Tokyo: A Biography

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Stephen Mansfield. Tokyo: A Biography

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A BIOGRAPHY

— George Orwell

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In the two days of raging fires, 930 daimyo residences were razed and 350 temples and shrines were destroyed, along with 1,200 merchants’ homes and 61 bridges. The estimated number of victims was 108,000 out of a population of some half a million. The timing was pitiless; the following day it snowed. Despite the prompt distribution of relief rice from the shogun’s granaries, many people died from starvation and hypothermia.

If two detailed paintings on folded screens (the Screen of Edo and the Screen of Famous Places in Edo) and an early extant Kan’eiera (1624–43) map of Edo are accurate, the city built after the fire was not as splendid as the castle town that preceded it. The ensuing reconstruction—based more on pragmatic concerns than aesthetics—required wider streets, firebreaks, and a program to get merchants to fireproof their homes and storehouses with plaster, which radically altered the appearance of the city. Carpenters, sawyers, and plasterers did well in this still largely flammable city. Burnt earth from the fire was collected and used to reclaim a number of marshes. Ryogoku-bashi, Edo’s “Interstate Bridge,” was built over the Sumida River, effectively annexing the east side of the city for further development. Lumberyards were moved from Hatchobori to Fukagawa, a supposedly less incendiary area east of the river. The transfer to Fukagawa, which at that point was little more than a marsh, added to the eastward movement and expansion of the shitamachi, more land reclamation, and the building of docks and storage yards. Preeminent lumber tycoons like Kinokuniya Bunzaemon made fortunes from the almost constant necessity to rebuild. The lumber king’s own mansion was located a sensible distance from the river, so that fresh water could be channeled into the garden.

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