Hirogo was born in 1776 and died in 1849 (1849).

Hirogo's biological father, Kawasaki Lordemon Kiaki, was a junior samurai among the castle corporals. Hirogo was the last son, and was adopted by the childless low-level samurai Kiyoshi Tosho Kiyoyue - the low-ranking feudal lord in charge of the Okunaka tea ceremony.

In 1798, he became a small Nato in the Satsuma Domain in Edo, and from then on he was noticed by Shigehiro Shimazu, a reclusive main hall, who later promoted him to the head of the tea ceremony.

In 1808, Shigehiro Shimazu returned to the government, and the ninth head of the family, Qi Xuan, was forced to retire, and the tenth head of the family, Shimazu Qixing, succeeded to the throne, but the real power was still in the hands of Shigehao.

The investigation office is familiar with civil affairs, words are given, and more importantly, he is usually high-spirited and not afraid of difficulties, so Chonghao attaches more and more importance to him, and he is promoted to "envoy" to be responsible for transmitting the orders of the head of the family and inspecting affairs.

In 1827, Shigehiro issued an order to solicit proposals for fiscal reform from the entire domain. Among the many Kenhaku books, Saemon Hirogo's strategy was the most appealing to Shigehao, so he was promoted to the town council.

Two years later, Chonghao changed the position of the transfer office to the imperial side of the service, and the royal two seclusion like the royal continuation of the material hanging.

The Imperial Servant is an official who is close to the head of the family, and his duties are similar to that of a secretary, and he is responsible for communication between the feudal government office and the head of the family.

The royal continuation material is responsible for the financial housekeeper, the two hermitages refer to the secluded two generations of family heads Chonghao and Qi Xuan, the royal two hermitage like the royal continuation of the material hanging is the secluded two generations of the head of the family outside the big housekeeper.

Since then, the agency has become Shigehiro Shimazu's most trusted official, and Shigehiro calls him "my eyes".

In 1830, at the end of the Satsuma Domain, everything was abolished, and the longest arrears of wages for the feudal officials were 13 months, and it was almost impossible to even "pay an explanation". The bureau sought help from merchants outside the domain, but the plight of the Satsuma clan was well known to the merchants, and the merchants who engaged in "daimyo loans" were unwilling to continue borrowing money because the Satsuma clan had defaulted on their repayments, and they were not even allowed to enter the office.

At that time, there was a merchant who was more friendly to the Satsuma clan called Izumo House Sun Bei - Izumo House was the name of the shop he owned, and the merchant did not have the Miao character, so the big merchant was called before the name of the store.

After meeting with Sun Bingwei, he pleaded in vain, so he stripped off his clothes and exposed his upper body, pulled out his sword (similar to a portable dagger), and said, "If you don't help, I won't be able to substitute for the main bus, so I have to apologize for my seppuku", Sun Bingwei had no choice but to find five merchants to scrape together a sum of money for the Satsuma Domain.

At that time, the head of the family, Chonghao, exclaimed to these five businessmen: "To this day, the proverbial cloud stands at the head of the road, but my situation today is not to stand and sleep at the head of the road!" This shows the embarrassment of the Satsuma clan at that time.

Chonghao, who was close to desperation, was greatly satisfied with the investigation office, and he promised that "as long as you can complete three things, you will be promoted to a family elder". The three things are:

The first thing: for ten years after the second year of Tenpo (1831), the Satsuma clan had a savings of 500,000 taels;

The second thing: the Satsuma clan originally planned to have a standing fund to deal with emergencies, but because the feudal finances have been unable to make ends meet, it has not been realized, and now it has to complete the matter;

The third thing is to pay off all the debts since the establishment of the Satsuma Domain. It is said that at this time, the total foreign debt of the Satsuma Shimazu family had reached an astronomical amount of five million taels.

"大変ですけどなんとかしましょう", this is the answer of the institute, which means "It's hard work, but let's find a way".

The original promise was to "solve the problem first and then promote the head of the investigation center", but the deterioration of the feudal economy led to many chain reactions, and no one except the investigation center dared to promise to complete the demands of the heavy man, and the reform presided over by the investigation center was resisted, and it was impossible to carry out at all, and the final situation became "the problem can only be solved by first pulling out the head of the investigation center".

Chonghao did not accept softness all his life, at this time he was already an eighty-seven-year-old man, since the age of ten succeeded to the throne, Chonghao has experienced many ups and downs, the scenery of a lifetime, old and strong, old and spicy, he through coordination, threats and painting a big pie, finally unified the opinions of the sergeants, in the third year of Tenpo (1832) at the age of fifty-six Hirogo was named the elder of the Satsuma Domain, and was fully responsible for the financial reform of the domain.

As a result, before the reform could take off, Shigeho, the head of the eighth family, died in the fourth year of Tenpo (1833). At this time, the retired ninth head of the family, Shimazu Saishino, was fifty-eight years old, and the tenth head of the family, Shimazu Saiko, who succeeded to the throne in the sixth year of culture (1809), was forty-one years old.

At that time, the Satsuma Domain's finances were already bankrupt, and the annual income was not enough to pay the interest on the debt, so no one dared to take this hot potato, and the reform of the mediation office had just begun, and public opinion in the domain was supportive, so the head of the family, Qixing, decided to "continue the previous policy by reusing the old mediation office." The agency, which has gained the trust of Qixing, continues to carry out his reform initiatives.

One of the primary reasons why the head of the family, Qi Xing, continued to appoint the head of the family as the head of the office, was that as soon as Guangxiang became the head of the house last year, he solved the problem of the foreign debt of 5 million taels of gold from the Satsuma Domain.

At that time, according to the total amount of foreign debt, the Satsuma clan had to repay 800,000 taels of principal and interest every year, which far exceeded the annual income, and it had to rely on borrowing new debts to pay off old debts, and the debt snowballed bigger and bigger.

To solve this problem, the Institute used trickery. He asked Osaka businessman Izumo House Sunbei to help send a notice to creditors in various places, saying, "The new family old office plans to clarify the debts of the island family, and all creditors are requested to register in Kagoshima and repay them on a first-come, first-served basis."

Creditors from all over the country flocked to the city, bringing all the "certificates" with them. Guangxiang, the new old investigation office, came forward to receive him, and on the grounds that "there are so many debts that they need to be registered and verified one by one", he deceived all the IOUs, and after re-registering, put the IOUs together, and the investigation office set a fire and burned them all, and all the businessmen present were stunned.

He said, "Don't be afraid, Satsuma confesses," and then issued new IOUs to the creditors. The terms of the new IOU were summarized as "within a few years the Satsuma Shimazu family will repay about 20,000 taels, and the remaining debts will be repaid within 250 years, and all interest will be cancelled." This was a blatant repayment, because the interest rate on the loan was very high at that time, and it was calculated on an annual basis (donkey rolling usury), and the creditors suffered huge losses, and there were many people who were angry, shouting, and crying bitterly, and some people ran over and grabbed the placket of the bureau, and asked the bureau to rewrite the IOU with tears in their eyes.

Of course, the creditor was not satisfied, and continued to make noise, and the mediation office took out a knife and threw it on the floor, threatening: "There is not a word on the IOU, and whoever is dissatisfied can take a knife and cut me down." The merchants made trouble for a day, and finally left with hatred.

The bureau sent someone to inform the creditors in the domain, "As long as you agree to the conditions, I will repay you and promote one person to be a samurai." The merchants in the domain agreed to this condition because the amount of money borrowed was relatively small and their lives were in the hands of the bureau.

As for the arrears outside the domain, most of them were large merchants, and there was no way to do it, so the merchants of Osaka sued the Osaka office and the merchants of Edo sued the Edo office.

At this time, Shigehao was still alive, and the reigning eleventh shogun Tokugawa Ieki was his son-in-law, and Shigehao had a great influence through friendship, and he also sent people to bribe the old and senior officials of the shogunate at that time, so the officials of the two offices shirked in every possible way, because the original IOUs were burned by the transfer office, and the officials delayed the verdict with "insufficient evidence", and finally public opinion was in an uproar, and the shogunate ordered to reprimand the Satsuma Domain, and the Satsuma Domain dedicated heavy money to the shogunate, so after a long time of lip service, The Osaka merchant Izumo House Sunbei, who was the middleman, was imprisoned as the main person responsible, and Hirogo was unharmed, and the Satsuma clan was unharmed.

Later, Izumo House Sunbei was sent to the island of Satsuma, and at that time, the tenth generation of the head of the family, Shimazu Saiko, was in power, and Saiko gave Sunbei the status of a samurai, and he changed his name to Hamamatsu Sunbei.

In this way, the Satsuma clan was freed from the pressure of huge foreign debts.

The Satsuma Domain's debt repayment incident occurred between 1832 and 1833, and with the Satsuma Domain as a leading example, the Saga Domain followed the example of the "sages" in 1838 and 1839, and the Saga Domain's debt handling representative, Nabeshima Shigema, also signed the same repayment terms, "The creditors of Osaka agreed to give three-quarters of the debt as a donation, and to recover one-quarter within five years; Edo's creditors agreed to forgive 20 to 50 percent of the arrears and recover the remainder in five years; Nagasaki's creditors agreed to a gradual repayment of the loan by the Saga clan over a period of seventy years. ”

Later, in 1843, Choshu introduced the "Thirty-Seven Years of Fudu Jishi Law".

At that time, when the "Tenpo Yakuza" (1833-1839) was raging, the whole of Fuso was in the midst of famine, a series of uprisings, the big merchants were suppressed, and the shogunate and the feudal clans had serious financial problems, so the Satsuma Shimazu family escaped punishment.

Other contents of the "Tenpo Reform" of the Satsuma Domain, presided over by Hirogo of the Investigation Office, include:

1. Reward domestic production.

The "Mishima Party" was established to strictly control the black sugar monopoly on the three islands (Amami Oshima, Tokunoshima, and Kikai Island). It is said that from the first year of Tianbao to the tenth year of Tianbao, 120 million catties of sugar were produced, worth 2.35 million taels. Brown sugar, a specialty of the Satsuma Domain, played a major role in the economic recovery of the Satsuma Domain, and also eased the relationship between the Satsuma Domain and the merchants.

In addition, he tried to grow tobacco, rapeseed, sesame, shiitake mushrooms, tulips, etc., and invested in the production of rice, ceramics, wax, vegetables, cotton, vermilion, traditional Chinese medicine, cattle and horses, flax, paper, sulfur, camphor, satsuma taro, black porpoise, taro yaki, etc., and actively participated in the trade of various feudal products in Osaka.

Second, expand the original Naha smuggling.

Under the auspices of the Satsuma Domain, the Satsuma Domain established a smuggling route from Ezo (Hokkaido) to Kanazawa to Kagoshima to Naha, collecting goods (dried sea cucumbers, shark fins, and abalone) and silver, copper, and other specialties from Satsuma and transporting them to Naha in exchange for silk, medicinal herbs, dyes, and other specialties from Chinese merchants.

3. Making bad money.

It is said that under the auspices of the Satsuma Domain, the Satsuma Clan set up a private mint factory to mint bad coins with insufficient silver content, and the various bad coins minted by Satsuma during the entire Edo period were worth 2.9 million taels.

Fourth, strict economy.

With the support of the head of the family, Qi Xing, many of Shimazu's policies were abolished, and officials were streamlined, stipulating that all expenses except for water conservancy construction and road and bridge maintenance should be reduced. Official banquets are strictly prohibited in the domain, and official festivals and celebrations are cancelled. At the same time, the size of the Satsuma Domain in Edo was reduced, the number of expatriates was reduced, and the cost of visiting the Hajj was reduced.

Fifth, the method of collecting land rent has been changed from the inspection method to the fixed exemption law.

The inspection method is based on the annual harvest to determine the amount of land rent to be collected, and the exemption method is to average the harvest of the past five or ten years to set the rent for the next five or ten years.

In 1832, when the bureau was in charge, the Tenpo Murder (1833-1839) occurred, and the law brought great harm to the villagers and peasants, and they continued to flee, and some villagers even abandoned their samurai status and fled with their families.

Sixth, strictly deal with all kinds of corrupt behaviors.

Before the Satsuma Domain's tax collectors took office, they often overcharged land rents and miscellaneous taxes, and after taking office, they were strictly investigated and punished, thus reducing the burden on farmers and townspeople.

Seventh, learn the Western military system, purchase new weapons, set up military factories, and try to manufacture new muskets and Western artillery.

As a result of the reforms, the Satsuma Domain's fiscal revenues quickly turned into profits, and the economy developed rapidly after the Tenpo Rebellion, and it is rumored that in 1843 the Satsuma Domain's reserves had reached 2.5 million taels.

However, unlike the Saga Reform, which was very strict in its administration, sometimes with high pressure regardless of the actual situation, and adopted a one-size-fits-all approach, in order to accomplish the goals set by the bureau, the feudal offices, the feudal clans, and the townships had to take a series of measures to reduce salaries and raise taxes, which caused all the lower feudal lords and common people to suffer from living in poverty.

The Okubo family's plight also has a lot to do with it. Ironically, Okubo Ritsu's style of governance in the future government of the Restoration was the same as that of Hiroko.