Cause Of The Great Kanto Earthquake In Japan

One of the main reasons I chose to talk about this specific earthquake was because of the history of the city, Yokohama. Yokohama is a both a city and port in east-central Honshu, Japan. It is also the capital of Kanagawa. Yokohama is the second most populated city in the whole country. The Tokoyo-Yokohama metropolitan area is the largest and most populated urban area in all of Japan. Yokohama is roughly 20 miles southwest of the big city of Tokyo. Yokohama began in 1854 as a very small fishing town. As the years progressed the metropolitan area began to grow and prosper due to Japan’s growing foreign trade market and shipping. In the 1800’s the city of Yokohama was quickly becoming the country’s biggest and most successful trade centers and

This earthquake is also called the “Great Kanto earthquake”. The earthquake’s epicenter seems to be deep under Izu Ōshima Island in Sagami Bay. The cause of this earthquake was a disturbance of the convergent boundary where the subduction of the Philippine Sea Plate and Okhotsk Plate along the Sagami Trough line is taking place. A massive part of the Philippine sea plate slammed against the Eurasian continental plate which caused a massive surge of tectonic energy to be released. Japan is near a triple fault line that is between the Pacific Plate and the Eurasian Plate and the Philippine Plate. This earthquake was not predicted at all, it came as a surprise. Because of this, measures were taken to improve on the earthquake prediction technologies. This earthquake, in turn, generated a tsunami that was quite large. Waves reached the staggering height of a grand 39.5 feet. The tsunami hit at Atami on the Sagami Gulf. There is only one other earthquake, that occurred in Japan in the 20th century, that can compare to this one. That earthquake took place on Janurary 17 of 1995 in Kōbe. The death toll for the “Great Kanto earthquake” was said to have exceeded 140,000 while the earthquake in Kōbe has a death toll of only 6,400. The tsunami that occurred due to the “Great Kanto” earthquake in Tokyo-Yokohama demolished

It was said that well more than half of the buildings made of brick in the area and one-tenth of the structures that had reinforced concrete had been destroyed and collapsed. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, of houses of the residents of the area had been destroyed or were torched in the fires that ensued due to the effects of the 7.9 magnitude earthquake. The fires alone killed about 20,000 people. Some of the fires turned into firestorms and fire tornados. It took a complete two days to put out all of the fires. The fires spread so rapidly due to the extreme winds caused by a strong typhoon that was coming off the coast of Noto Peninsula which brought winds that were catastrophic to the Tokyo Bay. The rebuilding of the city quickly began to help get the city back to the booming area it was. The earthquake causes destruction in the surrounding areas of Kanagawa, Chiba and Shizuoka as well as throughout the Kantō area. Some Japanese witnesses said that the disastrous earthquake was an act of punishment become the people were becoming self-centered and immoral and relishing in their extravagant, lush lifestyles which were thanks to the booming trade center the city had become. However some chose to see the positive in this disaster and saw it as an opportunity to not only rebuild the city, but also to rebuilt their Japanese values of life. However, due to the start of World War II resources and materials were very limited.