The 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake unleashed massive firestorms and a tsunami that devastated Tokyo and Yokohama, killing more than 140,000 people and leaving 2.5 million homeless. The lecture focuses on a little-known chapter of this tragedy: the humanitarian relief operation of the Japanese Red Cross Society to provide medical aid and material assistance to Tokyo’s resident Koreans who survived both the earthquake, ensuing vigilante attacks on their communities triggered by ultranationalist agitators’ rumors of a Korean crime wave.

Dr. Michiko Suzuki is a research scholar in the history of modern and contemporary Japan at the University of Tokyo. She received her doctorate at SOAS University of London. Her book Humanitarian Internationalism Under Empire: The Global Evolution of the Japanese Red Cross Movement 1877-1945 (Columbia University Press 2024) has been awarded in 2026 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Book Prize.