Geographies of Hazard - The Earthquake Observers - page 105

On the surface, Sekiya seemed to be praising the breadth of Milne's research,
and he seemed to agree that earthquakes produced mental “excitement” in
Japan. Between the lines, however, Sekiya was challenging Milne's imperi-
alizing approach to both the study of seismology and the Japanese people.
Sekiya nimbly expanded the meaning of “mental excitement” to include
“observations of scientific value.” Moreover, he cast Japanese reactions to
the earthquake in universalist terms—they revealed not Japanese hearts but
the hearts of mankind. finally, Sekiya's conclusion was refreshingly nuanced
compared to Milne's: disaster did not produce an inevitable “demoraliza-
tion” and social breakdown, but rather a variety of individual responses. 63
in reply to Sekiya, Milne grew more equivocal: “All great calamities pro-
duced mental effects, and with savage nations these were more permanent
than with civilized nations. With civilized nations the effect of natural ter-
rorisms die out more rapidly than they do among the uncivilized. Many of
our present mental peculiarities are undoubtedly the result of a complexity
of causes, and with the exception of those countries where large earthquakes
are frequent it is difficult to indicate the results due to earthquakes as dis-
tinguished from those due to other phenomena.” Milne's own research into
Japanese vernacular sources had opened a door to Sekiya's skepticism about
the typology of “civilized” and “savage.”
The Decline of Seismic Tourism
european men of science of the mid-nineteenth century attempted to
channel the earthquake enthusiasm of european travelers into a global
Humboldtian science of disasters. By the 1880s, many spied an alternative
approach to the globalization of seismology. Already in his 1851 guide to
seismological observation for travelers, Mallet cautioned against relying on
human observations. evidence should, “as far as possible, be circumstan-
tial. Nature rightly questioned never lies; men are prone to exaggerate, at the
least, where novel and startling events are in question.” 64 Mallet's agenda
was already clear: he believed that architectural evidence would bear out his
hypothesis that earthquakes consisted of elastic compression waves.
By the time of the Manual's fourth edition in 1871, Mallet was prepared
to dismiss all observations other than those made explicitly in light of his
theory and on the basis of architectural damage. “Observations undertaken
without such preliminary knowledge will for the most part be valueless, and
uninteresting even to the observer.” 65 Similarly, the German Instructions for
Scientific Travelers of 1875 cautioned: “it lies in the nature of the matter that
the observations of such an unexpectedly occurring phenomenon cannot