A Cause Of The Fire
(Jan.18th, Tokyo)
It is told "Meireki-no-Taika" was caused by the following story. One 16-year girl died of illness and her clothes passed into an old-clothes dealer. But the girls got her clothes died one after another. Then they burned it at Honmyoji. Blown up the clothes with catching a fire caused the big fire. A lot of big fires broke out often in Edo(Tokyo) except "Meireki-no-Taika". It is said the reasons of the big fires were as follows; The houses were built of wood and winter is a dry and windy season. In spite of setting fire to a house sentenced to death penalty, it happened a lot. But whenever they had a fire, Edo was reconstructed and it led to the economic development. The picture is the present Ryogoku bridge in Chuo-ku, Tokyo. Before "Meireki-no-Taika", there was only one bridge on the Sumida river by reason of defense, made the disaster bigger. Two years later the "Meireki-no-Taika" broke out, The Ryogoku bridge was built across the Sumida river.
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