Sit Back and Enjoy the Show
“You lot, put on a show for me!”
After nearly a month at sea, Haneul set foot in the port of Naniwa. A long line of people in black clothes stood waiting in formation.
“Miss! Welcome!”
“Oh? Good to see you.”
Well, this is awkward? Why did everyone come pouring out like this?
Isn't this basically a CEO's commute? And where on earth did they learn to line up in perfect rows and color-coordinate in black?
“Shall we head to the branch office?”
“It's not even that far, so what's with everyone coming out? It's a hassle. You don't have to do this next time.”
“They all just came out to catch a glimpse of you, Miss. Please be gracious about it.”
Ah? This popularity of mine, haha! Am I just born for stardom? Well, it does feel nice!
“But why are there so many Japanese people out there? It's not just our people.”
“They've come looking for work, apparently.”
“Here?”
Is it really that hard to make a living? Well, we needed more hands anyway, so this works out great!
“Shall we chase them off?”
“No! The more, the better. More is even better!”
“What do you plan to do with them?”
Hm? I haven't told anyone what I'm planning, so I suppose even the branch manager is curious?
“It's the Sengoku era, isn't it?”
“Hm? Do they call it that?”
Come to think of it, terms like that only emerged when histories were being written in the modern era, so it makes sense he wouldn't know.
“When every province starts raising their own kingdoms and tearing each other apart, that's what you call a Sengoku era.”
“Oh...”
So where should I start~? Well, plenty of workers seem to be gathering already?
“Gather the people. Gather as many as you possibly can. Bring in the intellectuals and the upper classes too.”
“Don't tell me... you're going to build a kingdom?”
Half right, my friend! It may be a warring age, but no way would they let a foreigner come in and found a country on someone else's land.
“It won't be our country.”
“Hm?”
It's someone else's land, so we can't exactly build a nation ourselves, can we? Which means we put up a proxy!
But would a proxy we're backing really be weak? Unless they're a complete idiot, dominating this whole region shouldn't be hard.
“All we're doing is laying the stage. Then they'll fight each other all on their own.”
You've heard of it, haven't you? This is a proxy war too! We get to watch the fights AND make money. How great is that?
Ah~ this is going to be so much fun!
“Alright, let's head inside and draw up the plan first.”
“Yes, ma'am!”
We've got a castle site, a port, and the perfect starting point!
Our kids certainly aren't going to lose to Japan's pathetic little pirates, and we can route all the supplies by sea.
The crowd murmured as the branch manager escorted her with the utmost deference, and the people began whispering among themselves. Good, there are bound to be spies in there, right? Go on, run along and spread the rumors!
That someone enormously powerful from Daehan has arrived.
The room the branch manager led her to was quite humble.
“Hm? There's hardly anything in here?”
“I'm sorry?”
“You're the branch manager — shouldn't you have it a bit nicer? For receiving guests and all that?”
If your quarters look shabby, won't people start underestimating you?
“If I did, the Japanese would start eyeing it, wondering what else they could squeeze out of me.”
Ah? So it's just that these people are rotten to the core?
“Good, you did well. What's the point of decorating things anyway? I like it clean and simple.”
“But the Temple is extravagantly ornate?”
The Temple and places like that were simple at first, with no ornamentation at all?
“It wasn't like that in the beginning.”
“Really?”
“It's all just the traces of time. That's all it is.”
Master carvers carved one line after another over the ages, and eventually the whole place ended up wallpapered in it.
Even that enormous temple wasn't immune to the passage of time. Just one line per century adds up to forty lines already...
“You didn't come here on vacation, though, I take it?”
“Nope. And with so many people gathered already, let's start by building a castle.”
“A castle?”
A big one, obviously.
“Let's spread out a map, shall we?”
“Right away.”
The map snapped open with a crisp flick. Hm. They've been out scouting mines and marked the mountains quite thoroughly. Nice.
With a few smooth strokes, Haneul laid a fresh sheet of paper over the precious map and drew a long, sweeping line... Maybe a bit too big?
“Hm? Is this about right?”
“Miss, what is this?”
Come on~ you can tell just by looking, can't you?
“Our land. Well, land for our side.”
“Uh... Miss, this is really, REALLY big?”
“Huh? Is it?”
Ahem. Yes, I did have a feeling it might be a bit much.
Let's trim it down a little.
“Then we'll shrink it — everything to the right of the Do River, up to the mountains, is our land.”
“Our land?”
Ah. I said 'our land' out of habit again.
“Gah! I mean land for our side. Just roll with it!”
“Yes, ma'am!”
“There are plenty of people, aren't there? Let's build a castle.”
This part calls for a real plan, so I'd better draw the line nice and precisely.
“A castle? We have cannons?”
Yeah, that does bother me a little too, but this is a castle we need. There's no line as reliable as this one.
“Just slope the outer walls. That much is plenty.”
“Understood.”
And honestly, as long as the traces remain, who cares if a bit of it crumbles? It's not like we're the ones who'll be fighting over it.
The riverside doesn't need to be built high, and the mountain can just be carved down. Quite doable, really? Blast it flat with explosives and reinforce it with stone, that's all.
“Make sure the workers eat well. Do that much, and plenty of them will work their fingers to the bone for you.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
We've got to make them people who can't live without Daehan.
A few days later, a crowd had packed into the office.
“Greetings. I am Shin Ha-eun, come from Daehan.”
“A pleasure. I am Watanabe.”
“I am Yamamoto.”
“I am Kato.”
And so on, and so on.
Goodness, what a crowd. I asked them to gather the influential figures and intellectuals, and ten whole people showed up.
“You all find life terribly hard, don't you?”
“Ahem...”
“Hmm. Hmm...”
A foreigner walks in and blurts that out — of course they'd flinch. They were supposed to be the local notables, yet none of them look particularly wealthy.
Some of them are even wearing patched, resewn clothes.
“Japan is a shambles right now. Times like these are exactly when we need people with vision. People like you.”
“...?”
“Yes?”
“?”
They're throwing out hooks left and right, but once they hear the pitch, they'll take the bait.
“The daimyo across the land are at each other's throats, carving out their own domains, and life for ordinary people grows harder by the day — does it not?”
Oh, so they do know? Plenty of heads are nodding.
“Step forward, then, and build a place where everyone prospers.”
If those ignorant sword-swinging brutes can do it, what's stopping you?
“But we have no strength...”
“We are men of letters and study.”
“We've no talent for the blade...”
Scholars through and through, I see. Scared of a fight, huh?
“Gather the people and train them. Weren't those samurai daimyo just farmers themselves, in the end?”
“Even so...”
'Even so,' my foot. They're still strutting around swinging those flimsy katanas calling them swords. Hand them a Daehan blade and watch their thinking change.
“Money...”
“An army costs a fortune...”
“Heh heh...”
Sly old foxes, the lot of them. Talking about money while shooting sideways glances at each other — clearly waiting for someone else to speak first.
“We will help you.”
“Heh heh?”
“However much money you offer...”
Yes, an army costs a fortune — you know it and I know it.
“We are going to establish a Concession Zone. In other words, we want to buy your land. And we'll pay handsomely.”
“Our land?”
“Heh heh. Just a little of it?”
What else could you possibly have to offer us but land?
“So, do you have anything to give?”
“Heh heh...”
“Hmm...”
With money comes the chance to plant your feet right here and now and climb to the very top. You all know that perfectly well, don't you?
“Very well, then. I suppose I'll have to go see the daimyo nearby instead. I invited you here believing you were men who cared for their people. I'm disappointed.”
What a bunch of cowards.
“Wha— no! Where else would you find men who care for the people as we do!”
“That's right! We merely needed time to consider, that is all!”
“Give us time!”
Consider what? You just don't want to lose face by agreeing too quickly.
“Fine. I'll see you all again in one week.”
The deadline is one week? Remember the date well, you rascals.
Once the visitors had gone, the branch manager approached with an uneasy look on his face.
“Miss, isn't this deal far too one-sided in their favor?”
“We may not turn a profit, but we won't take a loss, either.”
At the very least we'll break even? Putting the people to work is, when you think about it, just another way of drawing our own borders — and any money we pay them goes straight back into buying our goods anyway.
“So really, we're just distributing some goods in exchange for land.”
“Why not?”
“We're not handing those men anything of real value, are we?”
Wherever possible, we'll pay in goods, and we'll be the ones directing the people's labor. The samurai's wages will come from our coffers too.
“But those men collect taxes from the people, don't they?”
“That's just a friendship fee! Perfectly reasonable.”
“A... friendship fee?”
They're going to be working as our frontmen, after all. Even if we can't pay them a proper salary, we should at least slip them a little something.
“Think of it as the price of having them as our public faces. That should make it easier to stomach.”
Though, of course, they might end up going down in history as the traitors who sold out their country.
“And they'll almost certainly say yes, so have them request plenty of food and weapons.”
“By weapons, you mean gunpowder weapons?”
“No. Swords, bows, that sort of thing only.”
Gunpowder weapons we sell for cold, hard cash. Expensive.
“And have them make copies of the cannons used in Ming China and Vietnam.”
“Do we really need to?”
“It'd be a waste to sell them ours, wouldn't it?”
The two sides need to be roughly evenly matched to beat each other senseless properly. Hand them our equipment and the fight's over before it starts.
“Also, have them produce a separate batch of low-grade gunpowder.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Our job here is to sit back, watch the show, and eat the rice cakes. Understood?”
“Oh...”
He still doesn't get it, does he? Just wait. They'll be beating the drums and clashing the cymbals all on their own soon enough — we'll just enjoy the performance.
And so they launched straight into a massive civil engineering project.
The small garden estates scattered around the area were all torn down, and with embankments raised along the river, farmland began spreading across land that had been flat plains to begin with.
“A bit of a shame. No farming here for a while, I suppose?”
“No. Buying food with the wages we pay them works out far better for them.”
“For now, just pile earth along the riverbanks. Once the road up to the mountain is finished, haul up stone and stack it diligently. Finish it all off with a coat of yellow lime mortar.”
I'd love to just build the whole thing out of raw stone and lime like a brute, but setting up a lime factory here feels like overkill.
“By the way, the nearby daimyo keeps sending men to ask what we're building. How should we handle it?”
“For now, tell them we're raising flood levees. It's not at a stage where anyone could call it a castle wall yet.”
“Yes, ma'am!”
This is the one downside of flat plains. No stone anywhere, so we can't throw up a castle right away.
And our future frontmen still haven't given us their answer, either.
“Elder Nakamura! Trouble!”
“What is it now!”
“It appears the daimyo's men came by yet again today!”
“Tch...”
The ten men who had spoken with Haneul gathered once more at Nakamura's house that day to talk things over.
Agreeing on the spot would have cost them face, so they had withdrawn to deliberate — stalling for time.
“Tch. Merchants and their tempers...”
“What should we do? If this drags on and we end up under the daimyo's thumb instead, wouldn't that be a disaster?”
A long sigh escaped his lips unbidden. The merchant had given them a deadline of one week, and he had planned to stall for several months — but now the whole affair looked likely to fall apart at the seams.
“What does everyone think?”
“We will follow your judgment, Elder.”
“I believe we have no choice. Send your reply to the merchant.”
“But our pride...”
Some argued to wait a little longer, while others insisted that if they were going to do this at all, they should answer quickly.
“Is the agitation among the people going well?”
“Yes. Once we began distributing the food received from the merchant, many commoners rallied to our cause.”
They, too, had needed time — time to gather men and spread word through the countryside.
They needed a justification: that they had risen up for the sake of the people, unable to bear the daimyo's tyranny any longer.
“Then it's best we send our reply and begin in earnest, with proper backing behind us.”
“That would mean less time to gather men, though.”
In Sengoku-era Japan, men following money over ideals was simply the natural order of things.
“Then let's send our answer quickly — and ask for quite a lot in return.”
“Absolutely!”