Many people think the act of massacre 6000 Koreans in Japan in the 1923 was purely motivated by the racism and hatered from the Japanese. However, it was much complicated than that and there are more explanation into it. There is a great connection between the post-war economic crisis and the conflicts between colonial subjects and the mainland Japan. Therefore, the Kanto earthquake is like the overflowed water of a full cup.
I see a similar story between this massacre and the Holocaust. It is not a fair combination but we can see a common thing here is those events happened after a large economic and social depression or crisis. Germany followed Hitler largely due to the economic and social santion as the result of losing the World War I. Even though, the WWI created an economic boom in Japan, it also led to an economic crisis as more people go to cities and urban for jobs. Therefore, there is an increasing tension among the Japanese society between the working class and the other classes. There is not only a job competitive, but the Japanese people also had to compete for the necessity like shelter, foods, water, electricity etc …This intension was much more between the Japanese and the Korean. These stresses are very similar to the hardship the Germans face after the Versailles treaty. Differently, the Japanese gained more territories while Germany lost their lands. However, the effect was the same. The Japanese people have to get used to with the Chinese and Korean. In addition, the conflicts caused by the colonies such as Tapany Incident 1915 in Taiwan and the March First Independence movement 1919 in Korea greatly angered the native Japanese. This helped understand why the Japanese people think the colonists are stubborn and dangerous. The support for killing the unsacrifired Korean [which idea is developed from Ryang’s homo sacer] might be understood as an moral justification for the Japanese. However, I think this explanation seems unrealistic and hard to prove. Japan society is modern and civilized and they can be compared with many Western countries at that time, so it seems to be impossible to find a large amount of Japanese city and urban people still believe in that logic. This concept of this idea can be very contradict with the assimilation programs in Korea and Taiwan. That the Japanese wanted to assimilate the Chinese and Korean rather than discriminate them as unsacraficed people.
With these connection, we can have a much deeper and more clear pictures of the terrible events. The material losses and the tremendous (100k-140k) human loss caused by the Kanto earthquake erupted the blindly hatred and stresses of the Japanese people. An angry mob after suffering tremendous losses will likely to find someone to unleash that frustration and their minds will not tell them otherwise. I think this is the best explanation for the massacre of the Korean in 1923.
