History of the Jews in Japan the end of Japan's "closed-door" foreign policy, Jewish families again began to settle in Japan. The first recorded Jewish settlers arrived at Yokohama in 1861. By 1895, this community, which by then consisted of about 50 families, established the first synagogue in Meiji Japan. Part of this community would later move to Kobe after the great Kanto earthquake of 1923. Another early Jewish settlement was established in the 1880s in Nagasaki, a large Japanese port city opened to foreign trade by the Portuguese. This community was larger than the one in Yokohama, consisting of more than 100 families. It was
1923 Great Kantō earthquake water demon triggers the 1923 earthquake. The josei manga "Akatsuki no Aria" (by Michiyo Akaishi) features the earthquake in volume 8. Several places frequented by the protagonist Aria Kanbara, like her boarding school and the house of the rich Nishimikado clan that she is an illegitimate member of, become shelters for the wounded and the homeless. Aria's birth mother is severely injured by debris and dies few later, and this triggers a subplot about Aria's own heritage. In the 2013 animated film by director Hayao Miyazaki, "The Wind Rises", the protagonist Jiro Horikoshi is traveling to Tokyo by train to