By the 1720s, the city born of shogunal vision and warrior needs pulsed with townspeople, the artists and merchants of commoner status who began to rival samurai in number among the residents of Edo. With a staggering one million people calling Edo home, the shogun’s capital also became the city of Edoites through a dance of shogunate authority, samurai prestige, and commoner interests. Destructive fires were occasions for such negotiations, and their frequency left a deep imprint on the physical landscape and culture of the city. Kabuki theater too was a site of political push and pull, as well as rambunctious amusement for both townspeople and samurai partaking in the flourishing urban popular culture of the world’s largest city.