Owari Yumeki Golden Day

There is a product that has not yet been monopolized. Shichibei just saw it on the roadside. There were farmers selling reed mats and reed curtains woven with reed stalks.

If nothing unexpected happens, in a few years, Ishida Mitsunari will discover this loophole and advise Hideyoshi to include reeds in the monopoly scope, thereby gaining an opportunity to serve in the government and a salary of 200 koku.

Shichibei was actually quite curious about why the land along Lake Biwa wasn't cultivated and used as paddy fields. Planting rice in paddy fields, or perhaps learning how to grow rushes, would yield far more income than growing wild reeds.

After all, rice is the basis of everything, and tatami is a piece of furniture used by all quarters.

It's better than cutting reeds to weave reed curtains. Even in 2024, there are still townhouses in Kyoto that hang reed curtains outside their windows to block the sun and allow ventilation.

Haha, let Shichibei go to the lakeshore to see the person selling reed mats. It’s only a few steps away anyway, and he will understand when he comes back.

The journey was quick, and Shichibei discovered that the entire shoreline of Lake Biwa was sandy. The reason? Shichibei didn't know, and neither did the farmer selling the reed mats.

Perhaps the people living near Poyang Lake know the reason. For example, in the southern part of Houtian Township, Xinjian County, Jiangxi Province, Zheji, Hukou County, Laoye Temple, Duchang County and other places, there are large amounts of sandy soil on the lake and river banks.

Such soil can only be used to grow melons, or left to grow reeds, which can be cut for firewood or used to weave reed mats for sale.

Melons are a seasonal product with a very limited shelf life, and they can't withstand long-distance transportation. They're sold only in the Hubei region near Lake Biwa, or perhaps not at all, as people grow some at home for their own consumption.

After all, poor people don’t have any direct way to get “sweetness”, and melon is the easiest thing they can get.

Sugar, or honey, in Ryukyu costs money, but melons don't. You just plant the seeds once, water them with manure a few times, and the rest is ready to eat.

It’s not a pity if they are eaten by birds or small animals. As long as two out of ten are preserved, it means that the work is not in vain.

Ow...

No wonder Ishida Mitsunari didn't let Hideyoshi cultivate the land on the lakeshore. It turned out that the land was useless. It was pure sand and could only be used to grow melons.

I'm not sure if watermelon will work. If I get a chance, I'll find two watermelon seeds and ask a local to plant them. I have some free time anyway, so I might as well have some fun.

It's a shame I didn't find much after wandering around Imahama. I can't really buy thousands of needles and sell them back in Owari. Hideyoshi is now a retainer of Oda, so I'm not afraid of stealing his business and starving the worldling. But that's too boring. It's like coming here for nothing.

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

That's right. Since there's no good business to be had, let's find a way to do our old business. Many horses shipped from Oshu pass through Omi and are sold there. The price is much cheaper than in Owari, and we can bring them back to Owari.

An ordinary pack horse was only worth three kan of cash. If you had enough capital, you could buy dozens or a hundred of them and bring them back to Owari, making a profit of one kan of cash on each one.

After retreating from the city, Sugaya Nagaya, who was caring for the Oda soldiers, saw Shichibei returning with ten horses and was quite surprised. "Your family is a horse breeder and transporter, so why did you come to Omi to buy horses?"

Can I take advantage of this opportunity to expand my family's business?

The Kawamura family has not had enough horses in recent years, so now is the perfect time to get a few horses back to meet more transportation needs.

7. Sandbars drift and are unstable

A house of gold or silver is not as good as your own doghouse. It's still more comfortable to stay at home. Sending Princess Aichi to Jiangbei sounded dangerous, but in the end, there was not even a scare. Clearly, neither the Mino Saito clan nor the Jiangnan Rokkaku clan expected Oda Nobunaga to give Aichi to Asai Nagamasa right now.

After all, Inuyama Oda Nobumasa has not been defeated yet. No matter who it is, one must first stabilize the country before fighting against foreign enemies. Oda Nobunaga must kill Oda Nobumasa no matter what before he can free up his hands to continue fighting against Saito Tatsuoki.

Shichibei did not understand the strategies of the daimyo, but his five sisters liked the Omi hemp that he brought back very much and said that it could be used to make summer clothes.

That's right, Shichibei's reputation in Tsushima Town was only enough to secretly bring back six rolls of linen. If the store owner brought in more, he would definitely teach Shichibei a lesson.

Shichibei was about the same height as Ai, both standing 1.4 meters tall, so she could just take care of the sackcloth. Shichibei also had to look after the horses they had brought back from Omi, as he wasn't sure if some of the mares could be bred with the local horses.

Speaking of which, Shichibei was quite envious of the horse-carriers in Omi. With the approval of Rokkaku Yoshitaka of Konan, they had actually begun to directly participate in the construction of the road network, adding post stations and horse-carrier houses, thus building a stable and complete land transportation network, unlike Shichibei, who could only recruit passengers in Tsushima.

The main business it took on was the business from Tsushima to the inland of Owari. It neither made much money nor lost a lot of business in the inland of Owari.

No one would walk to Tsushima Town first, then hire a horse from there to get to their destination. With this much time, you can just walk to your destination.

There was no other way. Who could have said that Owari had not yet achieved basic unification? Meanwhile, the Sasaki clan of Konan, or the Rokkaku clan, had been cultivating Omi for centuries, their roots deep and powerful. More importantly, they had produced many wise rulers over the generations, and their decrees were obeyed by all.

"Hey, feed the horses!" Shichibei noticed the shop assistants outside mowing some grass and casually asked them where they got it from. On their land, they primarily grew rice and alfalfa. The rice was for everyone in the shop, including Shichibei, to eat, while the alfalfa was for feeding the horses.

The grass that the guy brought was just ordinary thatch, obviously cut from the fields outside.

Upon inquiry, it turned out that the grass was harvested from the sandbars at the confluence of the Tenno and Kiso Rivers. The sandbars were covered with all sorts of thatch, and none of it belonged to anyone else. A few of the men saw it and cut it to feed the horses.

The Japanese horse breed itself is a Mongolian breed, known for its ability to tolerate roughage and requiring no special feed. Many of the horses in Shinano are even semi-wild, free-range on alpine pastures. Eating grass and drinking river water, they still manage to carry people and goods.

Of course, if you were to go abroad, some would say the Japanese raise big dogs. After all, they're around 1.2 to 1.3 meters tall at the shoulder. A horse that can grow to 1.4 meters tall at the shoulder, if trained well, would be a majestic warhorse.

Sandbar?

"Yes," the men muttered as they fed the horses. "Some sandbars are erratic, appearing one year and disappearing the next. They're only good for mowing."

The reason why a sandbar is called a sandbar is that the soil on it is loose, otherwise how could it change shape when the water rushes in? If it can really be fixed, it can form a large island.

Just like Nagashima Island in Ise Province across the way, people have long gone there to settle and cultivate the land.

Who wouldn't want prime paddy fields in densely populated Owari? It's just that they can't be developed. Furthermore, they have to find a way to improve the soil quality. They have to scoop up silt from the banks of the Kiso River to fill the paddy fields. First, they silt up the paddy fields, dry them, loosen the soil, plant beans, leave them fallow, plant beans, and then scoop up the silt again.

It would be difficult to completely transform the sandbar into paddy fields without ten or twenty years.

Lake Biwa, which Shichibei had just visited, was classified as a fractured lake based on certain geographical conditions. A large area of ​​land along the lake was actually composed entirely of sandstone, making it completely unsuitable for farming.

It is only after thousands of years of continuous development by the Japanese that they have achieved the current prosperity that is the most prosperous in the world.

Completely different from Lake Biwa in 2024, there are a large number of inner lakes around Lake Biwa at this time. These were formed on the fault zones caused by geological movements in those years. These so-called inner lakes are connected to Lake Biwa through natural or artificial rivers.

On the one hand, they serve as a source of water for the surrounding area, and on the other hand, these inner lakes serve as natural siltation fields. Because water flows to lower places, the rivers that flow into Lake Biwa from all directions first flow through these inner lakes before entering Lake Biwa.

As the surface area of ​​Neihu Lake is relatively large, when the river flows here, the water flow becomes calmer and the silt brought from upstream is deposited in Neihu Lake.

Unfortunately, Japan's rivers often experience rapid increases and decreases in runoff over short periods of time. After all, most of Japan's rivers are very short. Typhoons and heavy rains can cause immediate flooding. During the winter dry season, many rivers even dry up.

If you visit some of Japan's famous waterfalls in winter, you might run into a dry spell.

This created an excellent condition. When the water level dried up in winter, the people along the shores of Lake Biwa closed the gates between the inner lake and Lake Biwa, and carried the silt from the inner lake to the shore to fill the fields. Generation after generation of siltation transformed the sandstone landforms along the lake, eventually forming the current situation of interconnected fields and crisscrossing waterways.

Such a large project would either take dozens of generations and hundreds of years to complete, or follow the example of the Edo Shogunate, mobilizing tens of thousands of people and concentrating the power of a central government to carry out the transformation.

Obviously, neither Oda Nobunaga nor the Ikko clan of Nagashima on the opposite side had such strength.

After hearing this, Shichibei, who was feeding the horse with a ladle, asked the eldest family member in the family, "The sandbar at the river mouth drifts constantly, but does it form a sandbar every year?"

Of course, the Kiso River carries silt from upstream, and when the water slows down at its mouth, it will definitely accumulate. It's just that the combined effects of the tides and the river water make it accumulate and disperse.

According to memories from a previous life, Aichi Prefecture's Chubu Centrair International Airport was built by reclaiming land within the bay. Furthermore, by 2024, the current castles, such as Kanie Castle, Ohashi Castle, and Katsubata Castle, were all located far inland, and large-scale land reclamation had been carried out in the area.

This shows that the terrain in the coastal area should be quite high, or at least have a considerable foundation, rather than the kind of terrain where the water depth suddenly becomes several hundred meters two or three kilometers offshore.

In other words, the currently drifting Haikou sandbars can be stabilized. It just requires determining which sandbars have a more solid foundation and which are covered by flowing mud.

It's very easy. When I was reading tomb-raiding novels before, someone introduced the Luoyang shovel.

8. Freight horse price in exchange for sandbar

Of course, Shichibei didn't inquire about this matter because he wanted to grow rice. Firstly, he didn't have the financial strength to do so, and secondly, he didn't have the capital to protect it.

Even if he were a wealthy lord with a fortune of 1,000 or 2,000 kan, Shichibei could have found a way to protect the newly developed paddy fields. But he was just a small merchant with only 60 kan, and he couldn't protect a large area of ​​paddy fields.

But Shichibei is in the horse-raising and transportation business, so he never has too many alfalfa fields.

What kind of soil does alfalfa prefer? It's soft, sandy loam, with good drainage. Low-lying areas prone to waterlogging, as well as heavily saline soil, are not suitable for growing alfalfa.

That's why Shichibei said that we should look for a sandbar with a solid foundation, rather than a mobile sandbar formed by quicksand accumulation.

Find those sandbanks with foundations, build embankments, and plant hundreds of acres of alfalfa—wouldn't that be wonderful? Others may not know, but Shichibei knows. Nobunaga will conquer the world, and when he does, he'll begin building a road network within his territory. If we stockpile horse feed first, we'll have an advantage over others.

I've said it all, Shichibei was a direct subordinate of Oda Nobunaga!

Do you understand the value of a direct vassal? Not just a direct vassal, but also a hereditary vassal since the founding of Oda Danjotada. From now on, it would be unjust if the horse-carrying business between Nobi and other countries was not handed over to Shichibei.

My Kawamura family has served you, Oda, for generations. Now that you, Oda, have become successful, you can't just kick me out like Hayashi Hidetada and Sakuma Nobumori did.

After calming himself down, Shichibei patted his horse's neck and headed for Komaki Castle. He had two things to do: find a blacksmith to make two Luoyang shovels, and then pay Nobunaga for the money that would be used to transport Aichi's dowry to Odani Castle.

Sugaya Nagarai had previously offered to pay Shichibei double the amount. Now that the trip was over, Shichibei naturally had to go to Murai Sadakatsu to settle the bill.

The Luoyang shovel is easy to get, as it's simple and the materials are readily available. Just explain it to the blacksmith downstairs and wait for the delivery. However, getting the double horse fee is a bit more difficult, as Murai Sadakatsu actually plays hide-and-seek with Shichibei.

It takes more than ten days to go back and forth, and the horse fee for more than twenty horses is only a little over three strings of coins, and double that is only seven or eight strings of coins. It's not interesting.

By bribing Asai Nagamasa, Oda Nobunaga was emptied of his power? Not only Shichibei doesn't believe it, even if you pull anyone out from the street, no one would believe it.

Actually, that wasn't necessarily the case. Nobunaga, having looted 2,500 kan from Owari, added a large sum of his own money and finally married Aichi off to Asai Nagamasa in grand style. Nagamasa was delighted with the large dowry, and the marriage alliance was sealed.

If that were the case, Nobunaga would not necessarily be completely drained. It just so happened that at this time, Nobunaga was in the process of attacking Inuyama. Previously, Nobunaga led the foot soldiers and the small clans to attack the branch castle of Inuyama Castle, Koguchi Castle. The castle lord, Nakajima Bingonokami, fought desperately to defend the castle and actually repelled the army led by Nobunaga himself.

If they couldn't even take the branch castle, how could they possibly attack Inuyama Castle? Nobunaga was certainly not convinced. So he sent Niwa Nagahide to try to sow discord between Nakajima Bingonokami and Oda Nobumasa.

It's fair to say that Nakajima Bingo-no-kami also demonstrated his value in uniting forces. He was able to repel Nobunaga, so Nobunaga naturally looked up to him. Now that Komakiyama Castle was complete and intimidating Inuyama, further resistance would surely lead to disaster.

So Nakajima Bingonokami said that he could surrender to Nobunaga, but many of his retainers and foot soldiers who came to defend the city were loyal to Inuyama, and he needed money to dismiss them so that they could go to Oda Nobumasa.

Five hundred kan, if you give me five hundred kan, I will join you, Nobunaga.

Everyone said that Nobunaga was a man who should spend money and save money, so he waved his hand and brought 500 kan into the city. Nakajima Bingo-no-Kami pushed the gold mountain, overturned the jade pillar, and kowtowed to Nobunaga's horse.

From then on, Oguchi Castle took the name of Oda Nobunaga, but the 500 kan in cash was also spent.

The autumn harvest hadn't yet arrived, and the feudal lords' crucial annual tribute of rice hadn't arrived, yet Komaki Castle's gold reserves had already been emptied. A skilled cook can't cook without rice, so Murai Sadakatsu had no choice but to avoid Shichibei.

Sadly, Shichibei was young and strong, and he easily stopped Murai Sadakatsu. "Master Tamebe, you are a magistrate of the Oda clan. It's really unbecoming of you to hide from me for a mere sixty kan nickname."

Murai Sadakatsu, who was already 40 years old, could only smile, then pretend to be very majestic and asked Shichibei why he came to see him.

You're asking questions even though you already know the answer. That's a bit too much.

Murai Sadakatsu, a man of his age, maintained his composure and remained undeterred. He simply asked Shichibei how much he wanted. "How much?" "Seven kan is a lot. Do you have an abacus?" "I'll give you a calculation."

and many more!

"Minbu, it's okay if I don't charge for the horse riding." Shichibei suddenly remembered the incident on the sandbar.

"Oh!" Murai Sadakatsu was originally looking for an abacus at a snail's pace, but when he heard this, he immediately straightened up.

"There are some drifting sandbars at the mouth of the Kiso River. If you can include them in my harvest land, I won't take the money."

"Huh? Sandbar? What sandbar?" Murai Sadakatsu never expected that this was what Shichibei wanted.

"You can send someone to Tsushima to take a look." Shichibei was not afraid of being looked at.

Those sandbars were originally ownerless, existing one year and disappearing the next. They had no owner since ancient times. It didn't even need to be ancient; if you go back hundreds of years, it's possible that Tsushima had only just appeared.

To save the extra seven kan, Murai Sadakatsu actually rode a horse with Shichibei to Tsushima, even climbing a sandbar to take a look. He wasn't a fool; he was certain that rice couldn't be grown on that sandbar. When he learned that Shichibei was going to grow alfalfa, he even thought he was a fool.

How much alfalfa do I need to plant to recoup the investment of more than 70,000 strings of cash?

But you're just being silly, Murai Sadakatsu thought it was perfectly acceptable. And there was no need to go to Oda Nobunaga about it. He took Shichibei with him to Sakuma Nobumori and asked him to make the decision. He said that part of the Kawamura family's land near the river had been washed away by the flood, and now they were re-examining it, and the sandbar at the river mouth would be assigned to the Kawamura family.

It is not about granting knowledge and action, but about clarifying the scope of the original knowledge and action!

There is an essential difference between the two. The only one who could grant the Oda family the title of nobility and provide a safe haven to their retainers was Oda Nobunaga. However, it was Sakuma Nobumori who accepted the lawsuits filed by the retainers of the samurai family regarding the land parcels.

The Muromachi shogunate also set up stewards to accept lawsuits from samurai families. All daimyo were the same. For general lawsuits involving small territories, the family elders and magistrates in charge would make the judgment.

With Murai Sadakatsu's face and explanation, Sakuma Nobumori confirmed that Shichibei was a hereditary retainer of the Oda army, the old Owari and the old Oda, so he signed his signature happily, and clearly stated in the document that the river mouth sandbar also belonged to the Kawamura family's land.

9. Let's start working first

Ai, the always obedient sister, said some harsh words to Shichibei for the first time. She said that the Oda family did not collect the horse fee and spent the family savings to buy ten horses. Now there is not much cash left in the store.

Whether there is a dowry or not is a small matter. What if the family needs money for something else?

Oh no, Shichibei slapped his forehead. This was too wasteful. He only thought about taking advantage of Oda Nobunaga's military expansion to expand his business in the future, without considering his current abilities.

It's just like the joke about a farmer who asked the landlord to pay him one grain of rice on the first day, two grains of rice on the second day, and four grains of rice on the third day. He happily thought he would get 20 million grains of rice on the 30th day, but in fact, he starved to death on the seventh day.

Don’t think about value investing when you have no money because you can’t afford to wait.

Still, they had to make quick money. How could they make it the fastest? Of course, it was written in the criminal code. Whether it was robbing ships traveling to and from Tsushima or stealing the gold caches and warehouses of Tsushima merchants, they could acquire a large amount of wealth in a short period of time.

However, selling the stolen goods was a problem, and Shichibei didn't have any usable Yojimbo. On the other hand, Boss Ito had 200 to 300 Yojimbo recruits, including rogues and exiled samurai, and quite a few skilled ones.

No, no, no, no, robbery is not right after all. I am from a respectable family. It's okay to rob people on the battlefield, but how can I rob my own hometown? Even rabbits don't eat grass near their burrows.

Seeing Shichibei's distressed expression, Ai finally stopped talking. After all, the family still depended on Shichibei to support it. There were female samurai these days, and even female emperors, but in the end, a man was needed to inherit the family name and the family business.

"If we can really grow hundreds of acres of alfalfa on the sandbar, at least we can save on horse feed." Ai gave Shichibei a way out.

"How about this, I'll go borrow some money from Mr. Kato in Atsuta." Shichibei immediately said that he could go out and borrow money and would definitely not make things difficult for Ai.

"This is your men's business..." Ai handed the account book to Shichibei and said no more.

"Yes, yes, yes." Shichibei nodded quickly.

Being criticized by your sister is not something to be ashamed of. Self-esteem is not something that should be used in this way.