In front of the monument honoring the Koreans massacred in Tokyo in 1923 on August 6, 2023. RICHARD A. BROOKS/AFP
Celebrations on Friday, September 1, to mark the 100th anniversary of the earthquake that killed 105,000 people in Tokyo and its surrounding areas will take place again, while the other disaster directly linked to the earthquake will be pushed into the background : the massacres of Koreans and suspects of being, but also political activists and Chinese in the days following the tragedy.
The continued silence surrounding these massacres explains filmmaker Tatsuya Mori’s difficulties in making his film Fukudamura jiken (“The Fukuda Village Incident”), scheduled for release on September 1. The feature film tells of a tragedy that occurred five days after the earthquake: the murder of nine street vendors in the village of Fukuda, now Noda, in the Chiba department (east of Tokyo). The street vendors belonged to the Burakumin community, which was discriminated against because it was considered “unclean.” They came from Kagawa (West) Prefecture and sold medicine along the Tone River. They were massacred by a hundred villagers because they spoke the Sanuki dialect. They were mistaken for Koreans.
As in his documentaries A and A2 about the members of the Aum Shinrikyo sect responsible for the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, Mr. Mori focuses on the daily lives of the perpetrators of the massacre and the events leading up to it . “I wanted to show that good people can do the worst things under pressure from those around them,” he said during a press conference in early August. This only happens to other people. We all have that within us. The triggering factor is a feeling of insecurity that pushes people to gather, which can lead to drama. The Japanese in particular tend to act this way. »
Making the film wasn’t easy, especially raising the necessary budget. A crowdfunding campaign raised 35 million yen (221,000 euros), half of the production costs. In addition, actors had to be found, while star agencies were reluctant to let their protégés appear in films on sensitive topics. However, on the program is Arata Iura, a regular character in controversial films such as those about the Japanese Red Army. Actress Rena Tanaka joined the project due to the war in Ukraine. “I noticed similarities between the invasion of Ukraine and the Fukuda tragedy,” she explained.
Political activists murdered
In 1923, in the panic following the earthquake, rumors spread that migrants from Korea, then a colony of Japan, had poisoned wells, started fires and caused riots. At that time, Koreans came to Japan to work in an industry that needed workers. Four years after the March 1, 1919 movement for peninsular independence, the Japanese authorities considered them rebels and monitored them closely.
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