The Dog Shogun

17. The Final Years

255 17 The Final Years “To describe the recent earthquake as very, very terrifying would be a silly understatement . It occurred in the early hours around the twentieth day of the eleventh month when it was extremely cold, but one could not remain inside. The feeling of horror was beyond compare. I have heard of such things in the past, but I have never experienced heaven and earth collapsing in this fashion in front of my very eyes. What incomparable misery, I thought in great bewilderment.”1 The genteel world of the aristocratic Machiko seems to be lacking the vocabulary to describe adequately the horrors of the 8.2 magnitude earthquake that hit Edo around 2:00 a.m. on 22.11.Genroku 16 (1703). Heaven and Earth Collapsing The scholar Arai Hakuseki found his house “tossing like a small boat in a heavy sea,” and, after having his family squat outside on some broken shutters in case the ground below opened up, he rushed to the mansion of his lord, the shogun’s nephew, the future Ienobu. Heavy tremors continued and progress was dif¤cult with chasms opening as the earth crumbled, water gushing forth and walls collapsing , the whole nightmare scene wrapped in clouds of dust. The material from houses “fell across the roadway like strips of silk curling in the breeze.” Fires were starting here and there, and their light revealed the injured and dying as they were dragged from beneath the rubble. Nevertheless, as dawn broke, Ienobu decided he had to make his way to the castle to inquire after the shogun’s safety.2 The castle and its forti¤cations had suffered greatly. Most of the gates and guard stations as well as the stone walls and buildings were badly damaged. The moat embankment had cracks up to two inches wide; major destruction was reported at some thirty-seven places within the castle. There were rumors that the guard unit especially created by Tsunayoshi, the kirinoma ban, had been totally wiped out and even that the shogun himself had died. In fact Tsunayoshi had¶ed to the safety of the shogunal gardens with his entourage.3 The devastation in Edo was great, but the news from the provinces was even worse. Odawara castle and town were nearly totally destroyed, ¤rst by the quake and then by ¤re, with few survivors. A tidal wave had swept inland from 256 The Final Years the southeast and washed away houses and even whole villages along the coast of Awa, Kazusa, and Shimoosa, present-day Chiba, and Izu and Sagami, today’s Shizuoka and Kanagawa prefectures respectively. The number of dead seemed impossible to calculate. Documents and memorials erected later in their memory indicate that over 90 percent of the population along the Chiba coastline perished. Even villages 2 kilometers inland were assaulted by repeated waves the size of “a high mountain” moving up rivers. No earthquake approaching this scale had been experienced since Keian 2 (1649), and this one, to all appearance, was twice as strong, the bakufu’s daily record noted.4 Contemporary perceptions were correct. With an estimated magnitude of 8.2, the earthquake is the strongest recorded in Japanese history. Scientists have discovered many similarities with the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 in both strength (magnitude 7.9) and location of the epicenter in Sagami Bay. Yet of the two the Genroku earthquake and the tsunami that followed were in all respects worse.5 The Dutch ¤rst heard of a death toll of 380,000, but when they visited Edo three months later this estimate was revised down to 270,000. The ¤gure, however, excluded the large number of victims residing within the outer walls of Edo and Odawara castles, the numbers of which were kept secret by the government . The contemporary Asahi Shigeaki noted a toll of some 226,000.6 Curiously , however, this most destructive of all natural disasters in Japanese history rarely ¤nds a mention in school textbooks, re¶ecting the fact that historians in general have paid little attention to it. Although the earthquake’s location is virtually identical with that of 1923, the name Great Kanto Earthquake (Kantô dai jishin) is reserved for the latter, in which some 140,000 people died, even though the devastation and death toll of the 1703 predecessor was far greater. Government Response At this time of crisis, concentration of authority in the hands of the shogun was an advantage, for it permitted swift action...