A Coin Born the Year Before the Rebellion

Bodies as Collateral for Taxes

The Matsukura clan did not ease the annual tribute even in years of poor harvest. Those who could not pay were put in water prisons, forced to stand for days in winter water up to their necks. A form of torture in which a person was dressed in a straw raincoat and set on fire was called the "mino dance."

This name and scene were recorded by Duarte Correa, a Portuguese man in Nagasaki. Descriptions of the harsh rule also remain in the diary of the Dutch factory chief Couckebacker and in the "Nabeshima Katsushige Kōfu." Many of the stories about individual tortures were written after the rebellion, and their details differ. Nevertheless, different lines of records consistently report that failure to pay the annual tribute was paid for with one's body. The bodies of those unable to pay taxes became collateral for the tax.

A Standard of Value for the First Time in 678 Years

The shogunate began minting the domestic Kan'ei Tsūhō in 1636, the year before this rebellion. It was during the reign of the third shogun, Iemitsu. This was twenty years after Ieyasu passed away. Until then, the coins of this country had been imported; it had been 678 years since the Kengen Taihō, the last domestically produced coin.

Mints were established in Asakusa and Shiba in Edo, and in Sakamoto in Ōmi Province, where Kan'ei Tsūhō were cast. Those cast at Aminawate in Shiba were called Shibasen and are distinguished by a dot in a cursive style. The diameter was two and a half centimeters, and the weight was about one monme. The coin trees were pulled from the sand molds, the coins were broken off, and then filed. One coin was worth exactly one mon. The era of reliance on Chinese coins was finally coming to an end.

The 4-Mon Coin That Changed Daily Life

Time passed after the creation of the Kan'ei Tsūhō, and in 1768, a brass 4-mon coin was established. It was made at the mint in Senda Shinden, Fukagawa, Edo, and people called it the Namisen ("wave coin") because of the wave pattern struck on the reverse.

The 4-mon coin changed the pace of life. A bowl of nihachi soba cost sixteen mon. With 1-mon coins, one had to count out sixteen, but with Namisen, four were enough. Paying at a food stall could be done in a single breath. A type of business called a "shimon-ya" also emerged, which sold items that could be bought for four mon. It is said that strings of coins functioned, in effect, like paper money.

Fluctuating Numbers, a Target of Rumors

A little before that, in 1732, the western provinces were overrun by insects. After a period of long rains and low temperatures, planthoppers and locusts swarmed. The total assessed rice yield (kokudaka) of the 46 domains in the western region was 2.36 million koku, but the harvest that year was only about 630,000 koku.

The number of people who starved to death in this famine, according to figures compiled by the shogunate, is 12,172. However, the "Tokugawa Jikki" records the number as 969,900. The death toll for the same famine differs by a factor of eighty. The number is still not settled today. The price of one koku of rice, which had been about 64 monme of silver, rose to the 120-monme range. On New Year's of the following year, the first uchikowashi (destructive riot) occurred in Edo. The house of the rice merchant Takama Denbei was destroyed by about 1,700 impoverished people. However, Takama had not been hoarding rice; he was a merchant who had been trying to keep prices down. Rumors had created the target.