Great Fire of Meireki

[2] The fire was said to have been started accidentally by a priest who was cremating an allegedly cursed furisode kimono that had been owned in succession by three teenage girls who all died before ever being able to wear it.

[3] The fire began on the eighteenth day of the year, in Edo's Hongō district, and spread quickly through the city, due to hurricane-force winds that were blowing from the northwest.

Under the guidance of Rōjū Matsudaira Nobutsuna, streets were widened and some districts replanned and reorganized; special care was taken to restore Edo's mercantile center, thus protecting and boosting to some extent the overall national economy.

Commoners and samurai retainers alike were granted funds from the government for the rebuilding of their homes, and the restoration of the shōgun's castle was left to be completed last.

One of the greatest disasters in Japanese history, the death and destruction caused by the Meireki fire was nearly comparable to that suffered in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and the 1945 bombing of Tokyo in World War II.