The Fall: In 1788, the Reformer Was Buried Under Disgrace

In 1786 (Tenmei 6), at Edo Castle. The tenth shōgun Tokugawa Ieharu, Tanuma Okitsugu's greatest backing, departed the world.

Immediately after that death, Okitsugu was dismissed from the rōjū and tumbled at a stroke from the seat of power.

His domain of Sagara was confiscated, and his mansion taken. The reformer who had led shogunal government for nearly twenty years, the instant he lost his backing, immediately fell from power.

What awaited Okitsugu was a later life of disgrace and solitude.

In 1784, preceding his fall, a deep grief struck Okitsugu. His heir Tanuma Okitomo, who had supported his father as a wakadoshiyori, was slashed by the hatamoto Sano Masakoto within Edo Castle and lost his life.

To suddenly lose, within the castle, the successor to whom he had entrusted the future — for Okitsugu personally, there was no wound greater than this.

The world whispered of this incident as if it were heaven's punishment on the Tanuma's power.

The father's grief, overlapping with political isolation, drove Okitsugu into a corner.

As it happened, the Tenmei years saw a great famine and the eruption of Mt. Asama overlap, and the whole country was visited by hunger and confusion.

Okitsugu's commerce-focused policies were saddled with the blame for such destitution of the people.

In truth the famine was largely a matter of natural disaster, but the people's discontent was directed at the man in power, Tanuma.

The ill fame of bribe-politics too was amplified amid this backlash. Before the fruits of reform could ripen, Okitsugu was swallowed by the headwind of the age.

After Okitsugu's fall, it was Matsudaira Sadanobu who took the real power of shogunal government.

Sadanobu's Kansei Reforms denied all of Tanuma's policies and steered toward austerity finances and a return to agrarianism.

The commerce-focused line was buried, and Okitsugu's name was disparaged as the byword for a 'bribe politician.

' In 1788, Okitsugu departed the world in despair. He was seventy. Nearly two centuries would be required before the will of the reformer ahead of his time was justly appraised.

Having lost his heir and been saddled with disgrace, Okitsugu's later years were far too lonely.