Teito Monogatari:
The Tale of the Imperial Capital
Part 3: The Book of Catastrophe
Author: Hiroshi Aramata
Part 2: The Imperial Capital is Destroyed
Chapter 2: Terada Torahiko During the Earthquake
A little before noon that day, Terada Torahiko was dining at a restaurant in Ueno with his friend, the painter Tsuda Seifū. The Nika Exhibition had brought Torahiko to the city. He had just sipped his tea when the violent earthquake struck.
There was a terrible roaring sound. The second-floor dining room convulsed. People screamed and rose from their chairs all at once.
The ceiling chandelier swayed violently like a small boat abandoned in stormy weather. The window glass shattered.
Torahiko gripped his knife and clung to the table, lowering his body and looking upward. There was no chandelier above his head, fortunately.
A second tremor struck. The large dining table slid across the unstable floor. Torahiko braced his feet and prevented the table from sliding too far away from him.
A waiter threw down his tray and hurried toward the exit. The guests ran between the tables like a rushing stream, heading downstairs.
Torahiko looked around. Only himself, the painter Mr. Tsuda, a married couple near the center of the room, and two or three waiters remained on the second floor.
“Everyone,” Torahiko said in a loud voice. “You should not move. This place is safe.”
The couple tried to rise, overwhelmed by fear, but his voice stopped them. They were rooted to the spot.
“Watch your heads. Get under the tables.”
A huge chandelier fell to the floor. Shattered glass and hot wax flew and sprayed in all directions.
When the tremors finally subsided, Torahiko left the table and hurried downstairs.
The lower floor was devastated. Every dining table had been overturned. Tableware was scattered everywhere.
He suddenly thought of his residence in Hongō. He had young children. Were they all right?
He parted from Mr. Tsuda and ran out into the street, heading toward Hongō.
Many citizens were collapsed on the ground. Some clung to utility poles. Eerie cracks ran across the road. People were still stunned, uncomprehending.
Roof tiles came raining down from above. There was neighing and commotion among horses on the street. No one said a word. The catastrophe was like a terrible dream.
When Torahiko passed Tōshōgū Shrine and peered into the grounds, he saw stone lanterns lying toppled over. That was proof that a terrible tremor had struck Tōkyō.
At last he reached the streetcar stop in front of the shrine. The streetcars were not running. The rails were bent and twisted in places.
Torahiko gave up on the idea of traveling by streetcar and tried to go around behind the zoo. When he looked down from the hill toward the lowlands, his hair stood on end.
White smoke rose from the edge of streets lined with houses. All of Tōkyō might become a sea of fire.
A chill ran up his spine. He headed anxiously toward Dangozaka by way of Misaki in the Yanaka neighborhood, then ran through Sendagi toward Hongō.
Along the way, he stopped to catch his breath and looked around. The white smoke he’d seen before had already turned black. Sparks fell like rain.
On his way to his residence, he cut through the cemetery. Many gravestones had fallen. The largest ones had shifted, pointing left or right instead of straight up.
The way the gravestones had fallen revealed the magnitude and direction of the earthquake. Torahiko murmured to himself as he passed the gravestones by, but this was no time to conduct an earthquake survey.
When he finally reached his residence in Hongō after much difficulty, the aftershocks had not ceased. He gathered the members of his household. The children were unharmed. The house had suffered no serious damage.
Relieved, Torahiko cleared away roof tiles that had fallen into the garden and went around checking the extent of damage among his neighbors.
Before long, an assistant from the Applied Physics Department rushed over to him. The university had suffered tremendous damage. The Medical Chemistry Department was on fire. The library and other buildings were in terrible condition. Fires had broken out on campus and were about to engulf the library.
Torahiko hurried to the university with the assistant.
The real disaster occurred after their departure. Immediately after the violent earthquake, flames rising from the direction of Hakozakichō swiftly consumed the Tōshin Warehouse and Hakozakichō Elementary School, burned Tsushū Bridge, and began spreading toward Nihonbashi Kakigarachō.
At the same time, flames rising from the Honchō area converged to scorch the center of Tōkyō.
The magnificent Mitsukoshi drapery store, a proud seven-story building, burned. The department store Shiroki was swept away by fire. The Tōkyō Stock Exchange, which still recalled the achievements of the young Shibusawa Eiichi, went up in flames. Maruzen, the salon of literary figures, became ashes. One by one, they were swallowed by the flames.
The fire grew into a mighty wall of destruction. The area on the lower side of the railway running from Shinagawa through Senju was completely engulfed. The enormous flames leapfrogged over the few remaining moats and canals. Every bridge spanning the canals fell prey to the serpentine, writhing fire.
Ginza—the brick-paved district that had given people the impression of a London city street suddenly appearing in the imperial capital—vanished in smoke. Nihonbashi to Marunouchi became a desolate wasteland. Kanda and Koishikawa were likewise completely destroyed. In Asakusa, the twelve-story Cloud-Surpassing Tower—a symbol of the imperial capital—snapped in the middle and collapsed.
Then Hanzōmon through Kōjimachi to Kudan burst into flames. Fire pressed to the very edge of the imperial palace.
At dusk on September 1, Terada Torahiko stood on a hill in Hongō, gazing over the sea of flames. He recalled the omens of disaster like a man possessed.
The Great Fire of London in 1666. Professor Imamura’s theory, advanced at the end of the Meiji period, of a fifty-year cycle of great earthquakes. The vague anxiety he himself had felt this morning.
All the omens merged in Torahiko’s mind as he took in the terrible tragedy before him. A great earthquake had destroyed the imperial capital.
Translator's Note
The Nika Association was founded in 1914 by pioneering Western-style painters who broke away from the traditional, government-run Bunten exhibition. The exhibition sponsored by the association is still held annually in Japan.
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