Chapter 15 - 10 Nagano Castle

Chapter 15 - 10 Nagano CastleNagano Castle is a Ping Mountain City (a castle built on hills), not as beautiful as the famous castles of Japan's Warring States known in later generations. It is built with stone and wood as the foundation, soil as walls, and is painted with white plaster which has become somewhat mottled with age, looking a bit worn out. It also lacks the beautiful Tenshu Tower seen in scenic pictures of later generations of Japan. Overall, it is unremarkable with no trace of the central stronghold that it would become in later generations of Japan's Guanzhong area. Fortunately, Owari Province is a key transportation hub in Middle Ages Japan, serving as the critical overland route connecting Kyoto, Kaido Town, Shimazu, Atsuta, and Jumogawa along this road of commercial and cultural prosperity. It is the best, shortest, and safest land route. Therefore, even though Owari Province itself doesn't have any famous specialties, and only the pottery and folk textiles are slightly better, Nagano Castle is still very prosperous, with a large area for the town, and many shops and travelers. The streets are paved with gravel, and people from the roadside shops occasionally use wooden ladles to sprinkle water to prevent dust, creating a fairly decent trade environment. The buildings are similar to farmhouses, all built with pillars on flat ground, comprising two parts: earth spaces and earth seats. However, the earth seats are much more refined than those in farmhouses. Most have wooden floors, and a few even have woven tatami mats with patterns made from proper lamp wick grass. The earth space faces the road and is the business section. Generally, the earth space's panel windows are lowered outward to serve as counters, displaying samples to attract customers or listing product names and prices. If customers are interested, they can enter the earth space to closely examine the goods. The manager or clerk will also serve enthusiastically, and important customers will even be invited into the earth seat and served tea. The commercial prosperity is even better than anticipated by the wilderness. He walks like a horse rider, glancing at the shop names ("store names") and cloth banners (advertisements) along the way. He sees Whale Houses (brothels that also serve as bars, with some even having casinos), as well as bathhouses with banners reading "Kyoto steam" and "water steam health care." Additionally, he notices many ordinary shops like rice stores, blacksmith shops, weaving shops (cloth stores), and cooking houses. There are also many street performers—monkey trainers, storytellers, cockfighting gamblers, dancers showcasing their talents, and puppet shows, making the atmosphere very lively. He even sees a public toilet, which is at least five hundred years ahead of India in this regard. The wilderness roams the town, and for a moment, it feels as if he's seeing a scene from the Song Dynasty. If it weren't for the fact that most of the passersby resemble the warrior Lang faction at three-foot height, it would truly seem like a replication of the market scene from the Song Dynasty city and town as depicted in books. However, since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Japan has been fervently absorbing the essence of Huaxia culture, so it's no surprise to encounter such a scene. The wilderness roughly strolls through the town, sets aside thoughts of nostalgia, and begins to attend to his own affairs. He is here to sell some items, to solve his food problem for the time being and prevent the Yayoi family from going straight to bankruptcy. But he isn't in a rush and quickly focuses his attention on market prices—if he wants to sell things, he has to negotiate prices and can't just make things up. Here, copper coins are used, and more than eighty percent of them are Huaxia copper coins. Among them, the most commonly used are the Yongle Coins from the Ming Dynasty, followed by the reasonably preserved Song Coins, Tang Coins, and other Ming Coins. Next are the Quanzhou Coins (a general term for imported privately minted coins), and lastly, Japan-produced copper coins from unknown origins of poor quality. Finally, there are tin and iron coins with indistinguishable materials. The first two are generally called "good coins," and the others are "evil coins," with conversion rates being... Based on the wilderness's observations and indirect questioning, "good coins" equate to one thousand wen per one proper kan (also called one foot kan, generally not used in civil transactions), eight hundred forty wen per one market kan (fluctuating with the market, pegged to the silver price), and one hundred wen per one bolt, which can be exchanged for three to four times the "evil coins." If it's among the "evil coins," like tin and iron coins that break with some force, it might conservatively be exchanged for six to seven times. He hasn't seen anyone using silver or gold, which are likely for large transactions and aren't commonly used in daily market exchanges, but they can be exchanged. At one street corner, he finds a "Ginza" where customers can exchange silver certificates, gold certificates, or broken silver and gold sand for various copper coins, but not the reverse. Whether this counts as an ancient bank is unclear. The exchange rate is roughly one tael of gold for 40-50 coins of silver, depending on purity; one tael of silver can be exchanged for about 840 wen of Yongle Coins, which is approximately one market kan. It still depends on purity, as inferior silver surely wouldn't fetch 840 wen. Regarding prices... Using Yongle Coins as a standard, a stone of brown rice in the rice shop costs eight hundred six wen, polished rice costs one kan two hundred twenty wen per stone, and the price of a stone of beans varies by type: four hundred fifty wen for black beans, four hundred ninety wen for yellow beans, five hundred fifty wen for green beans, and seven hundred wen for red beans. Sёarch* The NôᴠelFirё.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. Soba is cheaper, with the price of a stone being comparable to black beans and yellow beans, mostly ranging from four hundred to five hundred wen depending on quality, while aged mixed grains with bran and sand are even cheaper, costing just over three hundred wen per stone. Regarding how much a stone is, it here refers to shi (shi), a unit of volume originally referring to a container for holding grain. In ancient times, it was very difficult to measure weight accurately, especially in the countryside, so the Huaxia people habitually used volume to replace weight, chiseling stone according to size and filling it up to count as a "shi." Units such as "two thousand shi" from the Han Dynasty originated from this practice. As to why it's now read as "dan," it's because of Zhu Yuanzhang. He was from Fengyang, and in the Fengyang dialect, "shi" equates to "dan." He pronounced it as "dan," and his officials probably didn't dare to say, "Your Majesty, what are you rambling about? As an emperor, you should speak elegantly. Do you still consider yourself a country bumpkin?" lest they prematurely enjoy the skinned alive treatment, so from the reign of Hongwu onwards, this word was pronounced as "dan." Not to digress, but Japan also adopted the Han character "shi" as a unit of volume in ancient times, though the size and volume changed multiple times. Now, in the late Muromachi Shogunate era, it was estimated that one "shi" approximately equals a little over 120 kilograms in modern terms, quite a weight for one person to carry. Of course, the weight was not very accurate. 1 "shi" equals 10 "dou," 1 "dou" equals 10 "sheng," and 1 "sheng" equals 10 "ge." He estimated the weights of 1 "dou" and 1 "sheng," and the feeling in his hands suggested it was roughly accurate. This should be about right. He remembered seeing information at the Nagoya City Museum that a foot soldier in Japan's Warring States Period typically had a daily ration of 5 "ge" of unpolished rice, where 1 "ge" equals over 120 grams, and 5 "ge" is equivalent to over 600 grams in modern terms, more than a jin of staple food, which should ensure a certain level of physical activity—cooking rice causes it to expand and become heavier, especially since at this time, the Japanese usually used a dry method to cook rice, making the weight even more, and foot soldiers did not solely eat rice; they were also provided with condiments, pickled vegetables, dried radishes, dried taro, and miso, among others, and would scavenge for chickens or ducks during marches as supplementary food, barely able to fill their stomachs. Moreover, the 5 "ge" was the ration during routine training, while during wartime, daily rice distribution was 10 "ge," sometimes supplemented with wine and other side dishes. So calculating from this, having a bit over two "shi" of rice a year would suffice for survival, taking into account an additional patient, totaling four "shi" of rice, so he'd only need more than three strings of Yongle Coins to be temporarily worry-free? If he desired a better quality of life, he could at most double that, with six or seven strings of coins being enough to sustain a year? Simpler than imagined... Having played "Taiko 2" before, Harano thought he would have to shell out a thousand strings just to consider it money. He relaxed slightly, and under the curious gaze of the clerk at the rice shop, he walked out again, taking a look at the roadside stalls. Some were itinerant merchants selling needles, threads, and scraps, while others were nearby villagers, hunters, and fishermen selling mountain and water products. Crucian carp and loaches were 1 wen for two, carp the length of a forearm were about 10 wen, a tattered wolf pelt was 150 wen, an unrecognizable large bird was sold for 15 wen (its large feathers had been plucked out and were sold separately), a small bamboo basket of dried mushrooms was 25 wen with a large piece of dried bamboo shoot thrown in. Hmm, the dried bamboo shoots at this time of year, likely last year's stock? There was also miscellaneous trinkets from peddlers. Various sewing threads were around 10 wen, bamboo tube fire starters for 5 wen (with small holes drilled on the bottom side of the bamboo tube, containing grass paper, cotton, and sulfur, which smoldered for a day or two when the lid was closed, igniting with a blow), copper ear spoons for 5 wen, along with some oddities. Such as roofing-shaped headscarves woven from ramie stems, veiled conical hats made from fine bamboo strips, boot-shaped straw overshoes, four-tie grass sandals, six-tie grass sandals, blessing grass shoes, un-tied sock-like messy grass shoes, thick and high-stilt gaudy footwear made from coarse grass ropes, short heel-less straw shoes, and wooden clogs made with grass ropes, mostly priced between 5 to 20 wen. Besides these peculiar everyday items, there were also silver-plated copper bangles, silver-plated copper magatama beads, cut glass, copper hairpins, wooden hair clips, wooden hairpins, and other small accessories, generally priced from a dozen to over a hundred wen, and even a vendor selling sets of wooden combs, several packed in a lacquered box carved with the full set of the Seven Lucky Gods motifs, serving as both head nit combs and daily hair care instruments, priced at three hundred and fifty wen for the whole box. Additionally, Harano spotted a complete set of tooth dyeing tools, including a copper bowl, a copper pot for boiling dye, a copper box for storing five-flavor ink, and a copper ear rinse for mouthwash, all with uniform motifs, lightweight, decent, antique-looking and potentially an antique, priced at five strings, though the seller looked like an old farmer, making Harano suspect it to be stolen goods or burial items. The horse market was not within the town, supposedly ordered to be moved by the City Lord for some reason, yet Harano casually asked, and a vendor told him a regular packhorse, evaluating its teeth, was about two strings, roughly equivalent to the entire annual income of an ordinary Lang Faction member—assuming he was an orphan without a wife and children, and could sell off all the rations provided by the Patriarch, then he could afford a regular packhorse after a year of work. Packhorses were quite cheap, but as for war and famous horses, it was uncertain, ranging from a dozen to several hundred strings, which most people need not think about. With an understanding of the current prices, Harano set his base price, then sought out an "Earth Store" and went inside.