Impact of natural disasters on industrial agglomeration: The case of the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923

Abstract

The Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923 did enormous damage to industries in Tokyo Prefecture. Around 40% of the buildings in Tokyo Prefecture were completely burnt or destroyed. In this paper, we investigate whether this temporary shock had a persistent impact on the spatial distribution of industries in Tokyo, using ward- and county-level panel data for industrial workers. It was found that while the earthquake caused mean shifts in the shares and numbers of workers, these mean shifts disappeared by the early 1930s. On the other hand, the earthquake caused shifts in the trends in the share and number of workers. The combined effects of these mean shifts and trend shifts were persistent for both the shares and the numbers of workers. The earthquake caused especially serious damage to the old industrial clusters in the southeast of Tokyo, and provided an opportunity for newly developing industrial clusters in non-damaged areas to take over the market. Further, the people and the local governments in non-damaged areas made an effort to take advantage of this opportunity to attract factories. Arguably, these forces made the impact of the earthquake on the spatial distribution of industry persistent.