Beginning in 1960, every September 1 is designated as Disaster Prevention Day to commemorate the earthquake and remind people of the importance of preparation, as September and October are the middle of the typhoon season. Schools, public and private organizations host disaster drills. Tokyo is located near a fault zone beneath the Izu peninsula which, on average, causes a major earthquake about once every 70 years, and is also located near the Sagami Trough, a large subduction zone that threatens to create a massive earthquake that, in the darkest case, would kill millions in the Kanto Region. Every year on this date, schools across Japan take a moment of silence at the precise time the earthquake hit in memory of the lives lost. Read more
Historical records document dozens of quakes in the Kanto region over the last millennium, but it's been difficult for scientists and historians to figure out how often the largest of those quakes, dubbed the great Kanto earthquakes, recur. Now, a team of Japanese scientists has combined those historical records with geochemical and depositional analyses of the region's soil to better pinpoint the Kanto region's major historical quakes. Read more
The 1923 Great Kanto earthquake struck the Kanto plain on the Japanese main island of Honsh at 11:58:44 am JST on September 1, 1923. Varied accounts hold that the duration of the earthquake was between 4 and 10 minutes. The quake had a magnitude of 7.9 on the Richter scale, with its focus deep beneath Izu Oshima Island in Sagami Bay. Read more