Kobayashi Kiyochika’s Outbreak of Fire

Orange flames dominate the composition, driven rightward by wind. People flee on the right side of the canal. One of the unburned homes on the right has people on their roof observing.

Kobayashi Kiyochika, Outbreak of Fire Seen from Hisamatus-cho (Great Fire on the Night of February 11, 1881), 1881, woodblock print, 9 ¾ x 14 ⅜ in., Mead Art Museum.

About

Outbreak of Fire Seen from Hisamatus-cho (Great Fire on the Night of February 11, 1881) is a Japanese woodblock print depicting the destruction of a neighborhood in Tokyo and one of the ninety-three prints in a series titled Famous Places of Tokyo or Views of Tokyo by Kobayashi Kiyochika.

Japanese Woodblock Printing

The medium used for this print is an example of traditional Japanese woodblock printing, which allows for the artist to reproduce their sketches. By the time Kiyochika completed his series, Famous Places of Tokyo, the woodblock tradition was in decline. The process starts with a sketch which is brought to a carver who creates the woodblocks, one for each color, out of wild mountain cherry wood. Then, the blocks are brought to a printer where they add a water-based ink to the blocks and press them against paper to create the print.1

One of the most-well known printing effects in Japanese woodblock printing is gradation (bokashi). Made famous by artists Hokusai and Hiroshige, there are two main ways to create this effect, block gradation (itabokashi) and brushed (fukibokashi). Itabokashi is the process of creating gradation through carving the wood progressively deeper so that less ink is laid throughout the carving. This method is more consistent which makes each print almost exactly the same. Fukibokashi is the process of creating the gradation on a flat part of the woodblock by fading the colors together before pressing it with the paper. This process creates a softer feel to the print, but allows for inconsistencies across prints.2 I believe that Outbreak of Fire Seen from Hisamatus-cho uses fukibokashi since the gradation in the top left corner looks soft and brushed.

Kobayashi Kiyochika

Kiyochika was born in 1847 to two low-ranking government officials and lived in near poverty as a child. When he was just eighteen years old, he fought in the battles before the Meiji Restoration. After returning to Tokyo years later, he eventually found his way under the guidance of Charles Wirgman, an English cartoonist, painter, and correspondent for the Illustrated London News.3 Between 1876 and 1881, Kiyochika dedicated himself to Famous Places of Tokyo or Views of Tokyo, a series of woodblock prints. Inspired by the Western art he was exposed to early on in his artistic career through Wirgman, he incorporated its use of shadows and shading for modeling. This series of ninety-three woodblock prints ended due to the Fires of Edo in 1881, which historically have destroyed parts of what is now Tokyo throughout centuries. Kiyochika lost his home and studio which caused him to abandon this project. However, before stopping, he created four more woodblock prints about the fires with Outbreak of Fire Seen from Hisamatus-cho (Great Fire on the Night of February 11, 1881) being one of the last in the series. While this series was Kiyochika’s most famous work, he continued to make newspaper cartoons, animal representations, and ended his career with depictions of Japan as an imperialist power after the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars.4

History of Tokyo and Fire

During the Meiji Era, the government promoted modernization of the city through constructing western-style neighborhoods with brick buildings. Before this, during the Edo period (1603–1867), all buildings were made of wood so urban fires would spread widely. Throughout Tokyo’s history, fires would often break out in the winter due to strong dry northwest winds. These winds would fuel the fire and turn them into large urban fires. During the Edo period, the water pumps were not efficient, so the volunteer firefighters would instead destroy neighboring homes to prevent the spread of the fire.5

On January 26, 1881, the Great Ryogoku Fire started and ended up being one of the largest fires in Tokyo history, burning over 15,000 homes including Kiyochika’s. About two weeks later another fire in Hisamatsu-cho, a different neighborhood in Tokyo, started and is the one depicted in the print. This fire, although less destructive than the Great Ryogoku Fire, destroyed over 7,000 homes.6 The destruction and loss from these fires caused Kiyochika to terminate his ninety-three print series, which was suspected to continue for one-hundred prints, as it was emotionally taxing.7

Wind and Weather Analysis

Kiyochika’s series, Famous Places of Tokyo, reflects his denial of the modernization and westernization of Tokyo from the Edo period to the Meiji period until the fires of 1881. Throughout the ninety-three print series, Kiyochika tries to hide the advancements in Tokyo during the Meiji period by removing modern elements such as Western clothing. Most woodblock print artists at the time displayed the changing urban landscape to advertise Japan’s modernization to the rest of the world. Similar to others, Kiyochika at first favored a Western audience by labeling his prints with English writing, however, after a couple of prints, he decided to return to producing for a Japanese audience by labeling the prints in Japanese.8 One of Kiyochika’s latest prints in this series, Outbreak of Fire Seen from Hisamatus-cho (Great Fire on the Night of February 11, 1881), is an example of his disdain for Westernization.

The print’s composition contains a canal running through the middle of a neighborhood. These canals were used as a water supply system which were part of Tokyo’s modernization efforts during the Meiji period to support over one million people in the city.9 As seen in the print, the flames are consuming multiple buildings. The building at the heart of the print is the Meiji Theater, which was known for its Western stage plays.10 Especially since the wind is coming from the northwest, Kiyochika is making an argument against Westernization in Japan and signifies his want for the return of the old Japan.11 The Keio era (1865–68) and early Meiji era prints were usually dark and brutal, similar to the fire in this print from 1881 in the middle Meiji era, thus further showing Kiyochika reminiscing of the past.12

This print represents the wind and its destructive ability. As seen by the direction of the flames and smoke, the wind blows from left to right in the print at roughly a 45 degree angle, which implies strong winds. While the wind is not directly damaging the homes and structures, the wind fuels the fire which razed the neighborhood. Wind’s relationship with fire is dichotomous since a small fire can be put out by wind, but a conflagration can be magnified.

Similarly, wind can create and destroy life. In our daily lives we take wind for granted; the swaying trees and grass. Without wind, when looking at nature there would be no difference between an image and living in nature. Even though wind adds movement and life to our surroundings, under specific circumstances like the print, it is a destructive force. The fire was specifically destructive to Kiyochika’s life, destroying his home, studio, and will to continue his series. He ended his Famous Places of Tokyo series—inspired by Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo—with ninety-three prints.

Footnotes

  1.  Rebecca Salter. Japanese Woodblock Printing (University of Hawai’i Press, 2002), 12–15, 60–61. ↩︎
  2. Salter, Japanese Woodblock Printing, 98–100. ↩︎
  3. Frederick Baekeland, “Kobayashi, Kiyochika,” Grove Art Online, 2003, https://doi-org.amherst.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T047045. ↩︎
  4.  James T. Ulak, “Kiyochika’s Tokyo: Master of Modern Melancholy (1876–1881),” MIT Visualizing Cultures, 2016, https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/kiyochika_tokyo/index.html. ↩︎
  5. Kyōichi Kobayashi, “The History of Firefighting (Tokyo and Yokohama),” The History of Fires and Firefighting in Japan and Six of its Major Cities, 2022, 7–8, https://www.kaigai-shobo.jp/files/fireserviceinjapan_eng/20221001_History-Japan_eng.pdf. ↩︎
  6. Kobayashi, “History,” 8-9. ↩︎
  7.  Henry D. Smith II, Kiyochika, Artist of Meiji Japan (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1988), iii. ↩︎
  8. Ulak, “Kiyochika’s Tokyo.” ↩︎
  9. Kobayashi, “History,” 7 ↩︎
  10. Smith, “Kiyochika,” iv. ↩︎
  11. Kobayashi, “History,” 8. ↩︎
  12.  Seiichirō Takahashi, Traditional Woodblock Prints of Japan (New York: Weatherhill, 1972), 147. ↩︎