Dressing for disaster: Edo firefighter uniforms and the kabuki tradition

Abstract

In eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Edo, firefighters were cultural icons in the life of the city. A dense forest of wooden buildings, Japan’s new capital was notorious for its fierce blazes. The hikeshi (‘firefighters’) became instantly recognizable for their striking full-body tattoos and ornately painted jackets, which they would flaunt to the watching crowds after extinguishing a blaze. This unique bodily adornment came to symbolize their manly bravery and the hikeshi were soon popular protagonists in the emerging world of kabuki theatre; multiple ukiyo-e (prints of Edo’s entertainment district) document kabuki actors in their guise. In this article, I illuminate the interactions between the cultural phenomena of Edo – renowned for its print and theatre industries – as they shaped, and were shaped by, the dress and bodies of its firefighters. Through a survey of surviving hikeshi uniforms, I demonstrate visual and material connections between the hikeshi’s ornamented skin, their garments and a series of illustrations by Utagawa Kuniyoshi for the 1827 edition of the epic poem, ‘Water Margin’, about a band of mythically strong bandits. I therefore reframe uniform as an expressive piece of menswear through which the hikeshi participated in an invented masculinity.