The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 246: Sustainability: Fishing Out the Pond
Tian Yiming originally thought that Tokugawa Jiyasu would be even more furious when he saw his own Mito Castle being destroyed.

As a result, when Tokugawa Jiyasu was pulled out this time, looking at the battlefield with continuous artillery fire in front of him and Mito Castle with fire everywhere, Tokugawa Jiyasu had no reaction at all.

The guards who were holding Tokugawa Jibao let go of his hands, and Tokugawa Jibao himself collapsed to the ground.

Tian Yiming asked someone to take the cloth out of Tokugawa Jibao's mouth. He no longer screamed heart-wrenchingly, but just stared at the battlefield without saying a word.

Tian Yiming vaguely guessed why he reacted this way, so he deliberately asked him with a smile:

"What's wrong, Lord Mito? You're not talking now?"

Tokugawa Jibao was stunned for half a second:
"Why does the Ming Dynasty have such great malice towards Japan? Why does it have such great malice towards my Mito Domain?"

Tian Yiming found this question puzzling:
"Where is the malice? The Ming Dynasty is willing to help Japan and clean up the parasites of you on the Japanese archipelago. This is obviously a great kindness!"

Tokugawa Jiyasu immediately said:
"Using so many terrifying artillery to destroy a small Mito Domain and eliminate the core of my Mito School, isn't this a huge malice?"

Tian Yiming was stunned for a moment:
"Do you think the Ming Dynasty values ​​you? Or even hates you? Is that why they specially dispatched artillery to bombard Mito Domain?"

Tokugawa Jibao immediately asked back:

"Is not it?"

Tian Yiming couldn't help laughing:

"Ha...hahaha...you are being overly self-conscious...

"His Majesty the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince have no idea where the Mito Domain is.

"Is this a lot of artillery? This is just the daily output of the Ming Australian Artillery Factory.

"This isn't even the most artillery that I, as a division commander, can directly mobilize."

Tokugawa Jiyasu couldn't believe it:

"That's impossible! With dozens of them a day, wouldn't that mean they can produce tens of thousands a year?

"How could there be so many of these terrifying artillery pieces? You are just bluffing!"

Tian Yiming was speechless and didn't bother to explain to him. He shook his head in disappointment and said:

"As a descendant of the wisest of the Tokugawa Gosanke, Tokugawa Mitsukuni, you should be the most prestigious and learned person in Japan.

"In the end, you are still just a frog in a well, and you don't realize how big the world is. Let alone other Japanese people.

"As long as the Japanese remain in this narrow archipelago, they will always remain a group of frogs in a well."

Tian Yiming no longer paid attention to Tokugawa Jiyasu and continued to command subsequent battles.

Since the purpose of this battle was to destroy, the artillery destroyed the main buildings, and after setting fires everywhere in the city, the attacking forces began to withdraw gradually.

Then the two samurai divisions continued to surround Mito Castle, eliminating or capturing the Mito samurai who escaped from it.

When the Mito samurai came out, they were shot dead without surrendering immediately.

Mito Castle was reduced to ruins in the melee, and more than half of the 5,000 samurai of the Mito Tokugawa family died directly in the fire and melee.

Only less than two thousand people escaped from the castle, and most of them were wiped out by the besieging samurai divisions.

In the end, only more than 300 samurai from Mito Domain were successfully captured.

On the side of the Japanese Kingdom's Samurai Division, more than 200 people died in the melee, and more than 300 people were injured to varying degrees.

The battle of the castle was over, and the liquidation of the Mito domain was basically over.

Members of the samurai division who had not previously participated in the siege were responsible for searching and controlling the residential areas outside Mito Castle.

All members of Mito samurai families were driven out.

Tian Yiming arranged a troop to gather more than 300 surviving captives and the samurai outside the Mito Domain Castle, and escorted them to the Edo dock area to take a ship to Africa.

The samurai group of Mito Domain was collectively wiped out in this battle, and the direct fighting in Mito Domain itself was basically over.

Although there are still several small branch towns and settlements where farmers and merchants gather, they are no longer important in terms of combat.

The next task of the Ming Dynasty’s garrison in Japan is how to control this area.

Under normal circumstances, in a full-scale war environment, after taking over a new area, it is best not to change any local systems.

It is just replacing the original rulers with new ones and trying to keep the social structure of the original area unchanged as much as possible.

Avoid inadvertently undermining the interests of any group, thereby causing chaos and rebellion.

However, after the Ming Dynasty's garrison in Japan took over Japan's feudal domains, it was unable to completely maintain the original system unchanged.

Because the social system, especially the tax system, of the Ming Dynasty was very different from that of Japan.

The Ming Dynasty was a centralized divine empire system.

Taxes were paid by farmers and collected by local government offices under the remote control of the central government. After receiving the taxes, the local government offices would withhold a portion and hand over a portion to the central government.

The imperial court and government offices then used the taxes to pay officials' salaries and other court expenses, and finally gave a portion of it to the emperor.

But before the King of Wu's Northern Expedition, most of the lower-class farmers were not necessarily landlords. After paying taxes as tenants, they also had to pay rent to the landlords.

In other words, the products of the land were divided among farmers, landlords, local government offices, the central court, and the emperor.

There are proportional taxes on grain paid directly, in-kind taxes on handicrafts such as silk, and small changes in silver after conversion. There may also be various types of labor and levies.

In other words, it is very complicated.

Regional Japan was highly feudal.

The Tokugawa shogunate in Edo implemented the "one country, one castle" order, which limited the number of castles in local feudal domains and forced the feudal domain landlords of a country to concentrate in one place.

At the same time, the registration of vassal towns that did not meet the sufficient standards was restricted, and they could only build open-style houses without courtyard walls. This slightly reduced the degree of feudalization.

But the land system is still feudal.

Apart from city dwellers such as merchants and craftsmen, all military families and aristocrats were landowners.

The vast majority of landowners operate and manage their own land.

The vast majority of land is managed by the corresponding lord.

The vast majority of farmers are dependent on the land they cultivate and on the corresponding landowners.

The vast majority of land taxes are paid directly to the corresponding land lords by the farmers who are responsible for cultivating the land.

The vast majority of taxes are in the form of food, namely rice and wheat.

In other words, the profit distribution relationship in this system is extremely simple.

Simplicity means high efficiency, which means that the rulers' ability to extract land revenue will be very close to the theoretical limit.

Japan's traditional tax ratio is half and half.

According to the Ming Dynasty, 50% should be handed over and 50% should be kept by the Ming Dynasty.

However, there is often a situation where 60% of the profits are handed over to the public and 40% are kept by the farmers themselves.

On the contrary, if the lord only collected 40% out of the four dukes and six commoners, it would be considered a benevolent policy.

In some outrageous places, there have been strange situations where there are eight officials and two civilians, with 80% of the income being handed over to the government and 20% being left for the farmers.

Most farmers cannot eat the rice and wheat they grow themselves, and have to eat miscellaneous grains and wild vegetables.

In addition, Japan is mountainous and has abundant rainfall, so farmers can make a living by relying on methods other than producing staple food from the land.

At the same time, the high tax rates collected by Japanese feudal lords did not mean that the peasants only had to pay these taxes and that was it; they still had to work for the lords.

Farmers in areas where the feudal system is highly developed can basically only barely survive.

The smaller the area under the lord's direct jurisdiction, the more highly refined the operations can be, allowing the peasants to be squeezed out of as much output as possible without dying.

The Japanese samurai group also exploited the lower classes within its own ranks.

Poorer samurai could have two meals a day, with a rice ball and a pickled plum as one meal.

The poorer daimyo would order the poor samurai set meal with a small addition of salted fish.

Excluding Hokkaido, Japan's arable land area is only three million hectares, less than half of Shandong Province.

But before the agricultural and industrial revolutions, the country was able to support a population of 30 million by relying on this kind of "sustainable fishing".

During the Wanli period, when Japan invaded Korea, Korean farmers could not stand the oppression of the Korean yangban nobles, so they welcomed the Japanese with food and drink.

After the Japanese arrived, they were very moved and decided to implement the benevolent policy of four officials and six people throughout Korea.

So the Korean peasants rebelled again to welcome the Ming Dynasty.

On the other hand, if Tian Yiming wanted to maintain the original social and taxation system by eradicating the original samurai system of Mito Domain, he would have to create the same number of feudal lords.

Soldiers were transformed into land lords, who were specifically responsible for a small amount of land and farmers, and continued to engage in sustainable exploitation.

Tian Yiming obviously couldn't do that, and the Ming Dynasty would not allow such a thing.

Wouldn’t it be a waste of time for Ming Dynasty to come here?

It was impossible for Tian Yiming to leave thousands of soldiers in every fief.

Therefore, after the Ming Dynasty’s garrison in Japan took over, the social and taxation systems in Mito Domain and other places had to be changed.

But change also requires methods and approaches.

If the tax rate is directly reduced to one public and nine private citizens, and at the same time, it is announced that farmers will cooperate in the land inventory, the land will be distributed to farmers, and they will be given land deeds.

The Japanese farmers would not believe it and would probably think it was a scam aimed at finding the private land they had cultivated in the mountains.

If the government distributes land directly to them, they will instinctively think that this means they will be made warriors.

Before launching the operation, Tian Yiming introduced the situation in Japan to other Ming military officers and senior civil servants such as Shen Chu.

After discussion, everyone thought that after clearing out Japan's samurai system, it would be most appropriate to directly change to the military settlement and agricultural company system.

However, some localized adjustments need to be made in external announcements.

It was announced to Japanese farmers that all the lands originally owned by the shogun, daimyo, and samurai would now belong to the Ming emperor.

It was announced that all farmers had to farm for the Ming Emperor, and that according to Japanese tradition, the profits from farming would be split equally between the court and the farmers, with half handed over and the other half kept for themselves.

But no more things were required of ordinary farmers, and no more unpaid dispatches and corvee were arranged for them.

However, the 50% of grain that was handed over would not be sent to the Ming mainland. Japan is a mountainous country with a small land area, and the price of grain is much higher than that in the Ming mainland.

Transporting grain from Japan to the Ming mainland is a pure losing business.

Fifty percent of the food received must be processed in Japan.

Twenty percent of it was sold to Japanese town residents and merchants in exchange for gold and silver, half was sent back to the Ming mainland and delivered to the capital, and the other half was left to the corps stationed in Japan as officer salaries.

The remaining 30% of the food was left in the local garrison in the form of physical goods and used to pay the salaries of the Japanese garrison's servants.

Every family arranged a young man to serve as a servant soldier.

The actual tax ratio was eventually formed as two for the public and eight for the civilians, but the young and strong among the civilians had to receive militia-level training and at the same time undertake engineering construction tasks of the garrisons.

(End of this chapter)