Kyōhō famine

What Happened

The Kyōhō famine (享保の大飢饉, Kyōhō no daikikin) was a famine that struck Japan in 1732 and lasted into 1733, during the Edo period. It fell hardest on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's main islands. Estimates of the death toll from starvation range from 12,172 to 169,000 people.

The famine occurred during the reign of Emperor Nakamikado and under the rule of the shōgun Tokugawa Yoshimune. It is counted among the four great famines of the Edo period.

Background

The Edo period (1603–1868) was a time of Tokugawa rule, when a military government based in Edo — modern Tokyo — governed Japan while the emperor remained in Kyoto as a largely ceremonial figure. The shōgun was the effective ruler, and in the early 1730s that position was held by Tokugawa Yoshimune.

The famine takes its name from the Kyōhō era (1716–1736), a period of official era naming that covered the years of the disaster. The famine began in 1732, the seventeenth year of the Kyōhō era.

Kyushu's agriculture was vulnerable to weather and crop disease, and when harvests failed the island's population had few reserves to fall back on. The result was widespread starvation across the region.

Why It Mattered

The Kyōhō famine belongs to a group remembered in Japanese history as the four great famines of the Edo period. Its death toll — somewhere between roughly twelve thousand and one hundred and seventy thousand people — made it one of the worst demographic disasters of the era.

The famine struck during the tenure of Tokugawa Yoshimune, one of the most prominent shōguns of the period, and it shaped how later generations understood the fragility of food supply under Tokugawa rule. For students of Japanese, the famine is also a fixed reference point: the phrase 享保の大飢饉 appears in historical writing the way "the Great Famine" does in English, a shorthand for a specific catastrophe in a specific era.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 享保の大飢饉.

• Kana reading: きょうほうのだいききん
• Romaji: Kyōhō no daikikin

Broken down character by character:

享 — read here as kyō. This kanji means "to receive," "to enjoy," or "to be blessed with." It carries a sense of receiving something beneficial.

保 — read here as hō. This kanji means "to protect," "to keep," or "to preserve." Together, 享保 (Kyōhō) is the name of an era — a reign period — chosen by the authorities of the time. Era names in Japan were selected for their auspicious meaning, and 享保 combines ideas of receiving and preserving, an optimistic pairing for a period that would come to be remembered for a famine.

の — read no. This is a hiragana particle, not a kanji. It links two nouns and works like the English possessive "of" or "'s." Here it joins the era name to the word for famine: "the Kyōhō era's great famine."

大 — read here as dai. This kanji means "big," "great," or "large." It signals that this famine was of major scale, distinguishing it from smaller, more routine crop failures.

飢 — read here as ki. This kanji means "to be hungry" or "to starve." It is the character at the heart of the word for famine.

饉 — read here as kin. This kanji means "crop failure" or "poor harvest." It appears almost exclusively in the compound 飢饉 (kikin), meaning "famine." The pairing of 飢 (hunger) and 饉 (failed harvest) captures the two halves of the disaster: the shortage of food and the human suffering that follows.

So the full phrase 享保の大飢饉 parses as: the era name 享保, the linking particle の, and the compound 大飢饉 — "great famine." Literally, "the great famine of the Kyōhō era."

A note for learners: 飢饉 (kikin) is the standard Japanese word for famine, and it is worth memorising as a unit, since 饉 rarely appears outside it. The prefix 大 (dai) can be attached to many nouns to intensify them, so 大飢饉 is simply a famine of the first order.

Key Figures

Tokugawa Yoshimune — the shōgun ruling Japan during the famine. The Kyōhō era takes its name from his reign, and the famine unfolded under his administration.

Emperor Nakamikado — the emperor reigning during the famine. In the Edo period the emperor held a ceremonial and symbolic position in Kyoto while the shōgun exercised political and military power.