August 19, 2025

Fourteen Tokyo metropolitan assemblymembers of the Japanese Communist Party, a 22-member faction led by the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and one other faction on August 18 submitted a request to Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko to send a message of condolence for the massacre of Koreans during the Great Kanto Earthquake 102 years ago.

JCP Satoyoshi Yumi noted that the massacre is clearly documented in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s “Tokyo Centennial History” as an “indelible stain.” Satoyoshi said that Governor Koike stopped sending a message of condolence after a rightwing assemblymember denied the historical fact of the massacre, and criticized the governor for opting to go along with the distortion of historical fact.

During the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, groundless rumors spread that “Koreans had poisoned wells” and “started riots,” resulting in the massacre of thousands of Koreans by the military, police, and local vigilante groups.

Since 1974, successive governors have sent condolence messages to the annual memorial ceremony held on September 1, but Governor Koike ceased sending the statement offering condolences the year after she took office.