in memory

Shirley “Nonni” Coffaro
July 24, 1933 – Oct. 31, 2006

Caring mother and spirit so bold

Loving woman with a heart of gold

Husband Larry preceded in death

Love of family abundant in breadth

Fond of opera, her pets and home

Now in the heavens but never alone

Her roses grow. Her table is set

Forever she’ll live in our hearts

You bet

Together at Last

1975—On a warm summer evening, Lisa Coffaro and her sister Gail walk into a 7-11, just minutes away from their home in Redwood City, California. Behind the counter, a young man with big brown Hollywood hair wears a name tag that says: Eric. Both girls buy an It’s It ice cream sandwich, and as he’s ringing them up, Eric looks at Gail with sly eyes and a smile and asks: “It’s It?” The two teenage girls pay and walk away laughing, both saying that the corny guy behind register was the other one's type.

Eric Hagnéré just turned 50 and he’s still got Hollywood hair. He married Gail, who is now 49; twice. They live together in Gail’s childhood home—now their family home, just minutes away from the 7-11 where they met. They have two adult sons: Fabian Hagnéré, and myself.

Dad reversed into the driveway with his white Mitsubishi SUV. He walked inside, set down his keys and flopped onto a leather chair in the living room. He wore a polo shirt and jeans, and had already kicked off his shoes. He huffed loudly about traffic and slumped back into his chair like a boxer in his 9^th round. Mom sat across from him at the ledge of the fireplace, wearing baggy khakis and a sweater. She was eating leftover gnocchi out of a Tupperware container.

“He’s like an old baseball glove,” said mom, “Worn-out and comfy.”

Dad looked back at her with those sly eyes.

“He just feels like home,” she said. “There’s nobody else for me, even when he dies.”

Mom is only two years younger than Dad, but she doesn’t smoke and gets more sleep. Dad seems healthy but likes red meat, red wine and menthol cigarettes. He works in concrete demolition and stays up late watching TV in the den. More often than not, he sleeps there, while mom sleeps alone upstairs. I asked them about that.

“I snore,” said Dad. “Your mom doesn’t like it.”

“It’s unfortunate that he snores,” said Mom. “I’d love to sleep with him, but I do need my beauty rest.”

Dad looked at me dead-on and said: “If she’s not happy, I’m not happy.”

Dad calls the den “the man room.” He’s got a private stash of wine and cookies in there, so nobody else is really allowed to come in—except Mom. They hang out in there and watch movies on the weekends. Dad’s crazy about wine but he doesn’t ever get drunk.

Every Sunday there is a big family dinner at the table, but other than that it’s an open kitchen. Mom is always cooking though. She makes everything from scratch and has a lot more than a knack in the kitchen. The smells of fresh baked breads and cooked vegetables from our own garden are always wafting about the kitchen. She also makes great cinnamon rolls, pizza, baked pasta dishes, desserts and just about everything else. Needless to say, we’re all a little bit overweight, but we eat very well.

“I love a good cook,” said Dad, as he peered over to the container of gnocchi in Mom’s hands. “She has all the qualities of a nurturing wife.”

“Am I earning any points honey,” he asked.

“You’re not saying anything we don’t already know, said Mom.

My parents are both home bodies. They never go on vacations and live a pretty frugal existence, but they still manage to spend about $1000 a month on groceries. They hate spending money. They’re just happy family people.

“She knows what I feel before I tell her, and I love the way she loves her children, said Dad. “She helps me be a better me, and she believes in me. She even makes my lunch every day.”

Mom started shaking her head.

“Between each other we have the core of true love, but there’s no free lunch,” Mom said. “There’s a lot of work involved.”

“It’s true,” said Dad. “Our commitment to communication took many years to learn, and we’re still learning.”

My parents were inseparable for 3 years after they first met. They went to different high schools, but were high school sweethearts nonetheless. My mom went on to beauty school and my dad ended up in carpentry. I was born in September of 1979, just two weeks after my mom’s 21^st birthday. They got married when I was 10-months old.

Frustration and cold feet led my parents to separation more than once before my brother was born, but my mom figured that a second child would probably seal the deal. My dad was less responsible. He started his family life prematurely and couldn’t handle it. My mom wanted kids right away. In 1985, shortly after my brother was born, they divorced.

“He thought he was too good looking to be married; to waste it all on one woman,” said Mom, still eating that gnocchi. “He wanted to show himself the world.”

Within 5 years, Dad re-married and moved to Florida, then Tennessee, then Arizona. Mom re-married too, and had a daughter with her new husband. My dad got “fixed” after my brother was born. Thanks Dad.

Both of their second marriages started falling apart within a few years, and by 1995, my parents were both back in Redwood City to be with their respective families. They opened up to each other right away. It was like they were meeting all over again, except for they had two children together. There was maturity. There was time. There was true love.

“Sometimes we think we’re looking for something, when it’s right in front of us,” Dad said, sitting up in his leather chair. “But we’re just not seeing it.”

Mom looked over to him and waved.

They spent 10 years re-connecting and learning each others boundaries; developing a perfect balance of respect, attention and space. Both were done looking for something better. They were either going to make it work, or they were going to die single. So they made it work. Now they feel that there is nothing better.

They got married again last year. They just bought their first house together.

“I always wanted my family back,” said Dad, as he stood-up out of his chair. “Our paths have separated and come back together.”

He crept over to Mom. She stood-up from the ledge of the fireplace and hugged her husband. They held each other and at the same time said: “Together at last.”

C.C. Rider

In Shaking the Cage, the documentary about the making of film Easy Rider, director Dennis Hopper said: "An easy rider is a person that is not a pimp, but he lives off a woman; he lives off a whore. He's her easy rider.”

During the Great Depression an easy rider referred to a slow-moving train and eventually the men that would hop on for free as it passed by, and those who even after the Great Depression, continued to live and travel along the rails that way. A “hobo,” if you will.

Chris Cook lives with and is financially supported by a prostitute, and has been leading a criminal life for so long he is almost totally comfortable with it. Drug induced counter-culture activities have become the norm and even though he wants to achieve more, he has adapted to life on the streets and incarceration. He says he's pretty much an easy rider.

Cook has a whole lot of charisma. "I'm stuck in the now," Cook says, which is good because that's all I got right now.

One night in Folsom Prison, Cook had "Carpe Diem" tattooed onto his chest in huge block letters. He says that he wanted something to balance out all the full sleeves of prison ink on his arms, and the other seemingly random tatts on his legs and back. Since then, he's gotten his gut covered, and his shoulders too, and now tattoos are starting to sprawl up onto his neck.

He almost always tucks in his t-shirt, and he wears baggy thrift store jeans that he holds up with a canvas belt. Right now he’s got on a pair of cheap sunglasses and somebody else's hat. He gets his clothes where he can. He doesn't usually wash them either. He just replaces them.

Inside his messenger bag, Cook has got a stack of intricate tattoo-like drawings (very good ones), a bunch of markers and pens, an array of multi-purpose doo-dads and gadgets that rarely get any use, and a beanie to keep his shaved head warm at night. His bag is always packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice.

After a quick rifle, Cook pulls a homemade tattoo gun out of his sack and says: “Check that out!” It’s made of a sawed-off pen top, a walkman motor and wires, and some electrical tape.” He makes needles for his contraption out of pieces of guitar string which are then stuck into bits of eraser inside and placed inside the motor so they spin. Smiling, Cook says, “I just did a whole leg piece last night.”

Cook’s baby face is starting to look a bit raggedy. The methamphetamine binges and the cold nights waiting outside of his prostitute-girlfriend’s hotel room have got him looking kind of tired. But, as Cook said himself, “She’s gotta pay the bills, y’know…When old-girl has got somebody coming over, I just go wait outside. If she don’t make money, I don’t get money.”

Today, Cook calls himself a “top-notch urban safariast” who can “speak everybody’s language,” if need be. “I am that guy,” Cook says seriously as he lights-up a cigarette, slouching forward a little bit just to hide the flame.

“He just doesn’t get it,” says close friend Dan Renal. “I love Chris like a brother, but he’s the perfect criminal. He has been in the system for too long and when he gets out he does exactly what the system wants him to do in order to get back in. Once they got you, they got you!”

On the eve of Christmas in 1976, Christian Bronson Cook was born at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, CA. He moved to Bullhead, AZ with his mother and step-father when he was 6-years-old. His half-brother was born a year later. Cook never met his biological father.

Because he was told to always set a good example for his younger brother, and because that didn’t always happen, Cook says that he was liberally beaten and verbally abused by his step-father. He would introduce Cook’s half-brother as his “real son.” Cook looks away and says: “I pity him for what karma is gonna do to him some day.”

Cook remembers clearly the time that he was caught bringing home a pellet gun without permission. His step-father took him out into the back yard and made him stand inside a huge cardboard box. Cook says that he covered his crying eyes with his trembling hands as his step-father fired-off the entire clip of pellets into the box, pelting his adolescent body with almost every shot, just to teach him a lesson.

“When I was 14 years-old, my mom got into a car crash but she was going to be okay. I talked to her and everything.” Cook says. “I wasn’t really living at home at the time. I was staying over at my cousin’s house. A few days after it happened, I was on my way out the door to go and visit her when my cousin was like: ‘Wait…don’t you know? Aunt Terri is dead!’” Cook’s mother died in the hospital with a severe case of cirrhosis of the liver. She never told him she was sick.

Shortly after the passing of his mother, Cook just wanted to get away from it all. He ended up at a payphone in Lake Elsinor CA, calling 911 for himself. For three days, he had been lost, scared and hallucinating on a lot of methamphetamine. Cook says the police found him with a stolen truck and a pocket full of drugs, hundreds of miles away from home. He was arrested and spent the following 3 years in the Arizona Juvenile Detention System.

Upon his 18^th birthday, Cook was released from The Arizona Boys Ranch and went straight to his grandfather’s house in Redwood City, CA. He has lived there, on and off, ever since, but he mostly lives the life of a vagrant, on the streets or in and out of the state prison system for various reasons including minor parole violations, drug use and possession and burglary.

According to Cooks grandfather, Chris had "a hell of a life."

“He didn’t have nobody who cared about him, well, except me,” his grandfather says. “I don’t know how many times I’ve talked to him about that crew he runs around with. Then he comes around here half-drunk and says fuck you and everything to me.”

In 2001, Cook was sentenced to 3-years in the state prison for robbing a Subway sandwich shop at knife point. He stole the cashier’s wallet and all of the money in the cash register. He remembers getting only a few blocks away before Redwood City Police rolled-up and arrested him at gun point. “There was no feeling or emotion in any of that,” says Cook. “I was just drunk as hell.”

“I’ve only been to prison once for committing a real crime. Now I just get busted by parole for weak shit like missing meetings and testing positive for dope,” says Cook.

He forgot to mention hit-and-run, causing bodily-injury, with a D.U.I and without a license or insurance, for which he was busted for in 2004.

“Idle hands are the devil’s playground, Cook says. “I’m mother fuckin idle hands!”

Dying for a Drink

Dan moved into his apartment about six months ago and was elated to tell me that he had finally made his bed, unpacked all his clothes and put them into his closet where they belong. Letting him glow in his accomplishments, I kept my opinions regarding the cleanliness and order of the rest of his place to myself. Let’s just say that his “front yard” resembles a small-scale model of a recycling center, only without any large containers for storage, and if alcoholic beverages were all that were sold in aluminum and glass.

A bottle of beer gets cracked open with the butt-end of his lighter, he slips on a pair of sporty sunglasses, fixes his cap sideways and flops onto an old couch that sits torn, stained and weathered under a spot of shade in his boozy little yard. As I position my video camera on a slashed-up bar stool across from him he asks, “Is it on?” As soon as I nod he bursts out: “Suspect age: 26! Daniel Joseph Renal! Born: April 17th! Lived: In Menlo Park until the age of thirteen and then…Redwood City corrupted my life.”

A little over seven years ago, in the beaming hot rays of July’s afternoon sun, Dan and Joey waited outside a local grocery store, where Colin was preparing to heist a bottle of rum. Upon his return, in went Joey. Then Dan. And by the time all were back outside, they had pilfered four bottles of hard drink to accompany the case of cold beer that waited with the boys outside. Well, it’s not as if they would have sold it to them.

High-fives all around and they headed toward Henry Ford Middle School, only a few blocks away, for some serious alcohol consumption.

This was a sort of a kiss-and-make-up party, arranged loosely, so that Dan and Colin could squash the bad blood that begun to boil a week earlier. It all started after Dan had been orally copulated by Colin’s drunken girlfriend, who was immediately inclined to confess her actions to Colin. The couple decided to put their relationship on hold.

For some odd reason, nobody got any teeth knocked out that day. The three of them drank, and drank, until the case of beer and most of the liquor was gone. The always charming “Bros before Hos” manifesto held its weight as those inebriated souls carried-out impromptu displays of social misconduct and vandalism in their own little version of peace and harmony.

They were all trashed by sunset. Muddled Beatles tunes and slurred howls echoed in the late dusk. As the night went on, and the air got colder, the drink became less refreshing, and the yawns more frequent. Soon there were two of them, and later, when Colin decided to bail, Dan was left by himself to kill the last bottle of whiskey alone.

At about 10:30 p.m., Dan stumbled off into the dark to try and find his way home. He dropped to the concrete ground of the school yard a handful of times before reaching the 10-foot chain-link fence he would climb to begin his shortcut. After successfully scaling the fence, tip-toeing across the 18-foot horizontal sewage pipe that paralleled a semi-toxic civic waterway, and then a second fence, he had saved himself a good ten-minute walk. The home stretch was only a few more blocks.

Dan noticed that he was having a lot of trouble standing and walking straight. He fell on the sidewalk, he fell in bushes, he fell on private lawns and he fell frequently, as his consequent bruises and abrasions would later illustrate.

Suddenly, about a block away from his house, Dan thought he saw Colin out of the corner of his eye. Suspecting that he might be up to a prank, Dan ran after Colin. He ran until there was no sign of him, and until finally, a very bewildered Dan found himself right in front of his friend Mike’s house. Eagerly in search of a place to rest, he hopped over Mike’s fence only to land on a pile of steel truck rims. He was chased away by Mike’s angry father, who came out with a baseball bat. Dan would lose all recollection of the events that followed.

At about 2:00 a.m., a 911 emergency call was placed from a pay phone at Roosevelt Plaza, in Redwood City, California. A young man had been found face-down in wet mud beside a group of bushes that landscaped the same plaza. Reportedly, he appeared to be dead.

When paramedics arrived, Dan was not breathing and without a pulse. He was whisked into an ambulance and given an adrenaline shot. He immediately sprang up from his gurney. His father, who arrived at the scene shortly after the ambulance, repeatedly shouted his name, to which Dan responded: “Who are you? Shut up. Bald Man!”

At the hospital Dan had defecated in his pants, urinated on the doctor and kept up a constant, delirious monologue before having his stomach pumped. Shortly thereafter, he was sent home and put to bed on the couch.

When he awoke, his girlfriend was there to fill him in on all of the gory details. He told her that his memory was completely void of the ambulance, the hospital or anything that might have happened after fleeing Mike’s house, and that he actually felt very well rested.

Prison Skin: Thicker Than Steel Bars

Chuck Skinner stands tall at about six-foot-six. He’s ripped, but you’d never know it because his clothes are all way too big. He’s covered in tattoos from his neck to his knuckles and from the bottom of his legs to the top of his head— almost all prison ink. The hair on his scalp is shorn to the skin and his bright blue eyes are charged with the enthusiasm of sustained freedom. His smile shows off his bubbly personality, and years of methamphetamine use.

He loves his daughter, his dirt bike and his new job at the lumber mill. He’s from the Bay Area, but he just can’t live here anymore.

Skinner was born and bred in Hayward, California, but moved up to Oregon about seven years ago when he was last released from prison. That’s the only way he ever saw himself getting off parole. Now he is.

“I just know way too many people in the Bay,” he says. “I’d be up to the same old shit in no time.”

Skinner has always been a bit of a trouble maker. He was a bully of a kid, but he didn’t have any legal problems until he started using drugs as a teenager and running with the bad crowd.

“A lot of people don’t really care about going back to prison,” he says. “You get institutionalized.”



Getting into Prison

Between San Quentin, Tracy, Susanville and Folsom; Skinner has been to prison five times—for a total of just over nine years. He just turned 37 years old.

He did his first stint in the Alameda County Jail (Santa Rita) on drug charges, at only 19. But he didn’t make it into the big house until he was busted for burglary when he was 21. Since then, he’s been convicted of strong armed robbery, battery, and numerous drug charges related to crank and crystal meth.

“I was scared my first time,” Skinner says. "I felt like I was being put into a dungeon.”

Like most convicted felons from the Bay Area, Skinner was first taken to San Quentin State Prison for reception. He ended up serving his entire first sentence there—about 18 months.

“When you first get there you’re on 23-hour lockdown,” he says. “You’re stuck in reception until they house you in a mainline prison.”

From there prisoners get assigned into housing units or “pods” where there are about 50 cells for inmates to shack-up in.

Skinner says he learned quickly that inmates are the ones who really run things in prison and that the guards can only try to watch over them.



Getting in a Prison Gang

“Different groups have their own societies in there and it’s been that way for years,” Skinner says. “It’s a whole new way of thinking, and they all have their own different sets of rules.”

“It’s always been segregated.”

Most lines that are drawn by these rules get respected, as crossing them can often result in harsh consequences. Skinner knew he’d have to side-up in order to survive.

If you choose to be on your own, Skinner says, you are considered a “lame,” and if anything happens to you nobody will back you up.

“One day I was sitting out on the lower yard and a bunch of whites came by and introduced themselves,” he says. “We made friends right away.”

Skinner became a skinhead in prison. In huge letters, he had “White Power” tattooed onto the side of his neck. He assumed an identity that befitted the color of his face.

The choice wasn’t hard for him. Between the Bloods and the Crips, the blacks and the Christians, the Native Americans and the Muslims, there’s no shortage of prison sets to roll with. But Skinner says most people just stick to “their own kind,” and often those who are also from the same county.

White inmates don’t care what county other whites are from, Skinner explains. As long as they’re down for these two principles: White Power and White Unity.

Skinner says that there’s usually some sort of initiation involved, but he can’t really get into that. He’ll only say that if you want to be any kind of gang member, you have to do something—to someone.

As in most gangs, rank is an important factor of influence. In San Quentin for example, Yard Reps serve as a mouthpiece for orders that come down from other prisons like Pelican Bay, where a lot of the real leaders are serving time. Sergeants back up the Reps and make sure everything runs smooth. And then there’s the Mission Boys—who Skinner says do most of the stabbings, or whatever else they’re told.

“Racism is unstoppable in prison,” he says. “It’s so segregated by race that it just breeds hate, and it sticks with a lot of us.”

“You see a whole different kind of people in there.”



Getting into Prison Gang Relations

Not all inmates want to get involved in prison violence, according to Skinner. He says that the Christians and the Muslims and the Native Americans usually just do their own thing and don’t really get involved when tensions arise.

Conversely, one of the worst moves an inmate can make is to start running with more than one prison gang. And if you’re already running with one, don’t switch sides.

“You can’t be fence-jumping like that,” Skinner says. “You’ll usually get fucked-off.”

There are some traditional relations between certain California prison gangs. For instance, the Whites can have associations with the Sureños and the Blacks are allowed to kick it the Norteños, but never the other way around.

“White boys that run with the blacks or the Norteños usually end up getting stabbed by us,” he says. “Sometimes that jumps-off a riot and the guards come out with their mini-14s and their block guns.”

When a melee breaks out, guards usually fire off a warning shot. But if it doesn’t break-up quick, they’ll start shooting inmates with rubber bullets. After that, Skinner says, they shoot to kill.

As a result of such violence, he says: “Sometimes shit gets squashed, other times more people get stabbed. It all depends on the situation.”

Skinner can’t stand certain inmate populations in the prisons he’s been to— mainly the blacks, but he doesn’t like the Jews or Asians either. This is where he shows his hate.

“The niggers are so disrespectful in there—they’re garbage,” he says. “It’s like being at the zoo and watching chimpanzees throw shit at each other.”

“The Norteños are cool, but they run with the niggers so they’re garbage too.”

Skinner says that the Northerners hate the Southerners, the Blacks hate the Whites, and the Whites just hate everybody. And that’s just the way it is in prison.



Getting Out and Staying Out

Nowadays, Skinner tries to stay away from the people he knows through incarceration. He hears things that are going on in certain prisons from time to time, but never tries to get involved anymore. He’s still as racist as ever, but he’s laying low in southern Oregon and staying out of trouble.

“I know the whites have been killing a lot of Norteños recently,” he says. “We’re trying to P.C. them all up—get ‘em off the yard.”

Skinner just got full custody of his four-year-old daughter, and says that he’s been sober for over seven years now. He wakes up early in the morning to drive his kid to preschool, and reads children’s stories to her every night before she goes to bed.

“Now I just want to work, chill and raise my family,” he says. “There are a lot of Skinheads up here, but most of them are in and out of prison, and doing drugs all the time—and that’s gonna be the downfall of our cause.”

The years spent in prison have changed his life forever. He made choices, and he lives with them. And he’s not ashamed of them either.

And he doesn’t neglect his skinhead ethics.

“We’re all about keeping our race white,” says Skinner. “No mixed breeding.”

“That’s how I live.”

Pangaimotu Sunday

Pangaimotu is a small coral islet about one mile off the docks of Queen Salote Wharf in Nuku’alofa, the main-island capital of the Royal Kingdom of Tonga. It’s a small family-operated pleasure resort on its own little island, and is host to one of the kingdom’s largest coral reef reserves.

On the boat ride from the wharf, Pangaimotu catches your eye like a not-so-distant paradise. With the hot Polynesian sun beaming down on you, the little motorboat that ferries you there just isn’t fast enough. After ten minutes, you’re there. The wooden ramp on the dock leads you straight under a banana leaf thatched roof. You order a drink at the beachfront bar.

Pangaimotu is especially popular on Sundays, because just about everything else in the kingdom is closed. On the Sabbath, it is unlawful for Tongans to work, trade or even create noise disturbances. There are no sporting events and all contracts signed on Sundays are void. The only people allowed to do business are a few select foreigners that operate somewhere off the main islands. Such is the case at Pangaimotu.

Everything here is so tiki, but it doesn’t look like it was done on purpose. You get your drink and find a seat on one of the wooden benches in the dining area. You're right on the water's edge.

People from everywhere, mostly Tonga, are laughing, splashing and playing in the warm clear water below. They’re on the beach playing volleyball, lounging on the sun-drenched deck and lying around in hammocks. Some are out snorkeling over scores of tropical fish, while others are busy eating under the restaurant’s shady canopy.

Food is a big deal in Tonga. Plates stacked high with fresh tropical fruits and huge servings of local seafood are brought to the table next to you. You also order a meal.

After lunch, you spend most of the day the day strolling around the pristine beaches, and wading in what feels like a heated fishtank. About 100-feet offshore, there is a half-submerged ship wreck that you can climb-up and dive from. But, you’d have to swim in line with a bunch of youngsters in order to get your turn. You end up snorkeling.

Little florescent blue fish brush by your legs, and a couple sea cucumbers explode when you step on them, emitting huge white stands of sticky-icky nasty goo that clings to your feet and legs like some jelly adhesive. Jumbo starfish stare up at you from underneath the water; they are orange, and yellow and purplish black.

After an hour or two, your skin begins to prune and the bar begins to lure you ashore. You spend the rest of the afternoon making friends and sharing drinks. Within a few hours, Pangaimotu gets quieter, and folks start gathering around the deck area to watch the fabled Tongan Sunset.

Smears of pink, red, and tangerine begin to glow across the tropical sky. The fresh ocean breeze picks-up and hundreds of palm trees gently rustle in the background. It becomes one of the most tranquil experiences you could ever imagine. You just sit and watch. Amidst the wavering silence and the unquestionable beauty, you can’t help but thank god for Sundays...and Pangaimotu.

Garden of Edo

The city of Edo (modern day Tokyo) was a deliberately planned environment. Attention was paid to how it would grow, and how it grew - and eventually, it grew out of control. The face of the city changed drastically as it blossomed, and the many fires, or “flowers,” of Edo helped to make that possible.

The “Seeds” of Edo

When the powerful and patient warlord, Tokugawa Ieyasu, finally seized his opportunity to take administrative control of Japan, he knew just what to do. By waiting until after the death of his rival for autonomous power, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), and then slaughtering the armies that supported him at the consequent battle at Sekigahara (1600), no more daimyo warlords would be able to stand in his way. Ieyasu was Shogun. De facto ruler of Japan.

When Tokugawa Iyeasu relocated to Edo in 1590 it was a swampy little fishing village, marked by a neglected fortress built by Ota Dokan in the 15^th century. But it had potential. It was far enough from Kyoto to start a new shift in government.

In essence, Edo was re-born as a dream. It was an intentionally planned metropolitan seat of power and protection, well positioned both spiritually and geographically, and it was built to grow in a particular fashion. The city’s inhabitants would adhere to the strict social codes and standings within the hierarchal order of the shogunate regime.

The civic development of Edo would be paid for by the daimyo warlords of Japan. Each of the wealthiest families would eagerly give a large portion of their resources to the construction effort of the Shogun’s castle, as well as their own grand estates in Edo. All of these new homes were situated close to the main compound where Tokugawa and his entourage lived, so that strict levels of social control could be enforced, collectively.

“Alternate attendance” further pledged daimyo allegiance to Tokugawa rule, and kept them nearly incapable of becoming wealthy or powerful enough to pose a threat to the regime. This would also ensure his lords that the fate of his domain and family would be shared by the fate of their own.

“The Flowers of Edo”

The population in Edo grew fast, and most of the homes in Edo were made of wood and other combustible materials. They were often packed very tightly together, with little or no space between them.

Fires broke-out regularly, especially in the Low City. Many were far-reaching and often destroyed much of the city, causing many fatalities. About 100 fires broke-out during the 15 generations of Tokugawa rule in Edo Japan. These fires were often started in the most densely populated areas of the city during the dry winter season, when Edoites warmed their homes with burning charcoal.

“The city was proud of its fires…and occurred so frequently and burned so freely that no house in the low city could expect to last more than two decades.”[1]

As devastating as many of these fires were, they were often seen with a bit of irony, not only as deadly catastrophes that left Edo and its inhabitant in ruins, but also as catalysts of civic change and the cause of redevelopment and reconstruction, which often addressed the practical and social needs of the changing times.

“Edo no hana” (the flowers of Edo) became a concurrent theme throughout the history and fine arts of Japan.

A “Flower’s” Bloom

“The Great Fire of Meireki turned Edo into ‘Great Edo”’[2]

Reports of arson were not uncommon in early Edo[3]. On the 18^th day of the 3^rd year of the Meireki Imperial Era, an uncontainable fire began to spread wildly from the Hongo district in the Low City, up toward Kogimachi and Edo Castle, consuming the property and lives of many on its way.

Otherwise known as the Furisode fire, it was the worst in Japanese history at the time, destroying 60-70% of the city over three days in 1657. The Meireki fire is estimated to have claimed the lives of over 100,000 people.

Tokugawa Ietsuna himself, the 3^rd shogun, barely made it out of his keep alive, after the flames breeched his powder magazine and caused a horrific explosion.[4]

In the days following the Meireki fire, people gathered the corpses of their family members and neighbors. Many of the bodies were sent down the Sumida River to Honjo, for a mass burial. It is at this site that “Edo-in,” or the Hall of Prayer for the Dead was built as a historical marker, in memory for those who died in the consuming inferno.

In the weeks following the blaze, and for nearly 2 years after, reconstruction efforts became a high priority for the people of Edo. The shogunate utilized this opportunity to re-organize his city, and address various social and practical civic situations, particularly concerning the degree of vulnerability Edo had displayed to the Meireki fire, and how it could spread so rampantly within Edo.

Alternate attendance was temporarily suspended, and about 900 tons of near-burnt rice was dispensed to encourage the reconstructive effort.

Taking fire safety and wind factors into account, entire districts were re-planned for safety. Also many daimyo homes were relocated further away from the castle, so as to serve as natural fire breaks. Homes in Edo had to be built in adherence to strict code, and were no longer allowed to display lavish ornamentation and exquisite entryways, which were usually made of highly flammable materials such as wood and bamboo.

Many streets were widened, especially in the Low City, and the far-reaching suburbs of Edo became the city’s outer-limits, decongesting the city to some degree. Old shrines and warrior centers were moved away from the more densely populated areas for protection.

Because of these changes in scope and design, future fires, or “flowers”, of Edo, would be far less devastating than they might have been, at least for the immediate future.

A “Flower” for Love

The best known arsonist in Japan was a 17-year-old girl, Yaoya Oshichi, who lived in Edo with her greengrocer family toward the end of the 17^th century.

In late 1682, she and her family fled from the city as a wild blaze approached her neighborhood. They sought refuge in Enjoji temple, where she fell in love with a boy that she met, who lived there under the care of its resident monks.[5]

Destroyed in the fire, her family home had to be rebuilt, and upon its completion, Oshichi worried that she may never see her newfound love again. She figured that only a tragedy such as the one that first brought them together could bring them together again.

Early in the following year, Oshichi set fire to a building, hoping to able to see her distant love again. The blaze she started grew out of control and destroyed much of the city.

In Edo, arson was capital crime, rightfully so, as the city was prone to massive death and destruction by such acts. Oshichi was dragged through the streets of Edo in shame, and publicly executed for her disregard for safety and the law.

Yaoya Oshichi was pitied by some of the citizens of Edo because of her youth and beauty, but a great deal more were outraged. Either way her story is an immortalized legacy within Japanese culture and is the focal point of many kabuki plays, books, and woodblock prints.[6]

Hikeshi: Tending to the “Flowers of Edo”

“Sonae areba ureinashi” is a Japanese proverb which is similar to “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of remedy,” as expressed in English.

Certain precautionary measures which deterred the massive outbreak of fire became law, early in the Edo period. For instance, shopkeepers were required to store large buckets of water, just in case they were needed.

Fire brigades would soon be established for each district, and numerous watchtowers would be erected, so that if a blaze did break out it would be noticed, and then isolated, quickly. This way, these “flowers of Edo” could be more easily nipped at the bud.

Even before the great Meireki fire, the Tokugawa required all daimyo to organize fire brigades (hikeshi) that would operate on a rotating basis, following the Okecho fire of 1641.[7] Needless to say, the great fire of 1657 proved these daimyo brigades inadequate in dealing with blazes on a large scale, so the government organized additional brigades that would be directed by retainers.

The first brigades responded only to blazes in and around the areas where the city officials resided. If a fire were to break out in the Low City, where most of the commoners lived, the firefighting brigades of the elite were not ordered to assist in extinguishing the flames. For this reason, the city commission developed even more brigades to protect the people and property in those areas.

Firefighting techniques in Edo usually consisted of fire isolation. Neighboring homes would be torn down to create a fire break in the immediate vicinity of a blaze. They also used manually-operated wooden water-pumps, which produced just enough water to wet the roofs of the surrounding structures, so that they wood be less likely to add fuel to the flames.

Highly revered in popular Edo culture, the firefighters themselves (gaen) were usually rowdy, young and energetic men from the lower classes, that were esteemed with a certain degree of courage and recklessness, which was implicitly necessary for the operation fire control in a mostly wooden city.[8]

The different brigades (hikeshi) were known for their rivalry amongst competing factions from other districts. Fistfights among them were not uncommon.

These firefighters shared a strong group mentality and expressed it in a number of ways, including traditional Japanese tattoos (horimono), as a display of masculinity and solidarity amongst comrades.[9]

The Wilt of the Tokugawa Regime

Tokugawa government could not sustain itself, nor its original codes of conduct and social control forever, not only because the warrior leader was not very highly revered after a couple hundred years of peace. The times were changing again, and the people of Edo, as well as many other parts of Japan, were growing tired of the out-dated administration.

The 15^th shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, lived in Kyoto while mass rebellion began to blossom in Edo.[10]

Early in 1868, Tokugawa forces were defeated in the first battle of the Boshin War, and by the time of the massacre of his loyalist’s armies at Ueno in 1868, the shift was very clear. Actually and metaphorically, it was mostly a battle between swords and guns. The Tokugawa shogun had lost.

In 1869, the young emperor Meiji came to Edo to re-situate his administration, and secure its control over the country’s most burgeoning city. By this time, the “flowers of Edo,” as well as the influences of the west, were both well on their way to becoming the blooms of Tokyo modernity.

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[1] Seidensticker, Edward. Low City, High City . 1st . New York : Knopf, 1983.

[2] Naito , Akira. Edo, the city that Became Tokyo: an Illustrated History. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 2003.

[3] Naito , Akira. Edo, the city that Became Tokyo: an Illustrated History. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 2003.

[4] Naito , Akira. Edo, the city that Became Tokyo: an Illustrated History. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 2003.

[5] Shimbun, Yomiuri. "Access My Library." www.accessmylibrary.com. 13 November 2003. 13 March 2007 .

[6] Stevenson , John . One Hundred Aspects of the Moon . Leiden Netherlands: Hotei Publishing , 2001.

[7] Kido, Okamoto. "Hanshichi Torimonocho." Japnese Lterature Publishing Project. 14 Mar 2007 .

[8] Kido, Okamoto. "Hanshichi Torimonocho." Japnese Lterature Publishing Project. 14 Mar 2007 .

[9] Stevenson , John . One Hundred Aspects of the Moon . Leiden Netherlands: Hotei Publishing , 2001.

[10] Naito , Akira. Edo, the city that Became Tokyo: an Illustrated History. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 2003.