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The peasants were not allowed to leave their land and found themselves over time becoming more and more efficient in agriculture production but retaining less and less of their produce while paying more and more in rents and taxes. Consequently many turned from rice cultivation to new commercial ventures based on cash crops such as cotton, tobacco, rapeseed, and so forth. Peasants had augmented their income for some time through raising silkworms and through spinning and weaving, enterprises carried out primarily by the women in the family. But as living became more difficult toward the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, they sought new ways of coping with their situations. The recurrent famines brought about by poor weather conditions in different parts of Japan which played havoc with agricultural production, and other calamities of nature such as earthquakes and epidemics, affected the peasant population dramatically.
Accelerated Problems of the Tenpō Era (1830-1844)
During the 1830s, Japan entered another period of severe famine and suffering. The new era, begun in 1830, was called Tenpō, or "Protected by Heaven," carefully named to ensure the powerful kami (gods) would surround the country with a protective aura. It was not to be. Planting the new rice crop in the spring of 1833 was hampered by unusual cold weather, and, in the fall, what had grown over the summer was decimated dramatically by early snowfalls. This was, as usual, most costly in the northern part of Honshū, or the Tōhoku area. But the reduction in harvest was also felt in the Tokugawa lands and the han to the West. This was the first of four poor harvests in succession resulting in famine in many parts of Japan. Death by starvation was particularly devastating in Tōhoku, but most of the entire country suffered to some degree.
While the agricultural disasters did not affect the entire domain equally, they were widespread enough to cause the people to go beyond simply petitioning the shogun and their daimyō for relief. These years between 1833 and 1837 witnessed peasant uprisings which exceeded in both seriousness and number those which had occurred in the past. Urban centers were also affected or the inhabitants of the castle towns rioted and demanded relief. One of the most famous incidents took place in Osaka in the second month of 1837. There, a former bakufu police inspector, Ōshio Heihachirō, wrote a treatise demanding help from the authorities in the punishment of the rich Osaka merchants whom he claimed were squeezing the last drop of blood from the impoverished town dwellers and peasants. Ōshio was determined to banish the evil as embodied in the merchant, which he saw destroying ordinary citizens. He called for the destitute people to rise up and execute these selfish money mongers, take their gold and silver, and empty their storehouses of rice for distribution among the poor. Carrying out his plan with the aid of a few rebel converts, he set fire to over three thousand merchant houses and burned up thousands of koku of rice, which the evil merchants had stored. Unfortunately for Ōshio the riot was put down within twelve hours by bakufu forces who killed or arrested and tortured the participants. Ōshio, who had managed to elude the bakufu's soldiers for a month, was finally discovered. In accordance with his Confucian thinking, he killed himself and his wounded son before they could be taken into custody.
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