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New
Moon
15 Jun 2026
Zelda
Cahill-Patten
Flowers of Edo
After Utagawa Hiroshige’s
Nihonbashi – Morning Scene (1833-5)
When the firetruck pulls up,
I think of Hiroshige.
Within the house, the whine of an alarm.
I shiver on a neighbour’s doorstep.
Then the siren: rising and falling
like a Naruto whirlpool,
shrill as the cry of a hiyodori.
I hear the engine before I see it.
In the Edo of Hiroshige’s boyhood,
they named the fires edo no hana.
All over the city, ash flowered.
And Hiroshige was heir to the blaze,
son of an Edo firefighter.
I look up at the glossy engine,
half expecting old Gen’emon
at the wheel.
But in another time,
another woodblock print,
the morning is tranquil.
And look how a son remembers his father:
fishermen carrying baskets of ayu,
a watery sunrise
at Nihonbashi Bridge.
Distant but paternal,
the fire watchtower.
The sky is clear – not a single ember.
Behind the poem...
Edo, a historical name for Tokyo, was known as the City of Fires. Repeatedly levelled by flames, its paper houses were referred to by locals as edo no hana: flowers of Edo. The famous ukiyo-e artist Hiroshige was the son of one of the shogun of Edo’s fire wardens, Andō Gen’emon. Like me, Hiroshige lost his father when he was young. This makes the fire watchtowers that appear in his work feel like a moving tribute. My poem draws inspiration from several of Hiroshige’s prints that feature these watchtowers – most notably, Nihonbashi – Morning Scene.