Firefighting in Japan (Japanese: 消防, Hepburn: Shōbō) is coordinated by local government with assistance and oversight from central government. Organized firefighting was first established in the Edo era to deal with threats posed to government property and power by the frequent devastating fires of the period; it was originally established along the lines of the local feudal system, with samurai and other local officials engaging in firefighting. However, as time went on and Japan adopted a more western-style system of government, organised fire brigades were established similar to those in the western world.
Today, firefighting is mainly provided by professional municipal fire departments, with some assistance from local volunteer fire corps. Fire departments are responsible not only for firefighting, but also for fire safety enforcement, disaster prevention and response, and emergency medical services. Municipalities are responsible for establishing municipal departments and volunteer corps, with assistance and funding provided by prefectures and the Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA).
History
Edo period and before
Prior to the Edo era, there was no organized firefighting organisations, despite frequent devastating conflagrations; these fires found abundant fuel in the buildings of the period, which were mainly constructed with wood and paper as frequent earthquakes and hot summers precluded the use of heavier materials such as stone and brick (which were already in limited supply). Instead, earthen storehouses were used to store valuable goods, and simple wooden construction techniques allowed for easy rebuilding after a fire.
The first firefighting force in Japan is believed to be the hōsho bikeshi, established in 1629, composed of members of more than 10 feudal families. In the event of a fire, the shogun would send a servant to fetch them to fight it; this was evidently a slow process and only yielded a small and unprofessional force, and as a result, the hōsho bikeshi were largely ineffective when confronted with the Fire of Oke-machi in 1641. As a result, the daimyō bikeshi (大名火消) were established in 1643, and were composed of samurai appointed by the local feudal lord or daimyō (大名). As well as firefighting, these samurai enforced strict fire control rules on the local populations, such as maintaining night fire watches, forbidding the lighting of candles in upper-floor rooms, and imprisoning the owners of houses where fires had started.Sand, Jordan; Wills, Steven (2012). "Governance, Arson, and Firefighting in Edo, 1600–1868". In Bankoff, Greg; Lübken, Uwe; Sand, Jordan (eds.). Flammable Cities: Urban Conflagration and the Making of the Modern World. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-28383-4.
In 1657, the Great Fire of Meireki ripped through the de facto capital of Edo (the site of modern-day Tokyo), destroying 60-70% of the city and killing over 100,000 people, with the local daimyō bikeshi brigades too undermanned, underequipped, and inexperienced to deal with such a large fire. This failure of fire control represented a severe threat to the authority of the ruling military shogunate, and so one year later the jō bikeshi (定火消) was established as a full-time brigade made up of hatamoto samurai directly under the command of the shogun. This brigade was mainly concerned with the protection of the shogun's properties, such as Edo Castle, however did cooperate with the daimyō bikeshi to deal with fires in common areas, so as to not let them spread.
Alongside the samurai firefighters, local tana bikeshi (店火消) brigades began to form, composed of local commoner businessmen who wished to protect their properties. In 1720, the Kyōhō Reforms reorganised this system, forming machi bikeshi (町火消), composed of commoners appointed by the town official. Over time, these brigades began to grow and were recognised as a competent firefighting force, even assisting the samurai brigades in extinguishing the Edo Castle Fire in 1747.
Meiji, Taishō, and pre-war Shōwa periods
By the time the Meiji era emerged, most firefighting across Japan was undertaken by machi bikeshi, and the number of samurai firefighters had dropped significantly. As a result of reforms in the 1880s following the Meiji restoration, career fire brigades across the country were absorbed into local police departments, where they became known as tokusetsu shōbō sho (特設消防署), whereas volunteer firefighters were reorganised into groups known as shōbō gumi (消防組) under the control of the governor of the prefecture. However, there was little change; fire services remained poorly trained and equipped, and Japanese cities remained largely vulnerable to regular major fires.
Throughout the Taishō and early Shōwa eras, this system remained largely unchanged until 1939 when the government, anticipating the Pacific War, reorganised the shōbō gumi into the new keibō dan (警防団) civil defense organizations, and the number of cities with career tokusetsu shōbō sho was increased.
Post-war Shōwa period Following the defeat of Japan in the Pacific War, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers wished to democratise the fire service, which throughout the war had been linked with militarised police and civil defense units. This began in 1947, when the Volunteer Fire Corps Ordinance (Imperial Ordinance No. 185) was enacted, reorganising the keibō dan into the modern volunteer fire corps; the same year, the Fire Service Organization Act (later to be renamed the Fire and Disaster Management Organization Act) was passed by the National Diet, and came into effect the following year, leading to the creation of the National Fire Defense Agency (Japanese: 国家消防庁, Hepburn: Kokka Shōbōchō), the precursor to the modern FDMA, and the modern municipal fire department system.
The following year, the Fire Service Act was passed and enacted, making fire prevention a duty of the new departments as well as their existing fire suppression duties. In the early years, the priorities of the new agencies was to form a "preventative and scientific" fire service, focusing on the prevention of fires and the integration of fire science into the core of the system, through the National Fire Institute (Japanese: 消防研究所, Hepburn: Shōbō kenkyūjo), a division of the NFDA. However, a series of major urban conflagrations in this period also highlighted the need for an expansion in firefighting capacity, which lead to the establishment of national standards, subsidies to local municipalities, and the reorganisation of the NFDA into the modern FDMA in 1960, under the new Ministry of Home Affairs, separating it organisationally from the police-led National Public Safety Commission it was previously under.
In 1961, the National Diet passed the Basic Act on Disaster Management, establishing a duty for the fire department to prepare for major disasters such as earthquakes and tsunami.
Emergency medical services were not initially the responsibility of the fire department, but as time went on fire departments became the primary provider of EMS, and so a 1962/1963 amendment to the Fire Service Act established the duty of fire departments to provide an ambulance service.
Another revision of the Fire and Disaster Management Organization Act in 1971 allowed for the establishment of wide-area fire departments covering multiple municipalities.
As Japan entered the early 1970s, the country was rocked by a series of major urban fires, such as the 1972 Sennichi Department Store Building fire and the 1973 Taiyo Department Store fire; in both of these fires investigations revealed that fire safety equipment failed or was not functional at the time, and that the buildings would not have been certified safe if built under new fire safety law.Taiyo Department Fire (1974) Tsukamoto K. (Nihon University) Yobo Jiho Vol. 97 Japan Nonlife Insurance Association, TokyoRussell, Henry (2001). World Disasters: Tragedies in the Modern Age. Taylor & Francis. . As a result, 1974 saw major additions to the Fire Service Law, including a new inspection system, and for the first time the regulations were made retroactive, forcing old buildings to be brought up to code. This led to a major reduction in fire deaths for a period of time following the fire, leading this revision to be considered a major milestone in Japan's fire safety history. However, the 1980s also saw major fire disasters, such as major hotel fires in Tochigi in 1980 and Tokyo in 1982, a gas explosion in an underground mall in Shizuoka in 1980, a nursing home fire in Tokyo in 1987, and a supermarket fire in Amagasaki in 1990. These fires highlighted new holes in fire safety law related to gas explosions and underground structures, and highlighted that many organisations were flouting the new laws introduced in 1974; this led to more legislative change, including the introduction of the Fire Safety Certification Mark (Japanese: 適マーク, Hepburn: Teki māku), making it clear to the public for the first time whether a building was up to code or not. This period also saw a steady decrease in the number of hazardous materials incidents as a result of the strengthening of the laws surrounding control of chemicals in the 60s and 70s.
The late 80s and early 90s also saw major changes to the way that firefighters engage in rescue operations; in 1985, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted in Colombia, destroying the town of Armero and surrounding areas, killing over 23,000 people. The FDMA wished to send a rescue team to help, but there was no system for selecting and preparing rescue workers from Japan's hundreds of fire departments, all with their own rescue units; the following year, the FDMA established the International Rescue Team of the Japan Fire Service (IRT-JF) (Japanese: 国際消防救助隊, Hepburn: Kokusai shōbō kyūjotai), drawing rescuers from across the country and establishing a structure for them to be deployed abroad to large-scale disasters; the same year they were dispatched to the Lake Nyos disaster and the San Salvador eathquake, and in 1987 the Act Concerning the Dispatch of the Japan Disaster Relief Team was passed, putting in place the statutory authority for the team to deploy.
Heisei and Reiwa periods
However, even larger change occurred following the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake (better known in the western world as the Kobe earthquake); the Kobe City Fire Bureau was overwhelmed by the disaster, and communications became intermittent due to damage to telecommunications equipment. In response, the FDMA formed domestic versions of the IRT-JF, known as Emergency Fire Response Teams (EFRTs) (Japanese: 緊急消防援助隊, Hepburn: Kinkyū shōbō enjo-tai), established resilient communications at national, prefectural, and municipal levels, and established a helicopter satellite communication system which allows images to be broadcast to control centres across Japan even if local telecommunications infrastructure is destroyed. These reforms also highlighted the role of the community and local fire prevention organisations, and also lead to a major review of firefighting during earthquakes, in view of the serious damage caused by the conflagrations that devastated Kobe following the quake.