In Los Angeles, as militarized, racist federal agents attack: The significance of Japan’s Kantō Massacre

On Sept. 1, 1923, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the Kanto region of Japan, claiming the lives of more than 105,000. Conveniently concealed behind the death toll of the Great Kantō Earthquake was the massacre of over 6,000 Koreans and more than 800 Chinese, based solely on their ethnicity. 

In the aftermath of the quake, false rumors were spread by the Japanese authorities that the Koreans were poisoning wells and rioting, which incited civilian vigilantes to take up arms and slaughter anyone who did not look or sound Japanese. 

The large-scale killing spree ravaged Tokyo and the surrounding region and lasted for three weeks, encouraged and aided by the Japanese military and police. A few hundred arrests were made in connection with the massacre, but most, if not all, were given only light sentences. The Japanese government has denied or significantly minimized the massacre to this day. 

The Empire of Japan

Leading up to the state-sanctioned mass killing known as the Kantō Massacre, Japan had been steadily paving the way toward further nationalism and militarism. The colonial expansion of the Empire of Japan began in 1895 with Japan’s victory over the Chinese Qing dynasty in the first Sino-Japanese War. 

Japan continued to assert itself as a military power through the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, colonizing Taiwan (1895) and Korea (1910) in the process. Thus, in 1923, many Korean and Chinese laborers lived throughout the Kantō region; the Empire of Japan regarded them as disposable labor and enslaved them under heinous living and working conditions. 

One could argue that, by the time the quake happened, a sense of racial superiority had been firmly implanted into the minds of the Japanese populace, giving them the moral and racial justification to oppress and even kill Koreans and Chinese, whom they saw as inherently criminal and a threat to the Japanese people. 

International solidarity commemorations

In Los Angeles and Vancouver, international solidarity commemorations were held with two main objectives: to condemn efforts by the Japanese government and some Japanese immigrant communities to deny the history of the Kantō Massacre, and to raise the voice of active opposition to Japan’s increasing militarization in East Asia. 

The actions were initiated by the Nikkei Decolonization Tour, a network of diasporic Nikkei grassroots organizers with diverse backgrounds, including people of Japanese ancestry, as well as the diaspora of all subjects of the Japanese Empire and their descendants in Japan today. 

As such, NDT rejects nostalgic identifications with imperialist Japanese history, but instead strives to strengthen solidarity with those oppressed by Japan and their continued struggle for truth and justice. 

The Kantō Massacre commemoration and teach-in in Los Angeles was co-hosted by J-TOWN Action とSolidarity (JAS) and Trans Rescue Action (TRA), and endorsed by Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice. It was held on Aug. 30 in Little Tokyo, the site of a highly militarized, racist, and unlawful raid staged by federal agents a little more than two weeks ago. 

Currently, in the name of ridding the streets of “criminal aliens,” masked kidnappers are committing daily acts of terrorism against communities of color. The racially motivated nature of the state violence, with the participation of civilian vigilantes, made the act of commemorating, remembering, and denouncing the historical event in Japan 102 years ago all the more significant and urgent. 

The crowd that took part in the commemoration was people who gathered for JAS’s weekly mutual aid program, consisting largely of immigrants, descendants of immigrants, people of color, the unhoused, and queer / trans people who are often the target of state violence and dehumanization. The convergence of marginalized groups and struggles at the action in L.A. mirrored the social climate of Japan in 1923 as well. 

In the 1920s, Japan was experiencing a social awakening of sorts. Certainly not the entire nation, but the people’s movement who were pushing back against the surging nationalism, militarism, and imperialism that ruthlessly oppressed and impoverished those who were at the bottom of the social ladder. 

After World War I ended, Japan went into a post-war recession; people were struggling. In 1919, inspired by the March First Movement (a series of protests against Japanese colonial rule throughout Korea and internationally by the Korean diaspora beginning on March 1, 1919), Korean laborers in Japan started to organize labor strikes with increased frequency. 

1922 saw the first human rights declaration in Japan published by Suiheisha (the Levelers Association), a group of undercaste activists who challenged discrimination and demanded emancipation. Also in 1922, a Chinese student activist by the name of Wang Xitian founded the Mutual Aid Association of Chinese Workers in Japan to improve Chinese migrant workers’ lives. 

Wang himself was born into an affluent family; however, he became a tireless advocate for workers’ rights, blurring the socioeconomic borders between students (the elite) and migrant workers, and uniting the two. In his social circles were also Japanese socialists, anarchists, and labor organizers. 

Intersectional organizing work, such as Wang’s, was seen as a threat to the stability of the Empire and had to be exterminated. On Sept. 9, 1923, Wang Xitian, concerned about the condition of workers, traveled to Oshima-machi (a district in Tokyo highly populated with Chinese migrant workers at the time) on a bicycle and never returned. He was abducted and assassinated by the Japanese police on Sept. 12.

In the midst of mind-numbing violence that’s being launched against our communities, if hope can be found, it is in the people gathering our forces and fighting back. There is nothing more threatening to the state than all of us marginalized and oppressed people recognizing our rights and reclaiming our power. That is why we are seeing the attacks on our communities increasing in scale and cruelty every day. They want us to be paralyzed with fear, give up hope, crawl up in the corner and / or die. The persecution may grow more brutal, but may we continue to stand firmly by and for each other. “We protect us.”