The Axe Mask, Part 3
After a searching analysis of how things had somehow ended up this way, Tsushima reached a rational conclusion.
“The Joseon bastards protected a shogunate spy. They used Park Axe to keep it from looking obvious.”
“Then Joseon and the shogunate may already have been connected for some time. Better to watch and wait than to rush in and bring danger on ourselves.”
The officials of the domain were tense.
This was a time for shadowy maneuvering, for finding a way not to be left behind in the new international order.
To gain momentum, they first sent Joseon a polite offer of surrender.
From Joseon’s point of view, or Taesu’s, a draw was an excellent outcome.
Originally, Tsushima Domain and the Dongrae naesang merchants had never been forces that could face each other head-on and expect to win.
An offer of a draw, ridiculous on its face in any gambling den, was gladly accepted.
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Nothing happened at Waegwan.
In fact, no Japanese had died at all.
The mass disappearance of the naesang was a little strange, but that was Joseon’s problem.
Itkyu had not been dragged off by Joseon men; he had entered a shut-door meditation retreat to pursue a higher state of enlightenment. The Japanese, who respected the Buddha’s path, did not go looking for him.
The “castaways” would be returned through the proper procedures. The shogunate inspector first handled the paperwork and broke the complete hypnosis.
Of course, the man Park Axe, who had delivered the castaways with surplus efficiency, was paid far more generously than the Jejumu office had requested.
And no one cared that the extra payment was made in Insamdaewangwaeun, high-purity silver coins minted for use only at Waegwan and manufactured for Joseon’s ginseng trade. Melt it down, and it was all just Ag anyway.
The official whom Joseon had demanded be punished, along with the others involved, would simply be “recorded as having been punished.”
Joseon, too, would now agree to believe that they had been punished.
In any case, Tsushima had succeeded at one technology after all.
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The Dongrae giyunggye, a society that should have survived all the way into the twenty-first century and boasted nearly two hundred years of history, was forced through the upheaval of historical revision.
Dongrae magistrate Kang Gi reorganized the giyunggye according to Yi Ha-eung’s report.
The excuse that it was a private organization would not fly. On reflection, Joseon didn’t have anything resembling that insolent free market nonsense anyway.
If there were going to be things like the Four Heavenly Kings or the Ten Blades, managing them would only be a headache, so the giyunggye needed a proper representative.
From this point on, the head of the giyunggye would be Jeong Jabeom.
His father, Jeong Yunjung, was known to every person in Dongrae. There was no objection to the elevation of Jeong Jabeom, a man of true naesang blood, to the position of leader.
And the number of the missing naesang was not restored.
Unless the number of licensed merchants increased, merely not increasing it was enough for Dongrae magistrate Kang Gi to sign off on.
“Trade with foreign countries has always been restrained, never carelessly expanded. Even if it ended in failure, the abuses of the licensed merchants have already been exposed. How could we hastily grant them new privileges again? For now, leave things as they are.”
Reduction in the number of naesang merchants, physically.
Concentration of authority through the giyunggye being transformed into a one-man representative system, politically.
Those two factors had the potential to make Jeong Jabeom even more powerful than the old Park Changsu ever had been.
And every merchant in Dongrae knew exactly who stood behind Jeong Jabeom.
The crisis was settled.
No, there had never been a crisis to begin with.
The achievement of Dongrae magistrate Kang Gi, who had made sure things ended at “failure” and never once let the matter explode into a real incident, shone brilliantly.
If a man like that wasn’t fit to be appointed Chief Censor, who was? The hereditary power of the Samsegiyunggijaga family had been proven.
And in all of this, one could not forget the interpreter Hyeon Hak-ro, who had served as the lubricant moving between Dongrae government, Waegwan, and the giyunggye.
Having repaid all his debts with Jeong Jabeom’s help instead of Park Changsu’s, Hyeon Hak-ro now devoted himself not to public trade, at which he was not even very good, but to diplomacy—the true duty of an interpreter.
Dongrae once again found peace.
What remained was the wreckage of the truth, butchered beyond recognition.
Only the city legend remained: that anyone who colluded with the Japanese would be visited by an avenger in a mask, carrying an axe.
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Song Gwangrak, the Sea Cucumber King and the sole survivor among the Four Heavenly Kings, obediently came to offer his condolences to Jeong Jabeom.
Cha Un-hong kept Taesu under control here as well.
“Song Gwangrak didn’t raise a blade against you or come at you. He just followed the crowd. He lied, yes, but he’s hardly some threat. Leave him be.”
“Do you people think I kill folks because I like it?”
No, that wasn’t it?
It also helped that Song Gwangrak was acting like a man ready to turn his own guts inside out for someone else’s sake—something a sea cucumber, naturally, was entirely capable of doing.
Now Song Gwangrak’s superior merchant was Jeong Jabeom, and Jeong Jabeom was on the side of Taesu, the savior of his life.
So Song Gwangrak seemed to have decided he ought to curry favor with the president’s friend as well.
The excuse was a farewell banquet to console the castaways who had suffered all this time thanks to Tsushima’s lies.
Song Gwangrak displayed the full measure of his talents as an East Asian international merchant.
He served Chinese food to Joseon people and Japanese alike. Cultural exchange among the three East Asian kingdoms bloomed in the form of savory meat broth.
“This delicacy is what the Chinese call Heilanghoubuyuban-tang.”
It was a luxury dish made by tying Chinese ham with kelp and simmering it thoroughly with bamboo shoots.
Though the ingredients were foreign, they were not goods that passed through Waegwan. It looked as though he had obtained them unofficially from items brought in from Nagasaki to Waegwan.
Yi Ha-eung and Ha Jeong-il were impressed too.
“I’ve heard of that. It’s a specialty of Yangzhou in Jiangnan.”
“I’ve heard the people of Nanjing enjoy it extravagantly, though this is the first time even I, of a family tied to the Japanese offices, have seen it.”
The most moved of all seemed to be Cha Un-hong. After tasting the special liquor master’s cooking, she fell headlong into a world of minute pleasures.
“The Japanese noodles and dishes I’ve eaten here were good too, but if I ever go farther north later, I’d like to meet some Chinese people as well.”
Taesu was satisfied too.
He hadn’t been able to feed her Busan’s famous pork soup, but it was a relief that he had at least managed something similar.
It was just pig boiled in water, after all. The axe work had been worth it.
Come to think of it, was MSG made from kelp?
How it was made would probably only be taught in a reincarnator training course or something, but as knowledge went, it wasn’t completely useless if you at least understood why it tasted good.
Still, Taesu tilted his head.
His sense of taste, like his eyesight, had become keen. He said to Song Gwangrak,
“This kelp doesn’t seem like an ordinary item.”
Song Gwangrak flattered Taesu so energetically that he might as well have been licking the soles of his shoes, though Taesu was younger than even his own son.
“Indeed, only the Dobansu’s eye could catch that. It’s top-grade kelp received as a gift from Waegwan. When honored guests arrive, it would be a crime not to bring it out.”
And here, the nominal guests of honor, Sashimi and Wasabi, were Japanese.
The small talk hadn’t been translated for them, but Taesu had been seen holding up the kelp with his chopsticks and talking about it.
Ryoma, who examined the kelp himself, quickly understood what it was.
Of course, Ryoma had no Mountain Spirit dwelling within him. His weapons were his family bloodline and a merchant’s knowledge.
Sakamoto Ryoma whispered a few words to Katsu Kaishu.
Katsu also nodded.
At Waegwan, Sashimi was putting on a satisfyingly chewy performance.
Wasabi, too, had to establish a sharp little presence by now. Only then would a proper mouthful from a well-balanced sashimi shop be complete.
After the meal ended, Ryoma managed to meet Taesu alone under the pretext of expressing his gratitude for the hospitality.
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The only way Ryoma could communicate with Taesu was through written exchange.
Fortunately, Cha Un-hong helped uphold the dignity of a great merchant lord who could not, for the sake of appearances, exchange writing directly with a Japanese boy.
Ryoma moved his brush with a certain tension.
The kelp served today was certainly the finest quality from Mutsu.
Taesu’s reaction was only that Song Gwangrak had worked hard. He felt like asking why they were making such a fuss over some seaweed.
But Ryoma’s true point lay elsewhere.
Kelp grows well in cold seas. Ezochi north of Mutsu is also a famous source. Good kelp does not come from the warm south, so all of it is sold at high prices to China.
“That seems to be true. In our country, too, the Manp merchant groups of cold northern Uiju handle kelp and trade with China. I’ve heard the Manp merchants are closely connected with the Song merchants when it comes to ginseng.”
“Really?”
Of course, direct Japan-China trade in this era was nothing compared to the Manp merchants’ trade with the Qing.
More than half of Japan’s exports to China in those days were seafood.
And more than ninety percent of that seafood was kelp. Sea cucumbers were also bought in large quantities, but sea cucumbers were, by nature, rare goods that could not easily be gathered in great amounts.
A spark of interest rose in Taesu’s eyes, the eyes of a man who dealt with China.
And Ryoma did not miss it.
I’m the son of a merchant family. I’m telling you this because I think it’ll help the Dobansu greatly in the future. Kelp isn’t an approved trade good at Waegwan, so even Mr. Song can’t openly sell it. But now that Waegwan has lost its edge, if you open a new route, you can make a fortune.
The matter was too dangerous, so Ryoma tore up the paper and swallowed it.
After hearing Cha Un-hong’s translation, Taesu muttered,
“So this isn’t just about kelp.”
“That’s right.”
“Good. Let’s probe a little.”
Cha Un-hong wrote quickly. Ryoma admired the handwriting of the boy who did not seem all that much younger than him.
Can you introduce us to good kelp?
Of course. My hometown isn’t in the north, but kelp from Ezochi and Mutsu is moved south through the western coast first, then sent on to Satsuma Domain and Ryukyu.
And from there it is smuggled on to China.
This route from Hokkaido to Jiangnan is collectively known in modern times as the kelp road, Konbu Road.
It may seem a little underwhelming compared to the Silk Road, but its impact was by no means small.
Satsuma, the terminus of the kelp road, is only a single domain.
It was originally a country much smaller than Joseon, and it had no development to make up for that weakness.
Satsuma’s traditional position was more or less that of the Japanese Meng Huo of the archipelago. Mainland Japanese and Satsuma people could barely even understand each other’s language.
And yet how had a mere lord of such a Satsuma become one of the great powers of the Restoration, running several steamships when even Joseon’s King Gojong would have struggled to get hold of one?
Satsuma was not a country that survived by relying only on Ryukyu sugar slaves. This kelp smuggling trade was no less important.
If one asked why Gojong, who smuggled red ginseng worth far more than kelp much more easily simply because he was king, ended up the way he did, the only answer was that smuggling depended on who was doing it.
Even sacred red ginseng doesn’t raise intelligence. As the saying went, “There are no foolish rulers in the Shimazu clan”; Satsuma had better gacha luck with its lords than Joseon did.
The Kaientai that Ryoma would create was a smuggling group deeply tied to that very Satsuma, along with Choshu.
Ryoma did not yet have connections in Satsuma or Choshu at his current age.
Still, Kaientai was not something Ryoma designed from zero. All people stand on the shoulders of giants.
Kaientai, too, was born only out of that existing Japanese smuggling environment. That was why Ryoma knew about the kelp road in the first place.
Taesu understood Ryoma’s meaning as well.
The kelp road was a shipping route that, as Ryoma had just said, traced down the western side of Japan.
In other words, if one slipped off it just a little, one landed in Joseon.
And the Japanese term for smuggling was, fittingly enough, “diverted cargo,” nukegani.
In other words, Ryoma’s proposal was a northern bit of sleight of hand carried out beyond the eyes of the Joseon government and Tsushima Domain.
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Needless to say, the shogunate had never ordered anything like this treasonous imitation.
What it had ordered was information on the recent clashes between the West and Joseon, Joseon’s response and political situation untouched by Tsushima’s lies.
But in an age with no cell phones, if one had to ask permission for every little thing, nothing would ever get done. European envoys started wars on their own all the time, anyway.
If it went well, one built a reliable espionage route and earned great merit. If it failed, well, slit the belly of the ship and be done with it. If he had been afraid of seppuku, he wouldn’t have volunteered for espionage in the first place.
Assuming that one could rise to success by riding the tide of the age, then the methods of rising to success could change too.
Using trade, not swords, to create a class that stood above the samurai. A class that might even use guns, if necessary.
It all lined up with the “replace the noble families with the chaebol” idea Taesu and Cha Un-hong had first discussed on the porch of the inn by the Imjin River.
Sakamoto Ryoma’s dream had been given shape by the sight of Park Axe.
He thought that if he someday tied himself to the Park Axe merchant group, a similar organization could be created in Japan as well.
Park Axe, too, had influenced Kaientai as one of those giant shoulders on which others stood.
One might think this all amounted to no more than a childish little game of make-believe by a twelve-year-old.
But twelve in this era was very different from twelve in the modern age.
Take Yoshida Shoin, for example, the teacher of the Choshu restoration activists. At Ryoma’s age right now, he was already giving lectures before the domain lord.
Wetting the bed is not all that rare even among modern twelve-year-olds. What matters is whether one can form an independent resolve.
Besides, the Meiji Restoration itself was a liberation festival for all the chuunibyou black-flame dragons scattered across the islands.
Revolution is always like that.
The left arm bandage of the Restoration activist Sakamoto Ryoma was beginning to loosen, pulled rough and early by someone else’s hand far sooner than history intended.
This isn’t for now. Still, the Dobansu is young, and I am younger still. The chance to labor for the country and its people will surely come someday. From the bearing of this Dobansu today, it seems you have the resolve to cut down corrupt officials in one great blow and sweep the four directions clean. When that day comes, I will certainly go with you.
Ryoma will go.
Taesu did not know about Shiba Ryotaro’s famous novel.
Even if someone had told him the future name Sakamoto Ryoma directly, he still would not have known it.
But the historical force contained in that boyish declaration, Taesu understood perfectly.
Because he was a man living in Joseon now, not in some future Korea.
Taesu answered,
“I’ll go too.”
Author’s Note
1. Kelp and seaweed are not plants. If you go by family relation, they’re closer to a paramecium.
2. In actual history, Jeong Jabeom also paid off Hyeon Hak-ro’s debt on his behalf.
3. Ryoma Goes Forth is the work that established the image of Sakamoto Ryoma beloved by modern Japanese readers. The line about “cutting down corrupt officials in one great blow and washing Japan clean again” comes from a letter the later Ryoma sent to his older sister.