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1923 Great Kantō Earthquake
The struck the Kantō Plain on the main Japanese island of Honshū at 11:58:44 JST (02:58:44 UTC) on Saturday, September 1, 1923. Varied accounts indicate the duration of the earthquake was between four and ten minutes. Extensive firestorms and even a fire whirl added to the death toll. Civil unrest after the disaster (i.e., the Kantō Massacre) has been documented. The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.9 on the moment magnitude scale (), with its focus deep beneath Izu Ōshima Island in Sagami Bay. The cause was a rupture of part of the convergent boundary where the Philippine Sea Plate is subducting beneath the Okhotsk Plate along the line of the Sagami Trough. Since 1960, September 1 has been designated by the Japanese government as , or a day in remembrance of and to prepare for major natural disasters including tsunami and typhoons. Drills, as well as knowledge promotion events, are centered around that date as well as awards ceremonies for people of merit. Earthquake The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ryōunkaku
The was Japan's first Western-style skyscraper. It stood in the Asakusa district of City of Tokyo (now Taitō, Tokyo) from 1890 until its demolition following the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. The , as it was affectionately called by Tokyoites, was Tokyo's most popular attraction, and a showcase for new technologies. It housed Japan's first electric elevator. History The Ryōunkaku quickly became a landmark and symbol of Asakusa after its opening in 1890. It was a major leisure complex for visitors from all over Tokyo. When the 1894 Tokyo earthquake weakened the structure, it was reinforced with steel girders. However on September 1, 1923, the Great Kanto earthquake destroyed the upper floors and damaged the whole tower so severely, that it had to be demolished with explosives on September 23. A supermarket stands on the former grounds of the Ryōunkaku, with a historic marker placed near its entrance. In 2018, a nearby construction project unearthed the bricks of the tower ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hypocenter
In seismology, a hypocenter or hypocentre () is the point of origin of an earthquake or a subsurface nuclear explosion. A synonym is the focus of an earthquake. Earthquakes An earthquake's hypocenter is the position where the strain energy stored in the rock is first released, marking the point where the fault begins to rupture.''The hypocenter is the point within the earth where an earthquake rupture starts. The epicenter is the point directly above it at the surface of the Earth. Also commonly termed the focus.'' This occurs directly beneath the epicenter, at a distance known as the ''hypocentral depth'' or ''focal depth''. The focal depth can be calculated from measurements based on seismic wave phenomena. As with all wave phenomena in physics, there is uncertainty in such measurements that grows with the wavelength so the focal depth of the source of these long-wavelength (low frequency) waves is difficult to determine exactly. Very strong earthquakes radiate a large f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tokyo City
was a Cities of Japan, municipality in Japan and part of Tokyo Prefecture (1868–1943), Tokyo-fu which existed from 1 May 1889 until its merger with its prefecture on 1 July 1943. The historical boundaries of Tokyo City are now occupied by the Special wards of Tokyo, Special Wards of Tokyo. The new merged government became what is now Tokyo, also known as the ''Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis'', or, ambiguously, ''Tokyo, Tokyo Prefecture''. History In 1868, the medieval city of Edo, seat of the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa government, was renamed Tokyo, and the offices of Tokyo Prefecture (''-fu'') were opened. The extent of Tokyo Prefecture was initially limited to the former Edo city, but rapidly augmented to be comparable with the present Tokyo Metropolis. In 1878, the Meiji government's reorganization of local governments subdivided prefectures into Counties of Japan, counties or districts (''gun'', further subdivided into Towns of Japan, towns and Villages of Japan, village ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SS Dongola
The SS ''Dongola'', launched 14 September 1905, was a steam-powered passenger liner of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), at various times used as a Royal Navy troop ship (HMT ''Dongola'') and hospital ship (HMHS ''Dongola''). Except during the First World War, the ship's main use was as a passenger liner on the routes from England through the Suez Canal to India and the Far East, and she was fast enough to carry mail. P&O sold the ship in June 1926 to be broken up for scrap. Construction ''Dongola'' was ordered by P&O from the shipbuilders Barclay, Curle and Co. of Whiteinch on the River Clyde, and work was reported to be in hand in March 1905. She was one of four ships built in 1905 and 1906 called the "D" class, the others being ''Delhi'', ''Devanha'', and ''Delta''. The ship was launched on Thursday, 14 September 1905, [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Diet Library
The is the national library of Japan and among the largest libraries in the world. It was established in 1948 for the purpose of assisting members of the in researching matters of public policy. The library is similar in purpose and scope to the United States Library of Congress. The National Diet Library (NDL) consists of two main facilities in Tokyo and Kyoto, and several other branch libraries throughout Japan. History The National Diet Library is the successor of three separate libraries: the library of the House of Peers, the library of the House of Representatives, both of which were established at the creation of Japan's Imperial Diet in 1890; and the Imperial Library, which had been established in 1872 under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education. The Diet's power in prewar Japan was limited, and its need for information was "correspondingly small". The original Diet libraries "never developed either the collections or the services which might have made ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Typhoon
A typhoon is a mature tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere. This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, and is the most active tropical cyclone basin on Earth, accounting for almost one-third of the world's annual tropical cyclones. For organizational purposes, the northern Pacific Ocean is divided into three regions: the eastern (North America to 140°W), central (140°W to 180°), and western (180° to 100°E). The Regional Specialized Meteorological Center (RSMC) for tropical cyclone forecasts is in Japan, with other tropical cyclone warning centers for the northwest Pacific in Hawaii (the Joint Typhoon Warning Center), the Philippines, and Hong Kong. Although the RSMC names each system, the main name list itself is coordinated among 18 countries that have territories threatened by typhoons each year. Within most of the northwestern Pacific, there are no official typhoon seasons as tropical cyclones form th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tsunami
A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions (including detonations, landslides, glacier calvings, meteorite impacts and other disturbances) above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami. Unlike normal ocean waves, which are generated by wind, or tides, which are in turn generated by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun, a tsunami is generated by the displacement of water from a large event. Tsunami waves do not resemble normal undersea currents or sea waves because their wavelength is far longer. Rather than appearing as a breaking wave, a tsunami may instead initially resemble a rapidly rising tide. For this reason, it is often referred to as a tidal wave, although this usage is not favoured by the scientific community because it might give ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sagami Trough
The also Sagami Trench, Sagami Megathrust, or Sagami Subduction Zone is a long trough, which is the surface expression of the convergent plate boundary where the Philippine Sea Plate is being subducted under the Okhotsk Plate. It stretches from the Boso Triple Junction in the east, where it meets the Japan Trench, to Sagami Bay in the west, where it meets the Nankai Trough. It runs north of the Izu Islands chain and the Izu–Bonin–Mariana Arc (IBM). Megathrust earthquakes associated with the Sagami Trough, known as Kantō earthquakes, are a major threat to Tokyo and the Kantō Region because of the proximity to a population center (with over 36 million living in Tokyo's metro area, with a total of 43 million living in the Kanto Region) and the magnitude the Sagami Trough can create. Earthquakes The Sagami Trough megathrust generated the 1703 Genroku earthquake The occurred at 02:00 local time on December 31 (17:00 December 30 UTC). The epicenter was near Edo, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Okhotsk Plate
The Okhotsk Plate is a minor tectonic plate covering the Kamchatka Peninsula, Magadan Oblast, and Sakhalin Island of Russia; Hokkaido, Kantō and Tōhoku regions of Japan; the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as the disputed Kuril Islands. It was formerly considered a part of the North American Plate, but recent studies indicate that it is an independent plate, bounded on the north by the North American Plate. The boundary is a left-lateral moving transform fault, the Ulakhan Fault originating from a triple junction in the Chersky Range. On the east, the plate is bounded by the Pacific Plate at the Kuril–Kamchatka Trench and the Japan Trench, on the south by the Philippine Sea Plate at the Nankai Trough, on the west by the Eurasian Plate, and on the southwest by the Amurian Plate. Geology The boundary between Okhotsk Plate and Amurian Plate might be responsible for many strong earthquakes that occurred in the Sea of Japan as well as in Sakhalin Island, such as the MW7.1 ( MS7.5 a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subduction
Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries. Where the oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, the heavier plate dives beneath the second plate and sinks into the mantle. A region where this process occurs is known as a subduction zone, and its surface expression is known as an arc-trench complex. The process of subduction has created most of the Earth's continental crust. Rates of subduction are typically measured in centimeters per year, with the average rate of convergence being approximately two to eight centimeters per year along most plate boundaries. Subduction is possible because the cold oceanic lithosphere is slightly denser than the underlying asthenosphere, the hot, ductile layer in the upper mantle underlying the cold, rigid lithosphere. Once initiated, stable subduction is driven mostly by the negative buoyancy of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philippine Sea Plate
The Philippine Sea Plate or the Philippine Plate is a tectonic plate comprising oceanic lithosphere that lies beneath the Philippine Sea, to the east of the Philippines. Most segments of the Philippines, including northern Luzon, are part of the Philippine Mobile Belt, which is geologically and tectonically separate from the Philippine Sea Plate. The plate is bordered mostly by convergent boundaries:Smoczyk, G.M., Hayes, G.P., Hamburger, M.W., Benz, H.M., Villaseñor, Antonio, and Furlong, K.P., 2013Seismicity of the Earth 1900–2012 Philippine Sea Plate and vicinity U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2010–1083-M, scale 1:10,000,000, ''https://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ofr20101083m''. To the north, the Philippine Sea Plate meets the Okhotsk Plate at the Nankai Trough. The Philippine Sea Plate, the Amurian Plate, and the Okhotsk Plate meet near Mount Fuji in Japan. The thickened crust of the Izu–Bonin–Mariana arc colliding with Japan constitutes the Izu Collision Zone. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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