TOKYO IN RUINS

In 1923, a violent earthquake razed Japan's bustling imperial capital and killed more than 100,000 people. Christopher Harding explores the aftermath of the disaster - and its pivotal cultural and physical legacy

- Christopher Harding

Shortly before noon on 1 September 1923, people in Tokyo and the nearby port city of Yokohama felt the ground beneath them shake. It was not especially unnerving: this region of Japan, the Kanto Plain, stood at the meeting point of four tectonic plates. Tremors were common, and usually passed after a few seconds.

On this occasion, though, they continued - for five seconds, then 10- and were so powerful that people were forced to reach out to steady themselves and catch possessions as they fell. After around 15 seconds, sideto-side movement suddenly gave way to something much worse: violent vertical convulsions of such devastating power that they could be felt as far away as Spain in one direction and California in the other.

In past centuries, some in Japan had associated earthquakes with the restive movements of a giant catfish living deep within the Earth. People in Tokyo and Yokohama now gained a visceral, terrifying sense of why that belief might have taken root. The shockwaves caused the ground beneath their feet to undulate. Objects did not just fall- they jumped off the floor, accompanied by an angry, ominous rumble that was soon drowned out by the noise of brick and concrete buildings collapsing, tiles crashing from roofs and people shouting and screaming.

The cacophony briefly gave way to an eerie quiet as people took in what had happened. Stepping out of homes or shops to survey the landscape around them, they began to think of relatives and friends and the need to escape. As the first of many hundreds of aftershocks arrived, the streets of Tokyo filled with people trying to flee to the countryside. The prospect of further tremors to come was worrying enough; far worse was the peril that some could already smell on the air: fire.