The real-life destruction haunting Demon Slayer’s Entertainment District Arc

polygon.com:

[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for the finale of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba’sEntertainment District Arc.]

Between a Demon Slayer’s sword and an Upper Rank 6 demon, flames were everywhere in “Never Give Up”, the penultimate episode of Demon Slayer’s Entertainment District Arc. As Tanjiro Kamado clung to life in his fight against demon Gyutaro in the beginning moments of the episode, the district fell to the flames of Tanjiro’s Hinokami and Gyutaro’s mighty strength, leaving the demon slayer to wonder if the residents of the area made it out OK. The breathtaking devastation in Yoshiwara was emphasized by a lingering wide shot of the area.

But for residents of Yoshiwara during the Taishō era, the period between the years 1912 to 1926, this destruction of the district would be all too familiar. Time after time, much like Edo itself, Yoshiwara fell to ruin and was reborn anew.

The Yoshiwara we see in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Entertainment District Arc is a city born out of the ashes of another. The original Yoshiwara, which was founded in 1617, was situated in an area that is now known as Nipponbashi, one of the most central locations in Tokyo and close to the Imperial Palace. The original district was set up by the shogunate as part of the Licensed Prostitution System, not to hide away the debauchery that went on, but keep the sex industry centered in one location for ease of taxation and regulatory procedure. (A very governmental thing to do.)

As Edo grew from a rural town where the then emperor spent his holidays to a merchant city, the area surrounding Yoshiwara became more and more urbanized, and the space occupied by the pleasure district was needed for the hordes of people moving to the east