1923 Great Kantō earthquake collapsed due to urbanization. The 1923 earthquake led to record-high morbidity due to unsanitary conditions following the earthquake, and it prompted the establishment of antityphoid measures and the building of urban infrastructure. The Honda Point Disaster on the United States west coast, in which seven US Navy destroyers ran aground and 23 lives were lost, has been attributed to navigational errors caused by unusual currents set up by the earthquake in Japan. Beginning in 1960, every September 1 is designated as Disaster Prevention Day to commemorate the earthquake and remind people of the importance of preparedness, as August and September
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1922) and "A Serpent's Lust" (1923) (based on the story of the same title by Ueda Akinari, which was, in part, the inspiration for Mizoguchi Kenji's 1953 masterpiece "Ugetsu monogatari"). Some have argued that Tanizaki's relation to cinema is important to understanding his overall career. Tanizaki's reputation began to take off in 1923, when he moved to Kyoto after the Great Kanto earthquake, which destroyed his house in Yokohama (at the time Tanizaki was on a bus in Hakone and thus escaped injury). The loss of Tokyo's historic buildings and neighborhoods in the quake triggered a change in his enthusiasms,