With the breathless national strength of the British Empire, Zhou Lang still has to guard against Japan, which is indeed a little too nervous.

But there is no way, Japan's evil neighbor is by China's side, and it is really harmful to China but not beneficial.

Japan hardly meets any of the conditions for China to occupy, there is no land for agriculture, no mineral deposits for industry, and only tens of millions of malnourished people, even if the Japanese take the initiative to let China annex, Zhou Lang thinks it is not cost-effective.

But the Japanese have a very strong ability to learn, China is by his side, and if China's industrial revolution can appear, Japan will learn from it sooner or later.

There is a widely circulated saying in later generations that China is a sleeping lion, and the earliest well-documented sentence was said by Kang Liang's group, which was nothing more than using Napoleon to raise his own value. If the West were to evaluate China, they would not actually use terms like sleeping lions and waking up lions, they might be depicted as dragons. Chinese In ancient times, the dragon was on behalf of the imperial power, and in many dynasties, only the royal family could use the dragon as a symbol, and the common people used it was against the etiquette system, and they would lose their heads if they didn't get it right, and they were considered to be rebellious.

In the consciousness of Westerners, the flag of the monarch often represents the flag of the country, so they will use the dragon instead of the sleeping lion to describe China.

Napoleon said that he didn't say that China is a sleeping lion Zhou Lang is not sure, he didn't ask Napoleon, but Zhou Lang felt that the Japanese really met this condition, once they woke up, they would quickly catch up, Japan's size may not reach the level of a lion, but it is appropriate to say that he is a sleeping dog.

When it sleeps, hello, hello, hello, everyone, after it wakes up, it will bite you if it doesn't get right, even if you have a great power in your hand, although you will not be afraid of it, or be bitten to death by him, but no one wants to be bitten by a dog.

Later generations had a theory about why Westerners were very interested in carving up China when they had no strength to invade Japan, saying that it was because Japan was poor. Being poor makes people uninterested in him, but poverty prompts him to have a motive to rob.

That's why Zhou Lang was wary of Japan.

But why do we really want to help Japan build an industry? Wouldn't it be good to let them fall asleep slowly, and let them continue to retreat and isolate the country?

Of course it's good, but this state can't be maintained permanently, it will wake up at any time, so it's better to wake him up directly and take the initiative.

Mulberry sericulture is a very good industry, and in the past, in order to accumulate industrialization funds, Japan was so crazy that it planted a quarter of its arable land with mulberry trees, and they were already a food-starved country.

Support the development of silkworms in Japan, the more he grows mulberry, the more he can not get rations, grain is an irreplaceable, but relatively cheap commodity, because it is expensive and the poor cannot afford to eat, all the mass consumer goods that everyone needs, whether it is necessary or not, will not be expensive, and consumers are very sensitive to price. Japan is short of food, and the best import channel is China. Therefore, Japan is inevitably dependent on China.

Therefore, helping Japan to develop the mulberry sericulture is like waking up this vicious dog and putting a leash on him personally.

But this is only the most superficial reason, it doesn't matter whether to control Japan or not, so that Japan does not have the power to harm China, it is Zhou Lang's plan, put a dog leash on the vicious dog, and never directly knock out its minions is useful, the dog leash can break free at any time, but without the minions, it will not be aggressive.

In order to defeat Japan's minions, what other way is more advantageous and easier to operate to keep Japan divided?

Therefore, Zhou Lang mediated the conflict between the shogunate and the powerful feudal lords, the purpose of which was to keep Japan divided, and Japan had more than 200 local feudal lords who held real power, and as long as Japan did not complete the centralized power system, it would be impossible for Japan to become a strong country, and as long as the shogunate ruled, instead of fighting until the shogunate established the emperor's centralized power system, Japan could only maintain its division.

It is impossible to put an end to smuggling, and trade is beneficial to China, but trade will cause Japan to collapse, and after the collapse, it will inevitably reorganize, and after the reorganization, it is possible to centralize power, so the best way is to achieve a trade balance with him, which is not only beneficial to China's economy, but also indirectly maintains the division of Japan.

This insidious purpose, like feeding Myanmar back then, seems to be well-intentioned, but in fact it contains murderous intentions.

But this kind of purpose cannot be recorded in the history books, so he can only be buried deep in Zhou Lang's heart, on the surface he is the holy lord Mingjun who loves the people like a son and even the Japanese people care.

The Japanese also felt that this was the case, and the Chinese emperor spared no effort to help Japan develop its industry, so that the Japanese people could have enough to eat, so that the Japanese government could maintain its rule, how could such a good neighbor be a conspirator.

With the spread of mulberry sericulture in Japan, the shogunate was unable to control it even if it saw the state of loss of control, so it could only watch as the feudal lords planted mulberry trees in their own territory, raised silkworms and reeled silk, and then sold the raw silk to Chinese merchants. Moreover, because of the promotion of the raw silk trade, most of the coastal feudal lords in Japan became more and more alienated from the shogunate, because the shogunate controlled their free trade, and they could not directly do business with Chinese merchants like the powerful feudal lords in the southwest, so they began to smuggle. This further pushed the shogunate to allow the local feudal lords to open their ports, otherwise they would be further and further away from the shogunate like the powerful feudal lords in the southwest.

If Japan can open trade with China and develop its economy by relying on its own ports, although it is impossible to have more than 70 strong feudal domains, and most of them may be unable to make ends meet and cannot support the operation of the ports, as long as there are four or five strong feudal clans that can develop into the economy, they will be able to form a new force to compete with the shogunate. It is possible to maintain Japan's division for a long time.

Under the conditions of Japan, there is no shortage of laborers, nor is there a shortage of hard-working people, and there are always some special products that are abundant locally, whether they are minerals, or forests, or fertile fields, and there are more than 70 independent Tibetan valves that open to the sea, and there are always a few that have developed.

In fact, in the past ten years, there have been more than a dozen daimyo who have begun to have economic surpluses, and half of them are not members of the Tokugawa shogunate's direct Hachimoto and Imperial families, nor are they directly under the Tokugawa family, and more than one-third of them are foreign daimyo who were enemies of the Tokugawa family.

In the composition of the shogunate in Japan, the shogunate occupies an absolute power, and the land of Japan is measured according to the rice output, and the country is divided into 30 million stones, of which the shogunate is directly under the name of Tianling, which is 4 million stones, and the shogunate retainer Banner and the imperial family have 3 million stones, which belong to the shogunate himself, accounting for a quarter of the country's land, and it can be said that the Tokugawa family is the largest daimyo.