How Many Great Fires Did Edo Have? | Room Hunting, Then and Now: Edo ⑨

This is the English edition of our Japanese series 「お部屋探し今むかし」 (Room Hunting, Then and Now). 日本語版はこちら ／ All English articles

There is an old saying: “Fires and fights are the flowers of Edo.” If they called them flowers, I assumed fires were fairly common. Then I saw the numbers and changed my mind.

More than 100 in 264 years

A Tokyo Fire Department page puts it this way: in the 264 years of the Edo period, there were more than 100 great fires.

Divide it out and that is more often than once every two and a half years. Nihonbashi and Kyobashi in particular are said to have had a great fire every two to three years, and Nihonbashi burned down ten times.

The page gives the reasons too. Nearly all houses were wooden. Row houses were packed tightly together. And fire was used every day.

The deadliest: the Great Fire of Meireki

On the 18th day of the first month of 1657 (Meireki 3), fire broke out at Honmyō-ji temple in Hongō. More than 100,000 people are said to have died. Also known as the “Furisode Fire,” it is one of the three great fires of Edo.

Afterward the shogunate created a firefighting organization called the jōbikeshi, opened firebreak spaces, and encouraged fire-resistant storehouse-style building. It changed how the city itself was built.

Renting a home in a city that burns

This is where the earlier articles connect.

The room was about four tatami mats of floor (Edo ④). The rent was cheap (Edo ⑤). People owned little and rented what they lacked (Edo ⑧).

Your neighborhood might burn every few years. Seen that way, owning little may not have been only about being poor. This part is my own guess.

Today, we insure

When you rent a home in Japan today, you are often asked to take out fire insurance when you sign. What a tenant buys is mainly cover for their own belongings and for liability to the landlord.

I understand the feeling of “one more expense.” But Edo had no fire insurance. People faced a great fire every few years with nothing to fall back on. Compared with that, insurance is a reassuring invention.

A note on sources: I confirmed the number of fires and the Meireki fire on the Tokyo Fire Department’s public pages. Insurance cover differs by product, so please check what is covered before you sign up.

Next time: wrapping up the Edo chapter. What has changed between Edo and today, and what has not.

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