The Morning Tokyo Burned: Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923

At noon on September 1, 1923, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake shattered Tokyo and Yokohama, igniting a firestorm that consumed nearly half the capital in under forty-eight hours. Within the first hour, cooking fires in thousands of toppled homes became a single, unstoppable conflagration that killed an estimated 105,000 people-many of them incinerated where they stood.This account includes an original map of the disaster zone and data-rich tables and timelines that trace the earthquake's progression, the fire's spread, and the breakdown of relief efforts. Anecdotes are sourced to contemporary accounts and primary documents by name, from survivor diaries to official reports, giving a clear, human-scale view of how the catastrophe unfolded.For readers of narrative nonfiction and popular history who want the concrete details behind one of the twentieth century's deadliest urban disasters.