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The Great Fire at Ryōgoku Bridge
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Didactics
<p>Kobayashi Kiyochika lived at a time of dramatic political and cultural change–the Meiji era (1868–1912), when Japan’s modernization and Westernization took place. Among popular artists of nineteenth century Japan, Kiyochika stands out in the diversity of his works, which embrace subjects that are serious and comic, lyrical and cynical. Kiyochika’s work closely reflects the cultural and political changes of the era, and consequently his art provides a historical outline of the four decades. Henry Smith, a historian of Meiji Japan, notes that “if one were to choose a single artist to represent the Meiji era, it would probably have to be Kiyochika. </p> <p>The Museum has recently acquired one of Kiyochika's best paintings, <em>The Great Fire at Ryōgoku Bridge.</em> The painting renders a dramatic scene of the largest fire of the Meiji era, in 1881, near Ryōgoku Bridge, which can be seen in the distance on the left side of the painting. In the center, buildings are engulfed in flames while firemen in thickly quilted black coats fight the conflagration on the roof with buckets or hand-pumps; on the lower left, panicked residents flee the approaching blaze. After sixteen hours, the fire destroyed more than ten thousand buildings in Tokyo, including the artist's own house.</p> <p>Acknowledging his historical contributions to the Westernization of Japanese painting, an exhibition in 1989 dedicated to Kiyochika credited him as a pioneer of Japanese Impressionism. Kiyochika, nevertheless, did not entirely abandon Japanese painting traditions. Unlike some of his contemporaries, notably Takahashi Yuichi (1828–1894), for whom oil was the primary medium, Kiyochika retained ink and color on silk as his painting medium, and also employed traditional Japanese painting motifs and renditions, as demonstrated, for example, in the way the fleeing residents are painted on the hanging scroll depicting The Great Fire. </p> <p><em>Xiaojin Wu, </em>Assistant Curator of Asian Art </p>
Information
Asia, Japan
This large and dramatic composition depicts the great fire that broke out around 2 a.m. on January 26, 1881 near Ryōgoku Bridge, which can be seen in the distance on the left of this painting. In the center, buildings are engulfed in flames while firemen in thickly-quilted black coats are fighting the conflagration on the roof with buckets or hand-pumps; on the lower left, panicked residents are fleeing the approaching blaze. This fire, the largest of the Meiji era, started just one-half mile west of Kiyochika’s house, and spread rapidly fanned by strong seasonal winds, and finally burned out in the early evening after sixteen hours of devastation. It destroyed over 10,000 buildings in Tokyo, including Kiyochika’s own house.
Kiyochika’s surviving sketchbook confirms that he did go out into the night to sketch the fire. The viewpoint of this painting appears to be from the roof of a house. It is possible that Kiyochika went up to the roof or an upper floor to sketch the fire. His interests in the imagery of fire, and the different effects of the light of the flames and smoke, are apparent in this painting. Obsessed by the effects of light, many of Kiyochika’s images are night scenes. From his sketches of this fire, Kiyochika not only made this extraordinary painting, but also three prints of the subject, two of which depicted the fire, while one depicted the aftermath.
The 1907 Tokyo Exposition lists a painting by Kiyochika titled The Great Fire. It is very likely that this very painting was exhibited on the Exposition, as only one painting of this subject is known within Kiyochika’s repertoire. Compared to the hundreds of prints that Kiyochika made, his paintings are much smaller in number.
