Kan'ei Great Famine

The Kan'ei Great Famine (寛永の大飢饉 ) was a famine which affected Japan during the reign of Empress Meishō in the Edo period. The estimated number of deaths due to starvation is between 50,000 and 100,000. The famine is generally considered to have begun in 1640 and lasted into 1643. It was named after the Kan'ei era (1624–1644). The ruling shōgun during the famine was Tokugawa Iemitsu. Due to large numbers of internally displaced persons in the aftermath of the Shimabara Rebellion, and the rinderpest epizooty, which broke out in Kyushu in 1638 and was impossible to contain, led to mass deaths of cattle in Western Japan, which reduced agricultural productivity in 1640 due to the scarcity of working animals. Also, motivation among farmers was weakening due to the extreme impoverishment of low-ranking samurai class members. The increased spending after the 1635 reformation of Sankin-kōtai (increasing frequency of daimyō annual trips to Edo) did not help either. The diversion of labour to the completion of the Tōkaidō highway and economical disturbances caused by abortive monetary reforms in 1641 further reduced the margin of agricultural productivity, making famine inevitable. The eruption of Hokkaido Koma-ga-take in June 1640, resulting in heavy ashfall and plants poisoning in Tsugaru Peninsula and nearby areas, triggered local crop failures which continued into 1642. Early 1641 had already seen a high number of abnormal weather events in East Asia. In Japan, drought hit the Kinai and Chūgoku regions as well as the island of Shikoku. Cold winds and heavy rains afflicted the Hokuriku region. Elsewhere, the abnormal patterns of heavy rain, flooding, drought, frost (in particular, frost hit in Akita in August) and insect damage sent food reserves plummeting toward zero. Overall, the heaviest crop failures occurred in the Tōhoku region in areas facing the Sea of Japan. By June 1642, starving peasants had started to either flee or sell their lots en masse, which alerted the shogunate to the scale of the famine.