Landslide in Front of the Hodogaya Tunnel on the Tōkaidō (1924)

The 1923 Great Kantō earthquake is regarded as one of the scariest disasters in Japanese history. It struck on September 1st, at 11:58 a.m., with a magnitude of 7.9, just as people were igniting their stoves for lunch. In heavily packed Tokyo and Yokohama, fires tore through the cities, leaving 700,000 people homeless and over 140,000 dead. A series of prints based on sketches and stories by eyewitnesses was commissioned a year later by the Japanese publishing business Shōnen Gahōsha.