Owari Yumeki Golden Day.

Seeing that the nobility who came to apply in the first two days all passed the review and were re-registered in the Oda family's accounts, those who came to apply later became increasingly bold, resorting to all sorts of tricks and deception.

No matter what they said, Shichibei was only responsible for recording the truth.

After five days of work, he finally decided to ride a horse and inspect all the registered villages and fortresses along the streets and waterways. This wasn't for verification, but simply to reconfirm the surrounding locations previously declared by the residents.

Then, lands that no one came to claim will be recorded in the declaration. These unclaimed lands will become Nobunaga's direct fiefs, which will be used to reward samurai who are willing to fight for Nobunaga.

After integrating the two, Shichibei roughly calculated that the population figures were wrong, and the total amount of local land assets was also wrong. They were both less. Undoubtedly less.

It's unclear whether this is the outcome Nobunaga desired. In any case, Shichibei simply submitted the revised account of the territory's boundaries.

36. No more than sixty cakes can be made into flowers.

"Shichibei, you did a great job!"

Nobunaga examined the newly compiled land allocation ledger and glanced at the unclaimed lands that had been identified. Clearly, his true intention in sending Shichibei to inspect the lands was simply to clarify the relationship between the land in Owari and those responsible for military service.

Who will farm the land and who will pay the taxes are all questions for later. What he wants to know now is how many people he can immediately pull out of Owari after the autumn harvest to go with him to Mino to fight Saito Tatsuoki.

"I dare not take credit." Shichibei had secretly slandered Nobunaga countless times outside, but in front of Nobunaga, he still had to act like a good boy.

"Good is good, merit is merit." Nobunaga raised his folding fan, signaling Shichibei to stop pretending.

"..." When the boss speaks, it's always the same: "Yes, yes, yes, yes."

"What do you want?" Nobunaga asked Shichibei very directly after ordering his men to put away the limited account book.

"Could you please allow me to set up a horse-riding shop in the entire Obi Province?" Shichibei asked without any politeness. Nobunaga was generous, but he was also quick to leave.

We should take advantage of his current interest and enthusiasm to boost our business. It would be a waste to only take business from Tsushima-cho, especially since Kato Nobutaka of Atsuta has suffered a significant loss of power. Now is the perfect opportunity to become the head of the Owari clan.

"That's it?" Nobunaga probably didn't think this was a reward.

Actually, it's quite good, because this is equivalent to Nobunaga handing over the exclusive right to operate the entire Owari horse-riding service to Shichibei. That way, we can also join the Tsushima Town Association and become prominent figures in Tsushima.

"I dare not overstep my bounds."

"Tch, you're a bit too timid. Fine, that'll do then. Also, your house order needs to be reissued." Nobunaga actually scoffed, but his tone was still good.

"I understand." Shichibei quickly bowed his head.

The reissue of the land grant certificate is understandable, because Shichibei's sandbar had actually generated profits. Nobunaga's willingness to reissue the certificate was a public acknowledgment of Shichibei's ownership of the sandbar. This certificate had stronger legal force in Owari than the previous land ownership document issued by Sakuma Nobumori.

Unless something catastrophic or dynastic change occurs in Owari, this land will remain in the hands of the Kawamura family. That is, unless the Kawamura family line dies out, and Tomoyuki is then taken back by the head family.

With Nobunaga's order, the pledge was quickly delivered to Shichibei. He was given 260 kan of cash for the Kaisei District, and his military service was changed to six horses, six grooms, and six monks.

Although military service has increased, the increase is not significant, and the sandbar has completely fallen into Shichibei's hands, which at least gives him some peace of mind.

The principle of equal rights and obligations should remain unchanged in theory, but it's hard to say what will happen in the future.

In addition, the exemption certificate for horse-riding service throughout Owari was also issued. With this certificate, Shichibei could smoothly set up horse-riding stations and allocate personnel and horses at various key transportation points in Owari.

After working for almost half a month at the foot of Komakiyama Castle, my duty was finally over, and I was able to go home. Everything was fine at home, as usual. After all, there were people from my hometown and Ai there, so what I did was just what was convenient.

When the news was announced that Kawamura-ya had been tasked with setting up denma-ya throughout Owari, everyone was astonished.

Leaving aside the challenges of such a large-scale expansion, such as manpower and horse deployment, the very task of dealing with the Kato family in Atsuta requires considerable thought.

First, there's the matter of horses. Yonekura Nobutsugu and Iifu Genshiro had previously promised Shichibei that if Shichibei needed a packhorse or a horse to ride, they could buy it for him if they had one.

Forget about warhorses, they'll just use packhorses; they can still make boastful claims about that.

Nobunaga's adopted daughter, Toyama-hime, is about to be sent to Kai. Nobunaga will definitely send Shichibei, or at least hire horses from Kawamura-ya, to transport the enormous dowry, worth 5,000 kanmon, to Kai.

Then we can contact Nobutsugu Yonekura and his team to purchase horses. It can be a one-time purchase or a long-term partnership.

Once Nobunaga conquers Mino and possesses the power to unify the land, his expansion will accelerate rapidly. After that, Shichibei will only complain about having too few packhorses, not too many.

We need to harvest the first crop of alfalfa and millet this year. Once we harvest them, we'll have money, at least a hundred kan. Adding that to the dowries that Shichibei saved up for his sisters, buying another hundred packhorses shouldn't be too difficult.

Well, I guess I need to find a way to get Aji and Kinoshita Koichiro to meet someday.

Although Kinoshita Koichiro was merely a retainer, his older brother was a proper centurion. A dowry of less than 100 kan would likely be beneath Shichibei's dignity.

There's no rush. Even if we meet tomorrow, whether it works out or not, we'll have money when the next rush harvest. She can get married then, and her dowry of 100 strings of cash won't be too little.

Secretly noting this down, Shichibei continued making arrangements.

The manpower issue wasn't actually that difficult to resolve. Shichibei had eight retainers, meaning eight households of retainers. It's impossible to know exactly when these people became retainers of the Kawamura family. In any case, these eight households were already serving the Kawamura family while Shichibei's adoptive father was still alive.

If Shichibei manages to make a name for himself, the Hachinohe family will probably be hailed as something like the "Eight Horsemen of Kawamura" or the "Eight Divine Generals of Kawamura."

But now, they are all just ordinary horse herders. Of course, they can also read and write and do math, since they all come from a background of horse service.

There are also a dozen or so other employees, all of whom are adult employees who have "graduated" and are retained in the shop, capable of independently handling certain tasks, such as accounting, horse care, and feed preparation.

The remaining dozen or so were young monks, the kind of child laborers I mentioned before who signed seven or nine-year contracts. These weren't considered employees, because they were all doing odd jobs and learning in the shop. Only those who could learn enough could "graduate" and be kept on, or be given a sum of money to make a living on their own.

In fact, Kawamura-ya has a strong core team, a solid reserve force, and a reasonable personnel structure.

Tsushima Town, one of the "Three Tsushima and Seven Minato" in Japan, has a population of over 10,000. If you include backpackers who come to worship and traveling merchants on shunsen (traveling ships), the number could be as high as 20,000 to 30,000.

In such towns, recruiting dozens of workers is not difficult at all. Just select a few families to take charge of the horse-riding shop that will be set up later, and pair them with experienced workers as well as newly recruited workers, and that will be enough to set up the framework.

The real problem is Kato-ya in Atsuta-cho...

Let me think this over carefully. The business arrangements in Owari will have to wait until the horses from Kai arrive. Once the horses from Kai arrive, everything will proceed smoothly. If we can't buy horses, all the arrangements in Owari will be in vain.

Before Nobunaga marries off his daughter, let's do two things: recruit workers and harvest alfalfa and barnyard grass.

Keep moving, keep moving! Shichibei is a workaholic, he doesn't even have a moment to spare. He just finished serving Nobunaga, and now he has to busy himself with his own family matters.

We'll rest for a day, then head to the sandbar the next day. The backpackers hired by the shop are already harvesting alfalfa. Since the weather is still good, they'll just spread it out on the ground to dry for a few days, then it'll be ready to be bundled as dry feed. I wonder if we'll need to hire some porters again this year to haul thousands of bundles of alfalfa to Atsuta town.

On the other side, the barnyard grass was processed a little simpler; it didn't need to be dried, so it was harvested, bundled, and transported to Tsushima. One of the reasons it later became a notorious weed was that it was threshed earlier and easier than regular rice.

Once ripe, the barnyard grass quickly falls to the ground, making it difficult to dig it out. One seed this year, one weed next year, and hundreds of weeds the year after. That's how vicious it is.

Therefore, it's not necessary to wait for the barnyard grass to fully mature before harvesting. It's a job that's both meticulous and not so meticulous. Except for one barnyard grass field where pregnant heifers were allowed to graze on their own, the rest weren't dried in the sun but were directly transported to Tsushima Town. They were bundled and left in the yard and shed. As long as straw mats were laid on the ground, they would naturally air dry for a few days, and the barnyard grass grains would fall off.

Horses also enjoy eating millet, and of course, people can eat it too. For ordinary people who don't have white rice, millet is what they eat. In the anime *Seven Samurai*, it's said that the common people ate so much millet that they went blind at night, which is quite pitiful.

The land planted with barnyard grass this year will have to be turned over to alfalfa next year. The soil on the sandbar is already infertile, so we have to alternate crops. If we plant barnyard grass all the time, the land will be barren in less than three years.

He instructed his family to come and meticulously record each plot of land. Actually, such a small matter didn't need to be instructed; they're all farmers and horse herders, how could they not know? But since he's a leader, he needs to say something when he comes, otherwise how can he project an air of authority?

When Shichibei came from his hometown, he simply asked if they planned to expand the planting of safflower next year. If so, they would need to allocate land previously used for alfalfa to build a polder, so they could adjust the land use plan for next year.

Oh, right, there are still two acres of safflower.

When Shichibei returned from Kai, the old man who planted safflowers said that it would be time to harvest them soon. Now Shichibei has even finished inspecting the land in Kami-Owari, so it seems that this year's safflowers have been harvested.

As we boarded the boat to the market town, the familiar barking of dogs filled the air. The old man's dogs were indeed quite alert, but upon seeing Shichibei, two of them immediately lowered their heads, whimpering softly, and tucked their tails between their legs. Clearly, they'd learned their lesson from the kick the shopkeeper gave them last time and recognized Shichibei.

When the dog barked, the old man naturally came out. Next to the original thatched hut, another thatched hut was built. Outside the hut, a drying yard was set up, with bamboo baskets stacked on top of each other on a frame made of bamboo poles.

Needless to say, the safflowers inside must be picked every morning, and they are probably being dried right now.

Upon seeing Shichibei and his old friend arrive, the old man quickly beckoned them to come and see. He was carrying a basket, making it inconvenient for him to cross the field of red flowers that still had some blooms.

What?

Red flower cake.

The production method is somewhat complicated and difficult to describe in just a few words. Just know that this stuff is a cake made from processed safflower, each piece weighing less than half a pound. When needed, simply break it in half, then clarify it with rice straw ash water to release the red pigment, and you can begin dyeing. As for how to fix the color, that's another matter, requiring the dyers to handle it separately.

Shichibei was quite disappointed that he hadn't witnessed the manufacturing process firsthand. But now wasn't the time for disappointment; how much was this thing actually worth?

The old man shook his head. He was an indigo dyeing craftsman who made purple robes for consumers in Kyoto. He had worked with red dye before, and even knew how to grow flowers and make cakes, but he had never sold red flower cakes.

Okay, so how many safflowers can be produced from one mu of land, and how many safflower cakes can be made from it?

After mentally calculating, the old man's figures weren't ideal. One mu (approximately 0.16 acres) of land could yield about ten jin (approximately 5 kg) of dried flowers, enough to make thirty-five to forty safflower cakes.

Since there was no control group, Shichibei wasn't quite sure whether this was good or bad. He just felt that they could only produce this many dried flowers and it would take more than half a year to grow them.

In later generations, the safflower planted in Xinjiang was well-managed and fertilized appropriately. On plots where long-term crop rotation was practiced, some even maintained a yield of more than 50 jin per mu per year for ten consecutive years.

Of course, Shichibei's sandbar soil is relatively thin, and it's newly planted. It's also managed by the old man alone, so the fertilization isn't perfect. It's already quite good if it can produce more than ten kilograms of dried flowers.

After a moment's thought, Shichibei put aside his concerns about the quantity; as long as it could be grown, that was good enough. The old man now had sixty red flower cakes, and the rest were still being made, which would take about half a month before the entire flowering and production period was over.

Send someone with this red flower cake to Sakai or Kyoto to ask a specialist merchant.

Whether it's a mule or a horse, you have to put it on the field and see how it performs to know its worth.

After accepting the two samples, Shichibei asked the old man how many acres of land he could manage. The old man replied that he had to look after the land himself and also make cakes, so ten acres was the most he could manage. Unless he could bring back all the Christian townspeople who had been exiled outside.

Hmm, Shichibei wouldn't dare take in Christians, so forget it.

He then instructed his family back home to hire people to build another ten-mu (approximately 1.65 acres) dike next to the old man's. The purpose of building the dike was simply to keep the land inside dry. After all, safflowers prefer dry, sandy soil but also require ample irrigation.

While we're at it, we'll go to Zhongnong, the place where Oda Nobunaga and Saito Tatsuoki were locked in a tug-of-war, and recruit a few farmers. They won't care about anything else; they'll just follow the old man and learn to grow safflower. Ten or eight acres is nothing to them; they can only sell a few dozen cakes of safflower a year, which is still quite a hassle.

We need to plant at least one or two hundred acres of safflower to achieve a certain scale before we can make a profit.

The old man sighed slightly when he saw that Shichibei refused to take in the Christian family members, but he had no objection to teaching other farmers safflower cultivation techniques. Of course, whether or not he would teach them the technique for making safflower cakes would be a matter for further discussion with Shichibei.

Shichibei wasn't stingy and gave the old man five hundred coins. Although the agreement mainly focused on providing food and lodging, at least the old man had made safflower cakes for us. Whether it made money or not was another matter; the old man had really done his job, so the five hundred coins were a reward we deserved.

With the money, the old man asked if he could take him ashore so they could buy some odds and ends. The children were always naked on the sandbar; it was alright now, but in winter it would be harder, at least they could have some burlap to cover themselves.

37. Rumors of Yonglu's Great Rebellion Shock

Perhaps worried that Shichibei might be abducted by Takeda Shingen, Nobunaga didn't send Shichibei along to escort Toyama-hime to her wedding this time. Instead, he hired fifty horses from Kawamura-ya. Together with Oda's own packhorses, they transported the exorbitantly priced dowry of 5,000 kan to Kai.

Well, there's nothing we can do then, if we don't want to go, we don't have to go. Shichibei instructed his family members in Kai to continue buying horses, and it would be best to reach an agreement with the Takeda family that they should sell the horses directly to Shichibei instead of through anyone else.

Consider this setting up a supply channel. We can discuss it further when Nobunaga and Shingen have a falling out. At least for the next few years, we can secure all the horses needed to establish the horse network in Owari and Mino.

On two fronts, after settling things in Kai, there's also the matter of Sakai.

The old man on the sandbar gave two of the red flower cakes he had made to Shichibei as samples. Neither the old man nor Shichibei had ever sold them, and they didn't want the other big bosses of Tsushima to know, so they had no choice but to take them to Sakai and ask the textile business owners there.

Since Shichibei was appointed by Nobunaga as the head of the Owari Road Central Passage and given 260 kan of credit, Shichibei officially became a member of the Tsushima Association and was no longer just a candidate with the right to attend.

As we've discussed before, the Tsushima clan, a feudal commercial guild, was united in its exclusion of outsiders. They maintained considerable unity when facing external threats. However, internally, mergers, exclusions, and backstabbing were all quite common occurrences.

In Tsushima, everyone speaks based on their own abilities, and only those who rise to the top can become members of the Tsushima Association.

Therefore, it's best to keep the fact that Shichibei has already made safflower cakes a secret for now, and discuss it again when Shichibei actually starts doing it.

Becoming a member of the Tsushima Clan has its advantages. At least you can negotiate with the big bosses of the Sakai Clan on a relatively equal footing, so you won't be cheated or robbed halfway through.