A report from a Japanese newspaper brings new documents to light showing that Japan’s government in 1923 kept tabs on Korean student victims after the Kanto Earthquake. The documents, the paper says, show that the government was wary the students would talk about the subsequent Kanto Massacre that residents and authorities waged against resident Koreans.
The new report from Mainichi Shimbun says that Japan’s Education Ministry set up a “Korean student relief department,” ostensibly to help students in the wake of the tragedy. The department did, indeed, distribute food and other relief to Korean students.
To facilitate this, the department, says Mainichi, also kept a meticulous list of Korean students, including a summary of their “character and conduct.” That wasn’t atypical in Imperial Japan.
However, the department also contains mentions of the massacre – such as a soldier telling a student he couldn’t return to Korea because he’d “spread the story” of the killings. There are also records of authorities in Korea, which was then colonized by Japan, cracking down on talk of the massacre. The Japanese government feared that awareness of the massacre would weaken its grip on the country.
The documents in question are currently at the National Archives of Japan in Chiyoda City, Tokyo. They cast additional historical light on the function of the relief department, whose exact activities were previously unknown.
The struggle to remember the Kanto Massacre
Today, the government estimates some 105,385 people died in the devastating 1923 quake. In its aftermath, however, disinformation spread that Korean residents were poisoning water supplies and engaging in other acts of terrorism.
Vigilante groups, with the help of police and the military, slaughtered thousands of Koreans based on this pretext. They also killed Japanese citizens, including so-called burakumin and even Japanese people whose regional accents made them sound “foreign.”
The Japanese government has only performed a single study into the Massacre, estimating the total number of victims at 6,000. Activists say that’s way too low.
The government refuses to perform any further research. Current Tokyo governor Koike Yuriko has refused to attend a memorial for the Massacre victims every single year she’s been in office.
Racial prejudice against Koreans is an unfortunate fact of life even in modern-day Japan. One restaurant recently made headlines by proudly asserting it wouldn’t serve Korean customers. (Ironically, the restaurant serves kimchi.) Korean and Chinese residents are also often singled out for housing discrimination.
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Sources
関東大震災で国が朝鮮人学生の動向調査 虐殺→民衆運動発展を警戒か. Mainichi Shimbun (English version)
