The politics of famine in a far-off place : Nyūi Mitsugi and the Hōreki crisis in Tsugaru

Abstract

The Tsugaru domain in far north eastern Honshu was located at the very northern boundary of Japan in the Tokugawa period, and its identi1y as an independent poli1y was almost as new the shogunate itself. A relative newcomer to the political and economic structures that had taken shape by the end of the sixteenth century, the domain spent most of the seventeenth century establishing itself a viable poli1y with a sound economic base. By the mid eighteenth century, after the productivi1y of Tsugaru had increased by a greater margin than that of any other domain, outgoing expenditures had also increased enormously and a fiscal crisis occurred. This dissertation examines the program of reforms instituted in the Horeki reforms to address the situation, arguing that the rationalisation of bureaucracy and integration of local commercial actors into managing official fiscal affairs showed some promise. Then, by closely tracing the experiences of famine in Tsugaru and two neighbouring domains, and their comparative fates in after the harvest failure that interrupted Tsugaru's reform program, I go on to argue that the combination of distance from the central markets, a climate unsuited to rice cultivation at the technological level of the period, and a latest art in establishing sound Procedures for fiscal management meant that the Tsugaru poli1y was hard put to move out of the precarious situation it was in by the mid 1700s. The succession of a child daimyo had left the administration of the domain in the hands of a small group of hereditary elders before the crises. One of them, who favoured fl.l1damental char'9es to government structures and procedures, was instrumental in the appointment of Nyui Mitsugi to lead the reforms. Mitsugi stored rice in the domain's granaries and was able to save the domain from the famine by arranging the distribution of relief food supplies. The elders, religious institutions and established merchants of the domain, however, chafed at the radical reform policies with which he followed up that triumph, however, and he was dismissed. Through a1examination of some of the writings Mitsugi produced during the periods he spent under house arrest a1d in exile, I argue that although to a large extent the domain was captive to its geography, climate and lack of depth in administrative experience, the world of the spirit and the intellect had no bol.l1daries. Taking politics in the broadest sense of political economy and social organisation, the dissertation demonstrates that although the ideas arguments for more equitable access to entitlements to adequate food were accessible to, and in fact elaborated by, Nyui Mitsugi, the powers of wealth, status and a centralised political system militated against saving the poorest and most isolated people from starvation when famines occurred.