Kantō Massacre
The Kantō Massacre (關東大虐殺, Korean: 간토 대학살) was a mass murder in the Kantō region of Japan committed in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. With the explicit and implicit approval of parts of the Japanese government, the Japanese military, police, and vigilantes murdered an estimated 6,000 people: mainly ethnic Koreans, but also Chinese and Japanese people mistaken to be Korean, and Japanese communists, socialists, and anarchists.
| Kantō Massacre | |
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Koreans in Japan about to be stabbed by Japanese vigilantes with bamboo spears immediately after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake. | |
| Location | Kantō region, Japan |
| Date | September 1923 |
| Target | Koreans in Japan, Chinese people in Japan, anarchists, communists, and socialists |
Attack type |
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| Weapons | Firearms, Japanese swords, bamboo spears |
| Deaths | at least 6,000 |
| Injured | unknown |
| Perpetrators | Imperial Japanese Army and vigilante civilians |
| Motive | Anti-Korean sentiment Anti-Chinese sentiment Anti-communism |
| Kantō Massacre | |||||||
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| Japanese name | |||||||
| Kanji | 関東大虐殺 | ||||||
| Hiragana | かんとうだいぎゃくさつ | ||||||
| Kyūjitai | 關東大虐殺 | ||||||
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| Korean name | |||||||
| Hangul | 관동대학살 | ||||||
| Hanja | 關東大虐殺 | ||||||
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| Korean name (alternate) | |||||||
| Hangul | 간토 대학살 | ||||||
| Hanja | 간토 大虐殺 | ||||||
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| Koreans in Japan |
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The massacre began on the day of the earthquake, September 1, 1923, and continued for three weeks. A significant number of incidents occurred, including the Fukuda Village Incident.
Meanwhile, government officials met and created a plan to suppress information about and minimize the scale of the killings. Beginning on September 18, the Japanese government arrested 735 participants in the massacre, but they were reportedly given light sentences. The Japanese Governor-General of Korea paid out 200 Japanese yen in compensation to 832 families of massacre victims, although the Japanese government on the mainland only admitted to about 250 deaths.
In recent years, it has continued to be denied or minimized by both mainstream Japanese politicians and fringe Japanese right-wing groups. Since 2017, the Governor of Tokyo Yuriko Koike has consistently expressed skepticism that the massacre occurred.