'Our guys are on the roof!' — Hikeshi in the shogunate era, when a firefighter was a hero, a brawler, and an Edo celebrity

Hikeshi (火消) – district “iroha” brigades, matoi, ladders, tattoos, and jackets as amulets. Heroes, brawlers, and street celebrities – and the logic of demolition that saved entire city blocks.

Hikeshi is not a profession; it is a subculture

Edo—the largest metropolis on the globe in the eighteenth century—dense, loud, indecently alive—was built to a great extent from wood and paper, and so fire was not an accident here but a rhythm: a season, a wind, a possibility that hovered over everyday life like an invisible banner. That is why the shogunate designed its capital like an organism resistant to catastrophe: it cut breathing strips out of the built fabric (hiyokechi 火除地), widened thoroughfares (hirokōji 広小路), created places meant to break the run of flames—and at the same time, perversely, these places became a stage for urban life, full of stalls, performances, and shows. This city was beautiful not because it was safe, but because it learned how to live close to risk.

In such a world, a firefighter could not be only a “rescuer”. They were called hikeshi (火消)—two simple signs: 火 (hi, fire) and 消 (kesu, to stop, to annihilate). And yet the Edo paradox was that “extinguishing” often meant… demolition. Instead of fighting with water against a flame that would swallow wooden roofs and paper walls anyway, hikeshi cut off its road: they tore away roofing, pulled down houses, created gaps before the fire could leap further. That is why their emblems—one syllable on the back, the matoi (纏) standard visible from afar—were for the residents something more than a brigade marker: they were an answer to the question on which everything depended. Are we in front of the sign, or behind the sign? Is our home still “to be saved”, or already “to be sacrificed”?

And because the brigades were the face of the neighborhoods, their rivalry was the rivalry of the whole city—like the football clubs of our time, except that the stake was not points, but reputation and a sense of safety. Edo knew them by short names from the iroha system—me-gumi (め組), ha-gumi (は組), and dozens of others—and cheered for them the way one cheers for “one’s own”: with pride, with exaggeration, sometimes with a readiness for a scuffle. Here, a firefighter could be at once a hero, a hooligan, and a star: a man who climbed onto a roof in smoke, and a moment later became the hero of gossip on the promenade. In today’s text we will step into their world—into their clothes, signs, rituals, urban psychology, and into that extraordinary moment when all of Edo holds its breath, looking up, because on the ladder stands someone—a young boy sighed over by the girls of the neighborhood, a model for the younger, a rival to other districts—a hero whose skill and speed decide whether, in a fire, the neighbors lose all their possessions or not. Let us get to know them more closely today.

SCENE

Hirokōji by Ryōgoku Bridge, Edo, 1720

The sun stands high above Edo and glints off the river so sharply that you squint your eyes. On Ryōgoku Bridge the crowd flows without pause—from one side people from Nihonbashi, from the other those who came here only to look. Because here, by the broad thoroughfare—hirokōji (広小路 – a wide strip – a promenade separating city blocks in order to stop a potential fire)—the city has space that almost nowhere else exists. And this space did not arise from a whim. It was cut out of the buildings like a scar: this is hiyokechi (火除地), a firebreak zone, a breathing strip meant to interrupt the run of flames. In Edo they do not speak of it with reverence—they speak of it out of habit. “It once burned here.” “Here the fire reached the river.” “Here they stopped it.” At noon no one wants to remember, but the memory is built into the very layout of the city’s streets.

At noon, however, hiyokechi pretends it is a promenade. Pretends—or perhaps it simply truly is one, because Edo cannot leave emptiness alone. On the wide strip of earth stand snack booths, sellers of uchiwa fans, paper toys, tiny amulets; someone shouts about fresh fish, someone about sweet balls of barley-and-rice flour. Off to the side, a makeshift stage for a little theater has been set up: a few boards, a couple of posts. Children squat on the ground, boys jostle to see better, and the older ones stand farther back, arms folded across their chests, as if they did not want to admit they came here for a spectacle.

And yet everyone came for a spectacle. But not for theater.

In the very center of the square a ladder rises. Not a household ladder, not the sort you lean against an eave—this one is tall, straight, made solidly, bound and set so it will not dance under a foot. Two men stabilize it at the bottom, a third checks the lashings, a fourth steps back and looks up, squinting, as if measuring not height but courage.

Someone strikes hyōshigi (拍子木)—kachi, kachi!—but this time it is not a night patrol; it is the announcement of a performance. The sound slices through the hubbub and in an instant people fall silent. Even the hawkers stop shouting for a moment. In Edo, sound can be an order—and especially that specific wooden kachi-kachi which cannot be mistaken for anything else: during a fire it taught people to gather faster than sight could, and here, in the square, it teaches concentration. The crowd lifts its heads.

First climbs a young firefighter—hikeshi (火消), or rather a man of that sphere, of those brigades the city knows by a single syllable on the back. He wears an indigo jacket densely stitched like armor—a sashiko-banten (刺子半纏)—and short work trousers. The jacket is dry, because this is a show, not an operation, but everyone in the crowd knows that if it truly were needed, the same jacket would soon be wet and very heavy, and steam would rise from it like from a pot, hissing in the heat of a blaze, protecting the young hikeshi’s body. At his waist he has a towel tied; under his arm he carries a rolled hood against sparks; in his hand he holds no bucket, only a hook on a long pole—a tobiguchi (鳶口)—a mark of the trade and a tool that in a fire can be more important than water.

For in Edo—the greatest metropolis on earth in the eighteenth century—it made no sense to fight fire with water. Everything around was built of wood and paper. The firefighters’ role was to assess to which house in the dense fabric the fire might reach, and which house had to be dismantled at once to break the flame’s path. Hence the hikeshi’s main task was not extinguishing but tearing off roofs, knocking down houses—so as to protect the lives and property of people farther down the machiya row.

The young man climbs confidently, as if the ladder were part of the street. At height he stops, stands on a narrow rung and… leans his body back, almost to horizontal, keeping balance with a lightness that elsewhere would be madness. The crowd releases one shared gasp, and then a shout. Girls cover their mouths with kimono sleeves and giggle, but in their laughter there is also tension: this is not only a “handsome boy”. This is someone who, day after day, walks rooftops while deadly heat grows beneath him.

“Look how nimble,” whispers a young apprentice to his friend. “He’s from one of those iroha… how high he holds the brigade sign!”

“From ‘め’ (me),” the other answers with pride, as if speaking of a samurai lineage—though he is speaking of a specific hikeshi brigade tied to a given district. “Me-gumi (め組, ‘the me brigade’). Ours.”

The word “ours” passes through a little group of youths like a spark: it does not ignite, but it binds. In Edo a brigade is not only an organization for fighting fires. It is the sign of a neighborhood, the sign of a street, the sign of a community. One character on a back is enough for a person to know with whom to go shoulder to shoulder, and whom to measure themselves against with a glance when, in the distance, they see smoke.

No sooner does the young man descend the ladder than the crowd begins to breathe loudly again, as if everyone at once remembered they have lungs. Someone claps, someone shouts “well done!”, someone calls a name known only from gossip. A tea seller seizes the moment and raises a jug, urging people to buy. Children run closer.

Then, from the other side of the hirokōji, movement begins. First you hear footsteps—heavy, compact—and then you see them. A second group of youths, just as strong, just as sure, walks as if they were leading the wind itself. Their jackets bear another sign, another rhythm of brushstroke. One of them carries something tall—not a ladder, but a matoi (纏), the brigade standard: a pole topped with an intricate element, and beneath it long strips that wave in the air like a comet’s tail. In a fire, the matoi can be seen from afar—it marks where the demolition action will be and where the planned line to stop the fire lies. That is why, during a fire, everyone wants to know where the sign is—whether it is in front of their house or behind—whether they will lose all their possessions, or whether there is still hope in the hikeshi’s hands.

“Oho,” mutters an old man standing to the side, picking at pieces of tofu with miso on a skewer. “They’ve come.”

“Who?” asks a curious boy.

The old man spits to the side, as if that might protect him from exaggeration.

“は組 (ha-gumi),” he says curtly. “And straight away with the matoi. They like being watched.”

A soft murmur runs through the crowd. “Ha!” “Me!” Two syllables—and in them whole neighborhoods, whole histories, whole bundles of pride. In Edo they say the city is made not of streets, but of reputations.

The young men from ha-gumi do not approach the ladder at once. They stand so that everyone can see them. One adjusts his sash, another lifts his chin, a third mutters something toward me-gumi—loud enough for them to hear, “innocent” enough that, if needed, it can be passed off as a joke.

“Nice bend, ‘め’. Just don’t forget that in a real fire and in a wet banten the ladder dances, it doesn’t stand politely.”

From me-gumi comes laughter, short and hard.

“And you, ‘は’ (ha), brought the matoi because without it no one would recognize you?” someone shoots back, and the crowd instantly bursts with laughter and indignation, because Edo loves words as much as motion.

This is the moment when the older ones look differently. Because they remember: brigade rivalry is not only play. In a fire, prestige could be currency, and currency can spoil a head. It is enough to think of what it meant for a brigade to “stop” the fire—to choose the keshikuchi (消口), the point of engagement, and be remembered as those who “took” the flame onto themselves, who made the break before the fire leapt. Even if today it is noon and a merry audience, everyone knows that tomorrow the same syllables on those backs may be running through smoke and death.

The old man shakes his head, but his mouth twitches.

“When the wind comes, they’ll stop pinching,” he says to himself. “The wind will teach them.”

Someone nearby adds:

“Before the wind comes, let the city have something to look at.”

And that is the truth about Edo that is difficult to compress into a dry sentence. The city is constantly torn between fear and wonder. Fire is real. And at the same time, real is the need to tame that fear. That is why firefighters—young, strong, loud—become icons. Their skill on the ladder is proof that a human being can master height. Their matoi is proof that in chaos one can recognize “one’s own”. Their jackets and signs say: “there is order here.” And their jabs? They are young, after all!

For a moment, the wind from the river strengthens. The flame of a small lamp in a teahouse trembles. A boy carrying cups instinctively shields it with his hand, as if protecting a small life from a great cataclysm.

The older man notices the gesture. He smiles faintly, almost imperceptibly—and says, as if it were the most ordinary remark in the world:

- 「よし。江戸じゃ火事ぁ、ちっせぇことから始まる。」
(Yoshi. Edo ja kaji a, chissē koto kara hajimaru.)

- “Right. In Edo, a fire starts from a tiny thing.”

Edo — an organism designed for fire

If we look closely at the city of Edo, we will see not only a flammable “city of paper and wood”, but also a city built with full awareness of the threat—with built-in safeguards. Not only because shogunate officials had a particular fondness for urban planning (and they did), but also because fire was as real here as taxes and the rice market: a recurring danger that demanded procedures, space, and a hierarchy of actions. In a sense, Edo was a great compromise between daily life and constant readiness for catastrophe—and that compromise can be read in the city’s very layout: in empty strips of land, in broad street “cuts”, in building-law ordinances, in the bakufu’s institutions (if you are interested in the broader way the shogunate functioned, I invite you here: The shogunate is not a monarchy. How did the precise machinery of samurai administration function?).

First, however, one must realize something: fires in Edo were not completely random. They had their rhythm, their cyclicality. Official data show that fire was relatively rare in summer, intensified from autumn, and reached its peak in spring—especially in March (converted from the lunar to the solar calendar)—and then weakened again toward summer. This is not chance, but climate + construction + density: dry season, wind, wood and paper in such close proximity that flame jumps from house to house in an instant. The wind directions are equally telling: from autumn to spring, fires dominated under winds from the north and northwest, and in early spring there is a clearly increased share of winds from the south and southwest. In other words: Edo did not only burn—it burned “in accordance with the weather”.

Here administration enters. After great catastrophes (especially after the “Meireki fire” of 1657, which burned a significant part of the city), the bakufu began to treat fire not as a series of misfortunes but as a systemic problem. And in the period from the reconstruction after the Meireki fire through the Kyōhō era (1716–1736), three pillars of fire-prevention policy were refined.

First—space: creating protective strips and empty zones; second—organization: the development and arrangement of firefighting formations; third—architecture: building regulations meant to slow flame (for example, mandating tiled roofs and developing more “fire-resistant” construction in key zones). The authors of the study* on Edo’s fire-prevention policy say it plainly: in the Kyōhō period these three strategies worked in linkage, mutually supported one another, and formed the city’s coherent anti-fire environment.

*森下雄治（Yuji Morishita）・山﨑正史（Masahumi Yamazaki）,
「江戸の主要防火政策に関する研究－享保から慶応までの防火環境とその変遷について－」

The most visible, “urban-planning” pillar was space: hiyokechi (火除地) and the related hirokōji (広小路), that is, empty strips, squares, and widenings meant to act like scissors cutting through continuous built fabric. This is important: they were not scattered at random. In Kyōhō policy we see thinking in terms of belts delaying the spread of fire: in strategic zones around moats (inner and outer), along key warehouses, in the areas of critical city nodes. In the case of the “samurai” part (武家方), these belts were linked with the placement of organizational hubs—for example with hikeshi yashiki (firefighter quarters/“bases”) of jōbikeshi (定火消)—so that the institution was literally “plugged into” the city’s urban line of defense.

In the “townspeople” part (町方), the logic was equally precise, only more social: the bakufu created firebreak belts, and during a fire it pulled people onto them—above all the urban brigades. They even planned something like a “double” safeguard: an outer firebreak belt (hiyokechi, 火除地) and an inner structure of blocks meant to be built more according to standards limiting the spread of flame.

And yet this engineering of safety has a second life in Edo—and it is this second life that is the key to hikeshi culture. Because hiyokechi did not remain empty “technical strips”. Depending on location, they became spaces of everyday use: by bridges and at road nodes (where movement and information had long existed) they blossomed as places of trade, storage, entertainment; by temples and gates—as zones of pleasure, eateries, misemono, teahouses; in “samurai” areas they were often immediately filled with training and representative functions (for example drill grounds, riding rings, buildings linked to falconry); and at boundaries between usage zones their “double life” matured slowly, over decades, until in the nineteenth century practically all major hiyokechi appeared in guidebooks and illustrations of “famous places” (名所). In short: Edo created an anti-fire space, and then made it the stage of lush life.

The second pillar—organization—was also not static but dynamic. After Meireki, jōbikeshi was established (1658, 定火消—literally “permanent firefighting guard”); the institution expanded and then—along with the bakufu’s growing financial problems—began to shrink again. In parallel, especially in Kyōhō, townspeople’s firefighting was increasingly institutionalized: in 1718 Ōoka Tadasuke, after consultations with nanushi (町名主, the block head), introduced the machi-bikeshi system for townspeople districts; in 1720 they began to bind them into “iroha” associations (いろは組), and in 1722 the scope of activity was expanded (among other things, into the areas of samurai residences). In 1730 there was a reordering and reduction in numbers, but at the same time the system became mature and durable—to such an extent that in the second half of the era a clear process is visible: institutions “on the samurai side” lose their real role, and the weight of prevention and response settles on machi-bikeshi.

And here we come to the most interesting fissure—the fissure from which the firefighting subculture is born. The Kyōhō system was coherent, but it was not eternal. As decades passed, those three pillars began to loosen: the number of “empty protective zones” gradually decreased after Kyōhō, building regulations began in practice to blur, and firefighting organizations tied to samurai households shrank and lost significance. The study cited above says it plainly: the connections among the three strategies weakened—and by the end of the Edo period machi-bikeshi took responsibility “thoroughly”, becoming the actual backbone of the city’s fire protection.

That is precisely why it is impossible to write about hikeshi as a “profession” in today’s sense. They are the product of an urban project and of that project’s erosion. When anti-fire space becomes at the same time public space, when building law is no longer enforced without compromise, and when state formations lose strength—then the importance grows of people who can act immediately, locally, on the basis of reputation, solidarity, and neighborhood pride. The firefighter ceases to be only an executor of order and becomes its living symbol. In the further part of the article we will learn: their hierarchies, their ethos, their brutal aesthetics, their ladder spectacles, their signs on jackets and on skin—and how fire made them not only rescuers but “stars of the city”.

Hikeshi culture

When we say “hikeshi culture”, it is easy to stop at an effective illustration: a brave firefighter, a ladder, a tattoo, applause from the crowd. In Edo, however, it was not a postcard but part of the city’s bloodstream. The city lived under constant fire pressure, and that pressure left a mark not only in regulations, but also in characters, relationships, and everyday gestures. To understand it, we must look at hikeshi at once as people, as an institution, and as a social phenomenon—something on the border between public service and street subculture.

In the Kyōhō era the bakufu did not limit itself to a general call: “extinguish faster”. It mapped firefighting in astonishing detail. In 1718 a stable frame of machi-bikeshi (町火消) was created, and just two years later it was ordered to organize them into the iroha-gumi (いろは組) system—larger unions gathering many neighboring chō (町). After 1718, 1720, and 1722 further steps followed, and in 1730 the system was arranged into “great groups”, at the same time reducing the number of people assigned to one chō from thirty to fifteen. This sounds like dry bureaucracy, but in practice it triggered something far stronger: neighborhood identity, pride, and rivalry. Because if your street belongs to this or that group, it is not an abstraction. It is who runs with you through smoke and heat, whom you know from night patrols, whom you trust—and whose courage you compare yourself to in silence when, in the distance, the first column of smoke rises.

It is easy to see why hiyokechi are such an important background for hikeshi culture. It was not an “empty safety square”. These were gathering places, intersection points of movement, spaces in which the city could see its own defense. By day hirokōji lived with trade and entertainment; at the moment of alarm they became the line on which the energy of whole neighborhoods concentrated. Firefighters were visible—and a hero is, above all, someone whom you can see.

Hence the first element of the social triad: the hero. It is enough to think of work on rooftops—running over slippery shingles, climbing a ladder into smoke, fighting not so much flame as wind and time. Meanwhile, from afar, hundreds and thousands of eyes watched the firefighter—people whose entire property was literally now in that man’s hands.

But alongside heroism there existed a second dimension, equally real: the brawler. Not because hikeshi were “bad” by nature, but because their world was built on neighborhood honor and on rivalry, which often took the form of demonstrations of strength. Edo repeated the saying:

「火事と喧嘩は江戸の花」

(Kaji to kenka wa Edo no hana)

“fights and fires are the flowers of Edo”

—and this image functioned in popular culture, especially in kabuki, which could turn a street conflict into a stage ritual. Not by chance there is the play “め組の喧嘩” (“The Brawl of the Megumi Brigade”), connected with the legend of a clash between firefighters and sumo wrestlers—a conflict of “the people” with a force that had its patrons and its own privileges. This is an important psychological thread: hikeshi were not merely a “service” ordered to act. They were the body of urban pride, constantly negotiating boundaries: how much is allowed to “ours”, when “ours” may be allowed more, and when one must step back because hierarchy stands beside you. They were even a symbol—an embodiment and inspiration—of the lower-strata city culture (more about the ethos of these groups can be found here: Honor Did Not Belong Only to the Samurai – Bravery, Courage, and the Ethos of Life of the machi-shū).

And at the same time they were “from here”—and that leads to the third, fundamental dimension: practical morality. Firefighters were residents of their own areas: they saved the houses of relatives, neighbors, people they knew by name. This closeness created trust, but also community pressure: in Edo, fire was a topic of everyday conversation, and prevention became a habit, a kind of collective vigilance. Authority quickly learned to exploit this social energy. In the Kyōhō edicts it was ordered that during strong winds machi-bikeshi should patrol their chō day and night, ensuring that shikka (失火)—accidental fires—did not occur.

In 1723 the construction of hinomi-yagura (火の見櫓)—watchtowers—was enforced, staffed by two guards: they were to look out for smoke, and when they saw it, strike wooden boards and immediately mobilize people (perhaps you have seen in ukiyo-e, or in later Meiji photographs, those very, very tall “ladders”—that is exactly hinomi-yagura). In 1736 consequences already appear: if the appropriate chō does not send people quickly, monetary penalties are threatened. Thus an ethos was born in which fear, duty, shame, and pride mixed. And also techniques of lightning-fast response.

On top of that came the everyday tissue of the night city: jishinban (自身番) and tsuji-ban (辻番). A study on this subject by the Tokyo University historian Miyamoto Fusae (“江戸における町火消成立期の火災被害に関する研究”) describes that even before the formal establishment of machi-bikeshi there existed in chō patrol shifts of hi no yōjin (“watch out for fire”), and from 1 October 1718 night pedestrians were to be escorted by guards from crossroads, striking hyōshigi (拍子木)—as a response to frequent arson. This is an important custom detail: in Edo, safety was communal, but also controlling. The sound of the clappers meant at once a warning about fire and a signal: “someone is watching, someone sees”.

And then the third member of the triad appears: the celebrity. Edo had an extraordinary ability to turn serious things into spectacle—including safety. Skills needed in a fire (ladders, rooftops, sure movement at height, speed) began to live a second life in squares and during festivals. From this world grows hashigo-nori (梯子乗り)—ladder acrobatics, today associated with New Year dezome (出初式) shows, and historically linked with firefighting traditions. The city watched firefighters like actors, because their prowess was visible proof that someone controlled chaos.

Matoi（纏）worked similarly—the brigade standard. It was a recognizability tool and a tool of “presence”: raised high, “animated” by strips of fabric, in a fire it indicated the action site and mobilized people, and in peacetime it became an emblem of neighborhood pride. And here the whole picture closes: iroha as a map of the city and a map of pride; a community that truly puts out its own houses; and finally the theater of the street, where bravery becomes a spectacle, and the spectacle—politics. In Edo, fame was born on the street, on hirokōji, on the hiyokechi strips, where crowds gathered. And therefore the firefighter was at once a hero, a brawler, and a local star—because in a city that burned regularly, it was impossible to be “only” a rescuer.

Edo firefighter “fashion”

The jacket

In Edo, a firefighter’s clothing was not an ordinary “work outfit”. It was a tool, a brigade calling card, and an object with protective power—because fire was treated not only as a physical phenomenon, but also as an element with its own “character”: capricious, vengeful, feeding on wind, capable of swallowing an entire street within an hour. In such a world, clothing had to do two things at once: protect the body and place a person on the right side of fate.

The most important was the thick, quilted jacket of the 刺子半纏 (sashiko-banten) type—a layered, densely stitched cotton armor. Its logic was simple and brilliant: it was meant to absorb water. Before entering the zone of heat, firefighters drenched themselves and the jacket with water; wet cotton acted like a first shield, and steam was a sign the garment was “working”. Period descriptions even say that the wet jacket in fire could hiss and steam when singed from the outside—and that was the price for those few seconds that sometimes decided life. Museums also emphasize that firefighting jackets could be reversible: modest, indigo on the outside, and inside decorated with images of great symbolic power (why rich decoration was not worn on the outside is explained here: Sumptuary Laws in the Time of the Shogunate, or How Prohibitions Stirred the Defiant Creative Genius of the Japanese).

And here begins the “amulet” function. Because the inside of the jacket—what you do not show the world on ordinary days—could be a place for motifs invoking water, courage, and divine protection. The Edo-Tokyo Museum has an excellent, concrete example: a firefighter’s jacket from は組 (ha-gumi) from the Nihonbashi Ōdenmachō area. On the back a great “は”, and by the waist the inscription “は組” and a signboard mark connected with the place where fire is stopped: 消口 (keshikuchi). Inside, meanwhile—a dragon in clouds and a waterfall, that is, water and strength harnessed in motion. The museum notes that such “watery” motifs were particularly loved.

In addition came head coverings and “soft armor” for the most exposed areas: various forms of 火事頭巾 (kaji-zukin) and 刺子火事頭巾 (sashiko kaji-zukin), as well as the famous “cat hoods” 猫頭巾 (neko-zukin)—covering the neck and cheeks, protecting against sparks and heat. Sources from the Tokyo Fire Department, citing the Edo culture scholar Mitamura Enryō (also called the father of edogaku), even describe “going out to a fire” as a procession: nanushi at the front in a special covering and hood, behind him men in half-hanten with brigade markings, then professional “tobi” in stitched jackets and “cat” hoods, and almost all with a 鳶口 (tobiguchi—long tool for tearing off roof tiles) in hand.

The tattoo

For Edo firefighters, armor did not end with cloth. Horimono—large tattoos worn by city working people (more about which we write here: The work of Japan’s tattoo masters, the horishi – where the gaze of the shogunate did not reach)—were sometimes treated as a second skin that protects: a sign of belonging, masculinity, resilience, and sometimes also an amulet. Studies on late Edo culture emphasize the connection of tattooing with woodblock-print iconography and with the ethos of urban “braves” (otokodate/kyōkaku)—and machi-bikeshi were one of the groups living closest to that imagination.

Motifs often referred to the fight against fire: water (waves, waterfalls), dragons, carp, sometimes deities and warriors—images that say: “I will not retreat.” (And again: the same logic as the jacket interiors—an inner side, private, yet fundamental.)

The brigade crest

In Edo, the equivalents of our football clubs were the hikeshi brigades. The stadium: the street, the rooftop, and hiyokechi.

The machi-bikeshi system was arranged into the famous いろは四十八組 (iroha shijūhachi gumi), where brigade names were taken from the iroha syllabary: that is why you encounter i-gumi（い組, “the i brigade”）, ro-gumi（ろ組, “the ro brigade”）, me-gumi（め組, “the me brigade”）, and so on. Interestingly, not all syllables were used directly: those avoided included ones that sounded ominous (for example “hi” – “ひ” associated with “火” – fire), and others with vulgar or unlucky sound; these were replaced with substitute signs: 百 (hyaku), 千 (sen), 万 (man), 本 (hon).

Symbols of the war for fame

The most important symbols in the field were not decorations, but tools of reputation. Each brigade had its signs: 纏 (matoi) and 幟 (nobori)—visible from afar, helping gather people and mark presence at the action site. And when firefighters reached a fire, they chose the “point of engagement”—消口 (keshikuchi), the place where one tries to stop the spread of fire—and there they hung 消札 (keshifuda), a wooden placard with the brigade name. It was both proof of action and something like a signature on the saved boundary.

And here begins what was inevitable in Edo: since a signature means prestige, the signature becomes a cause of fights. Sources describe the phenomenon 消口争い (keshikuchi-arasoi)—“disputes over keshikuchi”: swapping placards, pushing on rooftops, attempts to seize the action site, because in the end what mattered was who would be remembered as the one who “stopped the fire”.

That is why Edo firefighters’ uniform was at once practical and symbolic. Practical—because wet, stitched cotton and hoods saved skin. Symbolic—because one letter on the back and one placard at the keshikuchi could turn an operation into a duel for honor. And honor, in Edo, was worn on the outside: on the back of a jacket, at the top of a matoi, in the street’s stories—like a supporters’ song the city knew by heart.

“Megumi” and stardom

There are names in Edo that entered Edo history the way, in earlier centuries, great samurai were remembered. Me-gumi—め組, “the me brigade”—is among those names. There is something soft in its sound, and at the same time something hard in its associations: because in a city where wind could, within an hour, turn an entire block into heat and ash, a “brigade” was no metaphor. It was a local family, a local pride, a local reputation. And when someone said “those are ours, from me-gumi”, they were also saying: “those are the ones who will run first.” The bravest, the most skilled, the fastest.

Authority, of course, saw in machi-bikeshi above all an instrument of order. In documents and analyses of fire-prevention policy one sees that cool, systemic gesture: hiyokechi (火除地) and hirokōji (広小路) as belts and widenings against fire; brigade reorganization; building regulations. And yet this institution of grassroots groups created to fight fire—created so the city would not burn—immediately began to live its own life. Because Edo had its peculiar art: it could turn administrative necessity into urban mythology.

And here “Megumi” enters—not only as a brigade, but as a social phenomenon. The Tokyo Fire Department preserved in its listing which streets and areas were assigned to individual iroha brigades—and among them is also me-gumi, tied to the Shiba zone (among other places around Zōjō-ji and Hamamatsuchō). This matters, because a brigade was not an abstraction: it was the “segment of the city” it defended. And since it defended it regularly, climbing onto roofs and running over scorching tiles, it began to receive in return something hard to write into a rulebook: a social license, even adoration.

In practice, this meant that a firefighter—especially someone recognizable, a tobi-gashira (鳶頭, a “tobi” foreman) or a matoi bearer (纏)—might be treated as someone allowed more. Not because the law suddenly stopped functioning, but because another mechanism was at work: a debt of gratitude society felt toward its heroes. In a wooden city, dense, dependent on wind, “tomorrow” really could depend on whether someone made it in time today. And if he made it—if he “stopped” the fire at the district boundary—his reputation grew at a pace no other physical work could provide.

But that reputation had a dark side—and it became fuel for fame. The loudest example is “Me-gumi no kenka” (め組の喧嘩)—a real clash from 1805 (Bunka 2), which began from a conflict on the grounds of Shiba Shinmei (芝神明) and turned into a collective brawl between men of me-gumi and sumo wrestlers. This event passed into stories, kōdan, theater, and urban mythology—but in its original form it was a real, historical event.

Later it became the foundation of one of the most “Edo” stage stories: the kabuki play titled “Shinmei Megumi no Wago Torikumi” (神明恵和合取組)—and the title itself is a wonderful piece of urban semantics, because “恵 (megumi)” in the title simultaneously carries the meaning “grace/blessing” and points to “め組”.

This is not about excusing firefighters. It is about understanding the city’s psychology. Edo lived under pressure that regularly demanded an outlet: sometimes it was the pressure of fire, sometimes the pressure of honor. Kabuki shows this without sentiment: in a world where people said “fires and brawls are the flower of Edo”, firefighters rushing with matoi and tobiguchi were the darlings of girls and models for boys; they entered plays, tales, and anecdotes—they became a figure of urban “iki”, masculine flair and courage. Their volatility, therefore, was not merely a “misdeed”: it was part of the role Edo imposed on them, and then began to admire.

And now let us return to hiyokechi—because there it is easiest to see how a rescuer becomes an icon. Imagine such a square: by day a market with tea, stalls, a small show; by night a darker, more vigilant space, where it is easier to hear that the city lives by sound. One cannot overestimate how strongly Edo relied on neighborhood duty: jishinban (自身番) as a district guard post, night rounds, and tsuji-ban (辻番) escorting pedestrians, striking the wooden clappers hyōshigi (a sound permanently joined with night scenes of old Edo), because arson was a real problem. In such an environment the firefighter is not “someone from outside”. He is someone who grows out of the same street, the same conversations about wind and fire, the same memory of the last great blaze—but he is also someone whom the rest of the neighborhood trusts to protect their property and life when fire appears.

That is why his fame is different from an actor’s fame. It is more “neighborly”, more concrete, more demanding. An actor vanishes from the stage when the show ends. A firefighter does not vanish—tomorrow morning he will pass your shop again, someone will nod to him again, someone will say half-jokingly: “watch yourself, because if you’re gone, to whom will we entrust the roof?” And hearing that, he grows. He grows in a sense of duty, but he also grows in the sense that his presence is needed by the city. And from this a dangerous mixture is born: an ethos of service plus the conviction that one is irreplaceable.

It is precisely this mixture that Edo turned into the icon of “Megumi”. On one side—real work, real technique, real fear. On the other—the street theater, in which the city likes to watch its defenders like actors, because then it is easier to believe chaos can be tamed. And therefore a firefighter in Edo could be both a hero and a celebrity: not “despite” danger, but exactly because at any moment he could become the guarantee that the next day the city could still open its shop, cook katemeshi, and live on.

The further fate of hikeshi

In the end what remains in memory is not so much the flame, as how Edo learned to live with its real threat every day. The city was not “careless”—rather, it was constantly balancing between the daily need for closeness (wooden houses, narrow alleys, markets, neighborliness) and the necessity of creating breaks and barriers. Hikeshi, the Edo firefighter, became a figure in townspeople’s eyes greater than legendary warriors: he embodied urban resilience, strength, masculinity. In his clothing, in the brigade signs, in ladder shows, and in stormy temperament, two forces met: administrative order and the element of the street. And hiyokechi—those “empty” lands—were like a stage on which the city reminded itself every day that safety is not a state given once and for all, but a daily practice.

When Edo, however, entered modernity, this world could not remain the same. Already in the late Tokugawa period one can see the weight shifting toward the city guard, as the linkage among the “three pillars” of fire-prevention policy weakened and the role of machi-bikeshi grew. After 1868 not only the city’s name changes, but also the logic of institutions: in 1872 the former Edo machi-bikeshi were transformed into Tokyo 消防組 (shōbōgumi, “firefighting groups”), which gained a character similar to today’s volunteer formations, operating alongside salaried services. In subsequent decades the fire service enters ever more strongly into the orbit of state-and-police administration (in Tokyo it was moved into police structures in 1881), and later, in the twentieth century, these organizations are reshaped again (among other things, folded into civil-defense systems), until the postwar order finally separates out a modern, professional municipal fire service—in Tokyo as a distinct office created in 1948.

So what happened to the old hikeshi stardom? It did not vanish—rather, it changed form. Part of its energy was “civilized”: symbols, parades, and shows became heritage, a ritual of memory, not an element of street rivalry for honor at the keshikuchi. At the same time, the very idea of a local community taking responsibility for safety survived in the form of Japanese volunteer formations (shōbōdan), no longer as a neighborhood “brigade of pride” but as an institution rooted in neighborhood and training. And if today in Tokyo (and in many other cities) you still see, on New Year’s, ladders, standards, and ceremonial discipline—this is the echo of Edo: a city that learned that fire is inevitable, but we are not entirely helpless before it—we have our heroes—hikeshi.

>> SEE ALSO SIMILAR ARTICLES:

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'Our guys are on the roof!' — Hikeshi in the shogunate era, when a firefighter was a hero, a brawler, and an Edo celebrity

Hikeshi is not a profession; it is a subculture

SCENE

Hirokōji by Ryōgoku Bridge, Edo, 1720

Edo — an organism designed for fire

Hikeshi culture

Edo firefighter “fashion”

The jacket

The tattoo

The brigade crest

Symbols of the war for fame

“Megumi” and stardom

The further fate of hikeshi

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Mike Soray

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