Instead, Tanuma debased currency, sold monopoly rights to dealers, and taxed merchant guilds.

Tanuma's administration granted monopoly patents for numerous products, including iron, brass, sulfur, ginseng and lamp oil.

[1] Several years of crop failures from 1783 to 1787, resulting from drought followed by floods, led to famine and frequent riots.

[1] In Tenmei 4 (1784), Okitsugu's son, the wakadoshiyori (junior counselor) Tanuma Okitomo [ja], was assassinated inside Edo Castle.

Okitomo was killed in front of his father as both were returning to their norimono after a meeting of the Counselors of State had broken up.