J. Charles Schencking

Having been impressed by Schencking's study of propaganda and the Imperial Japanese Navy, I've been meaning to read this monograph for a while; I now regret that it's taken me this long to do so. Right up front, Schencking announces his skepticism that natural disasters, as traumatic as they can be, have the potential for great transformation. Yes, individuals with a vision may see a great opportunity, but the reality is that the survivors are likely to be most interested in resuming their normal lives as soon as possible. Much of the politics of reconstruction after this particular disaster were driven by this reality.

Before one gets to that point though, Schencking gives one a blow-by-blow accounting of the horrible day, which saw more than 100,000 people die, mostly in the resulting firestorm. It is somewhat chilling to read that there were Japanese observers before the event who saw Tokyo as a disaster waiting to happen; either as a "natural" event or by strategic aerial attack.

However, in one revelation, it turns out that the most shocking aspect of this disaster to the Japanese authorities was the vigilante action against people of Korean descent. Just one of the many things that led politicians and moralists to wonder what was wrong with the Japanese spirit. This is along with hand-wringing about lack of respect for authority, rampant consumerism (seen as decadence), and supposedly loose morals; the Japanese elites of the time were not doing better with the syndromes of urban industrial modernity than anyone else.

The real guts of this book though, are when Schencking gets into the debate over how to rebuild Tokyo, and what it says about Japanese politics and society. To crudely summarize, there was the argument between those who saw a great opportunity to give Japan a truly world-class capital city, and this should happen regardless of the cost, and those who were prepared to limit reconstruction to what the over-heated Japanese fiscal situation could support. This is not to mention the axis between those who saw Tokyo as being the transcendental center of Japan, and those who did not believe that the city's reconstruction should go forward at the radical sacrifice of the interests of the rest of the Japanese population; particularly the ever-more impoverished rural communities.

In the end, afflicted areas of Tokyo did see infrastructure improvements, rationalized property boundaries, and the creation of an appropriate memorial to the dead. However, the vision of providing Tokyo with more green space, for aesthetics, public health, and as a bulwark against fire, did not come to pass. The requisite money simply wasn't there to buy up enough land. This became a matter of much regret come 1945.

In any case, Schencking writes well and this study is highly accessible.… (más)