In Earthquake Children, Janet Borland argues that the Great Kantō Earthquake of September 1, 1923, was the catalyst for a state project to improve the nation's stamina and resilience through the twin forces of education and school architecture. The latter laid the groundwork for Japan's current success in disaster preparedness.
Readers familiar with Mark Jones's Children as Treasures Footnote 1 will not be surprised to learn that Japanese officials and the press in the 1920s put children at the center of their discourse on postdisaster reconstruction. Not only did they use the emotional pull of children to mobilize relief efforts, they also viewed schoolchildren as conduits of knowledge who would transmit disaster preparedness to their families and communities.
Borland's Earthquake Children adds to recent scholarship that seeks to go beyond textbooks in examining how imperial Japan's education system—and total war systems more generally—tried to shape national dispositions.Footnote 2 Drawing on concepts from the field of the history of emotion, including Roy Kozlovsky's work on ideals of childhood in architecture,Footnote 3 Borland argues that the state planning behind the restoration of 117 Tokyo schools sought to build character through architectural design.
The city of Tokyo is the protagonist of chapter 1, “A City at Risk: Young and Vulnerable Tokyo.” Its historical geography, wooden architecture, seismic history, and modern growth without urban planning are risk factors. Should disaster strike, the high proportion of children living in shantytowns in the alluvial floodplain portends a particularly poignant human tragedy.
In chapter 2, “Hell on Earth,” Borland brings children's voices to life through her fresh and natural translations of children's essays, selected from a seven-volume set of 2,186 essays from 196 Tokyo schools, compiled by the Tokyo municipal government in 1925. These eyewitness accounts came to represent the public memory of the disaster, but they have been overlooked in English-language scholarship. To her credit, Borland brings attention to this valuable primary source that not only speaks to child psychology, but also gives unique insight into the mass hysteria that led to vigilante violence against Koreans, even while families were on the move, seeking refuge from the fires.
Chapter 3, “Objects of Sympathy and Specialized Care,” offers a wealth of information on relief efforts as documented by newspapers. The chapter details the challenges facing several child-focused campaigns, such as those to provide powdered milk for infants where water was scarce or unclean, to distribute warm blankets to reduce children's greater vulnerability to bronchitis and pneumonia, and to rescue lost children and reunite them with their families when so many people were displaced. Living conditions barely improved once temporary barracks for displaced families were set up, many on school property.
Chapter 4, “Objects of Investigation and Agents of Recovery,” describes how officials worried about the effects of trauma on children, on the one hand, while on the other hand, they celebrated children's resilience through public exhibitions of essays and drawings. Here, Borland cites the framework used in the scholarship on the children of Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters.Footnote 4 Medical clinicians, teachers, Tokyo officials, and the Education Ministry sought to track the displaced children's mental and physical health and determine safe practices for child-rearing in barracks. The respect they showed children by seeking their opinions is striking.
Chapter 5, “Earthquake Teachers,” bears witness to the dedication and resourcefulness of individual teachers, who were themselves rendered homeless by the earthquake. Fiercely loyal to their schools and pupils, many took action ahead of any government directive. The range of activities recalled in teachers’ memoirs suggests that teachers were conscious of being role models, community organizers, and representatives of the government. Meanwhile, children's essays give insight into the discomforts and challenges of attending class outdoors, in tents, or in temporary barracks.
In chapter 6, “Wake Up, Japan! Know Yourself and Know Your Enemy,” Borland draws on Gregory Clancey's framework regarding the political impact of earthquakes.Footnote 5 Leaders in education saw mass hysteria, rather than the earthquake itself, as the root cause of suffering. For educators, the remedy was moral education to discipline the mind. For pioneering seismologist Imamura Akitsune, what was needed was science education to change behavior by reducing panic. In the end, neither side quite won out. Nevertheless, Borland sees the beginning of a culture of emergency preparedness that would characterize postwar Japan. Imamura's earthquake lesson, reworked as a “beautiful story” (bidan) in the morals textbook instead of being the science exercise that he wanted, still broke new ground by supplying a teacher's manual with practical instructions and suggestions for earthquake drills.
The role of architecture in cultivating modern discipline emerges in chapter 7, “Disaster-Resistant Schools and Centers of Community Resilience.” Borland argues that international trends, such as the Playground Movement, were already known in Japan, but it took the Great Kantō Earthquake (and a few others in the 1920s) to make them a reality. Drawing on Japanese scholarship, Borland describes how earthquake-resistant, nonflammable materials, such as reinforced concrete, went hand in hand with architectural design features to promote health and hygiene, frugality, simplicity, and respect for authority. The gymnasium was the locus for the primary school's transformation into a civic center. Borland warns readers not to conflate the motives of state planners in the 1920s with the later wartime uses of school gymnasiums and sports grounds.
Borland's well-researched and nicely synthesized Earthquake Children conveys a fresh appreciation for the continuing impact of natural disasters on Japan's modern mentalité, viewed through the lens of the history of childhood.
