It is well known as a terrible and sinful incident in the history of Japan that many innocent Korean immigrants and some socialist persons were killed after the Great Kanto Earthquake, in the name of social security.  However, the Fukudamura incident, which happened at a village in Chiba behind the confusion in 1923,  was hardly known until some researchers had revealed it in recent decades.   Tsujino Yayoi, the author of the book Fukudamura Incident, is one of the researchers.

In the incident, some families of travelling merchants were confused with Korean because of their “strange” local accent, and then murdered.   Ten people including  a pregnant woman fell victim.  It resulted from complex discrimination in Japan against the Korean immigrants and unsettled people of planetary life.

Even in their homeland, the victims were segregated as a kind of lower cast.  It was the reason for that nobody had tried to give an eye to the dreadful fact after the incident until recent days.

Of course the incident as such is so terrible and unacceptable.  At the same time, as well as in the murder case of Korean immigrants after the earthquake,  it is also seriously problematic that the responsibility for the incident has been obscured, and the incident has been sometimes legitimated with the reason of the killers’ will “to protect our village.”  This kind of mindset may survive in some part of the Japanese society today, I guess.

Reference: 辻野弥生『福田村事件』（崙書房出版、2013年）

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