The Japanese are extremely aggressive and gentle, arrogant and polite, stubborn and fickle...... Conservative but very welcoming to the new way of life.

- Ruth Benedict, "The Chrysanthemum and the Knife"

In ancient Chinese history books, Japan was evaluated very lowly, among which the Qing ancestor Xuanye said that the Japanese were "capricious and despicable" and called Japan a "country of Japanese people", which shows the attitude of the Manchus towards Japan. However, despite its barren land and harsh natural conditions, Japan has found a way out of national development with the help of several industrial revolutions, which we will briefly review here.

Japan's first development can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty, when the Tang Dynasty was launching its fourth attack on Goguryeo, and the newborn calf of the Japanese thought they were invincible in the world, and sent 42,000 men on more than 1,000 warships to support Baekje, and launched a fierce naval battle with the Tang army at the mouth of the Baijiang River. After the war, the whole country of Japan was terrified, Emperor Tianzhi was deeply afraid that the Tang army would attack the mainland, and did not hesitate to spend a huge amount of money to build four lines of defense, and then surrendered to the Tang Dynasty, and began to take the Tang Dynasty as a teacher, and successively sent a large number of Tang envoys to the Central Plains to learn advanced culture and technology, which is known as the Dahua Revolution in history.

During this period, there was a very famous historical figure, that is, we are familiar with Master Jianzhen, he traveled east to Japan six times, and the local people respected him as "Master of the Lantern", and the Japanese royal family appointed him as the "Great Monk Capital" to rule all the local monks and nuns.

After the Taika reform, Japan began to enter a feudal society, and with the development of the productive forces, the population increased dramatically, but the Japanese who moved towards civilization did not break through the narrow mode of thinking, and have always been obsessed with the teacher's family property. After Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified Japan, he immediately sent a large army to invade Korea, although the otaku Wanli did not fall in love with the court, but he was still very clear about Japan's wolf ambitions, and also sent Li Rubai and other famous generals to the Korean Peninsula. Due to the disparity in national strength between the two sides, Konishi Yukinaga and others were soon defeated, and although Toyotomi Hideyoshi died depressed after the defeat, his ambitions were continued.

At the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, the so-called "Overseas Flying Theory" emerged in Japan, which discussed foreign expansionism from different angles and pointed the finger at Korea and China, which was the ideological basis of Japan's "mainland policy." The representative figure in this is the so-called Japanese scholar Sato Nobubuchi, who constructed a blueprint for modern Japan to invade China in "The Secret Strategy of Unai Mixing", as follows:

1. To conquer China, you must first conquer Manchuria. Nobubuchi Sato believed that the easiest place for Japan to attack China was Manchuria, because Manchuria was similar to Japan and close to each other.

Second, after the attack on Manchuria, the north and south attacked. In Sato Nobubuchi's view, after getting Manchuria, he should continue to attack Hebei, Shandong, and other places, and after seizing Taiwan, he should attack Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and other places. When the time was ripe, the emperor personally marched into the Central Plains from Shanhaiguan, first attacked Beijing, then went down to the south of the Yangtze River, and finally occupied Yingtian (Nanjing) and then used it as the location of the imperial palace, and continued to become the ruler of China.

3. After the conquest of China, Southeast Asia and India are at your fingertips.

In our opinion, Nobubuchi Sato is a pervert, but when the entire Japanese nation is a pervert, we must be careful. Nobubuchi Sato was born in 1769, at a time when Japan was hit by the impact of Western imperialist industrial civilization and military conquest, and launched the Meiji Restoration Reform Movement from top to bottom.

The contents of the book were written into the soldiers' manual, and any Japanese soldiers who entered China should read it carefully, and they brought heavy suffering to the kind-hearted Chinese nation under the leadership of war maniacs such as Hirobumi Ito, Hideki Tojo, and Kuniaki Koiso. However, after the defeat of the war, the Japanese war criminals did not receive a just trial, and even enshrined these murderers as national heroes at the Yasukuni Shrine.

To get back to the point, Japan had already entered the Edo period by the fifth year of the Apocalypse, and the shogunate was jointly controlled by Tokugawa Hidetada and his eldest son, Tokugawa Iemitsu, hoping to fix the hereditary system through dualistic politics. To this end, he exterminated the Toyotomi clan internally, forced Emperor Gomizuo to marry his daughter Kazuko as a concubine, and gave birth to Princess Koko in 1623. In the following year, Kazuko ascended to the throne as the middle palace, and with the assistance of Tokugawa Hidetada, he took control of the imperial court, and the shogunate officially became the supreme ruler of Japan. The expulsion of Portuguese and Spanish missionaries, the bloody suppression of Catholics on the island of Kyushu, and the slaughter of many missionaries and Western merchants by the lord of the Shimabara domain, Matsukura Shigemasa, aroused serious social contradictions and ethnic hatred.

In order to unite European countries, Zhu Youxiao ordered Zheng Zhilong and Xiong Wencan to send ships to bring those missionaries and businessmen who had fled for their lives to China, and temporarily arrange for them to live in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. Grateful for the kindness of the Ming Dynasty, these people raised silver taels and handed them over to the Portuguese ambassador Masco, hoping to bribe the officials in Nanjing through him to allow them to preach and do business in the Ming Dynasty.

"Thank you Emperor Ming for his leniency, the Lord will bless him."

Of course, Nan Juyi did not refuse the bribe of Mashijialu, because Zhu Youxiao had told him that he could accept gifts from foreigners, but he was not allowed to betray the interests of the country and the nation. However, Nan Juyi was very amused by his nonsense, and secretly said where was your God when the Japanese people slaughtered the missionaries? Otherwise, the little emperor has other plans, and it is estimated that you people would have seen God a long time ago!

"My Emperor Shengming, I know that you have gone through hardships and dangers to come to the East, and it will be too embarrassing to go back empty-handed at this time, because you are allowed to do business in the Shanghai area, but I believe in the doctrines of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, and you must restrain your subordinates and not mislead the people of the Ming Dynasty. In addition, although our dynasty has defeated the Japanese state many times, at present, the mainland is still implementing new policies, and there is no time to uphold justice for you, so I hope you will do it yourself. ”

Nan Juyi's words are obviously concerned about their situation, but in fact, he ridiculed the foreigners' poor skills, and even the defeated generals of the Ming Dynasty couldn't beat them, and they still wanted to spread religious superstition here, which was really a toad who wanted to eat swan meat. Mashigaru was active in the coastal areas of the Ming Dynasty all the year round, and his Chinese was more fluent than his native language, so he naturally heard Nan Juyi's sarcasm and sarcasm, and said with a smile on his face:

"The small Wa Kingdom, starting from the tail length, naturally cannot be compared with the Celestial Empire. In the opinion of the envoy, the true hero of the Wa Kingdom was Oda Nobunaga, and that Toyotomi Hideyoshi and now Tokugawa Hidetada were both usurpers and should be punished by God. The envoy has reported the situation to our king, and plans to return to Nagasaki with the fleets of Spain, England, and Holland, and regain the right to trade by force. ”

Regarding Mashigarlu's counterattack, Nan Juyi was surprised and didn't know what to say for a while. This person has such a clear understanding of the history of Japan, so he must have known a lot about the situation in the Ming Dynasty. What is even more terrifying is that Portugal actually wants to unite European countries to attack Japan, which is not a good thing for the sunset operation of the Ming Dynasty. For this reason, he decided to fool around, and after a long sigh on purpose, he said:

"When the Governor heard that the envoy had suffered heavy losses in the civil strife of the Japanese kingdom, seven cargo ships had been seized, and the creditors must have broken through the threshold by this time. But if you're angry, don't risk your life, the Edo shogunate currently has 120,000 troops and 70,000 navies, and your coalition forces are sure to defeat them? If you lose this battle, what will your king do with you? ”

Nan Juyi deliberately exaggerated Japan's strength, and Mascolushin thought it was really sweating for himself. Since he became the official post of Portuguese ambassador to China, he has already made a lot of money in the trade between the two countries, but unfortunately he is not greedy enough, he has to smuggle arms with local daimyos, and Tokugawa Hidetada found out and decisively confiscated his cargo ship, not only all these years of savings have been lost, but also owe a huge amount of usury.

In order to recover his losses, he falsely claimed that Japan defied the prestige of Portugal, drove out merchants for no reason, and slaughtered missionaries, hoping to make up for his mistakes through government intervention.

"This time, the four-nation coalition has more than 60 warships and more than 7,000 navy, and we will land directly from Edo, and in addition to punishing those evil devils, we will also ask them to open treaty ports and ensure the rights and interests of merchants. If your country is able to lend a helping hand, we will share the benefits of Japan in accordance with the agreement of equal interests, and the Governor will receive a handsome additional reward. ”

The hustle and bustle of the world is all for profit, and the greed of merchants is the most primitive driving force of the Age of Discovery. Although Mascolu was an official of the government, he was a shrewd businessman at heart, and there was no problem in his eyes that money could not solve. Of course, this is due to cultural differences, and he obviously does not know much about the pride of the Chinese nation. Many people are either in high positions or governing one side, and they handle millions of taels of silver every year, but they have money in their hands but no money in their hearts, and they believe in loyalty and patriotism, and they regard their names and festivals as more important than their lives, not to mention these rancid yellow and white things.

Throughout the ages, there are countless big businessmen who are rich and rival the country, although their lives are poor and extravagant, but in the end they are still drowned in the long river of history, but it is Confucius, Yan Hui such poor scholars, poor and unswerving, mighty and unyielding, and eventually famous for a hundred years, becoming the teacher of the emperors of all dynasties and the model of the world's students.

The two didn't talk speculatively, and each found an excuse to disperse. According to Zhu Youxiao's instructions, Hong Chengchou and Nan Juyi remained neutral in this war, paying close attention to the tactical arrangements and combat strength of both sides as observer states. At the same time, they sold intelligence on both sides and peddled arms and other materials, so that the fisherman of the Ming Dynasty could gain enough benefits in the game of snipe and clam competition.