It struck at lunchtime, when Tokyo and Yokohama were cooking over open flames. The firestorm that followed did most of the killing; Japan still marks its disaster-prevention day on the anniversary.
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DownloadThe 1923 Great Kanto earthquake struck on September 1, 1923, registering magnitude 8.0 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 871× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 35.27°N, 139.34°E, at a depth of about 15 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 105,385 people were killed.