Another great woodcut by Maestro Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. Until the second world war Japans cities mostly consisted out of wooden buildings. So fire was a real threat to them - and firefighter even more important.

Too sad that American decided to totally devastated these old cities through incendiary bombings - which totally snuffed out most of Japan’s cities BEFORE they dropped the atomic bombs. Actually both cities were spared any air attacks to ’save’ them for the big experiments.

Anyway - this is a great painting. Bugger.