't burned, we would have to stretch them as sweet potato porridge for the time being.
But even that wouldn't last long.
After that would come starvation.
At that time, we never imagined provisions would be rushed from Kansai so quickly; anticipating a period without food, we considered countermeasures.
But there were no means available.
We found ourselves forced to resolve to face the peril of starvation.

On that anxious day, as evening drew near, rumors of Korean arson began to spread.
Rather than attempting to verify their truth, we were suddenly seized by an impulse to resist them.
Until now, we had been trembling and battling against the irresistible force of natural disasters, but at this moment, our mental stance suddenly shifted from passive to active.
I changed into Western clothes, put on shoes, and prepared myself.
I brought out rice, sweet potatoes, and sweets for the children, and instructed them that in case of fire, they should take only these and flee to Meiji Shrine.
As dusk fell, I ushered the women and children into a hastily erected tent, then took up guard outside with a wooden sword.

The moon had not yet risen, and the area was faintly visible by the fire’s light.
A figure came clattering from beside the house toward the vacant lot.
Upon looking, it was my wife’s younger sister who lived in Aoyama.
Though due to give birth this very month, she was panting heavily with a three-year-old girl on her back.
At this sight, I was startled.
When I asked if flames were approaching, she said it wasn’t that—but with arsonists causing unrest, fires might erupt at any moment.
There were absolutely no rickshaws or automobiles to be had; the child refused to let anyone else carry her in her fright, so she’d been forced to bring her here on her own back.
The young man who had escorted her turned back to retrieve their luggage from the street.
We grew suddenly tense, sensing danger drawing near.
Just then two youths came rushing into the vacant lot—carrying a trunk slung between them on a pole—and shouted in frantic voices, “Put out the fire! Put out the fire!”
Not recognizing them as the same young men from before, we felt some calamity had occurred.
We became convinced arsonists and murderers were closing in upon us.
For me, this moment became the most dreadful of all impressions left by those rumors.
Of course there had been no fires to extinguish nor any approaching arsonists—yet through this we were instantly infected by the panic convulsing the entire city.

Throughout the night, shouts of someone chasing something could be heard here and there.
In my view, those were the cries of hearts shriveled by disaster rebelling and resisting.
Right around that first night when this spirit of resistance reached its peak, the flames in the eastern skies gradually began to subside, and by around midnight, the redness in the air faded considerably.
Finally around that time, we recalled that the fear of the fires spreading was likely gone.
However, the smoke was still rising.
The time when we felt complete relief was around four o’clock at dawn, when the glow of the fire was no longer visible anywhere.

The morning of the third day gave a buoyant impression that the calamity had finally ceased. Even someone as timid as I felt compelled that day to inquire after the safety of relatives and friends. I began with the direction that seemed to have burned first. As I walked along the street, evacuees in soiled yukata were still quite numerous—heedless of their appearance, dragging their feet as they went. People heading toward Tokyo, too—those who seemed to be searching for others—were frequently noticeable. Everything manifested pure human suffering, stripped of all ornamentation. I found myself gripped by an urgent compulsion to share in that suffering. But that was not mine alone. It seemed that every human being in sight shared that same state of mind. It felt as though human hearts, once bound by natural disasters, were now surging vigorously over the entire town. Until I reached Shiochō in Yotsuya, I was still able to maintain some composure. When I first spoke to a stranger in Shiochō, tears welled up in my eyes for reasons I couldn’t fathom. I could not stop them until I reached Ichigaya Mitsuke. On one hand, it was sympathy for the suffering of disaster victims; on the other hand, it was awe at the pure human emotions swirling throughout the entire town. Now, all symbols of profit had vanished from the town. People possessed nothing but their own suffering and the will to save others from suffering. It was the spectacle of human existence that moved me. Therefore, when I heard a gentleman at Yotsuya Mitsuke—leading two children who appeared to be middle schoolers, with a canteen and camera slung over his shoulders—say in a carefree voice, “Well now, which way should we go around?” I felt an impulse to strike him down. Yet on the other hand, even a single kind word overheard in passing would immediately prompt fresh tears. Even if not living beings, as long as it was something that alleviated human suffering, it gave the same impression.

When I saw through the collapsed outer wall before Honmura-cho’s transformer station that the machinery inside remained unexpectedly intact, tears of joy welled up simply because it had escaped destruction.
Moreover, when I read bulletins posted at every intersection announcing that forty warships were racing from Osaka laden with five hundred thousand koku of rice, a shudder of exhilaration ran through my entire body.
Yet even amid these feelings, what seethed most violently and obstinately in my chest was the rumor of arsonists targeting their fellow citizens’ misfortune.

I did not think the rumors of arson were impossible. For it was all too easy to imagine that decadent extremists bent solely on destruction would plot such conspiracies against a city of wooden structures. Looking back now, the power of these rumors was rooted in a psychology entirely opposite to that which existed before the disaster. Before the disaster, even though people knew the possibility of a great earthquake and conflagration, mere possibility alone lacked the power to make them believe. After the disaster, no matter how far-fetched it was, as long as it was even remotely possible, it made people believe. For example, prophecies of earthquakes held no power to make people believe beforehand, but after the fact, they easily made them believe. (On the night of the third day, a rumor spread that a major quake would strike at 11:30 PM, driving everyone who had finally returned home back outdoors.) In the same way, people believed the arson rumors without verifying their truth—simply because such acts were possible, and because those acts could incinerate what remained of Tokyo. (I had heard several accounts of individuals being apprehended with incendiary bombs, petroleum, volatile oils, and similar materials.) And at first, I believed them. However, I have yet to hear any authoritative testimony regarding them. Regarding examples of arson, there have been reports such as the bomb arson at Matsuzakaya; however, on the other hand, I have also heard rumors from Matsuzakaya executives that the fire in question was caused by an oxygen explosion. I want those in responsible positions to disclose the facts of crimes in progress to clarify this incident.)

In any case, we believed the rumors of arson that followed the Great Earthquake and fires.
I think what compelled this belief ultimately traces back to the citizens' own negligence in creating "a vast city utterly unprepared for great fires."
They had been thoroughly negligent beforehand, slumbering atop danger.
As the danger materialized before them, people grew excessively sensitive to it, with numerous instances of projecting their terror onto withered pampas grass and seeing phantoms there.
This could be considered a natural manifestation of human psychology.
However, we cannot deny that this was panic born of negligence, fundamentally lacking sound judgment.
People had rushed to pursue the profits and pleasures offered by urban life while neglecting efforts to secure its foundational stability.
This negligence was exploited in one decisive blow.
And thus minds became clouded.
We must acknowledge this error.
What we require is correct understanding followed by proper implementation.
We were made acutely sensitive to the "imperfections" of existing Tokyo City—from urban planning and social organization to the very mindset of urban dwellers.
We must restore this to proper understanding and undertake improvements with resolute determination.
As our hypersensitive nerves settle, we must not repeat the folly of dismissing this correct understanding as mere hypersensitivity or academic idealism, as occurred before the disaster.
Immediately after the great fire, even notoriously corrupt city council members loudly advocated municipal land ownership.
Whether this argument stemmed from motives of personal gain, I cannot say.
In any case, we had reached such an opportune moment that even these sorts of people were arguing for municipal or public land ownership.
In other words, heaven had granted the Japanese people an opportunity to decisively reform egoistic social and economic structures for public benefit.
Merely restoring things to their previous state achieves nothing.
Establishing expansive firebreak parks in Tokyo City and constructing earthquake-resistant buildings throughout downtown—even these remain the most superficial measures required at this juncture.

To focus solely on preparing for future great earthquakes and fires because we had been struck by them would be to repeat our shortsightedness once more.
The next Great Earthquake in the Kanto Region would not strike until at least several decades had passed.
It was precisely against the calamity of a social cataclysm that might strike all of Japan before then that we had to devise the best preventive measures based on the spirit of mutual aid.
That was the lesson imparted by this natural disaster.
Were we to experience again, in a social cataclysm, what we had now endured through earthquake, fire, and rumor, its calamity would by no means remain as localized as this time.

(Thought)