Great Fire of Meireki (1657): The Blaze That Destroyed Edo

The Great Fire of Meireki was a series of fires that swept through Edo, the shogun’s capital and today’s Tokyo, from 2 to 4 March 1657. Driven by strong winds after a long dry spell, it destroyed most of the city, including the great keep of Edo Castle, and killed somewhere between about 30,000 and more than 100,000 people. It was the worst disaster of Japan’s Edo period, and the rebuilding that followed reshaped the city.

Background: a crowded wooden capital

By the 1650s Edo had grown from a modest castle town into one of the largest cities in the world. The Tokugawa shogunate ruled Japan from the castle, and the system of alternate attendance required feudal lords, the daimyo, to keep mansions and large households in the city. Around them crowded merchants, artisans, labourers and servants.

Almost every building was made of wood, paper and thatch or shingle, and streets in the commoners’ districts were narrow. Fires were frequent. The winter of 1656–1657 was unusually dry, and contemporary accounts say there had been no significant rain for many weeks before the disaster.

The three days of fire

The first fire broke out in the early afternoon of 2 March 1657, traditionally at Honmyo-ji, a temple of the Nichiren school of Buddhism in the Hongo district north of the castle. A strong north-westerly wind drove the flames south and east across the townspeople’s districts towards the Sumida River.

On the morning of 3 March a second fire started in Koishikawa, north-west of the castle. This one swept into Edo Castle itself, burning much of the inner enclosures and the main keep, a five-storey tower completed in 1638 and the largest ever built in Japan. That evening a third fire began in Kojimachi, west of the castle, and spread through the samurai and merchant quarters to the south as far as the bay. By the time the fires burned out on 4 March, perhaps 60 to 70 per cent of the city had been destroyed. Accounts say snow and bitter cold followed, adding to the suffering of the homeless.

Many of the dead were trapped as they fled. The best-known story concerns the Asakusa gate. The keeper of the Kodenmacho jail, Ishide Tatewaki, is said to have released his prisoners rather than let them burn, on condition that they return, which they did. Guards at the Asakusa gate, believing a jailbreak was under way, closed the gate, and great numbers of people fleeing towards the river died in the crush and the flames.

The death toll

The number of victims is uncertain. Asai Ryoi’s account Musashi abumi, published in 1661, and other contemporary reports give figures of over 100,000 dead, and that number is often repeated. Many modern historians consider it too high and prefer estimates in the tens of thousands, but even the lower figures make it one of the deadliest urban fires in recorded history.

The shogunate ordered the unclaimed dead to be collected and buried in a mass grave on the east bank of the Sumida River. A temple, Eko-in, was founded there to pray for the victims, and it still stands in Ryogoku in Tokyo.

Response and rebuilding

The shogun, Tokugawa Ietsuna, was only a teenager, and the most influential figure in the government was his uncle Hoshina Masayuki, lord of Aizu. The shogunate distributed rice and money to survivors, opened relief kitchens and tried to hold down the prices of rice and building timber. Hoshina argued that the castle keep served no practical purpose in a time of peace and that funds were better spent on the city. The keep was never rebuilt.

The reconstruction changed Edo’s layout. The government created firebreaks and broad avenues known as hirokoji, built earth embankments to stop fire, and moved temples and shrines from the centre to the edges of the city. The mansions of the three senior Tokugawa branch houses were moved out of the castle grounds, and other daimyo residences were relocated. The Yoshiwara pleasure quarter, whose move had been ordered in 1656, was rebuilt north of Asakusa.

New land was reclaimed from the bay, including the Tsukiji district, and Ryogoku Bridge was built across the Sumida within a few years of the fire. It opened the eastern districts of Honjo and Fukagawa to settlement and gave future residents an escape route. In 1658 the shogunate also created its first permanent professional fire brigades, the jobikeshi, under the command of bannermen.

Rebuilding was expensive. Grants and loans to daimyo and bannermen, together with the reconstruction of the castle palace, consumed much of the treasure the shogunate had accumulated under its first three rulers. Nor did the reforms end the danger: large fires continued to strike Edo throughout the period, giving rise to the saying that fires and quarrels were the flowers of Edo.

Myths and facts

The most famous story about the fire is the legend of the furisode, a long-sleeved kimono. A young woman was said to have died of lovesickness, and her robe passed to two other girls who also died young. When priests at Honmyo-ji burned the kimono on the day of the fire, the wind supposedly lifted it, still burning, onto the temple roof. The tale appears in later popular literature, and historians treat it as legend.

Another long-standing theory holds that the fire actually began at the neighbouring mansion of Abe Tadaaki, a senior shogunate councillor, and that Honmyo-ji accepted the blame to protect him. Supporters point out that the temple was not punished and later prospered. The theory is plausible but unproven.

In Japan the Meireki fire is sometimes ranked with the Great Fire of London of 1666 and the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64 as one of the three great fires of world history. This is a popular comparison rather than a historical measure, but in loss of life the Meireki fire was far deadlier than the London fire.

Witnesses

The fire is unusually well documented. Asai Ryoi’s Musashi abumi described the flight of the townspeople and was illustrated with woodblock prints. The Dutch trading chief from Dejima, Zacharias Wagenaer, is recorded as having been in Edo on the annual embassy to the shogun and escaped the fire; Dutch reports later supplied material for European books on Japan, including an engraving of the burning city in Arnoldus Montanus’s account of 1669.

Timeline

• 1638: the great keep of Edo Castle is completed under the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu.
• 1657, 2 March: fire breaks out in Hongo, traditionally at Honmyo-ji, and spreads south and east.
• 1657, 3 March, morning: a second fire in Koishikawa destroys much of Edo Castle and its keep.
• 1657, 3 March, evening: a third fire starts in Kojimachi and burns south towards the bay.
• 1657, 4 March: the fires burn out, leaving most of the city in ruins.
• 1657: Eko-in is founded for the unclaimed dead; the Yoshiwara quarter is moved near Asakusa.
• 1658: the shogunate establishes the jobikeshi fire brigades.
• 1661: Asai Ryoi publishes Musashi abumi, an account of the fire.

Why it matters

The Great Fire of Meireki was the deadliest disaster of Tokugawa Japan. It destroyed the symbol of shogunal power at the heart of Edo, and the city that rose afterwards, with its firebreaks, eastward growth and fire brigades, laid the pattern for the great metropolis that later became Tokyo.