prosperous age

Chapter 1125 1216 The Ming Population Puzzle
"Well, since they can't unite to fight against Oda Nobunaga, then letting the daimyo fight among themselves will have the same effect. They will all die as Japanese anyway."

Wei Guangde immediately adjusted his thinking and spoke to Liu Shouyou.

Knowing that the Japanese daimyos are now afraid of Oda Nobunaga, it means that Oda Nobunaga has actually taken control of Japan.

Although, some people believe that Japan was still in the era of daimyo separatism at that time, and Oda Nobunaga could not be considered to have truly unified the country because many daimyo had not chosen to surrender to him.

But it was different with Toyotomi Hideyoshi who came later. Almost all the Japanese daimyos knelt before him. That was what it meant to unify Japan.

From the great war between the Otomo clan and the Shimazu clan in Satsuma Domain, it can be seen that they did not have the courage to resist Oda Nobunaga, but they still had the confidence to fight each other.

Anyway, the ultimate goal is to weaken Japan, so does it matter who we fight against?
Apparently, no.

"Deliver the message to the people you send out, and try to cause civil unrest in Japan, so that the daimyo will fight each other.

Since they don't dare to fight Oda Nobunaga, let them fight each other. We should also try the King of Japan.

You know the story of the Yidaizhao, right? If we can persuade the King of Japan to participate,

Although later generations generally call him the Emperor, in the Ming Empire, there can only be one emperor, and that is His Majesty the Emperor of the Ming Empire.

From beginning to end, the Emperor of Wa could only be called the King of Wa in the official documents of the Ming Dynasty.

If we want to cause real chaos in Japan, we must muddy the waters.

In order to cause chaos in Japan from top to bottom, we have to start with the nominal king of Japan.

"Oh, I understand."

Liu Shouyou was stunned for a moment, then he understood what Wei Guangde meant. This was a must to cause chaos in Japan. Even if it was not aimed at Oda Nobunaga, it would at least make those daimyos fight each other and kill more Japanese people.

But it’s better this way. After all, the ones who died were Japanese. It’s better to let these Japanese pirates die in the civil war than to cross the ocean to cause trouble in the Ming Dynasty.

"Oh, Lord Wei, I have sent you some of the information about the silver mines in Japan that you were supposed to collect. If you don't check, you won't know that Japan actually has so many mines, and the output is so huge."

At this time, Liu Shouyou seemed to have just remembered it and continued to report.

"tell me the story."

Wei Guangde became interested. He only knew that the output of Iwami Silver Mine in Japan was terrifying. He also knew that Japan had a large number of gold and silver mines, with huge annual output of gold and silver, but he was not clear about the details.

When he mentioned the silver mines in Japan, his purpose was to arouse the Ming Dynasty's interest in Japan, so that it would not completely ignore it because it was considered a remote place.

After knowing about the mineral deposits in Japan, he believed that there would be countless people in the Ming court who were interested in the place. By then, there would be no need for him to show up, as people would have ideas about Japan and would push for sending troops to Japan.

The Ming Dynasty was extremely short of money, otherwise Emperor Wanli would not have sent people all the way to Luzon to look for gold and silver mines.

If Emperor Wanli knew that Japan, the country he was fighting, had these mineral deposits, the Korean War would not have ended so easily.

At that time, it would not be Toyotomi Hideyoshi who expanded the war, but the Ming Dynasty who took the initiative to expand the war and directly spread the war to Japan.

At the very least, the Ming army has proven with their strength that they can defeat the Japanese army.

To attack the Japanese mainland, all we have to do is continue to spend money and send troops in. It is not a difficult task at all.

Hearing Wei Guangde's question, Liu Shouyou was naturally happy to tell the story.

To be honest, he was also shocked when he saw these data. He never expected that Japan's mineral resources were so rich. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they were the gold of the borderland.

“The gold and silver mines in Japan are mainly distributed along the coast of Japan and on nearby islands, and the amount that can be mined is astonishingly large.

The largest silver mine in Japan today is called Iwami Silver Mine, located on Iwami Island. It was discovered and built fifty years ago. It produces up to one million taels of silver and tens of thousands of taels of gold annually.

According to our people, as long as there are enough laborers, production can continue to increase.

And according to the information they had heard, the confirmed mineral reserves of the Iwami Silver Mine were sufficient to support the current production of one million taels for more than a hundred years.

That is a huge mine with hundreds of millions of taels of silver and millions of taels of gold."

Liu Shouyou directly threw a big bomb to Wei Guangde, and he was also shocked when he saw it.

Are you kidding? Such a deserted island is actually so valuable. It really opens my eyes.

“Secondly, there is the Sado Gold Mine, which also produces nearly one million taels of silver a year. It is said that its scale may be smaller than that of Iwami Ginzan, but its gold content is higher and its output is also considerable.

There are many such silver mines in other parts of Japan, but they are not as large in scale. However, the annual output of silver in many of them is around 100,000 or 200,000 taels. Because there are so many, the mining time is also different, especially some old mines are on the verge of exhaustion, so it is really difficult to count.

However, I still asked them to try their best to find all these mineral deposits in Japan. During the previous civil war in Japan, the huge military expenditures of those daimyo were mostly maintained by these mineral deposits, so it was very difficult to obtain information.

These news are what our Jinyiwei spies learned from the outside. The real situation is probably only known by the owners of those mines and those tycoons."

After Liu Shouyou finished speaking, he looked at Wei Guangde with sharp eyes, wondering how surprised Lord Wei would be.

Come to think of it, according to the information we have now, Japan's annual silver production is probably more than the annual revenue of the Ming Empire.

According to his current estimate, at least three million taels of silver can be mined every year.

The Ming Dynasty’s annual silver income is just this amount. Isn’t it scary?
"What is the population of Japan? Have you checked?"

Wei Guangde asked casually.

In fact, he also knew that even the Japanese emperor or shogun could not clearly tell the population size, just like the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty probably did not know how many subjects he had.

The Ministry of Revenue can come up with a number, but everyone knows how inflated this number is.

"this."

Liu Shou didn't notice Wei Guangde's surprised expression, but was instead confused by Wei Guangde's series of questions.

"I know that no one knows the exact number, not even their king."

Wei Guangde spoke up to relieve Liu Shouyou's embarrassment, "I just need an approximate number, it doesn't have to be accurate, it could be several million or tens of millions, this is very important."

Wei Guangde wanted to know the population of Japan, which was actually an estimate of the approximate number of mobilized soldiers in Japan.

It is obviously inaccurate to simply think that the total number of troops that Japan can mobilize is hundreds of thousands. Just because Toyotomi Hideyoshi sent hundreds of thousands of troops to Korea, it cannot be assumed that Japan can only mobilize so many people. According to Wei Guangde's impression, it seems that Japan dared to challenge the Ming Dynasty and send troops to Korea because its small territory carried too many people, said to be tens of millions, which made it difficult for Japan to continue, so it chose to expand outward.

You have to know that the Ming Dynasty had a vast territory, but its population was only 60 million.

The land closest to the Korean Peninsula naturally became a delicacy in the eyes of the Japanese masters.

This is indeed the case. If the Ming Dynasty had not intervened, Korea would have become a territory of Japan in the 17th century, because they were simply unable to resist the attack of hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops.

Liu Shouyou still did not dare to answer Wei Guangde's question, so he could only whisper: "Report to Lord Wei, there is no figure reported to me about the population of Japan, so it is difficult to answer."

Wei Guangde glanced at Liu Shouyou and knew that he was not faking it, so he nodded and said with a smile: "I understand. Pay attention to the intelligence from Japan. When you get the numbers I asked for, report them to me first, no matter how exaggerated they are."

"Yes."

Liu Shouyou answered immediately.

"By the way, does Jinyiwei have the population figures of our Ming Dynasty?"

Wei Guangde suddenly had an idea and asked again.

At first, he thought Liu Shouyou was hesitant because the population figures were too sensitive and he didn't dare to answer.

In fact, the population of the Ming Dynasty in history has always been a mystery. No one can explain it clearly. It can only be said to be very metaphysical.

Wei Guangde could also see the figures reported by the Ministry of Revenue at the end of each year: 60 million, a very ridiculous number.

The Ming Dynasty is a historical dynasty with many unsolved mysteries, such as the mystery of the life and death of Emperor Jianwen, the mystery of the sudden death of Emperor Renzong of Ming Dynasty, the mystery of the bizarre death of Emperor Guangzong of Ming Dynasty, as well as the mystery of the loss of the original copy of "Yongle Encyclopedia", the mystery of the author of "Jin Ping Mei", and even the Wanggongchang explosion during the Tianqi period, which is known as one of the "three major natural mysteries of the world".

But in terms of the scale of the mystery, the duration of the mystery, and the impact it had, the greatest mystery of the Ming Dynasty is the mystery of its true population size.

Some people in the Ming Dynasty said that the official total population was more than 9000 million less than the actual total population.

Among the Chinese and foreign scholars who have studied Ming history in modern times, some said that the number of people missed by official statistics was at least 1 million, while a more bold estimate was that there were nearly 3 million unregistered people at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, various signs indicate that during the long period of more than 200 years of the Ming Dynasty, there was always a huge population that was like "ghosts", outside the official statistics of the court.

If we can solve the population mystery of the middle and late Ming Dynasty, perhaps we can uncover the truth behind the decline of the Ming Empire and the miraculous population growth in the Qing Dynasty.

The official data of the Ming Dynasty, namely "Ming Shilu", recorded the data reported by the Ministry of Households. In the 1381th year of Hongwu (5987) in the early Ming Dynasty, the total population was 1506 million, and in the first year of Zhengde (4680), it was million.

That is to say, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Households, the population change from the early to the middle period of the Ming Dynasty showed a negative population growth of more than 1307 million.

Such a population change trajectory is unconvincing, and people can find no reason to believe that this is the true outcome of the historical development of the Ming Dynasty.

More importantly, the official population records in "Ming Shilu" contain many things that are extremely contrary to human cognition. The most prominent one is the extremely high level of "population reduction" in the Ming Dynasty.

The Ming Shilu recorded that the peak population of the Ming Dynasty was 1479 million in the 7185th year of Chenghua (1506), and the trough population was 4680 million in the first year of Zhengde ().

You have to know that this was just the so-called Hongzhi Restoration.

These two sets of official data show a cruel situation. In just 27 years, the population of the Ming Dynasty decreased by more than 2500 million, a decrease of more than 34%.

Does this drastic population decline make sense?

However, the most incredible situation is that the peak achievement of "population reduction" in the Ming Dynasty seems to be the final work of the Hongzhi Restoration, because the total population recorded in "Ming Shilu" in the 1504th year of Hongzhi (6015) was 1506 million, and this number was drastically reduced to 4680 million in the first year of Zhengde () two years later.

That is to say, of the population loss of more than 27 million in 2500 years, more than 1335 million people disappeared in the last two years of the Hongzhi era.

To achieve a drastic population reduction of more than 2 million in two years, even without taking birth into account, a mortality rate of more than 1335% would be required. However, such a high mortality rate is basically impossible under natural conditions.

During these 27 years, the Ming Dynasty experienced neither large-scale famines or epidemics, nor large-scale executions or wars. Under such circumstances, it was reasonable for the population development trend to be an increase, and there was absolutely no possibility of a large-scale reduction.

In fact, the mystery of the Ming Dynasty’s population was known not only to Wei Guangde, but also to Zhang Juzheng, and even to all the princes and ministers in the court.

It is no wonder that many Chinese and foreign scholars in later generations like to study the population growth rate of ancient China. Their purpose is not to study the fertility of the Chinese people, but to try to solve the mystery of the Ming Dynasty's population.

According to the comparison of population changes in multiple dynasties, it is more convincing that China's total population reached 1790 million in the 3.01th year of Qianlong's reign, i.e. , which is a reflection of China's population changes over the past years.

Most people tend to believe that even at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the population should have exceeded 2 million, taking into account the sharp decline in population caused by war.

That is to say, at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, China should have had a population of 2 million. After more than a hundred years of war and development, the population exceeded 3 million during the Qianlong period.

In fact, Wei Guangde had his own opinion. According to the situation in Bengshan Fort, he knew that at least half of the population of the Ming Dynasty was concealed.

This happened under the premise that his father was relatively conservative and cautious. In other places, where the ties between officials and gentry were closer, the number would be even greater.

The population of the Ming Dynasty is conservatively estimated to be between 1 million and 1.5 million. The reason why the Ministry of Households data shows a population of only million is that it actually only represents the number of people who paid taxes and labor service to the court.

That is, taxpayers.

Yes, the Ming Dynasty only counted the number of taxpayers, but those illegal residents who did not pay taxes and were therefore not considered human beings were naturally not counted.

In fact, according to population calculations, even if Zhu Yuanzhang's policy of not increasing taxes was followed, the per capita head tax would be reduced by at least 60%.

"Have you, the Jinyiwei, also not calculated the numbers in the white books?"

Wei Guangde suddenly asked.

The imperial court only had the yellow book, but the Jinyiwei had a way to get the white book from local officials.

Perhaps, only the white book can somewhat truly reflect the population data of the Ming Dynasty. After all, it is impossible to truly hide from the world. Local people, especially the village elders, will know who are not on the household registration.

Liu Shouyou remained silent and said nothing.

"Ugh."

Wei Guangde sighed, knowing that Liu Shouyou had concerns. The matter was too big, even if Zhang Juzheng showed signs of reform.

"Quietly, send someone to check the local white list. I want to know how many people there are in the Ming Dynasty?"

Wei Guangde gave the order softly.

Although he knew that this number might not be accurate, it was better than looking at the things in the Ministry of Households.