ABSTRACT
At the time of the great earthquake in 1891, as I have heard it described by those who experienced it, the trees in the yard seemed "seized" by a strange demon, and a peculiar roar was audible in the yabu, or bamboo grove, below the house. That the wooden house, though elastic, is not proof against seismic disturbances, was clearly shown by the destruction between Kyoto and Nagoya of two hundred thousand houses. In the later great earthquake of 1923, more houses were destroyed by the ensuing fire than by the earthquake itself, a half million houses being thrown down or going up in flame.
