Oshichi fire

• Date: 1682/12/28
• Other Names: 天和の大火 (Tenna no taika)
• Japanese: お七火事 (Oshichi kaji)

The Great Oshichi Fire of 1682 was a disaster which began when a young woman known as Yaoya Oshichi started a fire in order to enable her to meet with her lover again; the fire spread and in the end destroyed a large section of downtown Edo.

Oshichi, 17, was sentenced to public execution.

But dramatized versions of her story very soon came to be told by street musicians and storytellers. Ihara Saikaku published a version of her story, entitled Yaoya Monogatari ("The Tale of Yaoya") in 1686, and a kabuki production called Oshichi Utasaiban came to be performed in Osaka.

The shogunate soon afterwards (in 1686) issued an ordinance against rumors, songs, published materials, and the like relating to recent events.

References

• Ikegami, Eiko. Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture. Cambridge University Press, 2005. pp307-308.