SKM – Chapter 21

Translator: Manshiro    Editor: Sage Yomeri, DC    Proofreader: N/A    TLC: ShimizuA

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Editor Note: Please read the footnotes at the bottom since this chapter has quite a lot of inaccuracies.

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Arc 2 – Ninth Year of Eiroku Era, Owari Province Agricultural Reform

Late October, 1566

Shizuko was worried about a certain natural phenomenon that would happen in a few days. In the modern era, it would’ve been something to leisurely observe with one’s family, but in the Sengoku era it probably would be categorized as an ill omen. Shizuko was worried whether the villagers would be frightened by it.

(The earth, the moon, and the sun… would they understand an explanation like that?)

Explaining it would be quite easy. But the villagers lacked the basic knowledge to understand that explanation. She was worried whether them not explaining the phenomenon would be enough to assuage their fears. On the other hand, this astrological event would occur between 22:45 and 02:18 Japan time¹. In this era however, almost nobody would notice it. Once the sun goes down, there’s simply nothing to do but to sleep.

(But what if someone stays awake by chance and sees it?)

In the end, after racking her brain for some time, Shizuko decided on explaining it in a fairy tale fashion just in case someone did see it. Her plan was to keep it on a children’s fairy tale level, but mix some facts into it, to calm any possible unrest. Having come to a conclusion, Shizuko immediately sat down and started writing down a made-up story on the sand board she was using as a notebook replacement.

(Mrs. Sun is hiding behind behind Mr. Moon, or something like that.)

While Shizuko was drafting up a fairy tale like story, Aya was cleaning the room Shizuko was using to store her luggage. Although it couldn’t really be called cleaning as Shizuko was meticulous in her work and didn’t really let it get dirty. She would be finished after lightly sweeping the room.

Even though it was Aya’s mission to investigate Shizuko’s talent, she basically still had to wait on her. While it seems having to do household chores while investigating would be hard, but in fact, this way was more convenient. After all, Aya could rifle through Shizuko’s belongings as much as she wanted under the guise of cleaning. And as Shizuko didn’t suspect her of doing something like that, she easily left the cleaning to Aya.

Shizuko occupied three rooms. She used the first one as a storage, the second as a workshop, and the last one as her private room. This house, which was bigger than a normal farmer’s, was Nobunaga’s reward for the crops she had offered to Nobunaga in her first and second year since coming to this era. The house she was given was a normal one, but despite that, it had a simple fence around it, a garden that was turned into a place for drying food for the most part, a shack for Wittmann and his family, as well as enough rooms to count on both hands. At this size, a helper to take care of the house became necessary, which was used as a pretense to send in Aya.

But not everything went well for Aya.

First of all, there were always three wolves present somewhere in the rooms Shizuko used.  When she tried to do anything under the cover of cleaning, they would react to the slightest noise and come into the room. Aya felt as though she was being watched, which was indeed the case as the wolves observed her.

But their motive was different from what Aya was thinking as they were only concerned about the hierarchy and were wondering “what is an underling like her is doing in the boss’ room”. Under these circumstances, Aya managed to find two strange things.

The first one was a wooden box which was tied shut with a sturdy rope. The other one was the medium-sized crossbow Shizuko used for hunting.

The wooden box was placed in a room Shizuko used, and even if she wanted to open it, doing so would be difficult with Aya’s meagre strength. Since the rope was tied quite tight, there would be no other way to open it than to cut the rope. But doing so would make Shizuko notice that Aya was sneaking around and investigating her. Aya decided that there was no other option than to prudently wait for a good opportunity to confirm the contents of the box.

The crossbow on the other hand was easy to obtain. It wasn’t monitored as strictly as the wooden box and just stored together with all the other hunting gear. Even when she had carried it around under the pretense of cleaning, Shizuko didn’t say anything. Only a warning that she should be careful when handling it, since it was a [weapon]. That Shizuko had called it a [weapon] was the reason for Aya’s strong interest in the crossbow.

(A completely unfamiliar construction… Shizuko-sama had called it a bow, but I have never seen a bow such as this before.)

Shizuko had three different crossbows she owned.

The first one was a crossbow with a very simple structure, the second one was the biggest of the three and had the strongest pull, and the third one was what a so-called compound type crossbow with pulleys. ²

The second crossbow was a scaled up version of the first one, and she used it to hunt deer, but it needed special tools to pull back the string. When she came up short on ideas, Shizuko consulted her older sister’s book and stumbled upon the compound crossbow with pulleys. But those pulleys did require an even higher level of technology than the special spanning tools. ³

Together with Kinzou, she needed to start from manufacturing special crafting equipment. After much trial and error, they finally succeeded in making the pulleys, but as they were aided by a water mill the manufacturing time depended on the flow of the river.

Under good conditions it would take around three months to make a single pulley system, but if the flow of the river was slow it could take up to almost five. They could produce around twenty pulleys in parallel, but it still took a vast amount of time to make a single part. Therefore, they created several spare parts and safely stored them.

But not only the pulleys were different. The shaft was designed to reduce shaky aim, the trigger had to be carefully made, an auxiliary cocking rope was needed, a deer skin shoulder strap was added to carry it around, as well as many more small improvements were incorporated.

She couldn’t measure how much drawing weight it had, but Shizuko gauged it to be around 150 to 185 lbs ⁴. Shizuko didn’t really care for the number as her only criterion was whether or not it could easily bring down a deer. Obviously, with the third crossbow, where she could easily pull back the string and shoot with a stable posture, her hunting went much smoother.

As the cocking rope was only auxiliary, she usually didn’t need to use it and mostly just carried it around.

Upon seeing this crossbow brimming with advanced technology, Aya instinctively felt the need to report it to Nobunaga. It was her duty to report the existence of strange things like this, but the crossbow was just too foreign.

Shizuko didn’t make a report about this crossbow as she understood that it was inferior to the matchlock​ in every regard and therefore only useful for hunting and the like. In fact, regardless of the larger amounts of shots that could be fired and the higher penetration power, as a crossbow its bolts were shorter than a japanese longbow’s arrows, leaving it with a relatively short effective range of 50 to 70 meters ⁵. History has proven that it is more effective to give your soldiers matchlocks than crossbows ⁶. But, sadly, Aya was unaware of this.

(…however, how I can deliver this to Mori-sama is the issue.)

Aya mused while looking at the compound crossbow. There were only three of them, so Shizuko would notice if one of the crossbows went missing. And then Aya who was cleaning and taking care of the household would be the first to be suspected. Unsure on how to proceed, Aya’s problem was solved quite anticlimactically.

“Huh? You want to borrow a crossbow? That’s okay.”

Aya tried to lightly ask for it without any expectations, but was rewarded with unexpected  words of permission. Although she had achieved her goal, as it was just too easy, Aya stood there stunned.

“It doesn’t have any safety features so be careful when handling it. But, well, I showed you how to use it before so you should be fine.”

With just this comment Shizuko turned back to her desk and resumed her work. As Aya couldn’t afford to sour Shizuko’s mood by disturbing her, Aya gave a bow and left the room.

Shortly after that, Aya called for a servant of Mori Yoshinari and handed him a letter. It contents were kept short and read thusly:

“Shizuko-dono posses a weapon of seemingly Namban origin.”

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On the 27th of October, Aya personally delivered the crossbow (the compound crossbow) to Mori Yoshinari upon which both of them went to meet Nobunaga. Normally, Aya’s standing wouldn’t allow her to even meet Nobunaga, but the object in question this time around was too strange for Mori Yoshinari to explain, so he took Aya along as someone who had seen it operated in person. After completing the greeting formalities, Mori Yoshinari immediately showed the crossbow to Nobunaga.

“…this is supposed to be… a bow?”

Nobunaga asked with furrowed eyebrows.

Japan had weapon similar to the crossbow too in the past, but as the warrior caste formed and small scale battles increased in frequency, these weapons gradually vanished as they needed much maintenance and were hard to get personal military achievements with.

The exact point in time is unknown, but when the Muromachi era rolled around, there were no more craftsmen around who knew how to make these kinds of weapons. In exchange, low maintenance light armor and bows had become the mainstream. And when the time for infantry en masse to return to the battlefield had come around again, weapon designs had increased the longbow’s range significantly, so the people never looked back at the crossbow-like weapons.

Nobunaga took the crossbow in his hands. And then, as if handling a fragile object, he carefully checked the construction of the crossbow. After roughly five minutes of deliberate inspection, Nobunaga placed the crossbow down on the tray before him and addressed Mori Yoshinari.

“This is unusable on the battlefield.”

Nobunaga ignored the reaction of his two listeners and continued as if talking to himself.

“It’s structure is too complex and strange. If it gets damaged, repairing it will take quite some effort. I might not know its exact manufacturing process, but it surely must be quite elaborate. And as Shizuko uses it to hunt game, it must mean that this thing has only that much power.”

“…then…”

At Mori Yoshinari’s prompt, Nobunaga nodded.

“Shizuko was aware of all of this and therefore intentionally didn’t report it to me. As if saying what use is there in reporting on something useless on the battlefield.”

Muttering a slight “but”, Nobunaga played around with the fan is his hands as he continued.

“With this we know that Shizuko knows about Namban weaponry as well. This is a great harvest.”

“But will we be able to use them in our country?”

The matchlock had developed greatly in Japan, but the same was not true for everything. When the crossbow had been reintroduced from western countries, its power was inferior to that of a matchlock and its rate of fire inferior to that of the bow. Decried as a half-baked weapon, it didn’t see a reintroduction to the battlefield. In a similar manner, some weapons which were successful in the western world were difficult to use on Japanese soil.

“If it is unusable, we just need to make it so. If this bow’s structure wasn’t as complicated and strange, that is.”

He would be able to incorporate Namban technologies faster than expected. Thinking this, Nobunaga started smiling unconsciously.

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While November was a fairly quiet month, things became busy in early December. It was time to harvest soybeans and sugarcane. The cultivation area was only around 1 ha for the sugarcane and just 50 ha for soybeans, but a good harvest could be expected. Especially the soybeans, since they didn’t have the nitrogen-enriched fertilizer and Shizuko didn’t expect much of them, seem to be yielding a plentiful harvest.

(If we can somehow make that fertilizer we could use grandpa’s special cultivation method to get 400 kg from 10 ha of land… but, maybe next year or the one after that)

Shizuko did not know, but soybeans can be used as food for warhorses, and could even be considered military supplies. But in her mind, soybeans were at best source materials for soy sauce or miso, so she didn’t place a high value on them.

“Hmm, for we need salt to make soy sauce… but there really isn’t a way to get much of it right now.”

In the Sengoku era where salt production via ion-exchange membranes was miles away, the salt one could easily buy in a convenience store in the modern era, needed to be produced in salt evaporation ponds.

But with this manufacturing method, throwing in large amounts of manpower yielded only a miniscule amount of salt.

(Let’s try modifying the flow-down salt field method a little and mass produce salt. Anyway, not having enough salt is just bad.)

As a basic seasoning as well as the foundation of other seasonings, having more salt never hurts. As an inorganic substance, salt won’t grow moldy and has no nutrients for bacteria to grow on it. Therefore, even when mass produced, long term storage is no problem. Frankly, just putting it in a pot or barrel and leaving that in a warehouse is enough.

(Storage would be more of a problem with rice… but we can just use wooden silos for that. Other than that we maybe need a facility for threshing and molting the harvested rice.)

Despite calling it a facility, it wouldn’t need many mechanical components as Shizuko was thinking of a place where work could be done on a simple conveyor belt. Thankfully, they could use water wheels to power it, making the construction of a production line quite easy.

“Setting that aside… we first need to take care of the soybeans”

The soybeans need to be dried immediately after harvest. For that, they first needed to be shaped first⁷. Next was securing a location. Shizuko’s small garden was already crowded with drying food. As the amount of soybeans would be too much to fit in there, Shizuko made long drying grounds in front of her house for them. As they were close to the entrance of the house, coming and going would be a little inconvenient, but as it would only be one to two weeks, Shizuko decided to bear with it.

After drying them to make threshing easier, next they needed to be actually threshed ⁸. Upon a large piece of cloth spread out on the ground, branches with unthreshed soybeans were slammed into a deep bucket.

With that alone, most of the beans are threshed, but for a small fraction this won’t be enough. In addition, the husks and pieces of the branches will accumulate. Even worse is that larva emerge from bug-infested husks. Dealing with those individually would be a waste of time, so once some beans have been threshed, the entire mix is given into a wide and shallow bucket.

After that, human wave tactics are used to separate the beans from everything else. At this stage, soybeans fit for eating and those with bug-bites or other defects are separated.

But doing all that alone takes quite some time, so the work was separated between separating the soybeans from the rest and separating the good soybeans from the bad.  Finally, after another day of sorting, the amount of good soybeans was about 480 kg. From these, Shizuko selected the ones to use for seeding next year, leaving the remaining amount of soybeans to be used for food at just 400 kg. The husks and bugs they had sorted out became compost material to make fertilizer for next year.

“Muahaha, what a nice harvest. Next year I want to harvest ten times as much.”

“Wouldn’t you need ten times the workforce then….”

Looking at the buckets filled with sorted soybeans, Aya looked slightly skeptical while Shizuko had a bright smile on her face. For the people of this time it might have looked like a mountain of treasure, but to Shizuko it was just a pile of soybeans.

“Now, let’s turn them into miso and soy sauce.”

“(Soy sauce…?) Please do so after sending half the sorted ones to the lord as a tribute. And what exactly is that monstrous silver grass⁹?

“I know, I know. We’ll need to take care of the sugarcane next. Let’s go turn it into brown sugar.”

Saying this, Shizuko tackled the last big harvest and processing of the year: the sugarcane.

1. TN: This.
2. ED: The crossbows described that Shizuko introduced are three variants, in the order of how they were mentioned:

   The first one is a primitive draw-type crossbow. This has a draw strength of 100-150 lbs

   The second is a larger crossbow which is spanned with a series of pulleys. This would be by the description alone be a windlass-type crossbow, a large crossbow that was used at the time for siege warfare. This has a draw strength of up to 1,500 lbs.

   The last crossbow is what is assumed to be a compound bow, with at least two pulleys on the tips of the crossbow to amplify the kinetic energy in the bowstring. These are what you’d see in modern crossbows, with draw strengths of nearing 200-300 lbs, which probably accounts for her disappointment.

3. ED:The Japanese at this time actually DID have the techniques for creation of these parts. In fact, Nobunaga at the time in 1549 ordered the creation of 500 tanegashima muskets of the initial design and started the research on how to improve the weapon further (to include combat in the rain, night combat, etc). In fact, the hardest part to create initially was the rifling of the barrel, and not the intricate small parts (a feat fixed with the invitation of a foreign blacksmith to teach how to work it). A system of cogs or pulleys wouldn’t have been a problem; it’s just that the Japanese were only seeing the benefit of it JUST NOW.
4. ED: this is a HUGE understatement. A windlass has a work ratio of about 78:1, and an approximate max draw of about 1,500 lbs
5. ED: Another mistake. The heavy windlass crossbow has an effective range of up to 180 meters/ 200 yards.
6. ED: I’d like to point out however that this is purely on a SUBJECTIVE basis, and analyzing her location and time period, it would’ve been BETTER to give everyone crossbows than matchlocks.
7. TL: No fucking clue about this
8. ED: This step is not needed AT ALL in reality. Soybeans are harvested dried, being left in the field for the moisture to leach out, to about 13% moisture. As Shizuko worked in her grandfather’s farm before, she should know about this.
9. TN: Japanese pampas grass (Miscanthus sinensis); silver grass; zebra grass