Just before noon on September 1, 1923, a catastorophic earthquake of a magnitude of 7.9 widely struck Tokyo, capital of Japan, and surrounding areas. Consequently, to add to so much destruction, fires broke out, and several cities including Tokyo, Yokohama and Yokosuka were largely burnt to ashes. The damage was so much that the killed persons in total amounted to about 130, 000, and the home-lost to 2, 800, 000. This disaster has been called "The Great Earthquake of 1923".
The situation demanded some urgent countermeasures to maintain the public peace and order, and to give relief to a great deal of victims.
Then the Japanese Government practically executed a number of emergency orders provided in the Constitution to cope with the situation as promptly and strongly as possible.
Half the number of the emergency orders then issued were in substance related to the private rights of the sufferers or citizen in large.
Those contained the measures as follows; the national indemnity for requisition orders, the recovery of the lost private properties, the transaction of a great amount of suspended obligations, the recovery of the burnt official registration records of private rights, the financial measures for the reconstruction of the devastated, the national subrogation of benefits of fire assurances, the preservation of bank bills against a financial crisis, etc.
This is a study of the law-making respecting the emergency measures taken by the Japanese Government at the time of the 1923 great earthquake as mentioned above.
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