Janet Hunter (LSE)

The devastating impact of the earthquake, fire and tsunami that struck the Kantō plain on 1st September, 1923 has been widely acknowledged. Physical destruction, death, injury and social dislocation together left an enduring legacy on the capital area for the remaining years of the interwar period. The impact of the disaster on the rest of Japan, however, has often been overlooked. While regions beyond the Kantō area were spared physical destruction and death, they were nevertheless impacted by the disaster in a whole range of ways. From Hokkaidō down to Kyūshū, residents of provincial towns and villages found their lives affected by what had happened to their fellow citizens in Kantō, all the while knowing that they themselves were vulnerable to a similar fate. The focus in this presentation will be on the economic impact of the disaster. I will show that that while Japanese across the archipelago responded to the crisis with sympathy and altruism, their response was also shaped by fact that the disaster had occurred at the core of what was a relatively highly integrated market economy. The economic impact diffused outward from the devastated area through what disaster theorists have called ‘ripple effects’. Japanese reports drawn up in the months following the earthquake show that in some cases local businesses incurred losses from the disaster. They might, for example, have lost export stocks stored in warehouses in Yokohama or could no longer get their products to market because of infrastructural damage. Some were faced by a sudden drop in demand for the product on which they depended. Conversely, for others the disaster led to an increase in profits, perhaps because what they produced was needed for the reconstruction of buildings, or because they had skills that were in short supply. Whatever the case local actors responded proactively to the sudden shift in market conditions, changing their behaviour accordingly; these market-based responses were often targeted on the immediate short term, but there were also responses that were focussed on trying to use the disaster as a springboard for longer term opportunities. I will argue that despite the pursuit in many regions of a ‘disaster as opportunity’ scenario, only in a few cases did the disaster bring about any fundamental and lasting change in established patterns of economic activity. In particular, it did little to undermine the increasing dominance of the Kantō region in the national economy and appears to have had little impact on existing patterns of market integration.

Speaker Biography:

Janet Hunter specialises in the economic development of modern Japan. She has written widely on the evolution of the female labour force, the development of Anglo-Japanese economic relations and the development of communications networks. She is currently part of a research project on comparative ideas of business ethics in Asia, and is writing a monograph on the economic effects of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Her most recent publications include ‘Obtaining Wealth Through Fair Means’: Putting Shibusawa Eiichi’s Views on Business Morality in Context, in P.Fridenson & T.Kikkawa (eds.), Ethical Capitalism: Shibusawa Eiichi and Business Leadership in Global Perspective (University of Toronto Press, 2017) and ‘Price Shocks in Regional Markets: Japan’s Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923’ (with K.Ogasawara), Economic History Review (advance online version, 2018).

Speakers: Janet Hunter (LSE), Ulrich Volz (SOAS)

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcasts