The Logic of “Reconstruction” and “Restoration”in “Imperial Capital Reconstruction”

Abstract

At the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake, Shinpei Goto added a new meaning to the concept of “reconstruction”: “to make things better than they were before the disaster.” However, this concept of “reconstruction” was also subject to criticism. What was he trying to assert by proposing the concept of “reconstruction” in the first place? To this end, the focus of this paper is on three main positions regarding “reconstruction.” The first is Shinpei Goto, who proposed the concept of “reconstruction” and led the Imperial Capital Reconstruction Plan; the second is Miyoji Ito, who proposed the theory of “restoration” at the Imperial Capital Reconstruction Council; and the third is Tokuzo Fukuda, a social policy scholar who stood for the theory of “reconstruction” but sharply criticized Goto. The results revealed that the different ways of referring to the concepts of “reconstruction” and “restoration” gave priority to different policies.