Owari Yumeki Golden Day.

Naturally, Azai Nagamasa sent people directly to the border to welcome the Oda clan's wedding procession, and rebuilt Odani Castle for this purpose, so that Oichi and her attendants would have enough spacious living space in Odani.

The wedding was a grand affair, attended by almost all the powerful clans of Hubei. Previously, the Asai family had experienced a major upheaval, with powerful retainers, akin to a general defection, banishing Asai Hisamasa and installing Asai Nagamasa. Although the two sides had reconciled and Asai Hisamasa had returned to Odani Castle, he was ultimately at odds with his retainers.

Now that Nagamasa is in trouble, his Asai retainers, who supported him, will naturally want to support him. Only by strengthening Nagamasa's prestige and real power can they suppress Hisamasa and his close associates.

However grand the wedding was, it was a matter for the samurai. Although Shichibei was among the invited guests, it was better for him to go down into the castle and eat with his men than to sit in the corridor and receive the banquet.

The banquets in the city weren't very good either. In Hubei, people like to eat sushi, which involves burying raw fish from Lake Biwa in rice soaked in vinegar to ferment. This kind of taste is really not something that ordinary people can accept. Even after three or four hundred years, not many Japanese people like it.

In some places, people simply bury the cleaned fish meat in the vinegared rice. It is said that some more aggressive or lazy people don't even bother to pick out the fish, burying it in the rice with its scales and innards intact.

what……

Sigh, why bother?

The soldiers and servants of Oda Nobunaga at the castle were also entertained by the Asai clan. At least the sake was plentiful, as was the rice soup. Omi Province, relying on Lake Biwa, was not only a prosperous agricultural region but also a thriving commercial center. The rice soup provided by the Asai family even included dried goods and kelp transported from the distant island of Ezo.

Upon closer examination, while the Asai clan didn't control key trading points like Tsuruga, Kusatsu, or Ōtsu in the northward trade route, they were still involved in transportation routes. Simply by establishing customs posts, they could have made a fortune.

At this time, the powers within the capital region competed to establish customs posts along the sea and canal transport routes. On the Yodo River alone, there were 260 customs posts. Their sheer number dwarfed even the customs posts on the Weser River in distant Germany, which at its peak numbered only a little over 130.

After finishing his meal, Shichibei, feeling bored, wandered around the castle town. Like Tsushima or Atsuta, Kotani's castle town also had a market held on a daily basis, not 24 hours a day.

Even though local commerce in Hubei is also thriving, there haven't been any large-scale, continuously operating shops. However, we're lucky today; some shrine in Hubei is having a major festival, with markets being held for seven consecutive days.

Shichibei wasn't interested in supernatural or mysterious things. The goods at the market were far more appealing to him. He'd finally come on a "cross-border trip," and one with military protection no less; it would be foolish not to bring back some Omi specialties from Owari.

Someone will definitely say, "Kunitomo Village is here. Bring some arquebuses back to Owari. Nobunaga will definitely love you."

But there wasn't enough time for these things. Ever since the introduction of firearms, they've been in high demand. Everyone's waiting for firearms, not the other way around. After resting for two days in Otani, the wedding was successfully completed, and the secret talks between Sakuma Nobumori and Azai Nagamasa ended. It was time to return to Owari.

Obviously, it would be impossible to forge a musket in two or three days so that Shichibei could bring it back to Owari.

Other local specialties, such as linen, silk, rice, vinegar, fish, wine, dried persimmons, and castings, are all readily available. You can pick up your goods immediately as long as you pay.

However, Odani Castle Town wasn't large enough. There were two large markets north of the river, one in Imahama and the other in Minoura, both located near water. These days, without water, it's not certain that a place could truly thrive.

Well then, Shichibei returned to his camp to rest after his stroll. Since the Oda clan's forces would be staying in Odani Castle for a few more days, he had plenty of time to make a trip to Imahama. As a major commercial town in northern Hubei, Imahama might offer Shichibei a broader perspective.

If all else fails, I'll buy some iron needles and sell them. If Hideyoshi can sell needles, so can I.

6. No wonder 30% of the land is not cultivated.

Imahama.

It wasn't far from the future Nagahama, or rather, the two could almost be considered the same place. After Nobunaga and Hideyoshi took control of Imahama, they carried out large-scale dredging of waterways, renovated the castle town, and attracted merchants. This made the area a first-class commercial hub in the Hokuriku region.

Xiaogu, being a mountain town, primarily served a defensive purpose. If we're talking about the richest place in Hubei, it has to be Changbang.

Mountain cities like Xiaogu will gradually become obsolete. After all, building flat cities or flat mountain cities that can accumulate large amounts of wealth and food, and controlling the circulation of cannons, horses, and weapons, is an inevitable choice for increasingly powerful groups.

Even Tokugawa Ieyasu, a rough country bumpkin who knew nothing about business, knew to move his base to Hamamatsu and Sunpu, let alone others.

As the location of the rice and cloth markets in Hubei, Imahama's top-quality products relied on ramie fibers transported from Echigo to weave ramie cloth, or linen. Because the fibers of ramie are relatively whitish, they are suitable for later processing, eliminating the need for bleaching, and the linen woven from them was widely popular.

Why does Japan import not only silk but also raw silk from China? Because a significant portion of the raw silk in Japan is of substandard quality, yellowish in color, and considered inferior. It requires an extremely complicated bleaching process before it can be used for textiles.

Logically speaking, buying some Omi ramie and reselling it in Owari should be a good business. However, there is a problem: cloth, whether silk or linen, is subject to a monopoly in Owari.

It's not that if you secretly go to a village to sell a bolt of hemp cloth, no one will bother you. It's that you'll be checked when you enter the castle or the commercial town, and then your goods will be confiscated.

This was not uncommon in various provinces of Japan. The daimyo granted the merchants exclusive sales rights, and the merchants paid the Ming Dynasty "transportation gold," which was a protection fee for the exclusive sales rights.

Therefore, the daimyo needs to guarantee the monopoly of the seat within the territory and cooperate with the seat merchants to crack down on anyone who tries to challenge the monopoly.

At best, they'll be confiscated and expelled; at worst, they'll be beheaded.

In any case, the fabric trade in Tsushima-cho is monopolized by someone, and as a member of the Tsushima clan, Shichibei needs to defend the guild's monopoly system. Because if it weren't for the monopoly system, with Shichibei's thin arms and legs, he would have been squeezed out and killed by other guilds long ago, and wouldn't be alive today.

Other major commodities such as rice, miso, soy sauce, and vinegar were all monopolized by guilds. Even some less frequently used goods were monopolized, such as mercury produced in Ise and mosquito nets produced in Imahama, whose production and sales were protected by guilds.

The funniest thing is that Yoshitatsu Isshiki, the chief official of Mino, who was also Nobunaga's brother-in-law, once issued a monopoly document to Hayabusa in Mino.

What is a falcon? It's the eagle used for hunting.

To amass wealth, daimyo would sell even exclusive rights worth ten or twenty kan. Nagao Tamekage of Echigo, for example, earned less than six thousand kan annually, but was a powerful daimyo who waged war almost year-round. Therefore, he even separated squid and gentian, granting merchants exclusive rights to sell them in order to generate income.

There was one product that hadn't yet been granted exclusive sales rights, which Shichibei had just seen by the roadside: farmers were selling reed mats and reed curtains woven from reed stalks.

As expected, in a few years, Ishida Mitsunari will discover this loophole and advise Hideyoshi to include reeds in the monopoly, thus securing himself a position and a salary of 200 koku.

Shichibei was actually quite curious why the land along Lake Biwa wasn't cultivated into paddy fields. Growing rice in paddy fields, or even learning from others to grow rushes, would yield far greater income than growing wild reeds.

After all, rice is the foundation of everything, and tatami mats are furniture that everyone is vying for.

It's much better than cutting reeds to weave reed curtains. Even in 2024, there are still many townspeople in Kyoto who hang reed curtains outside their windows for sunshade and ventilation.

Haha, let Shichibei go to the lakeside to see for himself, it's not far anyway, he'll understand when he gets back.

The round trip was surprisingly quick; Shichibei discovered that the entire shoreline of Lake Biwa was composed of sandy soil. Why? Shichibei didn't know, and neither did the farmer selling reed mats.

The local people near Poyang Lake probably know the reason. For example, in the southern part of Houtian Township in Xinjian County, Jiangxi Province, Zheji in Hukou County, and Laoye Temple in Duchang County, there is a lot of sandy soil along the lake and riverbanks.

Such soil can only be used to grow melons, or left to grow wild reeds. The reeds can be harvested for firewood or woven into mats for sale.

Melons are a seasonal product with a very short shelf life and cannot withstand long-distance transportation. They are only sold in the area near Pipa Lake in Hubei, or rather, they are not sold at all; people grow some for their own consumption.

After all, poor people don't have many direct ways to obtain "sweetness," and melons are the easiest thing for them to get their hands on.

Sugar, or rather honey, in Ryukyu costs money, but melons are free. You just sow the seeds on the shore once, water them with manure a few times, and then you can just wait to eat them.

It's not a pity if they get eaten by birds or small animals; if two out of ten survive, then it's not a waste of effort.

Ow...

No wonder Ishida Mitsunari didn't let Hideyoshi cultivate the land on the lakeshore; it turns out that the land was simply uncultivable, pure sandy soil, only suitable for growing melons.

I don't know if it will work with watermelons, but if I get the chance, I'll find a couple of watermelon seeds and ask a fellow villager to plant them and give it a try. I'm just killing time anyway, might as well have some fun.

It's a pity that after wandering around Imahama for so long, I didn't find much of a bargain. I can't exactly buy thousands of needles and go back to Owari to sell them, can I? Hideyoshi is now a retainer of Oda, so I'm not worried about him competing with me and letting this powerful man starve. But that would be so pointless; it's like coming all this way for nothing.

In the end, having no other choice, Shichibei had to buy a horse and go home.

That's right. Since there's no good business to be had, we'll try to stick to our old ways. Many horses transported from Ou will pass through Omi and be sold there. They'll be sold for much less than in Owari, and we can bring them back to Owari.

Ordinary packhorses cost only three strings of cash. If it weren't for the lack of capital, one could buy dozens or even a hundred of them and bring them back to Owari, earning one string of cash for each one.

After retreating from the castle, Sugaya Nagayori, who was in charge of taking care of the Oda clan soldiers, was quite surprised to see Shichibei leading back ten horses. "Your family breeds horses and does transportation, why are you coming all the way to Omi to buy horses?"

Can we take advantage of this cheap price and expand our family business?

The Kawamura family has been short of horses for the past few years, so now they can bring back a few more to take on more transportation needs.

7. The sandbar is drifting and unstable.

There's no place like home, a golden house or a silver house. It's always more comfortable to stay at home. Sending Princess Oichi to Jiangbei sounds dangerous, but in the end, there wasn't even a scare. Clearly, neither the Mino Saito clan nor the Jiangnan Rokkaku clan expected Oda Nobunaga to hand Oichi over to Azai Nagamasa so soon.

After all, Inuyama Oda Nobukiyo hadn't been defeated yet. No matter who it was, internal strife must precede external defense. Oda Nobunaga had to kill Oda Nobukiyo before he could free up his resources to continue his battle against Saito Tatsuoki.

Shichibei didn't understand the strategies of the feudal lords, but his five younger sisters really liked the ramie from Omi that Shichibei brought back, saying they could use it to make summer clothes.

That's right. Shichibei's influence in Tsushima-cho was only enough to secretly smuggle back six bolts of linen. The local merchant, however, was sure to teach Shichibei a lesson.

Shichibei's height wasn't much different from Ai's, both around 1.4 meters tall, so she could handle the linen. Shichibei also had to look after the horses they bought in Omi; he wasn't sure if some of the mares could be bred with the local horses.

To be honest, Shichibei was quite envious of the horse-riding bosses in Omi. With Yoshikazu Rokkaku's permission, they had begun to directly participate in the construction of the road network, adding post stations and horse-riding inns, thus building a stable and comprehensive land transportation network, unlike Shichibei who could only solicit customers in Tsushima.

They mainly handled business from Tsushima to the Owari inland area, which meant they couldn't make much money and also lost a lot of business in the Owari inland area.

No one would walk to Tsushima-cho first, then hire a horse from within the town to reach their destination. They could simply walk there themselves.

There's no way around it; Owari has never achieved basic unification, while the Sasaki clan of Jiangnan, or rather the Rokkaku clan, has been cultivating their influence in Omi for centuries, establishing deep roots. More importantly, they have produced many outstanding rulers throughout history, whose decrees are obeyed without question.

"Sigh, let's feed the horses." Shichibei saw the shop assistants outside cutting grass and casually asked them where the grass came from. On his family's land, they mainly grew rice and alfalfa. The rice was for all the shop assistants, including Shichibei, to eat, and the alfalfa was for feeding the horses.

The grass the man was carrying was just ordinary thatch, obviously cut from the wild outside.

Upon inquiry, it was learned that the grass was cut from the sandbar at the confluence of the Tianwangchuan and Kisochuan rivers. The sandbar was covered with all kinds of thatch, and it was all unclaimed grass. The men saw it and cut it to feed the horses.

Japanese horses are primarily of the Mongolian breed, known for their hardiness and resilience, requiring little to no special feed. Many horses in Shinano are even semi-wild, grazing freely on high-altitude pastures. They eat grass, drink river water, and still grow strong enough to carry people and goods.

Of course, if this happened abroad, some people would say the Japanese raise huge dogs. After all, their shoulder height is over 1.2 to 1.3 meters. A horse that can grow to 1.4 meters tall at the shoulder, once trained, would be a magnificent warhorse.

A sandbar?

"Yeah, that's right," the guys chatted as they fed the horses. "Some of the sandbars are unpredictable; they might be there this year but not next, so they're only good for cutting grass."

Moreover, the reason a sandbar is called a sandbar is because the soil on it is loose; otherwise, how could it shift and change position with a little water erosion? If it could be stabilized, it could form a large island.

Just like Nagashima Island in Ise Province across the way, people have long been set up there to cultivate and farm.

The readily available, high-quality paddy fields in densely populated Owari are something everyone would want, but they just can't be developed. Furthermore, they have to find ways to improve the soil quality, hauling silt from the banks of the Kiso River to fill the fields. First, they silt the fields, then dry them in the sun, then loosen the soil, plant beans, leave the land fallow, plant beans again, and then haul in more silt.

It would take at least ten or twenty years to completely transform the sandbar into paddy fields.

Lake Biwa, which Shichibei just visited, is, according to certain geographical conditions, a so-called rift lake. A large area along the lake is actually composed of sandstone, making it completely unsuitable for farming.

It is through thousands of years of continuous development by the Japanese that they have achieved their current status as the wealthiest country in the world.

Unlike Lake Biwa in 2024, there are now numerous inland lakes surrounding Lake Biwa. These were formed along fault lines from geological movements of that time, and these so-called inland lakes are connected to Lake Biwa through natural or artificial waterways.

On the one hand, these lakes serve as water sources for the surrounding area, and on the other hand, they act as natural silt deposits. Due to the simple principle that water flows downhill, rivers flowing into Lake Biwa from all directions first pass through these lakes before entering Lake Biwa.

Because the inner lake has a large surface area, the river water tends to calm down when it reaches this point, and the silt carried from upstream is deposited in the inner lake.

Unfortunately, Japanese rivers experience rapid increases and decreases in flow within short periods, largely due to the short length of most of them. A typhoon or torrential rain can cause widespread flooding. During the dry winter season, many rivers even dry up completely.

If you visit some of Japan's famous waterfalls in winter, you might encounter a situation where the water has dried up.

This created an excellent condition: when the water level drops in winter, the people along the shore of Lake Biwa close the sluice gates between the inner lake and Lake Biwa, and transport the silt from the inner lake to the shore to silt up the fields. Generation after generation, the siltation has transformed the sandstone landform along the lake, eventually forming the current landscape of fields stretching as far as the eye can see and waterways crisscrossing the area.

Such a massive project could either take dozens of generations and hundreds of years to complete, or it could follow the example of the Edo Shogunate, mobilizing tens of thousands of people and combining the power of a central government to carry out the reforms.

Clearly, neither Oda Nobunaga nor the opposing Nagashima Ikko-shu had that kind of strength.

Shichibei, who was feeding the horse with a water ladle, heard this and asked the eldest member of the family, "The sandbars at the river mouth are constantly shifting, but do they form every year?"

Of course, the Kiso River carries silt from upstream, and when the current slows down at the estuary, it will definitely accumulate. It's just that, due to the combined action of the tides and the river water, it accumulates and disperses at different times.

According to my memories from my previous life, Chubu Centrair International Airport in Aichi Prefecture was built on reclaimed land within the bay. Furthermore, by 2024, the current castles such as Kanie Castle, Ohashi Castle, and Katsuhata Castle were all located deep inland, due to large-scale land reclamation efforts.

This suggests that the coastal area should have a relatively high elevation, or at least a substantial foundation, rather than a terrain where the water depth suddenly increases to several hundred meters just two or three kilometers from the shore.

In other words, the currently drifting sandbars at Haikou can be stabilized. The only step is to determine which sandbars have a relatively solid foundation and which have flowing silt underneath.