The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 571: Shangluo, Shangluo

"What a hearty battle!"

Tokugawa Ieharu was a little upset. He stood on the five-story pagoda of the Sunjoin-in Temple of Kanyo-ji Temple on Choyozan Mountain in Osaka, and sighed neurotically.

The Shonin-in Temple of Kanyosan Temple was the Tennoji Temple in Osaka in later generations. However, due to continuous disasters, it was still very dilapidated at that time.

The key to Tokugawa Ieharu's defense being so broken was precisely that the battle never started. The Chinese Zhendong Army did not even go through Hiroshima and was focused on occupying Kyushu.

Tokugawa Ieharu did not dare to go to Hiroshima because he had realized in the past few months that commanding 100,000 people in battle was not something he could handle.

During these months, Tokugawa Ieharu vaguely felt that he knew where the troops were deployed, and that he could barely command only about 30,000 to 40,000 people.

He didn't know where the rest of the troops were deployed, who was in charge, how the military supplies were implemented, or even whether they were implemented.

It was also because of this understanding that Tokugawa Ieharu became increasingly afraid to go west. He knew that if he was defeated in the war, the Tokugawa family's empire would probably be overthrown.

Therefore, after arriving in Osaka in the eighth month of the lunar calendar, the shogunate army stopped moving forward. Tokugawa Ieharu only sent 1,500 soldiers from the Aizu clan and 800 soldiers from the Sanada clan's Matsushiro clan to the Hiroshima clan to assist in the garrison.

It dragged on until September, when the Hiroshima clan, which was originally terrified and on the front line, stopped making trouble because the Chinese Zhendong Army did not come to attack after fighting near Kyushu.

This is the exhilarating battle that Tokugawa Ieharu mentioned. It was indeed an exhilarating battle, but it never happened at all. The exhilarating battle only manifested itself in the consumption of military rations.

After Tokugawa Ieharu sighed, he stopped there, but the strange confrontation continued. The strategic strength of both sides was not exaggerated and was absolutely amazing.

February 1784, 2. The Lantern Festival, the 5th day of the first lunar month, was the ninth year of the Guangzhong reign of the Great Yu Emperor (formerly the th year of the Qianlong reign).

Another four months passed. The Zhendong Army seemed to be quiet, but in fact, Reinstein was very busy. He had stockpiled 600,000 shi of grain during the confrontation over the past six months.

The pioneering fleet of the Fuxing Company controlled by Ye Mingyue began to expand its shipping capacity frantically, and in the past six months, it has moved three families of the Ryukyu Shuri clan to Jiaxi Prefecture (West Borneo).

At the same time, more than 10,000 Ryukyu people were sold as slaves to Jiasai Prefecture and Nanjie Island (Java Island), which was the best practice for the future large-scale population movement in Japan.

And unlike the shogunate which had little confidence, the entire China, including the Kyushu region and the Japanese daimyo, knew that China was bound to win.

Because the gap between the two sides was so huge, the shogunate's performance was really poor.

The most obvious reaction was in the Nanyang labor market.

Originally, a docile Thai Ping (Siamese) male slave was worth 35 silver dollars, and a female slave was worth 15 silver dollars. Now, the price has dropped to 20 silver dollars for male slaves and 8 silver dollars for female slaves, and is still falling.

Originally, if a Chinese in Southeast Asia wanted to marry a Chinese woman, the cost of a mixed-race Chinese woman from Southeast Asia, including the betrothal gift and wedding, would be at least fifty silver dollars.

To marry one from the mainland, it would cost at least eighty-five silver dollars for a round trip.

Many young Chinese men in Southeast Asia, even if they add up all their assets, they still cannot borrow enough money to get married.

As for those who were born in Nanyang, they were more adapted to the Nanyang climate, and were not mixed-race indigenous women, that is, non-Nyonya women. The marriage fee was only thirty or forty silver dollars.

But they basically do not circulate in the external marriage market, but are consumed within large families and among each other.

The few that do come out are extremely picky. Farmers and small vendors, don't even think about it, because they won't marry you.

When the news of the eastern expedition to Japan came, especially after comprehensively assessing the current situation, the cost of the wedding was cut in half.

The current market price of Nyonya has reached thirty silver dollars.

As for marrying someone in the mainland, as long as you actually have land and estates in Southeast Asia and can provide proof, then, apart from the travel expenses, you only need to buy the woman a set of gold and silver jewelry and give her ten silver dollars, and then you can take her away.

Even the market value of Chinese women in Nanyang, where the market is monopolized by big families and large groups, has begun to decline.

Because Henv and Chaonv are the best substitutes for Huanv nowadays. Apart from the language barrier, there is basically no impact.

In fact, language barriers also existed widely among Chinese people at that time.

People from Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi and eastern Zhejiang often speak different languages in the same county. In addition, a large number of Chinese from Anhui, Nanjing and Han were brought back. Not counting grammar, and only considering the difference in basic daily vocabulary between them, the difference is not much different from that between Japan and South Korea.

In some words, the pronunciation of Korean and Cantonese is even more similar than that of Cantonese and the dialect of Wenzhou in eastern Zhejiang.

"Land prices in Nanyang have also risen. An acre of cultivated land on Nanji Island has risen to four silver dollars, and raw land, which was worthless before, now costs eight cents of silver.

The value of a hundred-acre estate in Jiaxi Prefecture that can grow spices has increased from one hundred and sixty-five silver dollars to two hundred and twenty silver dollars.”

The prices of marriage and serfs fell rapidly, but the price of land rose rapidly. The price of land increased everywhere because there would soon be more stable serfs available to cultivate the land.

"That's great, hahahaha. This year when I go home, I can also get a carriage with three white horses, and they must be pulled by folded-ear horses."

Li Changgeng's mouth was grinning. In order to revitalize the market economy, except for the prohibition of owning more than five horses, other restrictions were not so strict.

Hearing Li Changgeng's straightforward shout, the officers in the room were also very happy.

As the executors of the war, the Zhendong Army, especially the officers and even the soldiers of the main force, the Beijing Camp Liwei Army, had bought a large amount of land in Southeast Asia in advance.

Many officers also bought manors, and this time the prices have risen by more than 50%, and they have all made a fortune.

"Mr. Ye, you've worked so hard. The Kumamoto clan can mobilize at least 50,000 people to go to Southeast Asia this time, and there will be more in the future."

The lord of Kumamoto Domain, Hosokawa Shigetaka, was also smiling from ear to ear. He also bought a lot of land in Southeast Asia. Although he obtained it from officers of the Zhendong Army, he still made a lot of money.

More importantly, as a local tyrant, the Kumamoto clan controlled a large population and could also plunder farmers on Shikoku Island and sell them to Southeast Asia.

With the current booming market, the Kumamoto clan is expected to earn over 500,000 silver dollars just from selling personnel. Not only will their financial problems be immediately resolved, but they'll even have a substantial surplus. This is also the biggest reason why the Zhendong Army has received such strong support on Kyushu Island: it's beneficial.

Even the warriors from Kyushu Island have begun to make suggestions and request to march eastward.

There are so many people on the Osaka Plain and the Mino Plain. If we catch them all and sell them as piglets, how much would they sell for?
Only a fool would not participate in this kind of sure-win way to get rich.

"Get on board, get on board!" Cheers were also heard outside. It seemed that the news of rising land prices brought by the South China Sea ship had also spread to the middle and lower-level warriors outside.

In the Meirinkan in Hagi Castle, a large number of mid-level samurai from various feudal domains, mainly from Kyushu, were having a heated discussion.

The relationship between Japan and China is very different from what the public imagines.

The most obvious manifestation is that, except for the past two hundred years, the relationship between Japan and China is not close.

This is not only emotionally, but also culturally.

It can be said that after the end of the trend of Japanese envoys to Tang Dynasty, Japan basically had little relationship with China. They did develop their own characteristics based on the seemingly plausible culture learned from the envoys to Tang Dynasty.

Although this feature is very rubbish, it is indeed their own thing.

The later Japanese culture of Wakoku, which can only be recognized by East Asians and seems no different from Chinese culture to foreigners, was actually reshaped at this time, that is, in the two hundred years after Jiashen.

To make a simple analogy, the culture of Japan, which developed after the end of the Tang Dynasty missions, is an isolated island culture that is covered with the cultural characteristics of the Tang Dynasty, but is actually very barbaric, weird, remote and backward.

Even though they fought a war with the Ming Dynasty in Korea, many ronin went out to sea and formed pirates with the Chinese to plunder the southeast of the Ming Dynasty, but cultural exchanges were still very rare.

During this period, the Japanese people, who had accepted Chinese culture and seemed somewhat civilized, quickly regressed to become extremely backward.

After the Jiashen Incident, a large number of intellectuals in the late Ming Dynasty refused to submit to the Qing Dynasty and followed the route opened up by Fujian merchants to cross the sea to Japan.

It was only after they arrived that they brought advanced culture to Japan.

It was also at this time that Confucianism, the representative of Chinese culture, was truly introduced to Japan. Before this, Confucianism had little foundation in Japan.

At this time, Confucianism on the mainland had been around for nearly a thousand years, and its theory had basically matured. Any Japanese samurai could draw nourishment from Confucianism on the mainland and apply it.

For example, the Kanto region was the orthodox Mito-han school, which interpreted the policy of "Respecting the Emperor and Expelling the Barbarians" as the foundation of the shogunate's rule over Japan.

The Kansai region was dominated by the schools of thought that respected the emperor and expelled foreigners, which were considered heterodox, and the Han and Tang ancient school, which advocated learning from the ancient Confucian scholars of the Han and Tang dynasties in China.

What Satsuma learned was Zhu Xi's "Jinsilu", which was a record of painful reflection.

The speaker at Meirinkan today was Koga Seisato, a samurai from the Hizen domain of the recently defeated Nabeshima clan. He actually studied Yangmingism.

What a great ideological contention! Although it is a flourishing of various schools of thought within the big framework of Confucianism, as long as there is a collision of ideas, it can be said to be a good thing.

This is also the real reason why the idea of respecting the king and expelling the barbarians could become the mainstream of Japanese thought in history, Zhu Shunshui could be revered as a saint, and Yangmingism could guide Japan's Meiji Restoration to a large extent.

It’s not because they learned well, but because they had just started learning and then encountered an era of great changes that had not been seen in thousands of years.

"Sage Yangming advocated the unity of knowledge and action, but this spirit is currently lacking in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Because the world at this time is no longer the same as before. The East and the West are fighting each other. The Land of the Rising Sun cannot remain isolated from the outside world and has no ability to protect itself.

Under the banner of respecting the king and expelling the barbarians, we must respect the great emperor of the Middle Earth, who has been the leader of the Eastern world for thousands of years, as the true Holy King.

In this way, one can follow the holy lord to seek welfare for the people of the world, and can also make achievements and apply what he has learned in his life.

If you can realize this, that is knowledge. After knowing, you must act, so that you can achieve unity.

And to act means to immediately raise the banner of respecting the king and expelling the barbarians, follow the footsteps of the saints, actively support the orders of His Majesty the Emperor of China, and be loyal to His Majesty the Emperor.

I suggest that all warriors take action immediately, spontaneously form a volunteer team, and march eastward with the emperor's heavenly soldiers in the spirit of warriors.

We are going to Kyoto to ask General Tokugawa which true saint king on earth he is fighting against the foreigners for?

Go ask the so-called Eternal Dynasty of Shancheng State. He is clearly just a vassal king, why did he dare to call himself emperor and deceive us for so long! "

Koga Seisato's words were extremely inflammatory, so as soon as he finished speaking, thunderous applause broke out in the room. This custom introduced from China was also very popular in Kyushu at this time.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" Arima Yoriyoshi of the Kurume Domain Arima clan also stood up and shouted excitedly:

"The shogunate boasts a hundred thousand elite soldiers, but they dare not even leave Osaka. This shows how weak and cowardly the shogunate is. How can we hand over the world to such people?

At this time, warriors who are willing to be loyal to the Great Emperor should go to the Heavenly Army Commander-in-Chief, Lieutenant General Ryan, and petition us to march to Kyoto immediately to present our interests to the Emperor and the Imperial Court!"

Arima Yoriyoshi was the grandson of Arima Yoritō, the lord of Kurume Domain, and had always been the most active in encouraging Reinstein to send troops.

Because the Kurume domain was so poor, there had been constant uprisings among the people in the past few decades. The Arima clan was like sitting on the edge of a volcano and was naturally extremely anxious.

"Shangluo! Shangluo! Shangluo!" Seeing that Ma Lairong had come forward, the warriors in the house became even more excited and started shouting.

Afterwards, these dozens of people walked out of Minglun Hall, shouting slogans and went to petition Reinstein. When the low-ranking samurai and the town guards on the street heard them, they followed them and soon formed a torrent.

At this time, Zheng Jinshui, who had been hiding behind the scenes, finally smiled.

The time is ripe to bring down the usurper of the Mountain City Kingdom from the altar.

(End of this chapter)