This special issue devoted to the topic of “disaster prevention in 20th century Japan” presents the findings of the Modern and Contemporary History Symposium held during the Shigakukai’s 114th Annual Conference in November 2016. The Symposium was devoted mainly to the pre- and post-World War II eras, in an attempt to document the formation of the concept of “disaster prevention”, the responses of various related agencies, changes in international cooperation, etc., in order to offer a perspective for understanding the history of disaster prevention in as comprehensive a way as possible. The present introduction covers the background to the essay collection by discussing the role of historical science in dealing with natural and man-made disasters and tracing the research to date from the standpoint of the history of disaster prevention.
There are basically two approaches to how historians have dealt with short term, catastrophic disruptions in the functioning of society: one being a feeling of responsibility to protect the historical record from the ravages of disasters, while striving to record their causes and effects for future generations; the other being the empirical clarification of catastrophes that occurred in the past based on critical study of the available historiography, in order to verify the historical record for the enlightenment of society in general. That being said, the study of disasters from the viewpoint of historical science was by no means a popular topic within the profession until after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake disaster of January 1995, when the first approach of preservation and recording was enthusiastically adopted in communities throughout Japan. The second approach was strongly promoted in the research activities of such historians as Kitahara Itoko and Suzuki Jun in their joint studies with scholars in the physical sciences, leading in part to a series of reports published by the “Special Committee Investigating the Dissemination of Disaster Literacy” set up by the Central Disaster Prevention Council. Then it was the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake disaster of March 2011 that presented us with the opportunity to reevaluate the role of historical science in the study of disasters, as all the major historical associations in Japan strove to deepen the discussion through symposia and special publications focussing on the history of natural and man-made disasters, while on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake around September 2013, museums and libraries throughout the country designed and built special exhibits, opening their archives related to the history of disasters in Japan.
What we historians were able to confirm from such events and activities was 1) there is an important role to be played by the humanities, especially historical science, in recording and verifying human responses to and conduct in the face of disasters that have occurred in the past and 2) the need for continuing research on the history of disasters by incorporating the findings of all the academic disciplines. Considering these two points from the standpoint of modern and contemporary political and social history, a new approach to interpreting the development of disaster prevention policy can now be added to the conventional research.
In this present collection of essays, we have chosen to identify cycles of disaster prevention consisting of ① Normalcy, ② Disaster Occurrence, ③ Immediate Response, ④ Recovery, ⑤ Anti-Disaster Measures and ⑥ Return to a New Normalcy Enhanced by the Disaster Experience. Through such an approach, we aim to firmly establish a “disaster prevent history” of the future, by understanding these cycles structurally and holistically from the continuity of the disasters that occurred in the past, in the hope of offering a new frame of reference for our colleagues in field of historical science.

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The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, Japan’s defeat in World War II (1945) and the enactment of the Basic Act on Disaster Control Measures in 1961 were the epoch-making events that led to changes in the concepts of disaster and disaster prevention in modern and contemporary Japan. Based on the lessons learned from the Great Kanto Earthquake, measures were initiated to deal with such emergencies as large-scale natural disasters and aerial attacks.
As Japan entered its era of militarism and war preparation in the 1930s, air defense was becoming more important than natural disaster prevention, until the Showa Sanriku Earthquake and Tsunami hit the Pacific coast of the Tohoku region in 1933, and the Muroto Typhoon devastated Western Japan the following year, turning policymakers’ attention back to the latter, as shown by the appearance of the term “bosai” 防災(disaster prevention) alongside “boku” 防空 (air defense) in such legislation as the Air Defense Law of 1937 and the 1939 Imperial Ordinance on the Organization of Meteorological Agencies. Nevertheless, as the risks of aerial attacks became more and more apparent during the early 1940’s, the highest priority was shifted back to air defense.
Though air defense was completely deemphasized immediately after Japan’s defeat in the World War II and during the Allied Occupation, rearmament and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 made it a prominent issue once again in disaster prevention; but it did not develop due to public skepticism about its effectiveness, given the fresh memories of the failure to prevent the huge loss of life caused by the Allied aerial bombings of civilian populations during the War.
It was from around the time of Japan’s defeat that large-scale earthquakes and typhoons began to frequently hit the Archipelago, as the devastation wreaked by the Isewan Typhoon of 1959 led to the eventual enactment of the Basic Act on Disaster Control Measures in 1961. The mid-1950s marked not only postwar recovery and take-off into rapid economic growth, but also several natural disasters, large-scale maritime accidents and industrial explosions. It was around that same time that measures were initiated to deal with nuclear disasters, as nuclear energy plants began to be constructed. All of these developments were reflected in the definition of “disaster” written into the 1961 Basic Act, in much the same way as the destructive events of previous decades determined disaster prevention policy decisions and legislation in their aftermaths.

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During the pre-World War II era, whenever disaster struck, the police would take charge of such duties as rescuing and leading victims to safety, as well as maintaining law and order in the stricken area. In Meiji times, during which there was no uniform protocol for police emergencies nationwide, each provincial authority established its own procedures and defined what disasters involved, according to their own prerogatives.
The first incentive towards establishing a national protocol was provided by the Great Kanto Earthquake disaster, after which provincial authorities drew up a policing plan with the occurrence of disasters clearly in mind, in search of establishing cooperation with other government agencies and private sector groups involved in the areas of rescue and recovery. Although there were provinces that attempted to define disasters in detail, even with the advent of the Showa Era, a majority still had not set up emergency police protocols. The second incentive was provided by the acts of terror which occurred during the early Showa era. Following the 15 May 1932 mutiny-coup d’etat staged by a group of young Army officers, the Ministry of the Interior put in place the first nationally integrated emergency police protocol that following September. The provincial authorities followed suit by either revising or newly establishing their own protocols accordingly. It goes without saying that police planning during the prewar Showa era was more concerned with rebellion than natural disasters.
The final push towards uniformity was provided by the 2nd Sino-Japanese War. As Japan became more and more involved militarily in China, the government was forced to integrate overlapping emergency police functions and the war effort into an interrelated national mobilization system. In 1939, the Interior Ministry revised its emergency police protocol, by making clear distinctions between national disasters and rebellion into two different programs, and requiring that each be dealt with separately.
However, with the start of the Asia-Pacific War, both aspects were again integrated in practice. Moreover, due a scarcity in police personnel, local civil defense and firefighting groups (keibodan 警防団) were mobilized, and along with the worsening of the war effort, aerial bombardment was given priority over natural and man-made disaster prevention measures.
After the War, the Japanese police agency was forced to completely revise its ideas about law enforcement and reform its institutions. The Law Enforcement Act of 1947 ordered that in the case of any national emergency the prime minister would oversee all police actions. Then with the enactment of the Basic Act on Disaster Control Measures of 1961, the definition of disaster was strictly defined and emergency policing was subsumed under the category of disaster prevention.

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This article is an attempt to clarify the aims of fire prevention during the early pre-wartime Showa era through an analysis of changes that took place in the fire prevention system which originated within the Fire Department affiliated with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Agency in the wake of the Great Kanto Earthquake disaster of 1923. The system itself was based on leading law enforcement bureaucrat and former Tokyo fire chief Matsui Shigeru’s concept of “civilian fire fighting” (kokumin shobo 国民消防), which called for the whole Japanese citizenry to become better acquainted with the basic issues of fire prevention, in order to become the country’s main fire fighting force.
In his overview of the actual fire fighting bureaucracy of the early Showa era, the author characterizes the years 1925-1937 as a time during which those officials went beyond their conventional fire fighting duties by assuming a proactive role in the area of fire prevention, culminating in the Emergency Fire Disaster Alarm and Prevention Protocol of 1930. Soon after the Manchurian (Mukden) Incident in China (1931), however, beginning in 1932-33, the system began to weaken and finally stagnate altogether in 1936, mainly due to a rising concern regarding defense against possible aerial attacks (boku 防空) and the assumption of leadership by the Imperial Army and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government over local civil defense organizations, thus switching the priority of the TMP Fire Department from fire prevention to air defense.
As to the overall image the early pre-wartime Showa era in terms of the objectives of fire prevention, the author points to the 1930 Emergency Fire Disaster Protocol “regime” continuously appealing to the citizenry of Tokyo for its assistance. In order for such a proactive approach to fire prevention to be successful, it was crucial that fire fighting operations have a significant effect on people’s lives. As a matter of fact, since the TMP Fire Department was not authorized to issue direct orders to the citizenry, the authority to take command of public organizations laid out in the Emergency Protocol was not invested in the Fire Department’s executive officer. It was this proviso that motivated the Fire Department to establish direct communication with the citizenry to promote better understanding about fire prevention, thus establishing the ongoing administrative tradition of close cooperation between the government and the people with respect to the aims of fire prevention.

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The present article examines the role played by military organizations in the midst of natural and man-made disasters via an analysis of legislation enacted both before and after the Asia-Pacific War; specifically, focussing on the similarities between Article 83 of the Self-Defense Forces Act (1954) and Article 9 of the Permanent Garrison Ordinance (1881) with respect to persons authorized to order military intervention and commanding officers of such activated forces. Although a great deal of research has accumulated regarding military organization in times of disaster in both the prewar and postwar eras, we have yet to see an analysis of the issue spanning modern and contemporary history, which will hopefully lead to a better understanding of the function of the present Self-Defense Forces on the domestic front. In concrete terms, the task will be to put in systematic order the legislation pertaining to mobilization of military organizations in response to disasters over the combined pre- and postwar epoch.
Viewed from such a holistic perspective, a definite continuum linking both eras comes into sharp relief in terms of military organizations. In the prewar era, upon orders from either the Imperial Army-Navy or regional administrators, commanding officers of military divisions, garrisons, naval stations in major ports, as well as ships at sea, would make decisions to deploy their forces, making it possible for those infantry regiment and naval squadron commanders dispatched directly to the scene to assess the situation and take appropriate action. However, the Great Kanto Earthquake was a disaster that proved unsolvable for the conventional institutions that had been put in place, necessitating new measures based on that unique, traumatic experience in such areas as preemptive planning and more geographically extensive military mobilization.
Then when the “boku” 防空 (air defense) issue arose, the Army and Navy responded with a comprehensive framework for action. Although the basic legislation determining official responses to disasters did not change, new legislation was continually passed along with the ramping up of the wartime regime, amongst which the existence of military forces on the occasion of every kind of disaster was incorporated into “boku” related policy.
In the midst of the dismantling of the Imperial Army and Navy after the War, although the Allied occupation forces were prepared to respond to disasters, the specific Japanese agencies on alert were limited to the police, fire departments and the like. Then, when the Japanese Coast Guard was newly organized in 1948, a system to deal with maritime disasters was put in place, and the National Police Reserve, formed in 1950 on the occasion of rearmament and the outbreak of the Korean War, were soon expected to respond to disasters. While in principle the decision to deploy NPR troops was a very serious matter, requiring a direct order from the Prime Minister, soon it became possible for NPR regimental commanders to make decisions prior to the worsening of the destruction.
Given the above historical circumstances, the prototype of Japan’s disaster mobilization system developed out of the deployment of military forces to deal with the devastation, while what developed after the War up to the present day has grown more and more similar to the prewar system. Like the Imperial Army and Navy responses to disasters during the first half of the 20th century, Japan’s contemporary armed forces have been socially accepted as agencies to turn to in the national disaster prevention effort and have become the organizations of last resort in cases where law enforcement and firefighting agencies cannot fully control the problems at hand.

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Due to the delay between the triggering seismic event and the actual wave, tsunamis can be forecast and prepared for by warnings and evacuations. In the Pacific, tsunamis originating from the highly seismically active “Ring of Fire” can cause devastation in distant areas of the ocean. Thus, international cooperation in tsunami research and prevention has proved vital. In this article, the history of the internationalization of tsunami research and the establishment of Japanese and US tsunami prevention systems within the Pacific are traced from a global history perspective. Two goals are pursued: Firstly, the connections between Japanese disaster prevention history and global trends are clarified, while considering the role of local experiences. Secondly, the role of scientists as advocates of disaster preparedness is examined. Scientists served not only as experts on preventive measures, but also as agents of global transfer of knowledge.
The word “tsunami” is used internationally today, reflecting Japan’s status as one of the leading nations in seismology since the beginnings of the discipline in the late 19th century. Subsequently, Japanese seismologists, such as Imamura Akitsune, became pioneers of tsunami research and disseminated their knowledge in English. In the 1920s, global research cooperation was intensified, though not successfully in the long term: At the 1926 Pan-Pacific Science Congress a seismic data network in the Pacific was proposed, and the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics established the Commission pour l’étude des raz de mar ée in 1931. Hawaiian scientists, such as Thomas Jaggar, were inspired by Japanese researchers to run an early tsunami warning system in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1941, following the 1933 Shōwa Sanriku Tsunami, a tsunami warning system with regular evacuation trainings was introduced in the Tohoku region, influenced by civil defense during World War II. In the aftermath of the Aleutian Earthquake in 1946, the US founded a warning center in Hawaii and created a network of reporting stations throughout the Pacific. To incorporate Japan into this network, the US occupation authorities ordered a nationwide tsunami warning system. The network, however, failed to prevent damage in the 1960 Chilean Earthquake, which became a starting point for the creation of a new tsunami research network and the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in the 1960s.
Japanese and US disaster prevention and international cooperation on tsunamis followed similar trajectories, mutually influencing one another. Tsunami prevention originated in tsunami-prone regions around 1930, with scientists as prominent advocates. National tsunami warning systems were institutionalized in the postwar period and finally coordinated internationally in the 1960s. Therefore, Japanese disaster prevention cannot be considered without taking global developments into account.

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The articles in this special issue devoted to disasters and how they were dealt with in 20th century Japan have taken up such pertinent topics as the historical development of how to define a “disaster” and roles played by such entities as the police, firefighters, the military, technological experts and the public at large, in trying to prevent them. While this research has attempted to offer new possibilities for the field of historical science, let the reader be warned against interpreting these efforts merely as a narrative regarding ways in which the Japanese people were mobilized and controlled from above under the direction of central government authorities. While all of the authors have aimed primarily at creating basic approaches to a history of disaster and its prevention, the latter was dealt with in the sense of “soft” policy-making related mainly to the aspect of calls to human action.
It would be presumptuous for us to announce that this issue now marks the firm establishment of a new field of disaster and disaster prevention history. Without a clear understanding about how and what kind of disasters occurred in the past, the study of the response to them cannot be begun in earnest. Thus, we should promote research on disasters of the past from the standpoint that the history of disaster prevention is an integral part of their history.
Now is the time to begin accumulating and sharing a database consisting of information on when, where and how disasters have occurred. Thoroughly reading metropolitan and provincial histories compiled by local authorities will no doubt lead to clues about disasters that we still know nothing about. Then there are histories of river basins compiled by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, providing us with a region-by-region framework for studying the history of flood and landslide disasters.
It goes without saying that given the far-reaching scope and effects of disasters, studying them requires close cooperation and coordination among scholars in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. At present, joint research efforts involving specialists in the humanities and their counterparts in the natural sciences, in particular, are few and far between, despite the fact that the ability of historians to find, read and interpret documents of past eras should be crucial to engineers and geologists studying the origins of particular disasters. On the other hand, the technological knowledge possessed by physical scientists will no doubt broaden and enrich the historian’s purview of the historical record.

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