田沼 意次
Okitsugu Tanuma was born on 11 September 1719. His childhood name was Ryusuke, but he later came to be called Tonomo-no- kami Okitsugu. His father, Scnzaemon Okiyuki, was a samurai of the fief of Kii in present-day Wakayama Prefecture, but when Tokugawa Yoshimune, the lord of Kii, was summoned to Edo to become the eighth shogun, Okiyuki and Okitsugu accompanied him, Okitsugu serving as page to Yoshimune’s eldest son, Ieshige. In 1734 Okiyuki died, leaving Okitsugu as his heir.
In 1745 Tokugawa Ieshigc succeeded his father to become the ninth shogun, and Okitsugu continued as before to act as his personal attendant, exercising his innate cleverness and enjoying great favor with his lord. He advanced repeatedly in station and in 1758 was presented with the fief of Sagara in the province of Totorni, thus rising to the rank of a provincial landholder.
In 1760 Ieshige died and was succeeded by his son Ieharu, the tenth Tokugawa shogun.
Okitsugu continued to enjoy favor as before; in 1767 he was appointed sobayonin, or intermediary between the shogun and the councilors of state, and in 1772 he himself became a councilor of state.
At the time of his appointment as a councilor of state the peasantry were sorely troubled by natural disasters, famine, and the burden of heavy taxes, and agricultural revenues had fallen off. In order to create new sources of revenue for the shogunal government, Okitsugu encouraged the export of copper and dried fish and shellfish from the port of Nagasaki, bringing into the country quantities of foreign gold and silver in exchange. He also created monopolies on certain commodities such as copper, iron, and ginseng, and collected fees from merchants and manufacturers in exchange for recognition of various mono¬polistic rights. Borrowing capital from the merchants, he undertook a large-scale project to drain Lake Imba in the province of Shimosa and convert it to farm land, and laid plans for the opening up of Ezochi, as the island of Hokkaido was known at the time. But, positive and forw'ard-looking as many of his plans were, his alliances with the great merchants led to widespread bribery and corruption in the government and frequent viola-tions of the law.
Moreover, in the latter years of his period in power, particularly during the years of the great famine that broke out in 1783 and spread throughout the country, life became increasingly difficult for the peasants and townspeople. It is not surprising, therefore, that with the death of Tokugawa Ieharu in 1786, Okitsugu, along with his son Okitomo, who had also held a high position in the shogunate, fell abruptly from power. He died shortly after.
