Early life Before Sakuramachi's ascension to the
Chrysanthemum Throne, his personal name (
imina) was . Teruhito was born on 8 February 1720 and was the firstborn son of
Emperor Nakamikado, he was also said to be the
reincarnation of
Prince Shōtoku. Teruhito's Imperial family lived with him in the
Dairi of the
Heian Palace. Events during Teruhito's early life included
Edo becoming the world's largest city in 1721, with a population of 1.1 million people. On 17 July 1728, Teruhito was named
crown prince and held the pre-accession title of
Waka-no-miya (若宮). The only other major event to occur afterwards was a disaster in 1732–33 called the
Kyōhō famine. This event was caused by swarms of locusts that devastated crops in agricultural communities around the inland sea.
Reign Prince Teruhito acceded to the throne on 13 April 1735 as Emperor when his father abdicated in his favor, the era's name was changed from
Kyōhō to
Genbun to mark this event. While he held the political title of
Emperor, it was
in name only as the
shoguns of the Tokugawa family controlled Japan. With the support of
Tokugawa Yoshimune though, Sakuramachi worked for the restoration of some Imperial rites. Two of the first reinstated ceremonies were brought back in the form of rice offerings. is a rice-offering by a newly enthroned Emperor, while is a rice-offering by the Emperor. In 1738, the Emperor performed
Esoteric Shinto rituals known as . The provinces of
Musashi,
Kōzuke,
Shimotsuke, and
Shinano all had noteworthy devastation from a major flood that occurred in 1742. In
Heian-kyō, the
Sanjo Bridge was also washed away in this destructive storm cycle. During the close of the Kanpō era, a comet was seen and recorded in the
Nihon Ōdai Ichiran, a consensus by later researches state that the comet was likely
C/1743 X1 (De Cheseaux). The fourth and final era during Sakuramachi's reign began in 1744, and was called
Enkyō (meaning "Becoming Prolonged"). This new era was created to mark the start of a new 60-year cycle of the
Chinese zodiac. The last two major events during Sakuramachi's reign occurred in 1745, when
Tokugawa Ieshige became the new shogun. The first establishment of a market fair in the capital was to be found at
Hirano Shrine in
Ōmi Province, while in
Edo a great fire swept through the city. Sakuramachi died on 28 May 1750 which was almost three years after his abdication.
Other events While the Emperor had no say, a major milestone occurred in
Japanese monetary history when the shogunate published an edict in 1736 regarding
coinage. This edict declared that henceforth, authorized coinage in the empire would be those copper coins which were marked on the obverse with the character
文 (
Genbun, also pronounced
bun in Japanese). The practice of placing the name of the era on coinage continues to present day with . ==Eras and Kugyō==