The Kanto earthquake and the impact of the Depression

What the specification asks for

“Economic decline in the 1920s: the impact of The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the effects on society, trade and industry of world Depression from 1929.” — examined through causation and consequence. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

A decade of difficulty before the Depression

The 1920s were not prosperous in Japan. The wartime boom, when Japanese producers had supplied markets the European belligerents abandoned, ended in a sharp recession in 1920 as those competitors returned. Prices fell, exports contracted and banks that had lent heavily during the boom were left exposed.

On 1 September 1923 the Great Kanto Earthquake struck the Tokyo–Yokohama region. It killed over a hundred thousand people, mostly in the fires that followed, and destroyed a large part of both cities. The economic consequences ran well beyond the reconstruction bill: the government issued special bills to cover commercial paper rendered worthless, which propped up banks that were already weak and postponed a reckoning rather than resolving it.

That reckoning came in the financial crisis of 1927, when a minister's careless remark in the Diet triggered runs, dozens of banks suspended payment, and several failed. The system was consolidated afterwards around the large banks, which strengthened the zaibatsu's position further, and the episode left party politicians associated in the public mind with financial mismanagement and with the interests of big business.

The Depression arrives

Japan's exposure to the world economy ran principally through raw silk, which was around a third of exports and went overwhelmingly to the United States, where it was made into stockings. It was a luxury good in a single market, which is the most vulnerable position an export can occupy.

When American demand collapsed after 1929 the price of raw silk fell catastrophically, by well over half within a couple of years. Because silk was produced by farming households as a supplementary cash income — women in the family rearing silkworms — the collapse struck rural incomes directly and immediately rather than through the intermediary of an industrial employer.

The government's policy made the first phase worse. Japan had returned to the gold standard at the old parity in January 1930, which raised the exchange rate exactly as export prices were falling. The policy was reversed at the end of 1931, and the subsequent depreciation and public spending produced a recovery earlier than in most industrial countries — but the damage in the villages had been done.

The village, the officer and 1931

The worst distress was in the north-east, where silk and rice incomes collapsed together and a cold summer in 1931 produced crop failure on top of the price collapse. Contemporary reporting described families selling daughters into service or prostitution to survive, and the phrase entered the political vocabulary of the period.

The political consequence is the link this strand exists to make. A substantial proportion of junior army officers came from rural families of exactly this kind, and they drew the conclusion that party politicians in Tokyo, the financiers who had been rescued in 1927, and the whole apparatus of parliamentary politics had failed the countryside while enriching themselves.

That conclusion is the bridge between the economics of this key topic and the assassinations and the Manchurian Incident of the next. It does not by itself explain the expansion of the 1930s — the army's constitutional independence and the resource argument matter too — but no account of why the officers acted, and why so many Japanese sympathised, works without it.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1920

The wartime boom ends in a sharp recession as European competitors return. Why this date: It establishes that the 1920s were difficult before either the earthquake or the Depression.

September 1923

The Great Kanto Earthquake kills over a hundred thousand people and devastates Tokyo and Yokohama. Why this date: The relief measures propped up weak banks and postponed a financial crisis that arrived in 1927.

1930

Japan returns to the gold standard at the old parity as export prices are collapsing. Why this date: It intensified the first phase of the Depression, and the reversal at the end of 1931 began the recovery.

1931

Crop failure in the north-east compounds the collapse of silk and rice prices. Why this date: It produces the rural distress that shaped the outlook of the junior officers who acted that September.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• Over 100,000 — Deaths in the Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923, most of them in the fires. (Estimates vary and include people killed in the violence against Korean residents that followed.)
• About a third of exports — The share represented by raw silk, sold overwhelmingly to the United States. (The proportion varied year to year before the collapse.)
• Fell by well over half — The price of raw silk in the first years of the Depression. (Figures differ by grade and market; the scale of the fall is not disputed.)

The people to place

• Inoue Junnosuke — Finance Minister who returned Japan to the gold standard at the old parity in 1930; assassinated in February 1932.
• Takahashi Korekiyo — Finance Minister who took Japan off gold at the end of 1931 and began the recovery; killed in the mutiny of February 1936.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'rural distress' reading: The Depression struck Japanese villages directly through the collapse of silk, and the junior officers who acted in the 1930s came from those villages, so the economics of 1929–31 is a necessary part of any explanation of the militarism that followed. Contested by The reading that Japan recovered from the Depression comparatively early after leaving gold in 1931, so an explanation resting on economic distress has to account for expansion continuing through years when the economy was growing again..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: Japan's economic problems began with the Wall Street Crash.

This: The wartime boom ended in recession in 1920, the earthquake of 1923 destabilised the banks, and a financial crisis broke in 1927 — all before 1929.

Not this: The Depression affected Japan's cities most.

This: Its sharpest impact was rural, through the collapse of raw silk prices, because silk was a cash income produced by farming households and sold into a single foreign market.

Two things students merge

Blurred: The earthquake's destruction and its economic consequences.

The distinction: The deaths and the physical damage were immediate; the more important economic effect was that relief measures propped up weak banks and postponed the crisis to 1927. The second is what a causation question wants.

Blurred: The Depression and the recovery.

The distinction: Japan left gold at the end of 1931 and recovered comparatively early, so the years of expansion after 1932 were not years of economic collapse. An argument from distress has to be dated carefully.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer traces the transmission and then dates it honestly. Silk was a third of exports, went to America, and was reared by farm women, so a fall in demand for stockings reached northern villages within months — and because Japan left gold at the end of 1931 and recovered early, an explanation of the 1930s built on distress has to say which years it covers.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 2 Section B (a) (6 marks — “Explain TWO ways in which … was different from ….”); Paper 2 Section B (b) (8 marks — “Explain TWO causes of ….”); Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “How significant was … in …, in the years …? / How far were … responsible for …, in the years …? You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own.”).

What earns marks: The silk chain stated in one sentence: American stockings to a village in Tohoku. It converts a general claim about the Depression into a mechanism.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. Explain TWO ways in which the impact of the Depression on Japan was different from its impact on the United States. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section B (a)]
2. Explain TWO causes of rural distress in Japan after 1929. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
3. Explain TWO causes of the Japanese financial crisis of 1927. [8 marks · Paper 2 Section B (b)]
4. How significant were economic problems in the rise of militarism in Japan, in the years 1919–45? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. How far was the Great Kanto Earthquake responsible for Japan's economic difficulties, in the years 1919–31? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section B (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Decide it

This lesson feeds a Decide History judgement — a position you commit to, an objection you answer, a criterion you name: What best explains Japan's rise to great-power status and its destruction: the state the Meiji leaders designed, the constitution they wrote, or the resources the country did not have?.

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: Suffrage, labour and the Peace Preservation Law
• Next lesson, in key topic 5: Tenko and the return to military dominance
• Key topic 4 · Political and economic challenges, 1919–31 · Japan in transformation, 1853–1945 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of Japan in transformation: Japan opening up to China and the West, 1853–67 · Transformation, 1867–1895 · An emerging power, 1895–1919 · Depression, empire and collapse, 1931–45