Ryōunkaku Ryōunkaku's fame spread, it appeared in the works of contemporary authors such as Tanizaki Junichiro, Ishikawa Takuboku, Kitahara Hakushu and Kaneko Mitsuharu. The edifice's opening was commemorated in Ogawa Kazumasa's most famous work, "Types of Japan, Celebrated Geysha of Tokyo in Collotype and From Photographic Negatives Taken by Him", published around 1892. Ryōunkaku The was Japan's first western-style skyscraper. It stood in the Asakusa district of City of Tokyo (now Taitō, Tokyo) from 1890 until its demolition following the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. The , as it was affectionately called by Tokyoites, was Tokyo's most popular attraction, and a
1923 Great Kantō earthquake 1923 Great Kantō earthquake The struck the Kantō Plain on the Japanese main island of Honshū at 11:58:44 JST (02:58:44 UTC) on Saturday, September 1, 1923. Varied accounts indicate the duration of the earthquake was between four and ten minutes. The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.9 on the moment magnitude scale (), with its focus deep beneath Izu Ōshima Island in Sagami Bay. The cause was a rupture of part of the convergent boundary where the Philippine Sea Plate is subducting beneath the Okhotsk Plate along the line of the Sagami Trough. Massacres such as the Kantō Massacre were