SNA (Tokyo) — From 1923-1924, Admiral Gonnohyoe Yamamoto made a return as prime minister. He was brought in to provide leadership in the wake of the cataclysmic Great Kanto Earthquake. Yamamoto made some progress in providing relief services, but was unable to bring political stability.

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When Prime Minister Tomosaburo Kato died on August 24, 1923, it was not immediately clear who should be his successor, and a week went by without a decision.

Then, on September 1, just before noon, a massive earthquake hit the capital region. Within seconds, stone buildings collapsed in Tokyo, Yokohama, and beyond, sending up a dust cloud the blocked vision. A tsunami hit the coast, and fires broke out in parts of the city made of wood. Within thirty minutes, Tokyo was consumed in a raging inferno, which lasted for two days.

When all was said and done, about 140,000 people lay dead and nearly two million people left homeless.

On September 2, 1923, Navy Admiral Gonnohyoe Yamamoto returned as prime minister. In the midst of such an unprecedented disaster, it made sense to turn to an experienced hand, and Yamamoto, still vigorous at age 70, was a natural choice.

Yamamoto wanted to create a national unity Cabinet with participation from all three major political parties, but only the smallest of the three, the Reformist Club led by Tsuyoshi Inukai, agreed to join. Most of the Cabinet was thus filled by bureaucrats, although many of were notably talented.

The Yamamoto Cabinet immediately declared martial law and established the Emergency Earthquake Relief Bureau, but matters did not immediately come under control.

Rumors soon spread that ethnic Koreans were poisoning wells and looting, and horrific mob violence racked the capital in which thousands of innocent Koreans were massacred.

Moreover, rightwing policeman and military officers took advantage of the chaos to arrest and murder a number of political dissidents whom they had long wanted to eliminate.

While Yamamoto did not support such outrages, they happened under his watch and he had proven unable to prevent them.

As matters began to settle down, however, experienced Home Minister Shinpei Goto, who had recently served several years as mayor of Tokyo, began making strides on providing relief to the population of the capital city and redesigning it as a more spacious and green metropolis.

As part of his deal to bring Inukai into the Cabinet, Yamamoto was obligated to support legislation establishing universal male suffrage for House of Representatives elections. But with the majority Constitutional Association of Political Friends opposed and his Cabinet divided on the matter, the prime minister backed off on the proposal.

Genro Kinmochi Saionji, who always had a difficult relationship with Yamamoto, began withdrawing his own political support.

In late December, as the Imperial Diet was beginning a new session, a radical activist made an assassination attempt on Crown Prince and Regent Hirohito. While he was unhurt, it was a close call, and it shocked the nation.

After deliberating on the matter for some time, Gonnohyoe Yamamoto decided that he would resign as prime minister to take responsibility for the lapse in security.

This he did on January 7, 1924. His second administration had lasted only 128 days.

In the aftermath, Yamamoto retired from politics. Had there been a second generation of Genro, he would have been a natural candidate, but Saionji always opposed the idea. Yamamoto died of natural causes in 1933.

This article was originally published on February 19, 2023, in the “Japan and the World” newsletter. Become a Shingetsu News supporter on Patreon and receive the newsletter by email each Monday morning.