The Great Fire at Ryōgoku Bridge

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.