The night our house burnt down

Murray Sayle, who died last weekend, wrote regularly for The Spectator. Here is an edited extract from his column of 13 May 1989.

Aikawa, near Tokyo

The night of 19 December last was cold and starry. Our house stood in a clearing in a pine forest halfway up a mountainside, and the flames could be seen a good
ten miles away, down by the Nissan factory. Some of them even downed tools for a moment or two, we heard, wondering what the bright light was.

Not that fires are unusual in Japan. Before the days of concrete cliffs they were called ‘The Flowers of Edo’, the old name of Tokyo. Traditional Japanese houses are built of massive
wooden beams to sway with earthquakes, with two-inch-thick straw mats on the floors, papered room dividers, thatched roofs and wooden shutters to keep out the rain. You have to heat them somehow,
and the choice is electricity, charcoal or paraffin — we had a full 200-litre tank in the garden. Add pots of paint and varnish, a 15-year accumulation of books and files, records,
children’s and adults’ toys, winter clothes, bamboo furniture and three television sets and we have, or rather had, a dwelling as flammable as a box of matches.

The fire started in the children’s room at suppertime. An electric blanket had been switched on minutes before; nothing more is known of its cause. My wife, Jenny, went to investigate, found
a bunk bed ablaze, emptied a fire extinguisher on it, pitched the smouldering remains of a futon out and returned to see flames in the rafters. She took the children to a neighbour’s and
returned to find the house alight from end to end.

The fire brigade, informed by telephone that a house (uchi in Japanese) was on fire, cruised the village looking for a nonexistent Mr Uchida until it was suggested that the fiery beacon on the
hillside might interest them.