perished in the city. The bodies that were unclaimed were buried in a plot of ground, 240 yards square, on the south side of the River Sumida, where a memorial temple was built. This temple which was first called Muyenji, or the temple of strangers, and later, Ekoin, or the temple for the reading of masses, became, a century and a half later, the scene of the annual wrestling matches. The second great fire took place in 1772, when the flames left behind a clear space, fifteen miles by two and a half, from the south-west outskirts of the city to beyond its north-east boundary; and in 1806, a fire which originated at the southern extremity of Yedo covered in twenty-two hours an area of nearly six miles in length and half a mile in width, and was only extinguished by a heavy rainfall. To this fire eighty-three daimyo’s mansions, eighty-six temples and shrines, and 530 streets fell victims; and 1,200 lives were lost.
Fires are more frequent in the latter half of winter and earlier half of spring than at any other season. Of fifty fires of greater or less magnitude which occurred in Yedo, four were in December, five in January, seventeen in February, sixteen in March, and three in April, leaving only five to the remaining seven months. Thus, more than three quarters took place in the first three months of the year. This frequency in the cold season is due to the prevalence of the north or north-west wind, and to the greater use of hearths, braziers, and other heat-generators, while the hardships of a rigorous winter also give rise to incendiarism.
Since the Restoration, there have been five great fires in Tokyo. The first broke out in 1872 when forty-one streets were destroyed, leaving a clear space, a mile and a half by a quarter. In 1876, seventy streets and ten thousand houses were burnt down; seventy-seven streets and 13,464 houses were effaced by a single fire in 1879; and in 1881, eleven thousand houses were razed to the ground. The last great fire occurred in 1892, when four
