140303-0025 - Nobi Earthquake

A collapsed Nagaragawa Railway Bridge on the Tokaido Main Line (東海道本線長良川鉄橋) in Gifu Prefecture after the Nobi Earthquake (濃尾地震, Nobi Jishin) of October 28, 1891 (Meiji 24). The bridge was completed only four years earlier, in 1887 (Meiji 20). It was designed by British engineer Charles Assheton Whately Pownall (チャールズ・A・W・パウネル), the Principal Engineer for the Japanese Government Railways at the time, and was the largest railway bridge in Japan. After the quake, the steel pillars of the truss bridge were replaced with brick foundation pylons.

The Nobi Earthquake measured between 8.0 and 8.4 on the scale of Richter and caused 7,273 deaths, 17,175 casualties and the destruction of 142,177 homes. It is the largest recorded quake in inland Japan. It jumpstarted the study of seismology in Japan and proved that earthquakes are caused by fault lines.

This photograph by William Kinnimond Burton was reproduced in “The Great Earthquake in Japan, 1891,” published by Lane, Crawford & Co. in Yokohama.

From a series of glass slides published (but not photographed) by Scottish photographer George Washington Wilson (1823–1893). Wilson’s firm was one of the largest publishers of photographic prints in the world.