Sashimi and Wasabi (1)
Cha Un-hong never took her eyes off Taesu’s binoculars for the entire voyage.
She said that in dangerous waters, a person couldn’t afford to let down their guard, and Taesu thought the thing looked like a very amusing toy.
It was the Enlightenment Party versus the Orthodox Defense Party, in a somewhat different sense.
In the end, Taesu had to stand beside her the whole time, just in case she lurched against the gunwale and toppled into the water.
Then Cha Un-hong suddenly jumped.
“I see it. That looks like Tongyeong harbor!”
“Yeah?”
Taesu borrowed the Japanese translation app with shooting functionality from Yi Ha-eung, who had come along with them.
Heading belowdecks with Heaven-under-the-Sun’s Jang, Ha Jeong-il, Taesu looked at Katsu Kaishu, the future first Minister of the Japanese Navy, who was lying there with his face wrapped up, and said, “Hey, Sashimi.”
Katsu Kaishu sat bolt upright.
“I told you not to call people by something you eat.”
When Ha Jeong-il said that, Taesu snorted.
“I’m being considerate and not using your real names, so what’s your problem? It’s not my fault you only look like sashimi because all you do is get sliced up.”
It was absolutely not because the names were hard to remember.
“And the one beside you...”
Sakamoto Ryoma, who had been tending Katsu, pissed himself.
He felt like his older sister Otome was going to thrash him again. But even Otome, a martial prodigy well over five feet eight, was nowhere near as terrifying as the Benkei-like brute standing before him.
“You, then. Let’s call you Wasabi. You and your sashimi buddy stay quiet and stay tucked away here for as long as you’re in Tongyeong. That’s for the best if you don’t want to get sliced and grated up like your names. Keep an eye on your little side dishes too.”
Ha Jeong-il, for the moment, merely relayed the part about staying quiet and staying put on the ship.
It was a level of autonomous judgment several steps beyond a modern translation app.
Ha Jeong-il turned back to Taesu.
“My master, Lord Yi Ha-eung, told me to help you well, so I’ll obey. But keeping them confined too long will cause trouble in more ways than one. What will you do?”
“We’ll sell what we can and leave right away. We still have bigger business in Dongrae, anyway.”
Partly because of the welfare center contract work, and partly because Naesang, Taesu’s original final target in Gyeongsang Province, was based in Dongrae.
Ha Jeong-il looked at Taesu with deep, measuring eyes.
“So long as you don’t go calling in some strange foreign ships like you did in Gangjin or Jeju, I suppose you can leave quickly enough.”
“Did I call them? What am I, some sort of calamity god?”
Taesu snapped irritably.
There really was something like a god of misfortune attached to him, so the complaint stung a little more than it should have. Monk Cho-ui had gone back to Haenam, where his temple was, so for the time being there was no chance of seeing him either.
Ha Jeong-il said, “Those who do not delight in offending their superiors, yet delight in making trouble, have never existed.The Analects. A fool like you, so ignorant you don’t even know what’s above or below, looks like the sort who’d bring about a truly enormous uproar.”
At first Taesu thought he was speaking Japanese, but it was Korean.
Taesu narrowed his eyes, parted his lips slightly, and let his jaw slide just a little to one side.
It was a thoroughly thug-like expression. A scoffing sound escaped from his mouth.
“Hah.”
Come to think of it, maybe a shooting function wasn’t even necessary in the translation app.
Taesu had been about to break Ha Jeong-il’s arm, but then he paused.
It was exactly the same as during the royalist shipboard battle.
Because Ha Jeong-il was right.
He really would probably cause a massive upheaval.
Taesu simply turned away.
“Forget about it and keep watching those guys.”
* * *
They had to keep watch, of course, but Ha Jeong-il had no intention of eating and sleeping in the hold with the Japanese either.
So Katsu Kaishu and Sakamoto Ryoma, a.k.a. Sashimi and Wasabi, were able to talk in low, hushed voices.
“They said they’d take us to Dongrae, but could they be tricking us and trying to arrest us in Gyeongseong, Seoul, and execute us?”
For a moment Katsu Kaishu almost thought it made sense. That bastard looked like the sort who’d grab a person, bundle them into a sack, and flee—then stab them to death with a knife out in a sesame field.
The fact that he was seeing such bizarre fantasies meant the aftereffects of the beating must be worse than he’d thought.
Katsu quickly came to his senses and tried to shake his head, only to let out a groan from the pain.
“We’re not important enough for that.”
It would become a famous name to every Japanese person in the future, but not yet.
For now, they were merely a high-born scholar of Western studies and an aspiring scholar of Western studies with no status at all.
That was precisely why they had come to find out about this war in Joseon.
* * *
The shogunate couldn’t exactly establish a naval training school or openly invite foreign experts ahead of the original timeline.
There was no justification for it. The black ships had not yet appeared in Japanese waters.
Still, as in Joseon and China, there were people in Japan who worried about the West. In fact, because of Nagasaki’s two hundred years of experience, they were more numerous and had a broader base.
They simply lacked, just like in China and Joseon, any public rationale that could persuade the court and the country.
So when they heard that Joseon had fought France and Britain, they seized on that.
It wasn’t their own country, so it wasn’t as urgent as the black ships appearing at home.
But if the scale was small, then it was still enough to serve as a reason to move.
And thus, in a very Japanese fashion, a “decision made independently by subordinates” came into being.
This time the justification was thin. That meant, if possible, it had to be carried out as a purely subordinate initiative so the oyabun—no, the superior’s—face wouldn’t be scratched, nor his belly, for that matter.
Working bureaucrats, lower-ranking magistrates, widely connected monks, black-market dealers, and others were mobilized, and a task force to set up a Joseon intelligence team was formed.
That was why Sakamoto Ryoma, a merchant-family son who had essentially purchased samurai status with money—something Joseon readers would find familiar—was following Katsu Kaishu around so much earlier than history.
From the start, there weren’t many talented people one could recruit under the banner of “secretly advancing things on the lower orders’ own initiative.”
With his high status, allowing him to negotiate, if need be, even with something like a foreign provincial governor; his solid knowledge of Western learning; and his willingness to stake his life on the endeavor, Katsu Kaishu was a major catch.
But if there were many six-sided talents like that, it would be stranger than anything else. Especially the last condition was far too difficult.
So the recruiters dangled a carrot.
In time, we’ll speak well of you above and make sure you rise in the world.
In Japan, this carried a very different weight than it did in Joseon.
In a country without civil service examinations, the only real path to advancement was your father.
Status, ability, and future were inherited forever. Not only was the emperor’s line unbroken for ten thousand generations, the local sushi shop’s line was too.
In Japanese manga, all the powerful protagonists have powerful fathers to begin with. If the father is a piece of trash, then no matter how hard the descendants struggle, the best they can ever earn is a title like “genius of effort.”
The exception would be a turbulent age like the Warring States period.
So it was hardly strange that young Sakamoto Ryoma got excited when he happened to hear about the recruitment of agents.
When you’re young and inexperienced, every word you hear can have a huge effect on you.
Right now every official post is already stuffed with sons who’ll inherit them, so there isn’t even room to stick a needle in, but if the West is truly at hand, wouldn’t there be new positions created again?
The problem was that he was far too clever for his age. Sakamoto Ryoma became convinced that a time of “great disorder” was about to come.
Then he couldn’t afford to let the opportunity slip away.
It was his chance to make up for the unbearable humiliation of always getting caught by his older sister because he’d wet the futon, stripped naked, and been thrown out of the house.
To escape being a siscon and become a man, Ryoma persuaded his sister and volunteered for the group.
The rest were mostly shiphands or outcasts from trading houses brought in through the Sakamoto family’s business connections.
That was why Katsu Kaishu accepted the role of mentor and guardian to Sakamoto Ryoma.
They intended to sneak into Dongrae “while avoiding the eyes of Tsushima Domain” and find a translator and local collaborators among the Joseon merchants or middlemen there.
But the talent pool was predictably shallow, and the unfamiliar route from Honshu to Busan Port was a fairly serious challenge.
So they ended up drifting to Jeju.
* * *
At any rate, neither Sakamoto Ryoma nor even Katsu Kaishu was on the current list of people the king had anything to do with executing.
So Katsu Kaishu offered a more rational guess.
“In truth, from the look of him, that man is certainly a merchant like your own family. And from his character, he’s probably one who deals in goods forbidden by the state.”
It was almost exact yakuza profiling.
“That’s why he’s planning to dump us in Dongrae without even bringing us to the local office first, as if he’d kidnapped us.”
“So he’s saying it’s awkward for him to meet the officials, too. Then maybe instead of being sent back to Tsushima, we could just be landed in Dongrae?”
“No. A man commanding a fleet that size wouldn’t go that far off the rails. There are at least some goods on board, and they’re extremely valuable. He’s probably someone who’s already worked out the details with the officials by routinely exchanging bribes. We’re probably going to the magistrate of Dongrae after all.”
“What? If he’s that brazen, then why bother hiding us here in the first place?”
“You’re still young. Even a man like that can’t openly break the law. He has to preserve the officials’ face. Disorderly men and government men both have to keep to the line a little if trade is to continue. That’s why they’re trying to handle this quietly.”
Katsu Kaishu, playing the role of a teacher even with his face smashed in, was loyal enough to protect what could only be called the path of the righteous.
Ryoma, however, seemed to have awakened not to the righteous path but to the way of the underworld—gokudō.
The Kaientai he would later found while engineering the Satsuma-Choshu Alliance would play a major role in the Restoration through maritime smuggling in weapons and other goods.
A company that could be considered a collateral descendant of that Kaientai is the famous Mitsubishi Group, even today. Kaientai was a war profiteer under the Meiji government, and Mitsubishi under the Showa government, so yes, there’s tradition there too.
The founder himself, Sakamoto Ryoma, was no different. He couldn’t escape his bloodline either.
His true calling lay in the family trade of commerce.
And Ryoma had the feeling that he might now be looking at Taesu and catching a glimpse of a blueprint for that still-vague thing called “commerce in a time of disorder.”
Come to think of it, Taesu was basically the head of a quasi-warlord smuggling outfit, much like Kaientai.
On top of that, though Ryoma didn’t know it, Taesu was also experiencing something very similar to Japan’s first honeymoon in the future, so it wasn’t that surprising.
Maybe I can bring this man over to our side, or travel with him and learn from him. No—could he be the legendary hero who single-handedly repelled the Western ships?
Of course, Katsu Kaishu, being a sensible man, never let his imagination run as far into fantasy as Ryoma’s did.
But the core was the same.
There was no need to become enemies with Taesu.
Not if he wanted Suishinshi Masahide, the famed sword, returned to him, anyway.
“For us, too, this is a good thing. Let’s pretend to be merchants ourselves for now and wait to be sent back to Tsushima.”
“But then doesn’t that mean the mission fails?”
“We’ll still have something to say. Let’s tell them we got along well with that merchant with the strange name, Doki, and built a connection. He doesn’t seem to hate us in particular, either.”
That much was true.
Even the name Taesu had given them showed his consideration for the two seafood-shop disciples.
Assuming the fact that they’d been exposed was already a given, Taesu had at least secured the best possible future for the situation they could have hoped for.
If they polished the name a little and reported it properly, then even the idea of setting up a business connection with a major smuggler from Joseon’s shadowy underworld seemed plausible.
While the disciple was turning that over in his mind, the ship lurched and came to a heavy stop.
Katsu Kaishu and Sakamoto Ryoma had both been on ships before, so they didn’t mistake it for an accident.
“We’ve arrived.”
Tongyeong.
The “naval headquarters” of the Admiral of the Three Provinces Fleet.
It felt as though the eternal trauma of Japanese sailors, Admiral Yi Sun-sin’s overwhelming presence, was pressing down on them.
Katsu Kaishu, who knew the navy well, tried to think of another Admiral of the Three Provinces.
If Joseon had Yi Sun-sin, then Japan had Won Gyun. The clash between those two heroes was a true showdown of titans.
In the name Won Gyun, Katsu saw a faintly burning hope.
“For now, let’s do as that guy says and stay quiet.”
* * *
A drumbeat rang out, not so much heavy as brisk and fidgety.
It was the signal for departure.
But it didn’t seem to mean much.
There were already so many ships departing from Tongyeong and coming in that the sound was probably lost in the noise.
And there were too many shouts and curses, too many excited calls and answers, to drown it out as well.
Taesu, for one, felt the old gap between what he’d learned in modern Korea and what Joseon actually was, not for the first time, but all over again.
“I heard Joseon was practically collapsing under sedo politics, but seeing a place like this, it’s hard to believe it.”
Because the surroundings were so loud, no one heard Taesu speaking in modern Korean.
Except for one who wasn’t human.
If this is what one would call the harbor’s underworld, then as even Dasan, that is, Jeong Yak-yong, said in the previous generation, they’re the world’s profiteers. They must have piled up a great deal of money. Ah, perhaps those are the ones over there.
How do you know that when they haven’t even gotten off the ship yet?
Can’t you see how the smoke from those tobacco pipes is rising as if a fire’s broken out? In a harbor where everyone is running about so busily, it means they’re the ones who can “sit still and watch.”
That seemed to be right.
At first, one or two of them exchanged whispers.
Then before long, a dozen more people around them ran off somewhere.
* * *
Tongyeong sits at the center of the routes linking the key points along the southern coast of Gyeongsang Province.
Changwon’s Masan Port, the province’s foremost harbor.
Dongrae, the political and diplomatic center and the seat of Naesang.
Gimhae’s Bulamjin, the starting point of the Nakdong River salt network.
All of them had to pass through Tongyeong. Taesu hadn’t merely come to look at one lonely harbor and call it a day.
These various goods were distributed through agreements among the many harbor owners, river owners, and tidal-flat owners.
In other words, this wasn’t some place where a random drifter could just moor a boat, unload a container, and start selling. A half-baked fool would end up with holes punched through him in several places and sunk to the bottom of the sea before he’d even floated up properly.
Of course, the basic order of other regions’ harbors wasn’t all that different.
But in Gyeonggi Province, Byeoklando and the Imjin River had already been Cha Un-hong and Taesu’s own front yard from the start.
In Chungcheong Province, the waters off Hongju had never really been a place where merchants gathered, so Taesu had never had a chance to feel it firsthand.
In Jeolla Province’s Gangjin, there had been martial-law conditions under the air-raid warnings of the then-survival king, Oggle. Unless you were a group as powerful as the Han River merchants, no one dared to make a scene there.
Jeju’s commercial scale was simply too small to begin with.
So it wasn’t until he got all the way to Gyeongsang Province that Taesu truly encountered the commerce of a Joseon port.
Author’s Note
1. Musashibō Benkei was a monk and warrior from the end of the Heian period, famous for his enormous build and strength.
2. The line Ha Jeong-il quoted literally means something like “Among those who do not delight in offending their superiors, there are none who delight in causing rebellion,” but I paraphrased it because the classical double-negative construction is complicated.
3. Sakamoto Ryoma was once nearly assassinated at an inn called Teradaya, and though he escaped with injuries, he later traveled with his wife to convalesce. Some even call it Japan’s first honeymoon.
4. Tongyeong was not an administrative district at this time, but part of Goseong County. I’ve used Tongyeong here for convenience.