Warring States Survival Guide

Chapter 26: It is a virtue to be prepared for danger in times of peace
Yuanye worked as ferociously as a tiger and cured most of the villagers in Hibitsu Village. The number of patients decreased a lot and the clinic was no longer as busy as when it first opened. He also took the opportunity to take a break. After all, he had been busy since he traveled through time until now, and he was under a lot of psychological pressure and was very tired.

At this time, the 21st year of Tianwen had also arrived.

It was late winter when he came, which would have been early January according to the Gregorian calendar. Japan used the Chinese lunar calendar during the Muromachi period, and this year it was almost the end of early February on the Gregorian calendar before the first month of the lunar calendar arrived, which was considered the Chinese New Year - New Year's Day. There was no "Spring Festival" at that time, so if the time traveler wanted to celebrate the Spring Festival, he had to wait until the Republic of China.

But we did have New Year's Eve, which was the night before New Year's Day. At this time in Japan, there was already a custom similar to eating "New Year's Eve soba". Aping and Yayoi cooked a big pot and everyone had a full meal.

Of course, it was far less refined than later generations. There were only boiled buckwheat noodles and steamed buckwheat noodles. They needed to be dipped in bean paste before eating, and it was coarsely ground, which was a bit sore on the throat.

Yuanye was not used to the food, but was embarrassed to let Yayoi and Aping down, so he could only secretly put some of it into Aman's bowl.

He is really not a squeamish person. He has never been a squeamish person in modern times and can endure hardships. But when it comes to the medieval era in Japan... he really can't swallow it. Anyone who has experienced it knows!

After eating "Yoni Soba", it was New Year's Day. Yuanye also planned to pay New Year's greetings to Yayoi's family. After all, he was "renting" someone else's house. They were the landlord, and running an illegal clinic had caused them a lot of trouble. He had to be polite and give their children a red envelope or something.

Fortunately, he was well aware that he did not understand the customs of this era, so he observed the situation first and asked some indirect questions. He was surprised to find that in the Middle Ages, people in Japan would greet each other on the second day of the New Year, and on the first day, everyone would do nothing but lie down at home and sleep, and they would not cook but eat cold food, so that everyone could have a good rest.

I have to say, life in ancient times was really slow-paced. If it were in modern times, how could we get a day off during the New Year?
After sleeping till the second day of the Chinese New Year, the villagers really started to greet each other. This was similar to the later generations, and they kept saying auspicious words. Yuanye's status was here, and now he was a widely respected "Mongolian miracle doctor". Many villagers, including the Yayoi family and the Jubei family, came to greet him for the New Year. If he didn't really like it, he would have organized the whole village to kowtow to him.

The well worship ceremony on the third day of the New Year is presided over by Jikuro - he is a member of the Arako Maeda family and a "celebrity" in the village, that is, a powerful commoner with military merits. In a sense, he is a reserve for lower-level samurai and has a certain possibility of being transformed into a retainer of the Arako Maeda family. His status is higher than that of an ordinary villager. He leads all the male villagers in the village to worship the village well, as a way of thanking it for its efforts in the past year, and also hoping that it will not stop producing water in the new year.

On the fourth day after worshiping the well, Jikuro again led all the male villagers to worship Odaigawa River and Mt. Ise. I guess the meaning was similar, hoping that they would produce more mountain products this year and that the water flow would not decrease or floods would destroy the prime fields.

On the fifth day of the first lunar month, people offer sacrifices to the cow in the hope that it will work hard and be healthy.

Since the Hibitsu Village could not afford to raise a cow, they made one out of mud and straw. After everyone finished worshipping, they carried the clay cow outside the village and crushed it again, then scattered it evenly in each family's field.

On the sixth day, people offer sacrifices to gods and monsters from all directions, hoping that they will continue to protect the village or at least not bring disasters.

On the seventh day, which is "Renri", or "the day to take care of the body", all the women in the village will collectively cook a pot of "Seven Days Seven Herbs Porridge" and go out of the village to pick five kinds of wild vegetables, namely water celery, Artemisia selengensis, Herba Polygoni Multiflori, Chickweed and Shepherd's Purse, and add radish, turnip and a little rice to cook a big pot of vegetable porridge and share it, praying for good health and freedom from illness and disaster this year.

At the same time, a group of careful, diligent and dexterous "Saotomes", also known as "rice seedlings girls", were selected through a wild vegetable picking competition to start breeding and raising seedlings in preparation for the upcoming spring plowing.

By this time, the medieval Japanese New Year was over, and life in Hibitsu Village returned to normal, and it was far from being as leisurely as in winter - it was not yet the Little Ice Age, and had not experienced the ravages of the global cooling, so the climate was quite different from the modern one. After the Lunar New Year, the plum blossoms had already bloomed for a long time, and it was already spring. The grass and trees grew, and a large number of edible wild vegetables appeared in the wilderness and mountains. The whole village of Hibitsu went out to dig the first batch of wild vegetables.

Yuanye followed the story for two days and solved another mystery, finally knowing why there were very few nationwide peasant uprisings in Japan. The reason was simple: Japan's natural resources were so abundant in ancient times that even if the lords took away more than 80% of the food, the peasants would still not starve to death and could still barely hang on. This was completely different from China, where the land was always at the limit of its carrying capacity.

There are many rivers here, and hills and mountains account for more than 80% of the land area. It is surrounded by the sea. The climate is originally warm, and it is even warmer than it is now. Therefore, there are crops of fresh wild vegetables early in spring, and mushrooms and bamboo shoots can be seen everywhere and are endless.

In summer, there are abundant aquatic plants and shellfish. Lotus seeds, lotus roots, and river clams are everywhere, and there is no shortage of food.

In autumn, the mountains are full of wild fruits and nuts, including wild persimmons, wild peaches, wild apricots, hazelnuts, pine nuts and hairy chestnuts. The winter is a little difficult, and people can only stay in the village and reduce activities, eating the little food they have saved. But the winter season in modern Japan is very short, and it is even shorter now than it is now. As long as you stay in winter for a while, you can see wild vegetables popping up all over the mountains and fields.

This may also be the main reason why the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, failed to develop a country:
The readily available food, relatively warm winters and very short cold seasons meant that they had no desire to develop agriculture, could not establish an effective food storage system, and could not form a sophisticated social division of labor.

After thousands of years, there were still small groups of gathering, fishing and hunting tribes. The population could not be accumulated at all, and the combat effectiveness was not worth mentioning. They would just move away when there was a little danger. Anyway, they could find food somewhere else, and they didn't even need to pay too much attention to military equipment.

As a result, waves of immigrants from the Korean Peninsula brought Chinese farming technology across the sea to Kyushu Island. Relying on the characteristics of farming culture that are good at accumulating population, the population exploded within a hundred years. They then merged with each other to form the so-called "Wazu", and began to encroach on the Ainu's territory step by step eastward.

They were driven from Kyushu Island to the main island, from the main island over Mount Fuji, from Mount Fuji into the desolate Kanto, from the desolate Kanto into the mountains of Hokuriku, and finally they were not allowed to stay in the mountains at all, and were driven directly into the snowy Hokkaido - Yuanye Crossing. At this moment, the Ainu tribe was fighting the Japanese at the entrance to Hokkaido, and riots broke out one after another to resist Japanese enslavement.

Finally, when Japan became a militarist country and its technology developed to the point where it was capable of fully developing Hokkaido, they intensified their efforts, imprisoning the Ainu in concentration camps, throwing them into mines, squeezing them dry, and carrying out planned exterminations with methods even more brutal than those used by the Germans. It was just that the Ainu did not have hegemony over world public opinion and could not make movies to sell their misery for a long time, resulting in not many people knowing about them in later generations.

By modern times, the number of Ainu people is estimated to be around 10,000, but as a nation, they are actually extinct.

Perhaps, in a few decades, no one will remember that there was such a pitiful nation in the world.

This is a typical example of "born in adversity, die in comfort", but it also proves from the side that the Japanese archipelago is indeed a treasure land rich in natural resources. Even though it lacks iron and oil, it is not as barren as most people imagine - a large number of rivers and mountains are extremely rich in production, fishing and hunting resources are excellent, and there are also a large number of precious metal deposits. It can definitely be called a treasure land.

At least it was quite good in the agricultural era. Even though it was located at the junction of several major plates and had three major earthquake zones and four volcanic belts, it was still very livable.

Yuanye looked at the villagers picking wild vegetables everywhere, and then looked around at the wilderness that was full of vitality. In his wandering thoughts, his stereotype of Japan was a little shattered.

At the same time, I was a little alert in my heart. I felt that the idea that wars in Japan's Warring States Period were just "village fights" might not be reliable. It might just be a stereotype. The relaxation I had felt during the New Year was lifted up again.

It is a virtue to be prepared for danger in times of peace, and it is wisdom to plan ahead. Although the situation seems good now, we still have to be careful and never commit euthanasia like the Ainu people!
We still have to keep working hard to save our lives!
(End of this chapter)