The flowing river never stops, and yet the water is never the same. The foam floating on its pools vanishes here and forms there, and never lasts long. So it is with people in the world and their dwellings.
In the beautiful capital, paved as if with jewels, the dwellings of high and low, ridge beside ridge, roofs vying in height, seem as if they would never vanish through the generations; but if you ask whether this is true, few houses have stood since long ago. One burned last year and was built this year. Another was a great house that has declined into a small one. The people who live in them are the same. The place has not changed, and there are many people, but of those I once knew, only one or two in twenty or thirty remain. Some die in the morning, others are born in the evening: the way of the world is just like foam on the water.
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It was, I think, the twenty-eighth of the fourth month of Angen 3 (1177). On a night of fierce, howling wind, around eight in the evening, a fire broke out in the southeast of the capital and spread to the northwest. In the end it reached the Suzaku Gate, the Great Hall of State, the State University and the Ministry of Popular Affairs, and in one night they were ash.
They say it started at Higuchi Tominokoji, in a temporary shelter where sick people were lodged. In the wild, shifting wind it jumped here and there, spreading out wider like an opened fan. Distant houses choked on smoke, and nearby the flames beat down on the ground. Ash was blown into the sky and lit by the fire, and all was dyed crimson, while flames torn off by the wind flew across one or two blocks at a time.
Did those inside it feel they were alive? Sixteen houses of senior nobles alone burned, and the rest were beyond counting. They say a third of the capital was lost. All human undertakings are foolish, but to spend one's wealth and trouble one's heart building a house in so perilous a capital is the most pointless of all.