Chapter 2: Japan’s Ansei Edo Earthquake
At about 10pm on November 11, 1855, Edo 江戸 shook violently. Many of the city’s residence would have been asleep at that time, and diaries and other eyewitness accounts of that night often describe waking suddenly to a loud roar or a bang. Although several severe earthquakes had occurred in various parts of the Japan within the previous decade, and small earthquakes frequently caused Edo to sway slightly, the last severe earthquake to damage Edo had occurred in 1703. In 1855, therefore, few of Edo’s residents had experienced a truly severe earthquake. For this reason, and because the shaking took place at night, it took many people a few seconds or even a few minutes to figure out what was happening. Crashing roof beams or other heavy timbers, roof tiles, and other parts of buildings were the main cause of death 1855, so delay in getting outside sometimes proved fatal. Fires were also a danger in the wake of the earthquake, more often to property than to lives. During the massive earthquake that struck the same region in 1923, tens of thousands of residents died by incineration, but conditions in 1855 were such that *crushing forces* were the main killer.
Edo was the largest city in Japan in 1855 and among the largest cities in the world. In 1868, Edo became Tokyo. Edo was the capital of the bakufu, a peculiar type of military government that functioned roughly like a cross between a central government and an army of occupation. The bakufu 幕府 is sometimes called a shogunate, because at its head was a warrior known as the shōgun 将軍 (“general”—short for “Great Barbarian-Conquering General”). Linked to the bakufu were several categories of local warlords, known by the general term daimyō 大名 (literally, “big names”). There were over 250 of these warlords, each of whom headed a domain (han 藩), the size of which varied from 10,000 agricultural production units to over 1,000,000 such units. All of these warlords maintained mansions in Edo, where they would reside in alternate years. The officials of the bakufu directly administered about one-fifth of the land of the Japanese islands and the various warlord governments administered the rest. Because the shōguns were members of the Tokugawa family, the period between 1603 and 1867 is called the Tokugawa Period or the Edo Period. Although inefficient by modern standards, the Tokugawa political system had worked fairly well since its inception at the start of the seventeenth century. By 1855, however, it had come under serious strain. The earthquake added much to this strain.
We now know that earthquakes are all about strain. Many of us tend to think of the earth as consisting mainly of soil, but soil forms only a thin layer on top of rock. The planet consists mainly of various types of rock in various states. The layer of rock right under the soil is generally hard, but as depth increases, so too does pressure and heat. Different types of rock melt at different levels of pressure and heat. We now know that the earth’s crust is divided into segments called plates (or tectonic plates). There are about ten major plates and several minor ones, and they are all in motion, conveyed by flows of molten rock underneath them (sometimes this molten rock makes its way to the surface of the earth via volcanoes). This motion is not harmonious, and the plates or rock are constantly grinding into each other or pulling away from each other. Sometimes, one plate pushes under another. Sometimes they grind past each other at an angle. All this jostling of huge plates of rock causes much stress and strain, especially at plate boundaries. It is for this reason that severe earthquakes are most frequent in parts of the earth near plate boundaries (the west coast of the United States is one of these areas, and so is Japan). #Visualize it.# Stress can build up and cause ruptures in any part of a plate, however, if there are weaknesses in the underlying rock. The most severe series of earthquakes in historical times to have shaken the United States, for example, was in New Madrid, Missouri (1811 -1812), far from any plate boundary. In 1886, an earthquake caused severe damage to Charleston, SC, also far from any plate boundary.
Faults are fractures in the rock forming the earth’s crust. The crust is full of faults of various depths, lengths, and geo-physical characteristics. Most faults are not terribly important, but larger ones that are under stress from movements of the earth’s crust are the source of damaging earthquakes. The earth moves when stress builds up to the point where the fault ruptures (moves) to release the accumulated strain. This rupturing releases several types of seismic waves, which move through the earth in all directions. As they pass through various types of rock, soil, water, and other features, some waves are absorbed, others deflected, others amplified, and so forth. What matters for humans is the bottom line: ground movement. The more severely the ground beneath our feet moves, the more death and destruction is likely to occur. Of course, there is a human response to this ground motion and its aftermath, which can make the situation better or worse. The ruptured fault and resulting ground motion is an example of a natural hazard. The extent of actual death, destruction, and suffering, which depends in substantial part on social variables, is an example of a natural disaster. In other words, natural disasters can occur when natural hazards interact with human societies.
A complex array of faults cut through the rock base of the Japanese islands. Some of these faults are well known and others more obscure. The large earthquake that badly damaged the Kōbe area in January 1995, for example, came from a little-known fault that experts had not previously considered a major hazard. We cannot say with certainly which fault ruptured to cause the 1855 Ansei Edo Earthquake. The epicenter (the point on the surface directly above the point where the fault rupture began) is fairly certain (Tokyo Bay, near the city), but the depth of the rupture is less certain. Despite this uncertainly, most historical geologists agree that the rupture was fairly shallow. The Richter magnitude (a rough measure of the amount of energy released when a fault ruptures, now largely replaced by a more precise measuring system called moment magnitude) of the earthquake has been estimated at between 6.9 and 7.1—moderately severe. If that much energy had been released deep down within the crust, the seismic waves might have attenuated enough by the time they reached the surface to have caused only minor damage. Because the rupture occurred relatively close to the surface, however, the seismic waves packed a significant punch. Nevertheless—and this phenomenon had political significance, as we will see—the ground motion around Edo was highly variable. In many areas the shaking, while severe, did fairly little damage and caused few casualties. In a few areas, the ground movement was immense, and the nearly every building was devastated with great loss of life. There is a fairly simple geological explanation for this unevenness of destruction, but in 1855 people attributed it to other causes.
In 1855, nobody in the world really knew what caused earthquakes, but there were many theories. When envisioning the process leading to violent shaking of the earth, there was a tendency for most people to think metaphorically, in terms of common, familiar phenomena. The emotion of anger, for example commonly, came to mind. It was common around the world to regard earthquakes as the result of the anger of God or some other deity. Japan contained plenty of violent or potentially violent deities, but most forms of Japanese religion lack an anthropomorphic conception of divine retribution. Instead, the tendency was to think of the cosmic forces in a more abstract way, but still to attribute a sense of “goodness,” “righteousness,” or “justice” to the logic behind their operation. In this way of thinking, it was common to regard earthquakes and any other violent or destructive natural phenomena as re-adjustments or re-alignments in the cosmic balance. Thinking in these terms, the re-adjustment might well be terrifying and unwelcome, but in the larger scheme of things, it was a necessary corrective. Furthermore, such re-adjustments indicated that something in human society was not as it should be. Frequent natural disasters, for example, were a classic sign of morally corrupt government in traditional East Asian political theory. We will revisit this point.
Regardless of a person’s religious interpretation of earthquakes, there was a tendency to imagine specific causal mechanisms for the shaking of the earth. For example, suppose the ultimate cause of an earthquake in a person’s mind is God’s anger at human sin. Even then, to explain fully the shaking, that person must imagine a physical mechanism. One common notion in Europe during the early nineteenth century was that electricity built up under the ground and eventually caused an explosion. This notion was known in Japan, too, because Japan imported books on a variety of subjects from Holland. “Dutch Studies” (Rangaku 蘭学) specialists translated many of these books into Japanese. In the Japanese case, the electrical explanation was not so popular mainly because a very similar theory held sway: an imbalance in the forces of yin 陰 and yang 陽.
The term yin referred to forces associated with darkness, dampness, the moon, cold, female, the ground, hidden things, and a vast array of other phenomena. Yang referred to forces associated with light, dryness, the sun, heat, male, the sky, things out in the open and many other matters. In general, the realms below the surface of the earth were, quite reasonably, thought of as being dark and wet—the domain of yin. Perhaps the most common conception of earthquake causality was that under some abnormal circumstances, yang forces accumulated under the ground, eventually causing and explosion that returned the subterranean world to its normal yin-dominated state. Intellectuals expanded on this basic idea to weave complex theories, but nearly all urban-dwelling Japanese were familiar with the basic idea. When the European electrical theory came along, most Japanese regarded it as a variation of the yin and yang explanation.
By the 1850s, notions of magnetic attraction had become part of many Japanese theories of earthquakes. Magnetism was often explained within the broader parameters of yin and yang. In any case, a popular (incorrect) notion was that magnetic forces weaken just before an earthquake. This theory led to the creation of several types of *warning devices* to ring bells or otherwise indicate the imminent onset of an earthquake.
It was entirely possible to combine varying degrees of moral or religious thought with scientific or mechanistic theories of earthquakes. For example, a common belief in Japan in 1855 was that human corruption in its various forms was itself a type of yang energy that seeped into the earth (a sort of mutant yang energy). It was this corruption-derived yang energy that eventually exploded to cause earthquakes. By extension, if society had become so corrupt as to cause a major earthquake, the earthquake was a strong indication that things were rotten at the top of society. Both ordinary people and intellectuals tended to regard earthquakes, strange weather, volcanic eruptions, famines, epidemics, and the appearance of other natural hazards as messages from the cosmos to the effect that something in society is badly out of balance. When these natural hazards caused severe damage and this became natural disasters, it was common to regard them as attempts by the cosmic forces violently to correct and rebalance society. In classical East Asian political theory, such corrections sometimes included a change of governments. In other words, natural hazards were dangerous not only for the specific damage they might cause but also for their psychological impact. Under the right circumstances, people might become convinced that the government has lost its moral foundation to rule and that its collapse was imminent. Such mass psychology might even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This general way of thinking, by the way, is not some strange artifact of the past. Many present-day governments are very much concerned with putting a positive spin on major developments to manage perceptions on the part of the general public. Moreover, consider the political impact of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated parts of Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005.
There is an additional aspect to the process of imagining how and why earthquakes take place: folk metaphors. In nineteenth-century Japan there were a wide variety of folk conceptions of earthquakes based on supernatural creatures or local deities. For example, earthquakes might be the result of giant creatures moving about under the earth. Japanese local deities tended to be hardly any different from ordinary people except for possessing greater power. Therefore, another popular conception of earthquakes was that the resulted from sexual orgies of the deities, whose lusty activities became vigorous enough to shake the earth. In such cases, some people thought that calling out loudly to the deities would get their attention and cause them realize that their movements were causing harm to people. Presumably they would be decent enough to take things a little slower.
At this point I want to emphasize that none of the various ways of conceptualizing earthquakes discussed so far were mutually exclusive or in conflict with each other. Yes, academics sometimes criticized each other’s theories, and they often regarded folk explanations about earthquakes as uneducated nonsense. But the vast majority of Japanese could and did, combine all these different modes of thought without any difficulty. An urban Japanese in the 1850s, for example was likely to be literate (literacy rates in Japan at this time were as high or higher than anywhere else in the world). Furthermore, s/he would have ready access to cheap newspapers. These newspapers were often sensational and entertaining, resembling the tabloid press of today. Nevertheless, their reporting on earthquakes was often fairly accurate, and articles on earthquakes often included some explanation of their cause based on imbalances in yin and yang. A reader might take in the text of such an article and then turn his attention to a cartoon printed on the same page that relied for its impact on the folk notion of an earthquake caused by a giant fish wiggling around. There would be no dissonance. The cartoon’s fish would simply be a widely-known visual metaphor for a process that in more somber, scientific terms, would be explained in terms of balances of cosmic forces. Moreover, the whole event could be interpreted in a variety of religious, moral, and/or political terms. Today, we tend to relegate earthquakes to the realm of science (mainly seismology and the “science” of disaster management). In 1855 Japan (and elsewhere in the world), earthquakes were much broader phenomena that could be and were “read” in a rich variety of ways. The Ansei Edo Earthquake is an especially interesting case study in the far-reaching social effects of seismic disturbances.
Property damage from the Ansei Edo Earthquake was severe, with over 14,000 homes and other buildings being destroyed by the shaking or by the subsequent fires. Loss of life was moderate considering the magnitude of the shaking, with about 8,000 serious casualties in the city among townspeople and an unknown but probably greater number among the warriors (samurai), who constituted about half of Edo’s population at the time. The #Great Kantō Earthquake# of 1923 was much deadlier both in absolute terms and as a percentage of the population. Despite the relatively low level of human casualties, the Ansei Edo Earthquake was psychologically shocking to a population with no living memory of serious earthquakes. Aftershocks occurred daily for nearly two weeks after the initial shaking, keeping
The Ansei Edo Earthquake produced a vast quantity of written material such as official statistics, government memoranda, newspaper reports, personal accounts and essays, diaries, fictionalized literary accounts, and much more. From official casualty statistics we have a clear idea of the rates of death and destruction in each of the neighborhoods of Edo. The damage to lives and property was dramatically uneven. What might have been the reason for such uneven damage? Some historians have assumed that socio-economic differences were the cause. They point out, for example that the many of the warlord mansions were located on high ground and suffered little damage, whereas the commoner neighborhood of low-lying *Fukagawa was nearly wiped out.* The residents of Fukagawa tended to be poor, their houses flimsy, and the neighborhood population density was high. Yoshiwara, the elite brothel district on the outskirts of town, was also densely populated and suffered especially severe damage (even though its residents were not poor). On the surface, this explanation sounds plausible. Certainly a high concentration of people packed into cheap housing would create conditions more likely to cause casualties in an earthquake. But the socio-economic explanation overlooks much data that does not fit. There were many neighborhoods of relatively poor commoners that escaped serious damage. Moreover, aside from Yoshiwara, the most dramatic scene of destruction in terms of its emotive impact was an ultra-elite neighborhood, the so-called “Daimyō Lane” (Daimyō kōji 大名小路).
Daimyō Lane was prime real estate located just below Edo Castle. It was home to major government offices, such as the bakufu’s high court, the hyōjōsho 評定所. It was also home to warlords with especially close ties to the bakufu. The bakufu often assigned these warlords especially prestigious, important, or sensitive projects. Earlier that year the bakufu had completed several artillery batteries located just offshore on small, man-made islands. Built at great expense, these batteries were designed to defend the water approach to Edo Castle. Several of the warlords residing in Daimyō Lane were in charge of specific batteries. When the earth began to shake, the elaborate mansions of these warlords collapsed. To make matters worse, because of the connection with the artillery batteries, the mansions contained large stores of gunpowder, ammunition, and other explosives. The dramatic collapses of the mansions was soon followed by even more dramatic explosions. Sustained bombardment by a modern naval fleet could not have caused more damage than the earthquake did. Just across the moat from Daimyō Lane was a large commoner neighborhood. It suffered very little damage, and, indeed, many of its residents gathered near the moat to gawk at the spectacle of destruction before their eyes in Daimyō Lane. And what about the shore batteries themselves? They, too, were completely destroyed in the shaking.
Socio-economic status was a factor in the distribution of casualties and property damage, but it was only a minor, secondary factor. It does not account for the dramatic differences in damage from one place to another. To explain these differences, we need to turn to basic physics.
Earthquakes throw off seismic waves, and these waves cause the ground to move. The ground motion causes the initial destruction (fires often follow). Explaining ground motion in earthquakes is extremely complex because there are so many variables at play. Fortunately, the explanation for the destruction of Daimyō Lane, the Yoshiwara brothel district, and the Fukagawa neighborhood is fairly simple. All three of these pieces of land had only recently come to exist. Prior to 1600, they were bodies of water. Yoshiwara and Fukagawa had been swamps, and Daimyō Lane was a shallow body of water called Hibiya Cove 日比谷入江. After Edo became the bakufu capital after 1600, these areas were filled in with dirt and debris to create living space. In general, the worst place to be in an earthquake is atop of unconsolidated fill. The reason is that unconsolidated fill greatly amplifies ground movement. *Click here* for more details on ground motion and the specific situation in Daimyō Lane (short PDF slide show).
The earthquake damage, therefore, varied as a function of the soil base. There were three general possibilities: upland areas, natural lowland areas, and recently filled-in lowland areas. The upland areas suffered the least damage. It is because only relatively wealthy people, including many warlords, lived in these areas, that some historians jumped to the incorrect conclusion that wealth was the most important variable. The natural lowland areas suffered slightly more damage, but still came through the earthquake in relatively good shape. The horrific damage occurred only in areas built on unconsolidated fill.
Bear in mind that in 1855 nobody understood any of these points about earthquakes, ground motion, the soil base, and so forth. Indeed, in 1855, few if any of the residents of Daimyō Lane would have even known that the place had once been a body of water. Even someone who did know this fact would not have connected it with earthquake damage. Consider the many ordinary townspeople watching in morbid fascination as mighty government offices and warlord mansions collapsed and then in some cases erupted in fierce explosions—while their own homes, for the most part, received only minor damage. Based on the prevailing understanding of earthquakes and their causes, how would most of these observers have tended to “read” the events they were witnessing?
Although the precise details of interpretation would have differed from person to person, most of Edo’s residents would have “read” the earthquake as a direct attack by the cosmic forces on the bakufu. There were some complicating variables, as there always are in big events like this one. Edo Castle itself, high on the hill, suffered little damage. But ordinary people never went inside the castle, and rumors of major destruction within the castle walls spread quickly. These rumors, combined with the obvious destruction of Daimyō Lane and the minor damage just across the moat, made a vivid impression. Yoshiwara and Fukagawa had no connection to the government, of course. Fukagawa was a genuine exception to reading the earthquake as cosmic re-ordering of society, but Yoshiwara’s destruction could be explained in broader terms.
As we will see, in the days and weeks following the earthquake, Edo’s ordinary people began increasingly to interpret the event as an instance of “world rectification” (yonaoshi 世直し). The cosmic forces struck the bakufu, but they also intervened to redistribute wealth, taking it out of the hands of the elite merchants and putting it onto the pockets of skilled and unskilled laborers. The Yoshiwara brothel district was where Edo’s elite men where to play. It was expensive and exclusive. Ordinary denizens of Edo did not go there, though they were fascinated by Yoshiwara, and its destruction got their attention. It was relatively easy, however, to interpret that destruction as part of the cosmic rectification. Indeed, in response to Yoshiwara’s destruction, the bakufu authorized the establishment of temporary brothels all around Edo. Ordinary laborers enjoyed a financial bonanza as the city dug out and rebuilt. They spent some of their newly-acquired wealth at the temporary brothels. Indeed, it seemed to many of them that the world really had been “rectified” in favor of the common people. The process was violent, frightening, and dangerous, but bear in mind that the death toll from the earthquake was low in most parts of the city. For many of the survivors, the earthquake functioned like a gift from nature.
The general population of Edo did not despise the bakufu. Indeed, they realized that the bakufu was ultimately the source of their livelihood. There was, however, a growing sense that society as a whole was becoming ever more corrupt (or course, to some extent people always think that their society is becoming more corrupt). When the earthquake appeared to single out the bakufu with particular severity, this result seemed fairly reasonable to most ordinary people. After all, the government was the “head” of society and thus at least partly responsible for any abuses and imbalances that had developed. The bakufu response to the earthquake, though modest, was well-planned and effective. It fit into the broader theme of the earthquake as cosmic rectification of society. Although the earthquake hit the government hard, it responded with fairly generous and vigorous relief efforts. Those on the receiving end of this relief tended to be grateful for it and to see the government response as appropriate. In other words, from the perspective of ordinary city dwellers, it appeared that the earthquake had caused the bakufu to act benevolently—part of the broader process of rectifying society.
The office of the bakufu in charge of administering the city of Edo was called the Machibugyō 町奉行. Its headquarters was located in the doomed Daimyō Lane, but, almost miraculously, it was one of the very few structures in that area to survive the earthquake. The very night of the disaster, Machibugyō officials met in their damaged but functional offices. By morning, they issued the following set of directives to local officials and neighborhood heads throughout Edo:
1. Distribute rice balls to the disaster victims.
2. Set up temporary shelters where the homeless have congregated.
3. Render speedy aid to the wounded.
4. Summon the heads of the wholesale distributors and have then secure and stockpile daily necessities and items in great demand.
5. Order the heads of trade associations to bring skilled workers from the countryside into
6. Prohibit sellers from holding items back from the market and buyers from cornering the market.
7. Control price and wage increases.
8. Police officials are to patrol the city, rendering aid and enforcing regulations.
9. Assign emergency assistance duties to the neighborhood heads.
Just because the government issued a directive does not necessarily mean that anyone followed it. Some of the items on this list such as controlling price and wage increases proved entirely impractical. The distribution of food aid and temporary shelter, on the other hand, proceeded effectively. Overall, the list indicates that Machibugyō officials understood the most pressing needs of the city in the wake of the earthquake.
Another important move by the bakufu’s city officials was to order and coordinate a neighborhood-by-neighborhood survey of casualties and property damage within days of the earthquake. Thanks mainly to this survey, we now know the uneven pattern of destruction that corresponded precisely to areas of the city built on unconsolidated fill. The bakufu’s purpose in ordering it was more immediate and practical. Machibugyō officials wanted to know where best to direct their relief efforts. Recall that in the days immediately after the earthquake, a shortage of coffins and wildly-exaggerated rumors combined to give the impression that the earthquake had caused much more death and destruction than it actually had. Bakufu officials were sufficiently disturbed by this exaggerated perception of the damage that they made the survey data public, and local newspapers republished it. This move was an unprecedented attempt by the bakufu to respond to and manage public perceptions. It presaged the rise of public opinion as a significant force in Japanese politics.
The actual relief took three main forms: medical aid, *food aid, and temporary shelter.* Although Edo had not experienced a severe earthquake since 1703, it regularly suffered from fires that flared out of control and ended up burning large parts of the city. The Machibugyō, therefore, was experienced in disaster relief, and there was even a division of the Machibugyō that specialized in such relief, the Machigaisho 町会所. By chance, this division happened to be well funded in 1855. It had on hand thousands of modular housing units. When the earthquake struck, the Machigaisho was able to erect 1000 tsubo (about 0.33 hectares) of temporary dwellings in half a day owing to prior experience in providing fire relief and to its connections with civilian contractors. The modular dwellings were made mainly out of wood, with most of the needed materials available in storehouses. One city official, Sakuma Chōkei, likened this work to putting up tents. Eventually it set up temporary housing in five locations around the city. The officials who supervised these locations established fairly strict rules for admitting people into them in an attempt to provide housing (and food) only to those who most needed it.
Food aid consisted mainly of distributing cooked and uncooked rice. The official who distributed this rice kept careful records to avoid duplicating aid. Unlike admittance to temporary housing, however, the criteria for receiving food aid were not based on how much damage a family had suffered in the earthquake. Instead, it was based on income level and general financial situation. In other words, bakufu officials conducted general poverty relief under the guise of earthquake relief. Why? Most likely it was a shrewd move designed to preempt social unrest. A total of several hundred thousand people received some kind of food aid in the wake of the earthquake. Edo’s poorest residents actually lived better in the weeks following the earthquake than they normally did, and they also tended to benefit from the economic windfall brought about by the rebuilding of the city. Was there any social unrest such as looting or other crimes? Apparently not. All official documents and private observations portray a post-earthquake city in which people offered assistance to those in need. No significant rioting, looting, or other such social unrest occurred. Contrast this situation in 1855, with the next big earthquake in 1923. In the post-earthquake Tokyo of 1923, mobs of agitated or #panicked# citizens, assisted by the police in some cases, #murdered thousands# of minority group members—mostly immigrants from Korea.
In addition to providing relief aid from its own resources, bakufu city official coordinated and encouraged wealthy citizens and prominent businesses to provide assistance. This “encouragement” sometimes bordered on coercion. It was not so much that the bakufu blatantly threatened the wealthy to cough up relief money, but it applied the lever of public expectations and shame. Once a few wealthy entities began to make donations, everyone else felt obligated to follow through so as not to lose face. The press also encouraged this tendency by publishing the names of businesses and wealthy citizens who donated aid, along with the details of their contributions.
Responses by the General Public
During the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, there was no particular response by the general public beyond the usual measures people might take in such circumstances: salvaging household belongings, surveying damage, dealing with injuries, fighting fires, and so forth. Owing to frequent, often severe aftershocks that continued for approximately a month after the initial shaking, many of Edo’s residents *erected simple shelters* out of cloth, boards, or whatever was at hand and slept in them for fear of their houses collapsing.
Within two days of the initial shaking, the popular press began to turn out single-page informational prints about the earthquake. Most popular were maps of the city showing which areas were on fire. These and other items purporting to offer news about current conditions sold extremely well, prompting publishers to produce even more earthquake-related news and commentary. Strictly speaking, the press was prohibited from commenting on “current events” according to bakufu rules. For several decades, however, these rules had not been enforced with respect to information about fires, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters—even though such disasters at least carried the potential for being politically significant given prevailing understanding of the broader significance of natural disasters. Popular curiosity about such things was simply too strong for the bakufu to be able to prohibit news reports about natural disasters. In the specific case of the Ansei Edo Earthquake, the local press took the position not that it was pandering to morbid curiosity but that it was providing a public service by informing the city’s residents of prevailing conditions. Even if the bakufu had wanted to regulate news of the earthquake, it had too many other more pressing matters on which to allocate its limited resources.
Many members of the general public also reacted to the earthquake by making generous donations to the relief effort. Statistical and anecdotal evidence indicates a large number and a wide variety of private donations, the majority of which were modest donations by ordinary townspeople. Those who could not contribute money often provided goods or services. A partial list includes miso, tea, soba, pickled radishes, pickled plums, sweet potatoes, dried fish, straw mats, towels, paper, pickled vegetables, and other practical items. One hair dresser offered free services. Donations were not limited to the residents of
Perhaps the most interesting reaction to the earthquake by the general public was the widespread production and sale of catfish picture prints (namazu-e 鯰絵). These prints were a complex cultural phenomenon that I have written about in detail elsewhere. The discussion here will be brief, dealing with only a few key points. Catfish picture prints were anonymous commentaries on different aspects of the earthquake and its significance. They featured a broad cast of characters, most commonly several well-known deities, generic workers in the construction trades, representations of townspeople in a variety of occupations, and, of course, catfish in various guises. The catfish was a visual shorthand for representing earthquakes.
Why catfish? Because one of the most common folk explanations for earthquakes was that a giant catfish wiggling around under the earth caused the shaking. Did the residents of Edo really believe that a wiggling fish caused the earth to shake? No, all indications are that they did not. Instead, the catfish was a well-understood stock metaphor for the earthquake. By creating cartoon-like images of catfish interacting with society, it became possible to comment on social and political conditions under the guise of producing amusing information about the earthquake. Why was this guise necessary? Because direct political commentary was prohibited by the bakufu, and that prohibition (unlike the broader prohibition against “current events”) did tend to be enforced. The residents of Edo loved political commentary, and by 1855 they had developed a rich array of encoding techniques to indulge in political commentary while pretending to be talking about something else. The earthquake was an excellent opportunity to express views about the current state of society, and the catfish picture prints was the main vehicle for doing so.
Production of the catfish picture prints lasted approximately two months. Approximately one month after the earthquake, the bakufu, realizing their political significance, ordered that publishers stop producing these prints. The prints were so profitable, however, that publishers ignored the bakufu order. Some were fined as a result, but even after paying the fine they were still able to make a profit. It took stronger measures eventually for force an end to these prints.
Many of the early catfish picture prints were *talismanic in nature.* They featured images of a giant catfish pinned down or otherwise subdued and often included a peculiar form of “spirit writing.” Appealing to popular superstitions, these prints included instructions to hang them in one’s house to prevent earthquake damage. Other early prints expressed anger at the local deities of Edo for the mess that they had permitted. Popular religion at the time was a complex matter. The earthquake had occurred during the tenth lunar month, which is the kannazuki (also pronounced kaminazuki) 神無月, which literally means “no deities month.” According to popular lore, during this month, all of the major deities leave town and assemble at the Izumo Shrine for a meeting or convention. While gone, they designate lesser deities to watch over things.
The Kashima 鹿島神宮 and Katori Shrines 香取神宮, located slightly to the north-east of Edo, were thought to be especially important in protecting Edo from a variety of problems, including earthquakes. Especially prominent as a protector against earthquakes was the Kashima Deity 鹿島大明神 (hereafter “Kashima”), who was commonly depicted pushing down on a large rock, which pinned down the head of a giant catfish. Several of the early catfish picture prints express *anger at Kashima* for abandoning the city and leaving an incompetent underling in charge.
Significantly, many of the prints that explicitly or implicitly criticize Kashima also feature another deity Amaterasu 天照大神. Amaterasu is Japan’s solar deity and thus often called the “Sun Goddess.” In modern times, nearly all Japanese came to know of Amaterasu, because the Japanese imperial family had long claimed descent from this deity. During most of Japan’s Tokugawa period, the emperor was an obscure figure, whose job was to preserve ancient cultural practices. The emperor and his court lived on money provided by the bakufu and were subject to bakufu oversight. As the bakufu began to weaken in the 1850s, the emperor slowly started to emerge from under the shōgun’s shadow. The prominence of Amaterasu in the catfish picture prints is one early indication of the increasing prominence of the emperor. In 1855, very few residents of Edo even knew of Amaterasu or the emperor. Amaterasu was a regional deity, popular around Kyōto, the old imperial capital, but not Edo. In expressing disgust with Kashima, however, some print makers praised the powers of Amaterasu, declaring him (at this time Amaterasu was often depicted as male) to be “ruler of all of Japan.” During the earthquake, a rumor spread through Edo that a white horse appeared in the sky, and that anyone receiving a strand of that horse’s hair would be protected from harm. The white horse belonged to Amaterasu. The role of Amaterasu in the catfish picture prints is quite complex, but the bottom line for our purposes is that many of the prints, in effect, demoted Kashima vis-à-vis Amaterasu. They stressed the localized, regional power of Kashima and contrasted it with the greater power of Amaterasu, whose realm was Japan as a whole. This was the first large-scale appearance of Amaterasu in Edo, and a harbinger of changes to come.
Many of the catfish picture prints also described the Ansei Edo Earthquake as having “shaken all of Japan” or having “reverberated throughout Japan.” Why printmakers describe a local earthquake in these terms? We cannot know for sure what was on their mind. Part of the reason is surely that many of Edo’s residents did not regard the earthquake of 1855 as a discreet, isolated event. Instead, they saw it as part of a chain of events that included several major earthquakes in other parts of the country and, especially, the arrival of the American naval officer Matthew Perry in 1853 and 1854 to negotiate a treaty with the bakufu. We will go into greater detail on these matters in the final section of this chapter. Here the main point is simply that the catfish picture prints frequently portrayed the shaking in Edo has having significance throughout Japan. This point, combined with the appearance of Amaterasu in the prints indicates a growing self-consciousness on the part of Edo’s residents that they were part of a larger imagined community of “Japan” and that Amaterasu (and thus the emperor) was in some important way its highest leader or guardian.
In other words, we see the early emergence of a simple national consciousness. I want to emphasize that this national consciousness was not terribly powerful in 1855. But it would grow over the coming years, haphazardly at first, but later under the explicit guidance of the state in the wake of the Meiji Restoration 明治維新 of 1868. Although it would require several decades for national consciousness to take firm root in the rural areas of Japan, it was already in place in Edo and other major cities by the end of the 1850s. The presence of an explicit consciousness of being “Japanese” among ordinary people in the large cities helped hasten the fall of the bakufu and the success of the Meiji state that replaced it.
The criticism of Kashima in the early catfish picture prints soon gave way to a more positive, even joyful theme: great *wealth falling into the hands* of ordinary people. The earthquake ended up functioning, among other things, as a vast redistribution of wealth in Edo. Perhaps the most common theme in the catfish picture prints is that the earthquake disgorged money from the rich and put into the hands of carpenters, roofers, plasterers, lumber cutters, food vendors, blacksmiths, and anyone else engaged in an occupation that would be in high demand during the rebuilding of the city. Even unskilled laborers could command high wages as porters to haul away debris and bring supplies to construction sites. Of the prints depict this process in crude detail, showing huge catfish forcing wealthy merchants to *vomit or excrete gold coins.
Storehouses were an important part of this redistribution process. Recall that it was easy for ordinary residents of Edo to interpret the earthquake as a cosmic strike against the government. The destruction of Daimyō Lane was not the only basis for such an interpretation. Edo was full of storehouses, and the more wealthy someone was the more he would need to maintain such structures. Because of the fires that frequently swept through the city, in the early 1800s, the bakufu mandated that all storehouses be built to certain fire-resistant specifications. These specifications included plaster walls and tile roofs. It turns out that storehouses constructed in this way were especially prone to damage from the earthquake. Apparently, the frequency of the seismic waves thrown off by this shallow earthquake was ideal for bringing down the rigidly-constructed storehouses. Ordinary buildings often contained enough flexibility in their construction to permit them to sway but not break; the vault-like storehouses broke. In terms of impressions, here too, it seemed as if the cosmic forces had singled out the bakufu (because it mandated the design of the storehouses) and the very rich (whose storehouses were numerous and large). In practical terms, the rich had to pay very high prices to get their storehouses quickly rebuilt. Rebuilding storehouses and the many other damaged and destroyed buildings resulted in an economic windfall for laborers. The bakufu tried with no success to keep wages low by fiat. Depending on the specific occupation, wages rose to between 2 and 10 times their pre-earthquake levels.
The overall impression from the catfish picture prints is that the earthquake was a cosmic intervention to correct or rectify a society that had become unbalanced an unhealthy. Medical metaphors were common in the catfish picture prints, which tended to see the earthquake as *strong medicine.* The medicine caused unfortunate side effects (the deaths of innocent people), but overall it was effective. The earthquake chastened the government and the wealthy elites, it provoked an outpouring of charity, and set the city vigorously to work in a rebuilding effort, and it redistributed the wealth from the storehouses of the rich to the pockets of skilled and unskilled laborers.
Broader Context and Long-Term Significance
In 1830, an earthquake of medium strength shook Kyōto, causing modest property damage and a few casualties. For a seismically-active place like Japan, earthquakes of such a scale are fairly common events. Nevertheless, this 1830 earthquake became entrenched in the popular imagination in cities throughout the Japanese islands and even comes up several times in the 1855 catfish picture prints. Why? The answer lies in the rise of the mass media, mainly newspapers. By 1830, sophisticated news dissemination networks had developed throughout the Japanese islands. Rural areas might well receive news fairly late, but residents of cities enjoyed news coverage as fast as anywhere in the world at that time. Within days of an event occurring in one city, the residents of Japan’s other cities could read about it in cheap newspapers. The speed was excellent, but the accuracy of the information was another matter. The various newspapers competed with each other for readers and sales. Not surprisingly, therefore, they tended to sensationalize their news reports. The first large event to be sensationalized all out of proportion by the press was the 1830 Kyōto earthquake. With each reiteration of the story, the death and destruction level increased. Soon, it was common to read reports in Edo or in Fukuoka that the entire city of Kyōto had been reduced to rubble. Though entirely inaccurate, the general impression that the Kyōto earthquake of 1830 had been severe stuck in the popular imagination. As we will see, the Ansei Edo earthquake also lingered in the popular imagination.
There were *other well-known earthquakes* that had occurred fairly close to 1855 in time. The most famous event was the Zenkōji Earthquake of 1847 in Shinano (present-day Nagano Prefecture). In this earthquake, fires were especially deadly, and casualties were high. It was thoroughly reported in the press, but, at the time, it seems to have made little impression of the people of Edo. For most of the residents of Edo, it was someone else’s problem. In 1847, there was not yet any sense of national unity among ordinary people such that they imagined themselves as part of the same broad community as the people in Shinano. The news networks provided the groundwork for a broader sense of identity, but it had not yet materialized. The Shinano earthquake might just as well have happened in China as far as most of the people in Edo were concerned. When Edo itself was shaken, however, suddenly the Zenkōji Earthquake and several other recent earthquakes took on a new significance to the people of Edo. There was a strong tendency to see these earthquakes as purposefully connected—a series of heavenly warnings or rectifications. The 1855 earthquake, in other words, changed the way Edo’s people tended to think about other recent earthquakes.
This newly-created web of significance in the minds of Edo’s residents included more than recent earthquakes. The biggest event in recent memory was the arrival of Matthew Perry, and the bakufu’s signing of a diplomatic treaty with the United States in 1854. The range of opinion about this event among both ordinary people and government officials was wide. Some welcomed this broadening of bakufu foreign relations beyond the traditional circle of China, Korea, Ryukyu, and Holland and looked forward to full-scale trade with Americans and others. Others saw the move to expand foreign relations in a negative light, claiming that the proper role of the bakufu should be to keep such barbarians away from our shores, not to sign treaties with them. Anti-bakufu elements around the country indeed held up the treaty with Perry and others that would shortly follow as proof that the bakufu was unfit to rule and had betrayed the country. Most ordinary Japanese, however, had no strong opinion about this matter. On the other hand, that a major earthquake struck so soon after Perry’s visit suggested that the times were changing.
Some of the catfish picture prints expressed cautious optimism about recent events, and others were more ambivalent. For example, one print features a menacing, whale-like catfish that is actually more like a steamship. Money pours out of the place where the smokestack would normally be located and people on shore beckon it to come closer. This strange beast is a possible source of wealth, but, if the print is turned upside down, a different reading of it becomes possible (and it has to be turned upside down to read part of the text). In another print, Perry and a catfish engage in a tug of war, shouting insults at each other. A plasterer serving as a referee eventually intervenes and explains that he and his peers are grateful for the earthquake and the economic opportunities that accompanied it, but the process of rectifying the world has gone far enough. He tells Perry and the catfish to stop their quarrel and explains that the people of Edo want no further surprises or upheavals.
There is another reason that the Ansei Edo Earthquake seemed especially significant. In the lunar calendar in effect at that time, every twelfth year was a year of special religious significance called okagedoshi 御蔭年. During that year, people traditionally made religious pilgrimages, and in recent decades, these pilgrimages had become so popular and frenzied that they sometimes bordered on mass riots. 1855 was an okagedoshi. Twelve years later, during the next okagdoshi in 1867, the bakufu collapsed. We will revisit this point.
The bakufu was already in financial and military decline by 1855. By almost any measure, the earthquake hastened this process. Although the public seems to have been quite satisfied with the bakufu response to the earthquake, the bakufu had a more difficult time dealing with the various warlords. The earthquake caused varying degrees of death and destruction among this group, who all maintained elaborate mansions in Edo. Arguments developed between warlord factions and between warlords and the bakufu about the extent to which the warlords should be excused from their obligations to serve in “attendance” at the shōgun’s castle and the extent to which the bakufu should assist them financially. In general, the bakufu gave in to warlord demands, and ended up extending large loans at generous terms to many of the warlords. A noticeable slide in bakufu power set in, and by the early 1860s, the bakufu had relaxed the attendance requirements for the warlords, which seriously depopulated Edo. By the time of the bakufu’s collapse in 1867, Edo was economically depressed and reduced to about half of its peak population. Weeds began to overgrow abandoned structures in some areas. Another decade or more would be required to restore Edo—newly renamed Tokyo—to its former vigor.
Did the Ansei Edo Earthquake cause the bakufu to collapse twelve years later? No. Cause and effect relationships in history are rarely so simple. The immediate cause of the bakufu collapse in 1867 was a complex series of political and military maneuvers. But a broader context created the atmosphere in which those maneuvers made their impact. Dissident samurai from several domains, especially Chōshū (southern end of Honshū) and Satsuma (southern end of Kyūshū), undertook the specific moves that ended the bakufu. There were other actors in the drama, including the general population. Throughout Japan, but especially in the Kyōto-Ōsaka area where most of the political action was occurring in 1867, there was a high expectation among the general population that major change was about to occur. One expression of this millenarian view was spontaneous outbreaks of frenzied, orgiastic dancing through the cities and countryside. Called ee ja nai ka (an phrase hard to translate, but which roughly meant “What the hell?!”). At least one of the songs these dancers chanted referred to the fact that 12 years earlier, the cosmic forces shook the shōgun’s capital. Now, during the current okagedoshi, was the time to put an end to it completely.
So the Ansei Edo earthquake played an indirect role in the bakufu’s collapse. First, it established the idea that the cosmic forces had chastised the bakufu in 1855, a view that seems to have lived on widely in folk memory throughout Japan and to have resurfaced in 1867. The earthquake was the first manifestation in Edo of the idea of world-rectification, a process whose logical culmination turned out to have been a change of government. The earthquake accelerated the financial decline of the bakufu and exacerbated tensions between some of the warlords and the bakufu. The Ansei Edo Earthquake was an example of a seismic disturbance that created long-term social, political, and economic consequences.
For an academic study of catfish picture prints, see #this article# (1.3 MB PDF file). In the next chapter we turn our attention to the collapse of the bakufu and its replacement by a modern-style centralized government.
