Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 225 Eat two fish for one fish

After staying in Edo Bay for more than a day, Haruno reluctantly led the fleet back to Shimoda Port.

The ship was to be repaired. After the battle, the Chita had suffered some damage, with many oars and oar mounts lost. More than ten other accompanying warships also suffered hull damage and needed to be docked to replace the hull plates and rudders before they could continue their voyage.

Returning victorious, the Wanjin navy was in high spirits, and the Wanjin merchants were also overjoyed. The previously empty ships were now loaded with goods, mainly "defeat reparations" from the Muramasa family. The Muramasa family were not only pirates but also businessmen. Now that Harano was blocking the port demanding compensation, the Muramasa family could not come up with that much money at the moment, so they used goods to settle the debt.

Many of these items were stolen goods, and a considerable amount were local specialties from Musashi and Sagami provinces that the Muramasa family had been selling themselves. However, they are now spoils of war. Haruno distributed some of them directly as rewards for participating in the war, and auctioned off the rest to merchants from Wanjin, thus recouping some of the shipbuilding costs.

Of course, the amount of compensation is not small. Since the Muramasa family lost the battle, they should naturally bear all the costs of this battle. Giving them only this amount of goods is definitely not enough. For the next five years, the Muramasa family will also have to pay Harano 11,500 kan every year as a lesson to teach them not to be so domineering and dare to provoke anyone in the future.

Honestly, this battle was entirely of the Muramasa family's own making. If they hadn't been so arrogant from the start and had simply told Haruno to get lost, the two sides could have had a chance to talk.

The Wanjin fleet, in a grand procession, took another day and night to cross the Miura Peninsula and return to the Izu Peninsula. The Wanjin navy then found a small island to temporarily shelter from the wind and anchor, taking turns to enter the port for repairs and to replenish supplies.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, the merchants of Wanjin, carrying their "spoils of war" and goods acquired from the Hojo family, returned to Wanjin in groups to restock.

The Hojo clan won the battle at Wanjin, wiping out 60-70% of the Satomi clan's naval forces. Naturally, the Hojo clan became even more enthusiastic, with many of their senior retainers rushing to Shimoda Port and even inviting Harano to Odawara Castle.

The implication is that the Hojo family hopes to take their relationship with Wanzu to the next level and become legitimate allies.

Haruno had no interest in this, stating that he had no intention of getting involved in the conflicts in Kanto. He said that the war between the Hojo and Satomi families should be resolved by themselves. However, he did take the opportunity to do some big business with the high-ranking samurai of the Hojo family, including exchanging firearms and gunpowder for warhorses, exchanging copper coins for gold, and further dumping luxury goods in Wanjin.

Yes, there are gold mines on the Izu Peninsula. The Hojo family has been mining them for three or four generations and has accumulated a large amount of gold. Moreover, the Hojo family and the Takeda family are currently allies, and the Takeda family is a major gold producer. The Hojo family can easily obtain "Takeda gold," so the price of gold in this area is relatively low. Harano can use the gold he transports back to improve his "Wanjin paper money" as reserves, and he can also resell it for profit, which is a win-win situation.

Of course, it was only because the Wanjin Navy defeated the Satomi Navy that they became a rising power in this sea area. Otherwise, the Hojo clan would not have chosen to trade with them for gold, a commodity that would definitely make money.

In response, Haruno also made concessions, agreeing to supply the Hojo family with a large quantity of goods over two years at prices below market value, in order to support the Hojo family in launching an attack on the Satomi family on land—he would make concessions first, and then raise prices once the Hojo family's artisans were overwhelmed by dumping.

He didn't go ashore, but stayed on a small island not far from Shimoda Port, constantly communicating with the Hojo family. He stayed there for almost a month, and then joined the merchant ships that had come back from Wanjin—there were more of them than before. The people of Wanjin followed Haruno, and he went to sea. Going to sea is now the most popular activity in Wanjin. Everyone is trying to build, borrow, and rent ships, all to participate in maritime trade.

After all, this stuff is really profitable. It's factory direct sales, and there are absolutely no competitors just by competing on price alone. It's incredibly easy to do business here, a hundred times better than competing with "state-owned workshops" in Wanjin.

It was thanks to Yuanye's willingness to bring them out that they were able to survive; otherwise, they would have been wiped out by Yuanye sooner or later.

Once the shipowners who had returned with their restocked goods, along with the newly joined merchant ships, were gathered together, Haruno ordered them to set sail again, and the magnificent fleet arrived at the Miura Peninsula.

This place is currently under the control of the Hojo family. The stop here is to deliver a batch of goods for the Hojo family, which is an extra service provided by Wanjin. After all, when you're selling, putting the customer first is a basic professional ethic. After stopping here for a day, Wanjin's fleet returned to Edo Bay.

This time, the Satomi family was much more friendly. They opened the port as agreed, exempted ships from various miscellaneous taxes and levies, and also reached a large-scale "government procurement" agreement with Wanjin. They ordered a large number of arquebuses and gunpowder, and also wanted to buy cannons and rockets. It seems that the experience of the power of firearms in Hyakushou Castle has made them yearn for it, and they want to form an arquebus force more than ten years earlier than in history.

Yuanye didn't care. The primitive matchlock gun and the breech-loading cannon weren't exactly classified technologies, so selling them wouldn't be a big deal.

Given the Satomi family's level of craftsmanship, the rockets alone could not be cast to resemble the propellant, making them impossible to imitate. Selling them was no big deal; in fact, because they were "high-tech, unique weapons," they could be sold for a high price—a thousand kan per rocket—and payment was only accepted in gold and silver.

Yes, there are silver mines on the Boso Peninsula, and the Satomi family has been mining them for generations. They have a lot of silver in their hands. The price of silver is much lower than in other regions, and silver is also a hard currency. It can be taken back as paper money reserves, and it is also very easy to resell. The Nanban people are coming soon. They like silver, and at the same time, smugglers from the Ming Dynasty also like silver.

The Satomi clan is under a lot of pressure. After the Hojo clan joined the "Three Kingdoms Alliance," they have been expanding in the Kanto region with the support of the Imagawa and Takeda clans. Under this pressure, the Satomi clan is more generous than the Hojo clan. After some bargaining, they are actually willing to buy expensive rockets in silver to bomb the Hojo clan. They even want to form an alliance with the Wanjin clan or pay to hire the Wanjin army to fight for them.

Haruno reiterated his stance of having no intention of intervening in the Kanto conflict, but he did send a small squad of internal guard officers to the Satomi clan as instructors to train their arquebusiers and teach them how to fire rockets, so as to prevent the Satomi clan from suffering a too-fast defeat and for Wanjin from losing a good customer. If he remembered correctly, in the Second Battle of Kokufutai a year or two later, the Satomi clan seemed to have suffered a crushing defeat and never recovered, becoming the target of constant attacks from the Hojo clan.

That's not good. It's not a good thing for one family to be dominant. We need to help the Satomi family survive, at least to give them the ability to hold onto their current territory.

Upon entering the sea, Haruno unexpectedly mastered the "stirring stick" technique without any instruction, and found it quite interesting to stir things up. It's fortunate that this is in medieval Japan; otherwise, if it were in the modern era, he would definitely be widely welcomed.

…………

Haruno led the Wanjin fleet to cook fish two ways, first at the Hojo family's place and then at the Rijo family's place. Once the market here opened up and all the orders were signed, they headed east along the coastline again.

Next stop: the Satake family.

The Satake family is located on the "chest of the seahorse" or the "lower end of the seahorse's long neck," where the coastline is relatively smooth and there are no protruding peninsulas. The port quality is also mediocre; the three larger ports are about the same size as Shinwanjin, and can only accommodate about twenty or thirty ships at most, so trade is not very prosperous.

This area is where the Kanto and Tohoku regions of Japan meet. At that time, the development level was not high. After all, the general impression of Kanto at that time was that it was a wild and undeveloped place. Further east, the situation could only get worse.

But the Satake family is quite interesting; they were famous "balance beam masters" during Japan's Sengoku period.

For example, the newly appointed head of the clan, Yoshishige Taketake—who succeeded to the throne the year after the Battle of Okehazama—has engaged in thirty-seven political marriages throughout his life. He married a daughter of the Uesugi family, married his daughter to the Satomi family, and sent his son to the Ashina family as an adopted son. In short, he used all his relatives and friends, leaving no one out. He was related to all his neighbors and had good relationships with them.

After Oda Nobunaga rose to power, he became universally disliked, and various daimyo organized an "Oda encirclement" to suppress him. The Satake clan did not participate; instead, they actively applied for official positions in the imperial court, indirectly aligning themselves with Oda Nobunaga. As a result, Oda Nobunaga had a good impression of them and never thought of dealing with them, allowing them to safely survive this ordeal.

After Oda Nobunaga died, he actively expressed goodwill to Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu, but still escaped punishment. During the Battle of Sekigahara, he ostensibly joined the Western Army, but in reality remained completely inactive, even more so than an old tortoise. Although he was eventually demoted to Akita, he achieved a rare feat: becoming one of only three daimyo in the Sengoku period of Japan whose titles were never changed.

In chaotic times, being able to preserve one's family name and heritage is considered a great success, and one's fate is better than that of 99% of famous families.

At the same time, the Satake family is not fond of martial arts; at most, they will help their allies fight.

For example, the Satake family was an ally of the Satomi family. In the first Battle of Kokufutai, the Satomi family was able to defeat the Hojo family in a rout, and the Satake family helped a lot. However, the Satake family rarely launched wars directly. Even when they were not on good terms with the one-eyed man of the Date family, it was the Date family that came south to beat them first, and they only retaliated passively.

Since they were not fond of military affairs, the Satake family naturally promoted "civil administration." The Yangming School of thought from China was introduced to Japan by the Satake family. They even invited Zhu Shunshui, a scholar from the Ming Dynasty, to give lectures. In addition, the Satake family later presided over the compilation of the "Great History of Japan," which put forward the concept of "respecting the emperor and expelling the barbarians," providing core theoretical support for the anti-shogunate movement in Japan in later generations.

In short, the Satake clan was considered moderate in this era. They had a large territory, four or five times the size of Oda Nobunaga's territory at the time, but they had little desire for expansion and were mostly inactive. They were very easy to talk to, mainly because they were poor. The Satake clan had a large territory, but they were very poor.

Haruno didn't act arrogantly towards this relatively unassailable daimyo, after all, harmony brings wealth. He drove all the way to Ota Port near the core territory of the Satake family, stopped far out at sea, and sent an envoy to deliver a letter requesting trade.

The Satake family's style was indeed far from being arrogant and domineering. They sent envoys to return the visit and basically agreed to all of Haruno's demands—to open the port for Wanjin merchant ships to trade, to reduce most of the unreasonable taxes and fees for these merchant ships out of respect for Haruno's strength, and to guarantee the personal and property safety of Wanjin merchants along the Satake family's coastline.

However, that was the end of it. Wanjin merchants were not allowed to venture deep into the Satake family's territory, and their activities were limited to the areas surrounding the three major ports. At the same time, the Satake family had no intention of winning over Haruno or forming an alliance with him, and simply treated him as an ordinary sea merchant.

Yuan Ye didn't mind, since he had achieved his goal. As long as there was a place to absorb Wanjin's future excess production capacity, it didn't matter whether customers were enthusiastic or not.

Of course, the Satake family is so easy to talk to partly because of the benefits brought by Wanzu's defeat of Satomi's navy; powerful people are respected wherever they go.

The people of Wanjin now have the right to freely navigate the waters east of the Seto Inland Sea, and any daimyo who wants to refuse the deal should think twice.

(End of this chapter)