Season 12, Episode 1: Cracks in the Foundation
The reign of Tokugawa Yoshimune was, in spite of the best efforts of both the Bakufu and the shogun, a tumultuous time of uncertain economy, dwindling prosperity, and increasing hardships being placed on farmers, some of whom organized occasional revolts. While Yoshimune himself is often credited with preserving Japan’s national political cohesion during this difficult period, his successor would need to prove even more able, active, and creative if the shogunate was to prevent a slide into irrelevance and obsolescence. Unfortunately for the Bakufu, Yoshimune’s choice of successor left a lot to be desired.
Yoshimune championed his eldest son Ieshige as his rightful successor in spite of the fact that the young man was plagued by chronic health problems and afflicted with difficulties in rudimentary communication. In 1745, in a bid to secure that succession, Yoshimune retired and became the Ogosho, or retired shogun, and arranged for Ieshige to be elevated to shogun.
Ieshige had a particularly acute speech impediment which records indicate made him almost incomprehensible. A posthumous examination in the late 1950s found that his teeth were crooked and malformed, thus confirming reports of his communication difficulties. That being said, it’s important to distinguish between physical limitations and mental disabilities. All the evidence leads to the conclusion that Ieshige was not mentally challenged in any way. George Sansom in “A History of Japan, 1615-1867” notes that Ieshige had written an essay about shogi, which is the Japanese version of chess. While his physical difficulties presented an obstacle to his governance, they cannot be blamed alone for his ineffectual governance. His was a problem of temperament, not a lack of mental capacity. When Yoshimune died in 1751, Ieshige became the sole ruler but in spite of the great pains his father endured securing his position, he seems to have had little interest in actual governance.
Taking a page from certain “hands-off” shoguns and national leaders before him, Ieshige decided to place his burden of governance into the hands of an underling, through whom he communicated to the roju, or council of elders. The particular young man whom he chose to be his mouthpiece, at least at first, was a soba-yonin, or chamberlain, named Ooka Tadamitsu. For his part, Ooka Tadamitsu appears to have been an honest, talented young man who relayed Ieshige’s actual wishes to the roju council.
Tadamitsu and the sitting roju elders probably did their best, but the national problems which had emerged toward the end of Yoshimune’s reign - namely rice market manipulation, economic instability, and widespread financial turmoil - persisted during Ieshige’s tenure. In 1760, Ieshige retired and became the Ogosho, and favored his eldest son Tokugawa Ieharu as the new shogun. Ooka Tadamitsu died in 1760, which opened the way for a new underling to assume expansive powers well beyond the scope of their office.
Which brings us to Tanuma Okitsugu. When Tokugawa Yoshimune came from Kii Province, now called Wakayama Domain, to serve as shogun, he naturally brought many of his own retinue and placed them in posts throughout the Bakufu. He promoted Tanuma Okitsugu’s father from his previous low position of ashigaru to that of hatamoto, or retainer. Okitsugu himself was only a child at the time, but when he turned sixteen he became a page serving Tokugawa Ieshige. His father died around that time, making him the head of the Tanuma Clan. When Yoshimune passed away in 1751, Okitsugu was promoted to soba-yonin, or chamberlain, to Ieshige. While his career was not quite rags-to-riches, it is remarkable that at a time when social advancement was hampered by a strict hierarchy, Okitsugu managed to obtain one of the highest ranks in the shogunate in spite of his humble origin as the son of a foot soldier. Sometimes what you know is not as important as who you know.
That being said, the nation was somewhat fortunate that Tanuma Okitsugu appears to have known quite a bit. Although overshadowed by Ooka Tadamitsu during the reign of Ieshige, when Tadamitsu passed away and Ieharu was elevated to the shogunal throne in 1760, Tanuma Okitsugu found his fortunes rapidly rising once more. He was a favorite confidant of Ieharu and was promoted and given considerable stipend increases throughout the early 1760s.
In 1767, however, Tanuma Okitsugu was given a chance to really shine. He was promoted to the rank of senior chamberlain and granted lordship of Sagara Han - a domain in Totomi Province in southern Chubu. Being that he held the rank of retainer of the Tokugawa Clan, this made him a fudai daimyo. Initially the income from Sagara Han was 10,000 koku per annum but this was soon increased to 20,000 and eventually was expanded to 50,000 and later reached its peak at 57,000. Through his intimate connection with the shogun Ieharu, he wielded enormous power as a senior chamberlain and his influence was only somewhat resisted by Matsudaira Takemoto, the most senior member of the roju council. However, in 1779 Takemoto died and Okitsugu was whisked into his position through the influence of the shogun, who continued to favor him.
Tanuma Okitsugu, for all of his faults (and they are numerous), threw himself into the project of resolving the lingering problems in Japan’s economy, monetary policy, and the growing shortfalls of the Bakufu’s receipts. Yoshimune had attempted to resolve these issues through spurring increased food cultivation, debasing the currency and attempting to curb the power of speculators whose activities were constantly wreaking havoc upon stability. Okitsugu broadly returned to these policies, although he opted for somewhat extreme measures which heavily debased the coinage and levied somewhat punitive taxes against merchant guilds. In an effort to increase revenues, he also sold official monopoly production rights for various metals, lamp oil, ginseng, and sulfur, among many other industrial goods.
However, lest you think that he was solely a stability-minded reformer motivated only by a desire to support good government, Tanuma Okitsugu was also incredibly corrupt and actively encouraged corruption throughout nearly every tier of national government. It may sound like I’m exaggerating here, that surely no public official would actually encourage bribery, much less openly solicit bribes without any attempt to cloak such activities, but Okitsugu himself was confident that he could both serve the public good while also ensuring hefty paydays for himself. In one remark attributed to him, according to “A History of Japan 1615-1867,” he defends rampant bribery by claiming, quote, “A man whose wish to serve is so strong that he offers bribes for an appointment shows… that his intentions are loyal.” End quote.
The Tanuma family saw its influence explode very quickly once Okitsugu took practical control of the Bakufu in 1779. His clients included great daimyo who desired important shogunate positions or promotions in their court rank, who happily offered gifts commensurate with whatever their requests might be. Even moralistic courtiers who would normally think themselves above such indecent activities gradually broke down and offered gifts to Tanuma Okitsugu when their desire for a promotion or appointment outweighed their pride and sense of propriety.
While most historical figures who engage in such open, shameless corruption are remembered as purely villainous figures whose legacies are little better than mustachioed cartoon heels, Tanuma Okitsugu’s historical reputation is far more nuanced and complicated. In particular, it’s worth recognizing that this kind of corruption in the Bakufu existed long before Okitsugu’s tenure. Yoshimune had worked hard to excise it but after his death it quickly returned, especially with hands-off shoguns like Ieshige and Ieharu who did little to increase accountability or discourage personal enrichment. However, there is also the factor of Okitsugu’s track record regarding the overall health of the ship of state, which was, all things considered, pretty good.
In spite of enriching himself to a degree which would have made Tony Soprano blush, he did succeed in reducing Bakufu expenditures, largely balanced its teetering budget, and moved the nation toward a more open posture with foreign powers, particularly Japan’s trade partners. Arai Hakuseki, a high-ranking advisor to Tokugawa Ienobu, had purposefully reduced the level of trade at the port of Nagasaki and it was Okitsugu who saw the folly in this decision and reversed it, expanding the goods which were tradeable and allowing a limited outflow of some of Japan’s precious metals to increase the value of its local currency and bring stability to the economy.
However, it was during Tanuma Okitsugu’s tenure that the earliest expressions of grass-roots resistance to the Bakufu began to emerge. The reign of Yoshimune had brought a new level of unwelcome official interference into many previously independent sectors of the economy. After his death, the reign of Ieshige was generally characterized by official guilds and merchant collectives largely regaining some of that independence. Thus Okitsugu’s tenure, in which the government returned to and expanded upon Yoshimune’s previous policies, was entirely unwelcome by the emerging bourgeois class of merchants and artisans, who were known as Chonin.
Ironically, the great daimyos -- the segment of the Edo Period population whom the shogunate viewed as their primary potential rivals to power -- largely lined up behind the Bakufu’s policies and continued upholding the status quo. Many historians attribute this holding the line to the efficiency of the shogunate in preventing potential enemy alliances from forming through the deployment of watchful fudai daimyo to their patchwork domains around the nation. If any daimyo dreamed of launching a successful rebellion, the map itself worked against them. However, rival samurai were a small segment of Japan’s population. A much larger segment, representing between 60 and 70 percent, were the nation’s farmers. While Tanuma Okitsugu’s tenure would prove largely beneficial for the Bakufu’s financial stability, the oppressive nature of the shogunate began to inspire pushback from agrarian quarters toward the end of his time as de facto head of state.
During Yoshimune’s tenure, farmers nationwide began to more frequently stage uprisings to protest oppressive and unpopular policies. These agrarian riots went from an occasional headache to becoming a frequent phenomenon throughout his reign, in spite of his attempts to control unstable prices and curtail the power of influential merchant guilds. In 1739, a massive riot involving around 84,000 farmers erupted in an area just north of Kanto. The focus of their uprising was primarily over-burdensome taxation and they succeeded in causing damage to many buildings. When the mob drew near to the daimyo’s castle, he met with their leaders and acquiesced to their demand for lower taxes.
The 1739 riot was largely an exception, however. Unrest in a domain was a potential justification for the shogunate to seize it from its proprietors if they were tozama or replace them and potentially dismiss them if they were fudai, so daimyo nationwide had a vested interest in preserving the local status quo, regardless of the harm it was clearly causing to food producers. Most uprisings were kept quiet by the daimyo whose domains fell into chaos and, generally, such actions by the peasant farmers were brutally put down and mercilessly punished. Even with uprisings where demands were met by domain leadership, it became common practice for the authorities to hunt down the riot’s leaders afterward and torture them to death. Cruelty and secrecy became dominant aspects of domain governance, though the expansive Tokugawa lands were not exempt from the trend.
Historically many of these riots were linked to famines caused by crop failures from previous years, but this assumption of natural cause has been largely discarded by a number of influential Japanese historians in modern times. Certainly it flattered the authorities to attribute mass starvation to natural means outside of their control but modern research points largely at the rice markets and expanding urbanization as the primary drivers of famine. When famines began, it was the urban centers which would first suffer from shortages because they were importing their food. Oftentimes letters of petition from urban areas would request coin from the authorities so that they could afford to purchase rice at inflated prices.
However, during the tenure of Tanuma Okitsugu, there emerged a particularly large uprising right in the shogunate’s back yard. Last season, specifically in episode 15 “The Cult of Tokugawa Ieyasu,” we discussed the emergence of the shogunate’s political cult. Ieyasu was deified and interred in his final resting place at Nikko, where his official temple was built among the cluster of shrines and temples already present. Nikko lay about a hundred miles from Edo, and the highway which connected the two locations passed through many villages. Arrangements were made between the Bakufu and the officials in charge of these villages for the people who lived therein to provide lodging, fresh horses, and baggage porters for the state-sanctioned pilgrims, which were members of the Bakufu or Tokugawa family, during their pilgrimages.
However, in 1764, the shogunate planned a grand pilgrimage to Nikko which was to include every member of the Tokugawa family, many kuge, some of their more influential vassals, and their retinues which included numerous pages, attendants, and servants. Because of the increased expenditure in such a gesture, the costs were borne not only by the villages on the road to Nikko but resulted in increased one-time taxes levied on villages in the broader region. The riots that resulted began as small pockets of discontent and at first the shogunate attempted to appease those who led the uprisings, which only resulted in temporary pauses of the mass violence. By the end of 1764, however, contemporary reports indicate that throughout the provinces of Kozuke and Musashi in Kanto, there were somewhere around 200,000 people participating in the riots. This puts the 1764 Kanto riots neatly into the same category, at least numerically, as the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637.
The rioters attacked storehouses and wreaked great destruction on anything within that was not edible. It took almost a month for the shogunate to suppress this rising and return order. While this is a far shorter time frame than the aforementioned Shimabara Rebellion, it is still a worrying sign that the enforcers of national harmony took so long to contain a riot, and even more concerning that it took place within Tokugawa-controlled domains. Worse than a mere national embarrassment, this incident made the Bakufu itself appear weak and ineffectual.
It’s worth noting that while the daimyo nationwide were allowed to request military aid from neighboring domains, they were specifically not allowed to use firearms to put down riots. The reason for this prohibition is likely that the Bakufu understood, at least conceptually, how powerful guns could be in an actual war and did not want the subordinate clans becoming too familiar with such a critical weapon.
While the Kanto riot of 1764 was certainly a black eye for Tanuma Okitsugu, it did not result in his removal from power. He continued taking bribes while also providing fairly even-keeled governance and supported policies which he believed would help set the nation back on a stable course. Of particular note is his attempt to open up trade with Russia. Having been reorganized into an absolute monarchy by reigning sovereign Peter the first, posthumously known as Peter the Great, the Russian Empire had been making gradual inroads into Siberia since the late 1500s and by the mid-1700s their traders were present on the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Kuril Islands, which lie due north of the island of Ezo, which is today called Hokkaido.
The Matsumae Clan, whom you may recall were placed as governors in southern Hokkaido and charged with managing trade with the Ainu people, had secretly already been allowing their merchants to trade with the Russian settlers, whom the Japanese dubbed the “Aka-ezo,” or “Red Ezo.” Tanuma Okitsugu promoted the policy that would make Japan open to legal trade with Russia and to use the profits from said trade to make “improvements” to Hokkaido. Such improvements would also allow greater control and governance over the Ainu people.
Under Okitsugu’s tenure, the Bakufu worked hand-in-hand with the merchant class and enjoyed a share in the profits. However, this partnership came at the expense of the agrarian class, who found themselves effectively punished for increased productivity. Because of the dynamic, demand-based pricing of the merchant collectives, bumper harvests earned less money than during times of shortage. There was thus less incentive to pursue methods that promised higher yields, since those higher yields would be purchased for virtual pennies on the dollar. This became especially true in Tohoku, where the colder climate of northern Japan made food production difficult even in the best of conditions.
The cycle of shortages, high retail prices, and unmotivated agrarian workers led to a series of unpleasant events toward the end of Okitsugu’s time as de facto head of state. In 1782, troubling signs of food shortage began to appear, with prices spiking around the country. In the spring of 1783, Mount Iwaki in northern Tohoku erupted. About a month later, Mount Asama in northeastern Kanto spewed a plume of toxic gasses which continued streaming from the volcano’s peak for three months afterward. In August that same year, a pyroclastic blast dramatically erupted from Mount Asama’s peak and lava flowed for 15 hours afterward, causing terrible destruction.
In the midst of this destruction and the ensuing food shortages, the daimyo were engaging in activities which proved generally unhelpful. In “A History of Japan, 1615-1867,” author George Sansom gives an example from Tsugaru domain in northern Mutsu, where the officials had exacted tax “in-kind” meaning they forced the farmers to give them rice as tax payment and through merchant middlemen sent 400,000 bags of rice to be sold in Edo and Osaka. While this brought a tidy income of coin for the domain, the shortages caused by their greed resulted in famine. They attempted to buy rice from their neighboring han, but none could be acquired and mass starvation ensued.
The debris expelled from both eruptions was certainly terrible for crops, as the smoke settled in the upper atmosphere and interfered with photosynthesis. Possibly making matters worse, the Icelandic volcano of Laki also erupted in midsummer of 1783, which may have further diminished crop yields in Japan and also possibly worsened a concurrent drought in China. Certainly the resulting food shortages were exacerbated by natural phenomena, but some of the blame still belongs with the shogunate and with Tanuma Okitsugu, its chamberlain-in-chief.
Because of Okitsugu’s integration of merchant collectives into the national economy, farmers remained at the mercy of a fickle market at harvest time. The farmers, having little incentive to increase yields, continued status quo production because the increased effort to produce bumper crops had little advantage when it came time to sell to wholesalers. Combined with speculation by daimyos who acted through their merchant allies, the stage was set in 1782 and solidified in 1783 for a large-scale famine.
The Great Tenmei Famine, named for the Imperial Tenmei Era in which it occurred, was a devastating food shortage that cost hundreds of thousands of lives by even the most conservative estimates. It is entirely possible that over a million people died from starvation or from the diseases which so often accompanied massive food shortages. Nowhere was more acutely affected than Tohoku, which so often suffered from production shortages itself -- shortages which had been amplified by the lack of available rice for the daimyo to purchase from neighboring regions. In northern Japan, over a hundred thousand died from either starvation or disease, with the aforementioned Tsugaru Han losing close to half its total population.
The Great Tenmei Famine lasted until 1787 and national population decline continued until at least 1792. Protests which sometimes culminated into riots erupted in Edo, primarily targeting Tanuma Okitsugu and his mercantilist policies -- objections which were not entirely unfounded. In 1784, Okitsugu felt the effects of his growing unpopularity most acutely when his son Tanuma Okitomo, serving as a wakadoshiyori, or junior counselor, was brutally attacked by a hatamoto, or retainer, in Edo Castle right in front of him. Okitomo died from his wounds eight days later. The hatamoto in question was ordered to commit seppuku and while it was suspected that he had been acting on the orders of other members of the Bakufu, such a conspiracy was never definitively proven.
The assassination of his son prompted the Bakufu to try and scale back the broader mercantile reforms of Okitsugu. Trade with Russia, in particular, was placed on an indefinite hold and sakoku once more put firmly in place as a measure of national protection. In 1786, Okitsugu’s ambitions were put on permanent hold when Tokugawa Ieharu, his patron and in whose name he effectively governed, died.
As soon as he fell out of political favor, grants of income for Tanuma Okitsugu were canceled and he was effectively placed in a forced retirement. He died two years later, in 1788. He had taken some measures to attempt to alleviate the famine while it was ongoing, but these did little more than increase expenditures and drain the treasury. Next time, we will discuss some of the concurrent events of the first decades of the Later Edo Period, and examine more closely the results of longstanding Bakufu domestic policies.