Meireki Era

The Great Fire of Meireki and the Loss of Swords

Meireki (1655-1658) was an era under the fourth shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna. Central to this period is the Great Fire of Meireki (also called the Furisode Fire) of January 1657, which destroyed most of Edo, consuming the keep of Edo Castle along with daimyo and hatamoto residences and townhouses, with a death toll estimated in the tens of thousands.

Sword researcher Ito Sanpei estimates that roughly 100,000 blades were lost in Edo alone in the fire. Of the 168 famous swords recorded in the 1719 Kyōhō Meibutsuchō, 69 are noted as having been lost to the fire — a staggering blow to the era's finest sword collection. Among the celebrated blades lost were the Uesugi Tachi, said to be associated with Uesugi Kenshin, the Daikoku Tachi handed down through the Ashikaga shogunate, and the Hōchō Tōshirō, an heirloom of the Tokugawa shogunal house. Records also describe "yakinaoshi" — the re-tempering of fire-damaged blades to restore them.

Setting the Stage for Kanbun Shintō

The mass loss of blades drove a sharp rise in demand for swords in Edo. The need for daimyo and hatamoto households to re-equip themselves after losing their armaments helped prepare the ground for the Kanbun Shintō boom of the 1661-1673 period. Kanbun Shintō blades are characterized by shallow curvature and a form suited to thrusting rather than a pronounced point — a style tied both to the spread of shinai-based swordsmanship training and to the replacement demand created by the fire.

A Representative Smith

Nagasone Kotetsu, who moved from armor-making into swordsmithing in Edo, is said to have begun forging blades around the Meireki-Manji years, later maturing into a smith ranked among the finest of the Shintō period during the following Kanbun era. This was a time when Edo smiths such as Kotetsu honed their craft amid the surge in demand following the fire.

Social Context

The Great Fire of Meireki prompted a major rethinking of Edo's urban planning, including the creation of firebreaks and wide avenues as part of a shift toward disaster-resilient city design. Many daimyo and hatamoto households lost heirloom blades that had been passed down for generations, making the re-acquisition of swords symbolizing lineage and status an urgent task. The Meireki era marks one of the turning points at which, in an age of peace, the sword increasingly took on the character of a family treasure embodying rank and pedigree rather than a purely practical weapon.