‘Earthquake and fire destroyed the greater part of Tokyo. Thoroughgoing reconstruction needed. Please come immediately if possible, even if for a short stay.’ So cabled Viscount Gotô Shinpei, former mayor of Tokyo (1920–1923) and current Home Minister to his long-time friend and Director of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, Charles A. Beard. Six days earlier, on 1 September 1923, an earthquake with an estimated magnitude between 7.9 and 8.2 devastated much of Tokyo and the surrounding Kantô region. The quake and the resulting fires, conflagrations that burned for over two days, destroyed nearly 70% of all structures in Tokyo, inflicted damage with a monetary cost upwards of 5.5 billion yen, killed more than 120,000 citizens, and rendered just over 1.5 million people homeless: it was an urban catastrophe surpassed in scope only by the devastation wrought by aerial bombing during the Second World War. The Kantô Daishinsai was Japan's most deadly, economically costly, and physically destructive natural catastrophe in history. Within a world history context moreover, the 1923 earthquake was one of the most devastating and disruptive natural disasters of the 20th century, yet it is also one of the least studied.

Sudden onset natural disasters such as earthquakes are absolute physical and psychological levellers which spare no one from the event itself or the aftermath. The resulting physical devastation of a city and the psychological weakening of a population, however, also present opportunities. The opportunity to reorder society is unparalleled by any other historical event except perhaps war and with increasing regularity throughout much of the twentieth century, nation states have used disasters as a pretext to secure long held political goals. In September 1923, the devastation of Tokyo as a result of the Great Kantô Earthquake presented a significant opportunity to reorder Japanese society both on a physical and psychological level. In the post-disaster reconstruction period, the government was quick to capitalise on this catastrophe.

On October 28, 1891, one of the most powerful earthquakes in modern Japanese history rocked the main island of Honshu from Tokyo to Osaka. Centered on the populous Nōbi Plain north of Nagoya, this was the first daishinsai (‘great earthquake disaster’) of the Meiji era, and the strongest to visit central Japan in 37 years. The Great Nōbi Earthquake killed only 7–8,000 people (compared to the over 100,000 destined to die in the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923), mostly inhabitants of towns and villages in Nagoya's hinterland. But its breadth and power were unprecedented in the memories of most Japanese, and the event became the subject of many dozens of books, newspaper and journal articles, paintings and woodblock prints, and even images on fans, plates, and lampshades. This was Japan's first truly national natural catastrophe. It was national in the sense that it was deemed by many of its narrators to have affected the new nation-state directly, and a nationalizing discourse of alarm, regret, recrimination, sympathy, and even patriotism was generated around it by a newly-consolidating modern print media.

This paper is concerned with cronyism and corruption in the Indonesian corporate economy. It employs detailed corporate evidence, verifying the inter-penetration of diverse political, bureaucratic and economic institutions. Although the emphasis is on the 1990s, the historical developments since 1950 within the institutions of the presidency, the military, private Chinese and pribumi corporations, as well as state-owned enterprises, are analysed in detail to identify the sources of this corruption. Equally important are the failures of the bureaucracy, the legal infrastructure, in curtailing corruption and introducing effective corporate governance. The relationship of this spiralling corruption to the 1997 financial crisis is clear. The final section is concerned with the reforms introduced after the crisis. This section also appraises the differences in corporate structures and networks between Western companies and the Indonesian conglomerates, identifying the need for institutional change.

It is as if bombings have become a trend in Indonesian society.

Tempo Interaktif, 25 December 2000.

To put it crudely: because the languages of Third World societies – including, of course, the societies that social anthropologists have traditionally studied – are ‘weaker’ in relation to Western languages (and today, especially to English), they are more likely to submit to forcible transformation in the translation process than the other way around.

Talal Asad (1986: 157–8)

Thailand has a long, well-established practice of publishing books to commemorate events and personages. Among these are volumes commemorating deceased persons which are distributed to participants at cremation ceremonies. They contain obituaries written by the deceased's superiors, peers, and subordinates as well as relatives. Commemorative books are also published by government agencies, private companies, schools and individuals. While most are published in the Thai language, Chinese communities in Thailand also produce a large number of such books in Chinese. There has been no slackening of the practice; rather the publication of commemorative books has been gaining strength over the past decades.

The division of domestic space within South Asian households is indicative, and even reflective, of the social status of South Asian women. This article argues the dependence of South Asian women's positionality upon their position within the confines of the home, making a case for the correlation between women's domestic roles and their (self and social) identities.

Through an analysis of the contemporary literature written by South Asian women, this article will analyse the joint family system, with its particular gendered spaces and hierarchies of power, exploring how these dictate and limit the interaction of its members, and pattern the relationships formed within them.

The positionality of second wives will also be investigated, to trace exactly how the newcomers establish themselves in relatively hostile environments. The body language of the women will be paid particularly close attention, as much of what is being investigated is often not directly verbalised.

This article also examines how the private spaces of home can be both sanctuary and prison for South Asian women. It will be seen that for South Asian women, not only their identities, but their survival, may be dependent on their successful staking out of positions within their domestic territories.