The Pride of Edo: Tobi and the Fire Brigades

By Paul Tierney

Fires were so common in Edo that they gave birth to a saying in Japanese: "fires and fights are the flowers of Edo."

The men who formed the backbone of Edo's fire brigades - the "Tobi", semi-skilled construction laborers - were both feared and admired. Admired for the unflinching bravery needed to wade into fires that could consume whole neighborhoods in a moment, the Tobi were also feared by the same residents they protected for their predatory behavior. They were the pre-cursors to the Yakuza, Japan's mafia. Like the mafia, they jealously protected their turf - primarily against other fire brigades who wanted to muscle in, "steal their accomplishments" and get the financial rewards doled out for successfully quenching a blaze.

An in-depth look at the development of Edo's fire brigades - the first of its kind in English - this book examines how each of the three fire fighting organizations was born and their influence on the city and the people who lived in it.

Using primarily source material in the original Japanese, "The Pride of Edo" digs deeper into the history of Tokyo's constant battle with fire and the steps that the Shogunate took to combat the flames. The two samurai fire brigades were formed earliest, but given their institutional focus on preserving the castle and the samurai districts, they tended to ignore fires in the commoner districts of the city.

As the Edo grew larger, the Shogunate realized that if it was to protect the "vital" parts of the city, it needed to protect the commoner districts as well. In order to do so, it ordered the town elders to form their own fire brigades. These brigades were the "machi hikeshi" (town fire fighters).

Originally looked down upon and ordered to step aside when the samurai fire brigades arrived at a fire, the machi hikeshi ultimately came to be relied upon by not only the commoners, but the Shogunate itself for the fire defense of the entire city. They eclipsed the socially superior samurai fire brigades and became a major force in the development of Edo's culture and fashion. The Tobi also occupied a unique position in the everyday society of Edo, both holding the communities together and at the same time using their influence to prey upon those same merchants and craftsmen that they protected.

After the Meiji Restoration, the commoners of the machi hikeshi were transformed into the Tokyo Fire Department and protect the city to this day.

The Tobi still play an active, but rapidly diminishing, role in Tokyo's neighborhood and festivals. Technology is forcing them out of the workplace, but they are still the Pride of Edo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Tierney
• Release date: May 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301440405

Paul Tierney

I am a eleven-year resident of Tokyo and love this amazing city. In addition to my writing, I run a business offering unique History/Art Walks in historic parts of Tokyo.I also work as a researcher for Meiji University's Tokyo Edo Radio project, specializing in the history of Edo/Tokyo. My goal (my passion?) is to shed more light on the daily life and culture of Edo and bring this vibrant back to life for a non-Japanese speaking audience. My small house with a small garden, shared with my lovely wife and son, is six minutes from the station and is in a small neighborhood that is filled with the sounds of laughing children.

Book preview

The Pride of Edo: Tobi and the Fire Brigades

A History of Tokyo's Forgotten Heroes

By Paul Tierney

Copyright 2012 Paul Tierney

Cover Design Copyright 2013

by (http://DigitalDonna.com)

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Introduction

City of Flame

The Flowers of Edo

Born in flame

The first steps toward organized fire fighting

Forged in fire

The Crucible: the Great Meireki Fire

Rising from its own ashes: design for a more fire proof Edo

The Joubikeshi: The Shogunate's own fire fighting force

Pride and Burden: The Daimyo Bikeshi

Edo's true sons: the Machi Hikeshi

The birth of the 47 companies of the I-Ro-Ha

Composition of the Machi Hikeshi brigades

Rise of the Tobi: professionals enter the ranks of the I-Ro-Ha

Machi Hikeshi and the final days of the Tokugawa Shogunate

The Meiji Restoration and the birth of the Tokyo Fire Department

The Tobi and Machi Hikeshi Today

About the Author

Notes & Bibliography

Introduction

A stroll along the Nakamise-dori shopping promenade leading to Sensoji Temple in Asakusa will reveal that amongst the various souvenirs and trinkets that one can buy as a memento of a visit to Tokyo, goods devoted to and decorated with the motifs of the machi-hikeshi fire brigades are extremely common and popular.

There are t-shirts, fans, hand towels, coin and cosmetic bags, and of course, happi coats - both of the cheap, light cotton and longer, heavier and thicker woven (and thus more expensive) cotton versions - all covered in various designs and symbols of the fire brigades. Most foreigner visitors will have no idea that these goods are related to groups that actually existed and whose spiritual, and occasionally, real descendents still protect Tokyo. These foreigners will only know that the images on those t-shirts, or hand towels, or happi coats strike a chord - they show an image that resonates with their idea of traditional Japan.

Even the Japanese who also throng here will know little more than that the figures on the t-shirts, fans, and hand towels are firemen - hikeshi. It is extremely unlikely that they will have any idea how the fire brigades came to be or the impact that they had on the city - just that they are emblematic of Tokyo. Like foreigners, for the average Japanese, the hikeshi resonates tradition, and specifically shita-machi (low city) Tokyo.

But why? Why do the hikeshi and, by association, their uniforms symbolize the stereotypical Edokko, and his descendent, the Tokyoite?

It was a search for the importance of that uniform - the happi coat - that gave birth to this book. My colleague at Meiji University's Tokyo-Edo Radio project, Hans Karlsson, was introduced to a tobi kashira, a boss of the semi-skilled construction and scaffold laborers, and in the course of interviewing him, came to realize that the happi coat and its disappearance was a central theme in the kashira's life.

Not only that, Hans realized that the tobi played a vital role in the life of the city and its neighborhoods. Not only did the tobi provide the social glue that kept the communities tightly knit, they were also a vital part of the fire brigades the protected Edo, and later, Tokyo.

The question, though, was what exactly was that role, not only in their everyday roles, but also in the fire brigades? Although the tobi were mentioned frequently, it wasn't immediately clear how great their impact was on both.

And so I picked up the trail to provide background and some historical reference material on the fire brigades for Hans's radio program on the tobi kashira and the rich story of his life.

There is a saying from the Edo period that states: Fires and fights are the flowers of Edo. This is so often repeated in Japanese that it is a cliché. Most people understand it to mean that fires were an all-too-frequent occurrence in Edo and fights were also an everyday phenomenon; not unexpected for a city filled with samurai from different and rival clans and crowded with commoners who were none too fond of those same samurai upon whom they depended for their livelihoods.

However, what isn't very well known is that those flowers of Edo - fights and fires - were directly related to each other. What the phrase really relates is that fires were the cause of most of those fights and bloodshed and loss of life at those fights was not uncommon. The two went hand in hand with each other.

The question was, again, why? Why were there so many fights at the fires? Who was fighting whom? For that matter, why were there so many fires in Edo?

In the course of searching for those answers and to explain the development of the fire brigades in Edo, I found that fires were not only physically shaped the city, but they also molded the character of those living in it - both elite samurai and commoner alike - and the fire brigades formed to combat the fires had huge impact on the city's social and cultural development. The fights were a reflection of the tensions between the classes in the city and the rising prominence of the machi hikeshi mirrored the increasing power and influence of the merchant class (and concurrent decline of the samurai).

This book examines the development of the fire brigades, their composition, and the role that they played in protecting the city. However, more than that, this book will show how the tobi