During a disaster, the ground shakes, the water rises, the sky turns black with smoke, and in that raw moment of terror, something else often begins to move—quietly, invisibly, and yet with devastating force. It is the rumor. It travels through frightened crowds, through whispered warnings, through hastily forwarded messages on phones, and it always seems to find the most vulnerable target: the stranger, the outsider, the one who does not belong. In recent years, as earthquakes, floods, typhoons, and wildfires have become more frequent and more intense, experts have noticed a troubling pattern. Disinformation aimed at foreign residents is rising sharply during these emergencies. They are accused of looting abandoned homes, of setting fires, of poisoning water supplies, of taking advantage of chaos for their own sinister purposes. None of this is true, but truth matters little when fear has taken hold. The accusation is enough. It spreads from one anxious person to another, gaining weight with every retelling, until it becomes a certainty in the minds of people who would otherwise never dream of harming anyone. And then, sometimes, that certainty turns into action. This is not a new story. It is an old one, as old as human fear itself, but it has a particular and terrible echo in the history of Japan, where the same kind of rumor once led to the murder of thousands of innocent people in the days following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.
Let us go back to that September morning, a hundred years ago. Tokyo and Yokohama had just been shattered by one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in Japan. The ground twisted, buildings collapsed, fires erupted everywhere, and within hours much of the capital was reduced to smoldering ruins. In the chaos, with communications cut and the authorities overwhelmed, fear began to feed on itself. People were desperate for explanations, for someone to blame, for a sense that the catastrophe was not random but deliberate. Then the rumors started. It was said that resident Koreans were using the disaster as cover for attacks on Japanese people. They were accused of poisoning wells, of setting fires, of looting, of plotting revolution. There was no evidence for any of this. In fact, many Korean residents were themselves victims of the earthquake, laboring alongside their Japanese neighbors to rescue the wounded and fight the flames. But the rumors did not care about evidence. They spread through the streets, through neighborhood associations, through police and military channels, and soon vigilante groups, armed with swords, clubs, and makeshift weapons, began stopping people on the streets, checking their accents and their names, and killing those they suspected of being Korean. The murder was indiscriminate and brutal. Korean men, women, and children were killed, along with Chinese residents who were mistaken for Koreans, and even Japanese citizens who spoke with regional dialects or who tried to defend the victims. Estimates vary, but thousands died. It was a massacre born not of hate alone, but of disinformation, of rumor allowed to fester in the dark space left by disaster.
Why does such disinformation take hold so easily? The answer lies deep in the human mind. When a disaster strikes, our normal world is turned upside down. We lose our sense of safety, our routines, our ability to control even the smallest aspects of our lives. In that state, the brain craves certainty above all else. It looks for patterns, for causes, for something to hold onto. A rumor offers that. It provides a simple explanation for an incomprehensible event: there are enemies among us, they are responsible, and if we act against them, we can restore order. This psychological mechanism is ancient, and it is powerfully reinforced by our tendency to favor members of our own group and to distrust those we perceive as different. Foreign residents, especially those with visible differences in language, appearance, or culture, become easy targets. They are the perfect canvas onto which fear can project its darkest fantasies. Add to this the stress and exhaustion of surviving a disaster, the lack of reliable information, the breakdown of normal institutions, and the desperate desire to protect one’s family, and you have a recipe for moral panic. People who would never normally endorse violence convince themselves that they are defending their community. They see themselves as heroes, not murderers. And once the violence begins, it is almost impossible to stop, because each violent act seems to confirm the original suspicion. This is the terrible logic of the scapegoat, and it is a logic that has repeated itself throughout history, in country after country, in disaster after disaster.
The modern world has not eliminated this logic; it has only accelerated it. In recent years, after earthquakes in Japan and other parts of Asia, researchers have documented waves of false rumors targeting foreign residents. Within minutes of a tremor, social media lights up with posts claiming that foreign workers are looting convenience stores, that refugees are setting fires, that migrants are raping and stealing in the chaos. Often these posts include images that are fake, outdated, or taken from completely different disasters in other countries. The images are shared by thousands, then tens of thousands, before any fact-checker can respond. The algorithms that control our social media feeds are designed to maximize engagement, and nothing engages people more than fear and anger. A calm correction gets far fewer clicks than a sensational accusation. So the lie spreads faster and further than the truth, and by the time the authorities issue a denial, the damage is already done. In some cases, foreign residents have reported being harassed, threatened, or attacked because of these rumors. In other cases, the rumors have caused them to flee their homes, abandoning their belongings and their communities, even as the disaster itself was still unfolding. And it is not only ordinary citizens who are responsible. In some countries, political leaders and media outlets have deliberately promoted such disinformation to win support or to distract from their own failures. The result is a toxic environment in which the most vulnerable members of society are made even more vulnerable, and the solidarity that should emerge in times of crisis is replaced by suspicion and hatred.
What can we learn from the shadow of 1923? The first and most important lesson is that we are not so different from those who came before us. We like to believe that we are more enlightened, more educated, more rational, but the same psychological currents run beneath our modern surface. The rumor that killed thousands after the Great Kanto Earthquake did not arise from some unique cruelty of that era; it arose from fear, uncertainty, and the human tendency to otherize. We carry those same tendencies within us, and when the next disaster strikes, they will be activated just as quickly, unless we actively prepare against them. This preparation is not just about fact-checking websites or government alerts, though those are useful. It is about building genuine relationships across lines of difference, so that when a rumor begins to spread, we have a human face to connect to it. It is about teaching ourselves and our children to question the messages that inflame our emotions, especially those that urge us to see our neighbors as enemies. It is about remembering that the person standing next to us during an earthquake, a flood, or a fire is not a threat but a fellow human being, equally afraid, equally in need of help. Community resilience is not built on uniformity; it is built on trust, and trust is built on contact, conversation, and shared experience.
In the end, the story of the Great Kanto Earthquake and the rumors that followed is not only a story about the past. It is a warning for the present and a challenge for the future. The world is becoming more connected, more diverse, more mobile. Foreign residents are part of every community, contributing their labor, their talents, and their hopes. When disaster strikes, they are not separate from us; they are us. To treat them as enemies is to betray the very values that make a community worth living in. We can honor the memory of those who were killed in 1923 by refusing to let their fate become the fate of others. We can choose to be the people who stop the rumor, who protect the stranger, who reach out a hand instead of raising a weapon. We can build a culture of care that is stronger than the culture of fear. And we can do this not by waiting for the next disaster, but by acting now, in the calm and comfortable times, to know our neighbors, to understand our differences, and to commit ourselves to the simple but radical idea that every human life is precious, and no one should be sacrificed to the cruelty of a lie. That is the lesson of history, and it is the only way forward.