"Jin see me? Why is that? Nobunaga asked curiously.

"That's it...... "I put Joao?" Cabral said that he was seeking to build a church in the territory and to preach freely, and at the end he added, "There are many Catholic Cheshitan in Kyushu, and Otomo Sorin, who himself has a very good opinion of Catholic teachings, had to become a monk at the age of thirty-three and convert to Rinzai Buddhism for the sake of the stability of his family...... However, he did get a lot of benefits from the Southern Barbarians. ”

"In that case, then I'll meet him!" Perhaps it was my last sentence that struck Nobunaga, who agreed to let Joao? See you at Cabral.

The exact circumstances of the meeting do not need to be repeated, but the result was that Nobunaga partially agreed with João? At Cabral's request, he was allowed to establish a church in Sakai and preach in Kinai. Of these two articles, the former is a more significant initiative, and before that, no lord of any region except Kyushu had allowed the establishment of a church; The latter is a posthumous surname, because the missionary activities of the missionary teachers in Kinai have already begun, such as Takayama Yuteru and his son, who were baptized and officially converted to the church in the seventh year of Eiroku (1564) nine years ago, but with Nobunaga's promise and the permission issued by Nobunaga to proselytize, the missionary teacher could file a complaint with the local lord when he was persecuted in the course of his mission.

Two days later, Nobunaga summoned me again.

"I have decided to accept your advice on the matter of the Exploration Trade, and I will entrust this matter to you and Nagahide," Nobunaga said straight to the point, "Nagahide is in charge of the distribution of goods, and the affairs of the fleet will be left to you." By this time next year, three large ships of 3,000 stone will be built. ”

"However, first of all, you must contact the Ming Court and obtain the qualifications for the exploration trade......" I reminded Nobunaga.

"I'll leave this matter to you!" Nobunaga's attitude was very casual, "Aren't you in charge of the navy?" Naturally, you are responsible for the liaison between the seas. ”

"And the nominal aspect?" I continued.

"It's in the name of you and Nagahide," Nobunaga seemed to have already made up his own plans, "In short, the lord can't be allowed to claim to the Ming court...... This must be ensured! ”

"This ......" I was a little worried. I know the practice of the Ming Dynasty, and he regards himself as the superior country of the Celestial Empire, and will not allow any country to sit on an equal footing with the Celestial Empire. And the exploration trade itself is a form of trade with tribute and reward as the main body, accompanied by the exchange of goods between the two countries.

"Why, can't it be done?" Nobunaga was impatient, "What did the Hosokawa family do before?" ”

"But it's different now......," I quickly argued. Really, at that time, the Hosokawa family had set up the Ashikaga family as a general, and I don't dare to take that name now.

"I know your concerns," Nobunaga waved his hand, "just do it!" You and Changxiu, I believe it...... If you want to show loyalty, you don't need to be in this false name. ”

“…… Be. When Nobunaga said this, I could only respectfully accept the order, "Your Majesty will do it!" ”

"Oh, you come back first!" Nobunaga suddenly stopped me, "There are two more things. ”

"My lord's command." I sat back in my original position.

"The first is about minting money," Nobunaga took a copper coin from his side and looked at it carefully in front of him, "Didn't you say last time that there were many wealthy merchants in Jiangnan in the Ming Kingdom who privately minted Yongle money?" So, when you send someone to the Ming Court this time, you will learn the technique of minting money for me, and then we will mint money ourselves...... There is already too much copper stored in the money house to be wasted! ”

"Yes." I promised. This is not a difficulty, the "sand turning method" is not a very advanced technology, many people in Jiangnan will, they just don't have the mother money of the Ming court, so they have to take the finished Yongle money as the mother money, so that the money cast will be a little smaller than the Yongle money cast by the Ming court officials, and it is not so clear.

"The second thing is about the marriage of Nobutaka and Yujin...... Yujin is fourteen years old, right? Why haven't you gotten it yet? Nobunaga asked.

Hakama is a women's motofu ceremony, which is called "shojo" in the public house, and in the Edo period, it was also called "motofu" along with men, and it was held in conjunction with weddings. But for the time being, samurai women are generally held at the even-numbered ages of twelve, fourteen, and sixteen, and then they can be married the following year. At the beginning, Nana and Mitsu were both at the age of twelve. And it was precisely because of what happened to Mitsu that I originally decided to let Yujin and Akitsu hold the ceremony until they were sixteen years old, so that they could stay at home for a few more years and be more mature after marriage, so that they would not be too unaccustomed to it.

However, when Nobunaga asked this, I had to change my mind.

"It is the honor of the courtier's family to ask...... When His Majesty returned, he immediately went to prepare. I bowed my head and said.

"Well," Nobunaga nodded, "and the dowry will be a three-thousand-stone ship." ”

“…… Be. "I was almost speechless, how could there be such a blatant dowry for the woman as he did? And it's also a "Fengshen-class" ...... The cost of the first ship is 13,000 yuan! Although the follow-up cost will be a little less, it will definitely exceed 8,000!

……，…… It was only after meeting Niwa Nagahide that I understood why Nobunaga did this.

Compared with Nobuo, who entered the Kitabatake family as an adult and inherited the territory of 210,000 koku in Minami Ise, Nobutaka's Wakasa Ichikoku 85,000 koku is really a bit shabby, and the reason for this is probably because Nobuo is the half-brother of his son-in-law Nobutada, and Nobutaka was born in another side room, right? (Naomasa's nephew was even worse, as the eldest son of the concubine, but he was directly handed over to Nobunaga's cousin as an adopted son to inherit the family business.) However, in recent years, Nobutaka has been conscientious, and his performance is more appropriate and appropriate than Nobuo, who almost poked a big basket on Long Island. So, it seems that Nobunaga decided to give Nobutaka greater responsibility.

The Takeda family he inherited had four genealogical ministers, known as the "Four Elders of Takeda", namely Awaya Katsuhisa, Itami Masakane, Yama Prefecture Hidemasa and Naito Tomoyo. But don't think how respectful these four are, when Takeda Yoshitomi was in power, they set off rebellions more than once. In particular, Yoshimi Shokei once colluded with Tanba's guardian Yoshimatsunaga Nagayori, and surrendered to the Miyoshi family, attacking the main family's Kohama Castle and Takahama Castle. When Takeda Motoaki was taken captive by the Asakura family, he finally seized the opportunity to take Takahama Castle and take control of the western part of Oii-gun. However, after the Oda family entered Wakasa and Nobutaka entered the Takeda family, he behaved very respectfully, and as the pen head of Wakasa people, he followed Nobutaka and the guardian Niwa Nagahide many times. For this reason, Nobunaga not only gave him the ability to 5,000 koku, but also handed him 3,000 koku after Muto Tomoyoshi's reform.

In addition to the territory, Yimi Changjing has a small naval army in his hands, which is why he was so strong before. After receiving his submission, Takeda Nobutaka and Niwa Nagahide used this naval army as the basis and expanded it to a scale of more than 1,000 people, roughly including the entire central part of Wakasa Bay, which was on a par with the Tango naval army in the west and the Tsuruga naval army in the east. Now, with the decline of the Tsuruga clan and the Asakura clan, the Tsuruga Naval Army has also perished, so the Wakasa Imperial Army has become the largest force in Wakasa Bay.

For this reason, Nobunaga decided to involve Nobutaka in the exploration trade as well. He would rely on the power of the Wakasa Navy to build Kohama Port into the most important trading center for the Oda family in Hokuriku.

At the same time, Nobunaga was preparing to establish a new castle in Kita-Omi, and to firmly control the surrounding area by taking advantage of the waterways of Lake Biwa, and to serve as a hub between Kinai and Hokuriku, Tokaido, and Higashiyamado...... and so on! I was very surprised, "The lord wants to build a new residence in the north Omi?" ”

"That's right," Niwa Nagahide nodded, "that's why the lord needs to reopen the trade and get a lot of money...... Gifu Castle is located on the Higashiyama Road, and although it is strong, it is a bit remote and difficult to control in Kinai. Moreover, now it is also facing the threat of the Takeda family. ”

"Isn't it Minami-Omi? Not in ......," I asked, almost saying the word "Azuchi" in my mouth.

"Minami Omi is the territory of the Katsu family!" Niwa Nagahide looked at me strangely.

"Well," I shrugged, "where?" ”

"The exact location has already been explored," Niwa Nagahide said with a smile, "It's in Imahama near where the Ogawa River joins Lake Biwa!" It's not far from the Friends of the Country House where the iron cannon was cast! ”

"Imama? …… It's Imama! I nodded, knowing Nobunaga's intentions.

The reason why he did not hand over Kita-Omi to Hideyoshi Yura during the last disbandment of the army in Imahama was because he wanted to transfer Kita-Omi to the direct command and establish a new castle. If it is completed, Imahama Castle will indeed be a hub connecting Kinai with Hokuriku, Tokaido, and Higashiyama Provinces, and it is also easy to get to Kyoto, and the other side of Lake Biwa is there.

Of course, things changed a bit later. Due to the breaking of the alliance between Uesugi Kenshin and the Honke and the invasion of Echichu and Kaga, Nobunaga had to send a retainer to serve as the commander of the army on the Hokuriku side to take charge of the defense of the Uesugi family. According to the situation at that time, there was only one Shibata Katsuya in the family who could be qualified for this position.

In this way, Shibata Katsuya went to Echizen and received 490,000 koku from the eight prefectures of Echizen, and Minami Omi was vacant. So Nobunaga handed over the old Asai domain to Hideyoshi, and he himself established Azuchi Castle in Minami-Omi.

Knowing this process, the two doubts in my heart were finally solved.

One is why Hideyoshi had the money to build present-day Hama Castle. Given his family's financial situation, this is almost impossible, and to put it mildly, I am waiting to see how he raises it. At the beginning, I just repaired Xiejiang City, and it cost about 10,000 yuan; Later, Mie Castle was built, and the savings of the previous years were almost emptied, but fortunately, there was Tsuya at that time, so Mie Town was used as the headquarters of Tsuya. So, with the scale of Changbin City, it will cost at least tens of thousands of yuan, right? This money can't be taken out even if the monkey is skinned and sold. You know, he hasn't returned the 5,000 yuan I gave me three years ago! In the few times I've been to Gifu in the past few years, Nene always came to Kira Jinya in person to apologize to me.

Of course, now I know that the money for the construction was all from Nobunaga.

In this way, the second doubt was also solved: Hideyoshi changed the name of Imahama Castle to Nagahama, not to flatter Nobunaga, but to read the origin of the money, so that Shinjo paid homage to Nobunaga's favoritism.

It can be said that getting Nagahama Castle is the beginning of Hideyoshi's real development. Since then, relying on the benefits of water transportation in Lake Biwa and the pivotal position of Nagahama Town, Hideyoshi has obtained a large amount of money, which has rapidly increased the level of his own armaments, and has also reached the great power of money. In his later years, after he built Osaka Castle, he forcibly moved all the merchants of Sakai Town to Osaka, and stored a large amount of gold in the city, which was used until the Osaka Winter Battle recruited more than 100,000 ronin samurai.

Of course, these are all afterwords in history. Now he is preparing to build present-day Hama Castle for Nobunaga, and his family is still in Gifu, but at Nobunaga's order, he sent the acting official Kinoshita Yuhisa, and together with the acting officials of Akechi Mitsuhide and Takigawa Kazuyi, he holds the real power of Echizen.

And Niwa Nagahide and I, the biggest headache at the moment is the status of tribute to the Ming court.

Finally, after careful discussion, we adopted a vague narrative that positioned Nobunaga as the regent of the Emperor, and Nagahide and I, as the commercial and administrative officers of the Regent's Office, respectively, were in charge of trade matters with the Ming Court.

But in reality, according to Nobunaga's plan, the entire exploration trade was under Nobunaga's control. There are two links under his control, one is the collection of exported goods, and the other is the taxation of imported goods. The collection of goods was jointly handled by Nobunaga's five-member executive team (Fukutomi Hidekatsu, Sugaya Nagayori, Hori Hidemasa, Yabe Iesada, and Hasegawa Shuichi) led by Niwa Nagahide, who organized middle and high-ranking samurai, affiliated daimyo, major temples, and major merchants, and gave certain quotas for goods and determined specific candidates for the trade mission; When this was done, Niwa Nagahide handed over the list of personnel and cargo to me, and I was in charge of leading the fleet to the Ming Court. After completing the transaction and returning, no matter what the result is, I will collect 10% of the commercial tax and 10% of the shipping fee. Half of the commercial tax is naturally attributed to Nobunaga, which is called "powder money"; One percent of the freight was handed over to the fleet, that is, me and Takeda Nobutaka, to pay for the rent of the ship, the ship's salary, and the crew's accommodation and other expenses to and from Daming.

However, even with half of the tax amount, the trade profits of these goods are still very substantial. Taking silver trading as an example, the ratio of gold and silver prices in this book is 1:10 to 1:11, and the Ming Dynasty is 1:4. Moreover, the raw silk, medicinal herbs, sugar, gold wisps, books, fan incense, copper coins, and clothing estimates of the Ming Dynasty were all profitable when they arrived at the capital, and the profits were about two to three times the value of the goods.

It is conceivable that many people will strive to win over Nobunaga in order to qualify for trade, and the Oda family's ruling base in Kinai will be strengthened.

(To be continued)