The Tenmei Famine: Living Until the Next Harvest

The Tenmei famine did not begin and end on a single day. The Tōhoku chronology published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries places the great famine under 1782. Aomori Prefecture’s chronology gives 1783–1784. These entries do not supply one exact starting date applicable to every place.

The difference does not immediately establish that one chronology is wrong. Their geographical coverage or the span summarized by an entry may differ. Comparing the year labels alone cannot settle a common national beginning. Nor can the boundaries of a present-day prefecture simply be laid over the boundaries of an Edo-period domain.

The focus here is Tōhoku around 1783. Earlier experiences and later responses also appear, but their dates remain visible. A book published decades afterward cannot be placed in the hands of people during the crisis merely because it discusses preparations for famine.

Mount Asama erupted in 1783. The Japan Meteorological Agency’s record identifies damage from pyroclastic flows, a debris avalanche and flooding along rivers. These are categories of direct volcanic disaster. They need to be distinguished from a food crisis extending across a much wider area.

Events occurring in the same year cannot automatically be represented by one casualty figure. A number describing volcanic losses would not become a count of all victims of the Tenmei famine. Following only the drama of an eruption can also make the continuing problems of food and agricultural work in Tōhoku villages harder to see.

The task is therefore to establish the scope of each kind of evidence. This article does not turn Asama into a single complete explanation of the famine. Keeping direct disaster and prolonged food shortage distinct leaves room for the regional records that follow.

A text about disaster preserves not only events but also its writer’s perspective. Sugita Genpaku’s Nochimigusa, introduced by the National Archives of Japan, is one example. The Archives’ explanation presents descriptions of famine suffering alongside assessments of the responses made by domain lords.

Among those praised is Uesugi Harunori of Yonezawa, better known as Yōzan. Such praise is important evidence for how responses were evaluated. It is nevertheless a different kind of evidence from a survey proving that no person died in any village throughout the domain. One cannot silently be substituted for the other.

What did the writer hear or observe, and what did he commend? Those questions preserve the value of an account while limiting what its praise can establish. The source used here is the Archives’ exhibition explanation, not a claim to have independently deciphered the complete original work or traced Genpaku through every affected place.

Storing food was one form of preparation. Yonezawa City describes grain-storage arrangements associated with farmers, townspeople and warriors. Its explanation connects annual accumulation with the release of grain during the Tenmei famine. Both stages belong to the account: establishing a reserve and using it when a crisis arrived.

The presence of a granary alone is not the whole mechanism. Grain kept inside a building does not, merely by being there, show how people were sustained. The question is when and how reserves were made useful to livelihoods. The adopted municipal explanation supplies the storage-and-release outline, rather than a complete distribution ledger.

Reducing the Yonezawa example to a story in which one hero saved everyone would obscure these arrangements. Using previously accumulated supplies can be considered alongside preparations for further cultivation. The comparison explains different work involved in getting through a shortage; it does not invent numbers of granaries, ration quantities or individual distribution scenes.

Preparations for famine did not originate solely in the Tenmei experience. The National Archives introduces Bikō Sōmokuzu, a work by Takebe Seian, a physician of the Ichinoseki domain. His experience of the famine of 1755 prompted the research, and a draft existed by 1771. Both dates precede the crisis at the center of this article.

Publication, however, came in 1833, after the author’s death. The making of a draft and the appearance of a printed book are different events. Ichinoseki City Museum’s explanation describes later editorial work and the long interval before publication. A manuscript’s existence does not by itself establish widespread printed circulation.

Earlier experience was compiled and transmitted into a later period. Keeping that sequence intact shows knowledge as something accumulated and worked upon across generations. This is an account of a book’s history, not instructions for gathering plants, preparing famine foods or using historical remedies today.

The Tenmei famine cannot be explained only through crop failure. Securing food, assembling seed and tools for further planting, and making reserves available were distinct tasks. Each concerned a different part of the interval between a failed harvest and the possibility of another crop.

Mourning lost lives and recording experience were further forms of work. The records from Hachinohe, Sannohe and Yonezawa bring different problems into view. Condensing a wide regional disaster into one figure or one hero would leave out much of that local experience. Checking what kind of evidence survives is a way of approaching those differences.

What provisions and work helped connect immediate survival with the next season? The records leave that question with us. This conclusion draws together the examples already examined; it does not turn them into a guarantee for a present-day policy, a complete account of every community or a new total of the dead.