Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Hongō, Tokyo, Japan
About Tanuma Okitsugu
- Tanuma Okitsugu (????) (September 11, 1719, in Edo, Japan – August 25, 1788, in Edo) was a chamberlain (sobashu) and a senior counselor (roju) to the shogun Tokugawa Ieharu.
- He is known for the economic reforms of the Tenmei era and rampant corruption.
- He was also a daimyo of the Sagara Domain.
- He used the title Tonomo-no-kami.The reforms aimed to rectify the systemic problems in the economy, particularly the trade imbalance between the provinces and the shogunal areas of Japan.
- He took steps to increase the foreign trade and set export quotas for Akita copper mines (the copper being the primary coinage metal during that period), despite higher domestic prices.
- Tanuma's administration granted monopoly patents for numerous products, including iron, brass, sulfur, ginseng and lamp oil.
- Large investments were made into the massive drainage program to increase the agricultural land.
- The program failed.
- Several years of crop failures, resulting from drought followed by floods, led to famine. In Tenmei 4 (1784), Okitsugu's son, the wakadoshiyori (junior counselor) Tanuma Okitomo, was assassinated inside Edo Castle.
- Okitomo was killed in front of his father as both were returning to their norimono after a meeting of the Counselors of State had broken up.
- Okitomo was killed by Sano Masakoto, a hatamoto.
- The involvement of senior figures in the bakufu was suspected, but only the assassin himself was punished. The famine led to a spike in a number of protests and peasant rebellions, culminating in the Edo riots of 1787.
- Traditionalist opponents of the reform interpreted it as the "voice of Heaven" being followed by the "voice of the people".
- With the assassination of his son and the death of his patron Tokugawa Ieharu, Tanuma fell from power.
- The result was that the reforms and the relaxation of the strictures of sakoku were blocked.
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