Featured on PDR in the collection Tales of the Catfish God: Earthquakes in Japanese Woodblock Prints (1855)

Legend has it that when the tremors of the 1855 Ansei Edo earthquake had finally subsided, there were so many dead that survivors were forced to carry their loved ones’ bodies away in sacks of coal and sake barrels. With much of the city having been built on reclaimed marshland — often using heavy, rigid materials — Japan’s capital was a sitting duck for what was then the worst natural disaster in living memory. As aftershocks continued to roil the city for weeks on end, even those whose houses had miraculously escaped collapse took to living in the streets rather than chance having the ceiling fall down around them as they slept.