[3] Starting in December 1731 heavy rains damaged the winter cereal crops (wheat and barley) and communities had difficulty re-planting fields because seed reserves had been diminished by years of marginal harvests.
From May to June 1732, the cold, wet weather continued for two months in the Chūgoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu regions, resulting in favourable conditions for the proliferation of insects and caused rice seedlings to rot.
Consequently, fishing villages relying on cash products to purchase food were hit hard, losing up to one third of the population.
At least 5919 deaths from starvation were recorded in Iyo-Matsuyama Domain, where people resorted to eating bracken and kudzu roots, straw and wood flour.
[5] During the New Year celebrations of 1733, the household utensils and rice sacks of merchant Takama Denbii (高間伝兵衛) were thrown into the river by a farmer mob of 1,700 men enraged by rumours of him hoarding food, in the event known in Japan as Kyōhō housebreaking [ja] - Japan's first recorded strike action.
The role of sweet potato (smuggled in 1711 by Asami Kichijūrō Hidetaka [ja] from Satsuma Domain) in averting famine at Ōmishima [ja] in the Seto Inland Sea region was noted and the sweet potato was consequently widely adopted across Japan.