As Chief Senior Councillor to the Tokugawa shogunate, Mizuno responded to the crisis engendered by famine, insurrection, and foreign pressure in the 1830s by instituting a comprehensive programme of social, political, and economic measures known collectively as the Tempo reform. He introduced strict price controls, abolished restrictive merchant guilds, and attempted to bring outlying lands under direct government control through a land requisition scheme. Opposition to the last measure led to Mizuno being driven from office in 1845.