Translator: Flowingcloud Editor: Arocks141
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TERMS/THINGS TO NOTE:
Lots of measurement units used this chapter:
Japanese units of measurement
Conversation About Flood Control
Late January, 24th Year of the Tembun era (1555), Nakano Village, Shioji-sato
If you are reading from a pirate or aggregator site, please read from the translator’s site: yado-inn (dot) com I have to put the link like this or else the bots will remove it, sorry 🙁
The Kando District is roughly 36,000-koku and the Shuto District is 13,000-koku. Put together, I’ve become a Daikan in charge of a territory of roughly 50,000-koku. A mere eight-year-old girl has, that is.
Well, the responsibility of the Jodai of the Shiga-Iwayama Castle was left to Shigemori-dono’s son, and old man Tako was assigned to be my guardian officially.
According to old man Tako, “It seems more interesting being together with the princess.”
And many other meaningless statements to embarrass me.
“Well then, let’s begin!”
Today, we have gathered 100 people to perform some forced labor. This time is just a trial. After this year’s rice harvest, I plan on starting in autumn at full-scale.
How many people or days will it take? How many tools are necessary? I’d like to grasp the approximate costs it’ll take.
However…
“Hmm, their movement is bad.”
“Everyone does look like they are moving sluggishly.”
“Haru thinks so as well?
“Yes. They are emitting off the feeling that they’re working unwillingly.”
“They are working forced labor after all. It cannot be helped with what we have.”
I see, everyone’s moving sluggishly because they’re being forced to work unwillingly. Well, even if I were forced to do it, I would do it sluggishly too.
“So that means forced labor is not the way. Like I thought, should we pay them?”
“However, Princess, have you ever heard of paying money to forced laborers?”
No matter how excellent old man Tako was, he was tied to the fixed ideas of ancient times, huh. The old man was on the ruling side, so it can’t be helped.
“That is why it will not be forced labor, but to have them work as if it was their own job.”
“As their own job?”
“A suitable amount of manual labor shall be met with a suitable amount of reward. If we do not do this, everyone would not be working seriously, am I right?
“As expected of Princess!”
I think only masochists will perform with selfless devotion.
“I understand, it is the same as favor and public duty.”
“They may be similar. Old man and Father, Haru and I, wouldn’t you both be reluctant to work for us for free?”
“Hahaha, I would be reluctant. Oh dear, it is enlightening when I am with Princess.”
“I won’t give you anything even if you flatter me.”
“Princess……”
“Hm? Haru, what’s wrong?”
“I… I don’t receive wages from Princess…… sniff.”
“Princess…”
Old man Tako, don’t stare at me! It’s pointless for an old man to stare at me.
“Umm…… Y-You see, Haru’s been together with me since I was a baby, so we’re like sisters!”
Yup, let’s call her Haru-nee from now on. Let’s do that.
***
Thus, I gathered the farmers.
“Everyone’s movements are bad, so I’m changing the method.”
“Princess, what do you mean by changing the method?”
“How are you changing it?”
“First, I am canceling today’s forced labor.”
“Ohh!”
“We can go home?”
“Mhm, let’s go home.”
Wait!? No, don’t go back without my permission!
“Wait before you leave! That’s not it. In place of forced labor, I will give you work and be paid daily properly.”
“We will receive money!?”
“How much?”
*mutter mutter*
“Let’s see, about 15-mon a day for the men?”
“15-mon is……”
“Umm, salt is 18-mon, so……”
“Alcohol is……”
I see, I forgot that the people who could count in this era were extremely little. Not to mention, farmers normally do not use money.
They were thinking about what they could buy with 15-mon.
“For example, if you were to sell rice to a merchant, 1-koku gives you roughly 400-mon to 600-mon, correct?
“The more rice you see, the less rice leftover!” 1
*mutter mutter*
“Princess is clueless about the world.”
*mutter mutter*
Grrr, someone told me off…… I’ll flog you for impoliteness!
Well, I think Amago’s tax rate is high. That is that and this is this, I need to give a clear explanation.
“Listen to me until the end! Roughly one-to is 50-mon and one-sho is 5-mon. This is the value of rice when you sell it.”
“Is that so? The price of one bale was 93-mon when I sold it to a merchant last fall.”
So cheap! Ahh, it might be normal if it’s half a bale. One bale being 60kg (~132lbs) is too heavy. 2
“That bale was a two-to bale, right?”
“Mhm.”
“If that’s the case, one-to is 46 and a half-mon, so if we were to refer to that princess immediately after the autumn harvest, it’s the regular price, right?”
“This is normal.”
I’m glad that respectful merchants bought from them. If they were an evil merchant, these farmers would be cheated.
“If we refer to that, 15-mon a day has the same worth as selling three-sho of rice! You can even buy seven-go or eight-go of salt!” 3
“““Ohh!”””
“So? Are you fired up now?”
“““““Ohhhh!”””””
Phew, easy peasy.
“Princess, everyone is motivated now, aren’t they!?”
“Princess, that was some splendid leadership. I am impressed.”
I’d be troubled if you were impressed with this. Is old man Tako perhaps someone simple?”
“It is not my power. It’s the power of money.”
“That is true.”
“Well, this shows how great money is.”
*dig dig… dig dig…*
“It’s basically like this, right?”
“We’ll make progress if we have them form groups and work.”
“We’re far from that.”
If I dish out a bonus, I wonder if their efficiency will increase like in legend of Hideyoshi’s Sunomata Ichiya Castle? 4
“This is tough, isn’t it?”
“Also, it would be more efficient to improve the tools.”
Like I thought, a shovel is necessary. In this period, there is a similarly shaped tool called a foot plow, civilization’s sharp-edged tools are great.
Also, I need a pickaxe and hoe, don’t forget about improving the plow. I know the completed form of them, so I better use the knowledge available to me.
“Princess, what are you calculating?”
“I’m calculating the number of days it’ll take based on the number of people and the money it’ll take.”
“Nanban numbers are complicated and mysterious. They do look convenient though.” 5
“I believe it is convenient if you get used to it.”
I consolidated the contents of the Hii River Replacement Project that I’ve grasped from today’s size of work.
Generally, I’ve confirmed the amount of earth and sand a laborer can dig is one cubic meter a day. One group has a total of 10 people: 2 plowers, 2 diggers, 4 carriers, and 2 people who create the dumping ground and embankment.
One group on average digs through a width of six-shaku, length of five-ken (one-ken = six-shaku), and a depth of two-shaku. In other words, one group digs 1.8m x 9m x 60cm (roughly 5.9ft x 29.5 x 2ft).
Based on this, first, the width of the river is set to two-cho, it’s hard to understand so 200m (~656ft). The distance from Nakano to Hirata is 2-ri, roughly 8km (~5mi). As for the depth, it looks like underwater will come out, so should I not dig too deep? Let’s compromise at 2m.
If I applied these estimations and calculated, 200 x 8000 = 3,200,000 cubic meters?
How many Tokyo domes is that? I can’t even imagine.
However! I’ve identified the amount of wages for 3,200,000 cubic meter worth of work. In other words, 3,200,000 x 15 = 48,000,000-mon. Err… 48,000-kan? I didn’t miscalculate, right? Isn’t that a digit too much?
“Princess, what is the matter? Your face is pale.”
O-K-A-Y, let’s calm down. Let’s stay cool, stay cool.
“It’s 80-cho till Hitara, 2-cho and a little more. How much do you think it costs to cover the flood control costs?”
“I cannot imagine, but maybe 10,000-kan or 20,000-kan?”
Oh, you’re on the right track, despite being Haru. However, that’s naive!
“It’s 48,000-kan! 48,000!”
“F-Forty eight thousand……”
“Hime-sama, would it not be better to use forced labor?”
“That’s no good. With forced labor, they move sluggishly, thus they will take too many days. Additionally, the more days it takes, the more dissatisfaction that accumulates within the people. An uprising could occur before the flood control is completed, and we won’t be able to see the end of the days.”
Perhaps I should reduce it to 10-mon a day? However, that’s a bad move. I did say that it was 15-mon a day in the beginning. If I take back what I said, my political reputation will go down.
And that drop in reputation would not only be me, but also tied together with my father’s reputation, the feudal lord who protects Izumo.
Nevertheless, they are still lacking experience and after I prepare the tools and the rough products, their efficiency should improve when those things improve. Fortunately, the soil around here consists mostly of sand, and it helps that the sand is soft.
By some chance, their speed might increase two-fold or three-fold compared to today! However, I should not get my hopes up and safely estimate a certain degree of extra wages I’ll need to provide.
So maybe I can save 16,000-kan? Maybe 12,000-kan? It’s a pain so let’s just take the middle and call it 14,000-kan. So probably 34,000-kan? That’s still an enormous sum of money.
Also, the demon has been whispering in my ear, “Isn’t it fine to further narrow down the width? It doesn’t have to be like the modern-times.”
If I halved the width of the river to 100m, naturally, the expenses will be cut in half. Hmm… if I narrow it, the meaning of the flood control would quickly go away… even if I have to compromise and narrow it down, I think I have to keep it at least at 150m.
“Tako-jii.”
“Did I just hear someone call me Octopus(tako)-jii? I wonder if it’s my imagination?”
“It is your imagination. So, Tako-jii, do you think that the width of the river needs to be 2-cho (~220m/~722ft)?”
“That’s right, the wider we widen the width of the river, the harder it will become for a flood to occur.”
“As expected it came down to that. I was an idiot for trying to compromise.”
I should carry out when I had planned in the beginning, and settle on the width of the river being 2-cho.
3,200,000 worth of work, 3,200 people working, 1000 days. The actual work only occurs during slack season for farmers, thus assuming they work 150 days in a year, it’ll take seven years? That’s too long……
At the very least, I need to finish it in half the time—in three or four years—otherwise, it’s pointless. Mainly due to time constraints. It would be better to make some progress even before the rice planting season, not just starting this fall. It would be a good practice for the fall too.
This means that I have to issue a proclamation and gather labor in the fall.
‘Labor is compulsory. However, you will be paid.’
The phrase has a very fragrant-flavored smell to it. Well, there are nearly 60,000 people in the territory, so if you gather all the peasants, foot soldiers, and the free townspeople, you will have about 6,000 people.
Although the problem is the budget: 34,000-kan. No, according to my initial calculations, it’s 48,000-kan. Should I borrow money from my father? Rather than spending extra later, he should be happy if I returned the extra amount.
Rather, if I don’t borrow money, I can’t implement flood control.
Additionally, there are other expenses outside of wages… the cost of tools is not to be sneezed at. Assuming that 6,000 people work every day, the distribution should be roughly 2,400 shovels, 1,200 spades, 1,200 pickaxes, and 1,200 mokkos, I think? 6 Also, I need to have a spare amount.
In order to motivate them, it might be good to have a soup kitchen, and I can imagine the money growing wings and flying off.
Let’s be stingy and charge for the soup kitchen. Let’s do that. Specifically, let’s charge about a one-mon for a nigiri-meshi (rice ball).
The Kando District and the Shuto District in total is roughly 50,000-koku. My budget that I can freely use is about 5,000-kan. However, if I seize the town around the Grand Shrine, Uryu Port, and Hirata Port, I should be able to get plus 20,000-kan.
This is… all right! There’s no choice but to seize them!
I mean, both the town and the port are located in the Kando District and Shuto District. This is within my realm of authority, isn’t it? That’s how I can interpret it, right?
If that’s the case, I can calculate the budget for 2-years worth of flood control. Although it’s only on paper.
In addition, we were also lucky enough to find a wonderful mine called the Sagi Copper Mine. Furthermore, there are still undeveloped mines in the vicinity. There is also a mine in Satume, near the border with Iwami, where metal should be able to be extracted.
Huh? That means that if I minted copper coins, couldn’t I implement flood control without borrowing money? On top of that, until the mines run out of gold, silver and copper, I’ll be rolling in dough! Having been worried about money, now I feel like I lost something.
Various future knowledge cheats! Hooray for cheating!
As it turns out, Izumo and Iwami are treasure houses of mineral resources. Well, since Iwami Ginzan (Silver Mine) is such a big name, it’s no wonder that there are other minerals lying nearby.
Well, just in case, I will consult my father about the mining of the metals and private coinage.
However, since I am only a Gundai (a representative) and not a lord, the copper, silver, and gold are not mine……
I wonder if I should keep my mouth shut about these undiscovered mines?
“Princess, your smile is a little dark and scary, you know?”
“Oh, it is.”
That’s not the case!
If you are reading from a pirate or aggregator site, please read from the translator’s site: yado-inn (dot) com I have to put the link like this or else the bots will remove it, sorry 🙁
- Slavemaster (Cloud): If you’re an idiot, farmers don’t sell everything they grow. They keep some for themselves to keep themselves alive until the next harvest.
- Flowingcloud: Hyou (translated as bale) is an ancient Japanese measuring unit for rice. In modern days (although outlawed for official use), one hyou is 60kg, but back then, one-hyou was only roughly 30kg (~66lbs).
- Gō (合):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_units_of_measurement - Slavemaster (Cloud): Mostly referring to the legend, not the place. It’s rumored that Hideyoshi built the castle in one night, however, it took him several days to complete in reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunomata_Castle - Slavemaster (Cloud): Nanban, if you haven’t seen enough Sengoku period things, are basically Europeans and Westerners. Nanban literally means “southern barbarians” because the Portugese initially came through the south to trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanban_trade
Slothmaster (Arocks): (Sell out alert) In case you don’t want to find another site with a historic Japan-themed story, check out SKM on Yado Inn itself! - Mokko: It’s similar to those mesh produce bags. Here’s an image: https://bit.ly/3v6oqfa
Oh my god. The work already began even though they didn’t have enough money. There is NEVER enough money, ever.
Sounds like every government project
Thanks for the chapter 😀
Great series so far! Really hope the translation continues