Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
FIRE OF THE LONG SLEEVES
Shitamachi's tightly packed streets of thatch and wood dwellings usually suffered worst in the
great fires which broke out so frequently that they were dubbed
Edo no hana
, the “flowers of
Edo”. In January 1657, the
Fire of the Long Sleeves
- so named because it started at a temple
where the long-sleeved kimono of women who had recently died were being burnt - laid
waste to three-quarters of the district's buildings and killed an estimated one hundred
thousand people. Subsequent precautions included earth firewalls, manned watchtowers and
local firefighting teams, who were much revered for their acrobatic skills and bravery. The fires
continued, however, and the life expectancy of an Edo building averaged a mere twenty years.
Edo rising
The long period of stability under the Tokugawa, interrupted only by a few peasant
rebellions, brought steady economic development. Mid-eighteenth-century Edo was
the world's largest city, with a population well over one million, of whom roughly half
were squeezed into Shitamachi at an astonishing 70,000 people per square kilometre.
Peace gave rise to an increasingly wealthy merchant class, and the arts flourished; in
parallel with this ran a vigorous, often bawdy subculture where the pursuit of pleasure
was taken to new extremes. In Shitamachi, the arbiters of fashion were the
Edo-ko
, the
“children of Edo”, with their earthy humour and delight in practical jokes. Inevitably,
there was also a darker side to life and the
Edo-ko
knew their fair share of squalor,
poverty and violence. Licensed brothels, euphemistically known as “pleasure quarters”,
in areas such as Shinjuku, flourished, and child prostitution was common.
The arrival of the Black Ships
During Japan's period of seclusion, a small number of Westerners managed to breach
the barriers, amongst them Engelbert Kaempfer, a Dutchman who wrote the first
European-language history of Japan in the late seventeenth century. Various British
survey vessels and Russian envoys also visited Japan in the early nineteenth century, but
the greatest pressure came from the US, whose trading and whaling routes passed to
the south of the country. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the US Navy arrived
in Shimoda - at the tip of the Izu peninsula, just west of Tokyo - with a small fleet of
“Black Ships”
, demanding that Japan open at least some of its ports to foreigners.
Japan's ruling elite was thrown into turmoil - the shogunate was already fearful of
foreign incursions following the British defeat of China in the Opium Wars. However,
when the emperor demanded that the foreigners be rebuffed it quickly became clear
that Japan's military was no longer up to the task.
American Townsend Harris managed to extract
concessions
in 1858, and similar
treaties were soon concluded with other Western nations; certain ports were opened up
(including Yokohama), while foreigners were given the right of residence and certain
judicial rights in these enclaves. Opponents of such shameful appeasement by the
shogunate took up the slogan “revere the emperor, expel the barbarians!”; less
reactionary factions could see that Japan was in no state to do this, and that their only
hope of remaining independent was to learn from the more powerful nations.
Edo's power was not only being weakened from outside Japan, but from inside as
well. Evidence of a westward shift in power came in 1863, when the emperor ordered
1639
1640
1657
1684
Policy of national
seclusion introduced;
Christians persecuted
Completion of
Edo castle
Fire lays waste to most
of Shitamachi
First sumo tournament
held
