Practical or Petty?: Motivations and Consequences of Tokugawa Yoshimune’s Reforms

• Published: 12 May 2025 • • Last updated: 12 May 2025 • • Written: 21 November 2024 •

(This entry is part of an ongoing series of papers I've written for various assignments. It is not necessarily representative of my beliefs; only my effort.)

Practical or Petty?: Motivations and Consequences of Tokugawa Yoshimune’s Reforms

Tokugawa Yoshimune, or simply Yoshimune, was the eighth Tokugawa shōgun (281). Unique among the shōguns until that point, instead of being descended from the main Tokugawa bloodline, Yoshimune was noted for being “already experienced in administering a major domain” (281), and was thus named the successor to the seat of power in Edo by bakufu leaders in the year 1716. Yoshimune would become famous for a series of measures aimed at addressing various crises that had been surfacing before his reign, but were beginning to accelerate and amplify in their severity. The effects of the reforms, however, did not always benefit individuals directly, and this paper seeks to define Yoshimune’s decisions in the context of a ruler seeking to bring stability to a disjointed society through the reformation of its monetary system and the attitudes of its elites, rather than one attempting to earn the favor of the common person.

One of the most rampant problems during Yoshimune’s reign was the interplay between the instability of currency and the strained manner in which people, particularly the hatamoto (samurai who were direct retainers to the shōgun) used their money. The hatamoto “tended to live beyond their means…borrowing from merchants and then disputing their obligations” (291). This system was partially ameliorated by currency debasements, which “increased the volume of money in Edo, reducing its value relative to rice” (291), and allowing rice sales to drive larger profits and more money to lend. However, this solution only masked the symptoms of the problem, not the disease of over-borrowing and overspending. Additionally, such a solution could not decouple the value of money from the volume of agricultural output, rural discontentment with which was enough to prompt a peasant strike in 1720 that, in 1721, resulted “hundreds of troops [being sent from Edo] to the area to suppress the strike, arrest the leaders, and interrogate everyone involved” (294).

Although the implementation of his fiscal policy predated the peasant strike by two years, their effects would gradually ease the concerns that had prompted it. Specifically, Yoshimune’s fiscal policy “sustained [Arai] Hakuseki’s monetary reform program during his first years as shōgun” (295)—requiring tighter control of the supply of precious metals, and thus, the value and exchange of currency (282), which caused a sharp drop in urban rice prices, “undermining the market value of the rice tax that enabled the bakufu and its retainers to carry indebtedness” (295). Unfortunately, “[the] deflation that hurt samurai also injured urban commoners” (295), because many of them relied on samurai as their employers or their customers. So while Yoshimune was successful in re-stabilizing the value of money and controlling frivolous expenditure by the hatamoto and bakufu, the people of Edo—elite and non-elite alike— “bore the brunt of currency ‘improvement’” (296).

The other major way in which Yoshimune attempted to bring stability was through the realignment of the attitudes of the elites away from performative obsequience to the shōgun, and toward genuine investment in their local polities and the bakufu. It should not be conceived that Yoshimune was able to do this with bribes and favors alone—in fact, the curtailing of the liberal spending and borrowing privileges of the bakufu and hatamoto, which frustrated them greatly, played a major role in his agenda to rein the elites in. Because loopholes are hardly a new concept, “the rulers [dealt] with their problems by passing them downward through the city and outward to rural areas” (297), but Yoshimune understood that this offloading of burden on the rural population would only send disaster back up the social pyramid, and thus, passed reforms “designed to help daimyō govern better” and “to steer…resources to bakufu service” (298).

In 1721,Yoshimune attempted to relieve the daimyō by “[trimming] sankin kōtai retinues” (299). He reduced the required monetary gifts to the shōgun to “one tenth,” and other gifts to “one-third” (299). And even in spite of warnings that such a measure “would undermine Edo’s control of the daimyō,” (299), Yoshimune ordered that sankin kōtai duty should be “reduced by half.” He hoped that, by easing the sankin kōtai requirements on the daimyō, new opportunities for them to invest in, and focus on domestic affairs would open up. Additionally, lessened traffic from sankin kōtai pilgrimages would reduce the population of Edo, reducing the heightened prices of goods associated with heightened demand, and alleviating some of the issues with inflation and monetary instability that had sparked earlier reforms.

While his social reforms were not as successful as his fiscal reforms, and he eventually relented on some of his policies, Tokugawa Yoshimune’s legacy can be regarded as practical and stabilizing—popular favor could be a powerful asset in times of certainty and prosperity, but in times like Yoshumine’s, practical reasoning made him the right shōgun for the job.

Bibliography

Totman, Conrad D. “Aesthetics and the Rise of Ukiyo.” Early Modern Japan: Conrad Totman. Berkeley, University of California Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Library, Scholarly Publishing Office, 1995, pp. 184-222.

Totman, Conrad D. “Yoshimune and the Kyōhō Reform.” Early Modern Japan: Conrad Totman. Berkeley, University of California Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Library, Scholarly Publishing Office, 1995, pp. 280-315.