両国

The Edo chronicle puts the 1657 fire's dead at 107,046. Two years later a bridge crossed the Sumida, from one province into another. The provinces are gone — only the name still counts them.

The Great Fire of Meireki (1657) — the Edo chronicle Bukō Nenpyō puts the dead at 107,046, marking the figure as hearsay — left the shogunate burying bodies in a mound across the river, where it founded Ekōin temple. In 1659 Ryōgoku-bashi went up over the Sumida. It spanned Musashi and Shimōsa, and so came to carry their name: 'both-provinces bridge' (National Diet Library). The east bank was Shimōsa in medieval times. As for when the border moved, the shogunate's own gazetteer weighed the stories and recorded that they disagree.

After the 1657 fire the shogunate granted land in Honjo, on the east bank, and Ekōin was founded there for the dead; in medieval times this bank lay in Shimōsa, not Musashi.