What 1923 earthquake devastated Tokyo and Yokohama, killing over 100,000?

The 1923 earthquake that devastated Tokyo and Yokohama, killing over 100,000 people, was the Great Kantō earthquake.

It struck Japan’s Kantō Plain on September 1, 1923, at approximately 11:58 a.m. local time. The megathrust earthquake, estimated at about magnitude 8.0, affected Tokyo, Yokohama, and surrounding prefectures. Its destruction was compounded by fires that spread through densely built urban districts, with strong winds making the blazes especially difficult to control.

Modern research places the death toll at about 105,385, while earlier estimates reached 140,000. Fires caused most of the fatalities, and roughly 2.5 million people were left homeless. The disaster also triggered the Kantō Massacre, in which ethnic Koreans and others were murdered after false rumors spread that they were attacking survivors.

A common mix-up is confusing it with the 1920 Haiyuan earthquake in China or the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. “Kantō” refers to the Japanese region containing Tokyo; the event is also called the 1923 Tokyo earthquake in some older accounts.