Firefighting Edo (1 results)

[Japan]: at end (in trans.): "copied 1842." Japanese cities have always been plagued by terrible fires. Regarding Edo, "the wooden construction of all of the city and the narrow lanes of commoner quarters made fire a devastating experience, and it came sufficiently frequently to be called 'the flowers of Edo.' Fires were no respecters of status and rank, and when driven by winter winds in the dry season they roared through the city.In the 268 years of Tokugawa rule, the Tosa 'upper' yashiki (at 'Blacksmith Bridge') suffered eighteen fires, and the Shiba middle residence burned twelve times. Four of these were citywide conflagrations. Merchant areas burned thirty-one times in two centuries, and even the shogun's castle suffered major damage seven times."Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan (Harvard: 2000), p. 151. This wonderfully detailed scroll is a record of the Great Meiwa Fire of 1772 in Edo, one of the three most severe fires of the Edo era, with a 30-square-mile section of the city destroyed (including an estimated 178 temples and shrines, 127 daimyo residences, 878 non-official residences, 8705 houses of bannermen, and 628 blocks of merchant dwellings). Almost 15,000 people died, and another 4,000 went missing. The fire was deliberately set by a Buddhist priest of the Daien-ji Temple on the eastern side of the Meguro River. Because of the regularity of such fires, the city of Edo organized 48 brigades of trained firefighters, with each group having a specific name after the old i ro ha alphabet. Our remarkable scroll consists of one enormously long panorama, which can be divided into three sections: the alarm, the actual fire, and the aftermath. In the first long scene, we are clearly in a shopping area, with numerous merchants' stores and warehouses (kura). We see some of the residents and the trained fire brigade men (hikeshi) rushing to the fire. A man on horseback is cantering through the streets, raising the alarm. The firefighters carry tools primarily of the building trades: ropes, saws, mauls, and the tobiguchi, the famous "fireman's hook." Other residents and their servants and staff prepare for the oncoming fire: each residence has a water barrel in front, ready for such an occasion. We see both buke hikeshi ???? (samurai firefighters) and machibikeshi ??? (merchant firefighters). As we proceed to the actual fire, we pass by a tall fire tower, with men at the top observing the fire. A man is reinforcing a kura, supposedly fireproof, with further reinforcements of mud. The following scenes are all action: merchants preparing for the worst, servants removing merchandise, firefighters gathering and organizing their equipment in a staging area, water being drawn from wells, men removing wooden roof shingles, the elderly being carried away, statues being carried from temples, a congested bridge with people fleeing the fire and the firemen struggling to go in the opposite direction, workers in a walled mansion removing valuables, people on roofs removing flying embers, firefighters carrying the portable pump (ry?dosui) known as the "water-spewing dragon," evacuated storefronts, etc. The second long scene shows the firefighters in action: buckets of water being filled, firefighters climbing and descending ladders, men removing embers from roofs, and the conflagration itself, vividly depicted in rich red colors for the fires themselves and gray tones for the considerable smoke. And, then, as we proceed, we see the resulting devastation, with almost nothing surviving. This section is simply horrific. The firemen survey the landscape and go through the area putting out the numerous smaller fires. Government officials gather to assess the damage. We see firemen from different companies in a brawl. The final scene shows the beginnings of the reconstruction of the area. Carpenters have brought in building materials, houses and shops are being rebuilt, merchants have reoccupied their surviving shops and restocked, residents are using carts to bring back their possessions, firefighters are marching across a bridge in celebration, a vendor is selling skewered snacks by the river, etc. Life resumesuntil the next fire. We should emphasize that throughout this long scroll, the artist has provided enormous detail of the shops, their contents, and the varied activities of the residents and firemen. At the end, we find the following manuscript note (in trans.): "The artist Ishikawa Kei'unsai Yuitomo copied these images from a scroll in Autumn 1819. In Autumn 1826, the artist Hasegawa Settei [1813/19-82] copied Ishikawa's scroll then owned by the Saito family. And in mid-December 1842, Etsuzan Fujiwara Said? Setsud? copied Hasegawa's scroll." We do not understand the chronology of the manuscript note, as Hasegawa was surely too young to execute this scroll in 1826. We do note that the National Diet Library attributes its rather similar scroll to Hasegawa as well. In fine condition. Some careful repairs and a few fill-ins. Preserved in a recent wooden box.