Sparked reportedly by a burning kimono at a temple, the blaze swept through the wooden city of Edo for three days, destroying Edo Castle's main keep and most of the city. Estimates of the dead range as high as 100,000. The catastrophe forced the Tokugawa shogunate to rebuild the city with wider streets, firebreaks, and relocated warehouses, reshaping Edo into the sprawling metropolis that became modern Tokyo.
Legend holds that a priest was burning a cursed furisode kimono, passed down through three young owners who had each died shortly after receiving it, when a gust of wind carried the flaming garment into the temple's wooden eaves. Whatever the true spark, the fire that resulted, known as the Meireki fire, ravaged nearly seventy percent of Edo, then one of the largest cities on Earth.
The blaze burned so hot and spread so fast across the tightly packed wooden and paper buildings that entire districts vanished within hours. Edo Castle's towering donjon, a symbol of Tokugawa power, burned and was never rebuilt to its former height. Death toll estimates run from 30,000 to over 100,000, with many perishing not from flame but from the panicked stampedes at bridges and gates.
The shogunate's response reshaped Japanese urban planning for centuries. Officials widened streets, created firebreak plazas, relocated flammable warehouses and temples to the city's edges, and built new bridges to prevent crowd crushes. The rebuilt Edo grew even larger than before, laying groundwork for the city that would become Tokyo.