Chapter 217 East Asian Integration Strategy (Part II)

As the object of the focus of the crossing public, the Heike family is now the general of the Zhengyi who leans towards the government and the opposition, and as the representative of the strongest military power of the Yueben, the surname power has long been able to influence the situation, but because of the imperial balance strategy, many shrines and temples in the east have also united to support the confrontation between the Emperor Shirakawa and the peace family. It is said that under the control of the two major forces of the Hei family and the social institute, there are more and more signs of **.

Emperor Shirakawa has also been distressed by this time, many years ago, the dialogue of the late Song Angel has been replaying in his mind: 'If Your Majesty rules the country, sweeping away internal and external resistance, your ambition will inevitably swell, and you intend to become a saint of the ages who surpasses the Emperor Shenwu, this matter is impossible under the attention of the Celestial Empire, and now if Your Majesty wants to get rid of the Fujiwara of the Regent family, you can only rely on the military strength of the martial family, and the military strength of the martial family will support Your Majesty the most for the Ping clan. Now the Ping clan has become my vassals, I am the princes of this book, Your Majesty is the Son of Heaven, the princes are to help the Son of Heaven, govern the world, the Son of Heaven is to patrol the hunt on behalf of the heavens, through the management of the princes, so that the people of the world can live and work in peace and contentment. We will give full authority to the management of the Ping clan in the fiefdom under our name, and the Ping clan is the prince, and if Your Majesty Shengming can naturally get the allegiance of the Ping clan, and get the full support of us, the power is just around the corner. ’

Emperor Shirakawa has been firmly tied to the carriage that passes through the crowd with these words. Firmly supported the Taira clan and the Regent family to contend with each other, and gradually regained the disadvantage, becoming the most powerful person in the imperial court, the Regent family was constantly weakened and marginalized, and the Taira clan continued to expand its armament with the help of Emperor Shirakawa's righteous name and funding from the empire, and quickly became the most powerful force in the whole world. Thieves, pirates, and horse bandits in various places were either exterminated by the Heike or co-opted, and the entire social atmosphere of the book was invigorated.

Emperor Shirakawa also took advantage of this wave to gain prestige and support, and quickly expanded his influence from the small area around Heiankyo to the entire island of Honshu, and in 1938, Emperor Shirakawa became the supreme de facto ruler of the entire island. Unfortunately, the good times were short-lived, and while the Heike were expanding their territory and installing cronies in newly conquered areas, the emperor slowly lost control of the army, for the simple reason that he lacked financial resources.

The Heike family, who monopolized the trade with China, had the financial resources to arm and buy the army, and how could the emperor, who had a little difficulty relying solely on the central treasury to support the minister, accept the newly promoted samurai officers who demanded more treatment? Position and reputation are no longer the most important things for the samurai who have been baptized by the tide of rich commoditization, and the values of the old era have been washed away by money, and they are as fragile as window paper, and the weight of a coin will be crushed to pieces.

After the establishment of the Qianhui Academy, which was dedicated to trade, commerce, and military technology, Emperor Shirakawa also built a Tianhui Academy specializing in media, art, law, and management. Unlike the Qianhui Academy, which only trained commercial, seafaring, agricultural, and handicraft talents and military officers who served the Heike family, the Tianhui Academy only trained pen and officials who were engaged in medicine, religious propaganda, and writing work. The Heike family, who firmly believed that force and financial resources were everything, simply ignored this seoin, but they did not expect that the many shrines and temples that had slowly mastered the ** and the hearts of the people would also become an obstacle to the expansion of the east.

When the shogunate wanted Emperor Shirakawa to take a back seat and retire in the palace, the major temples and shrines strongly opposed it. At this time, the Heike family realized that Emperor Shirakawa had mastered the terrible weapon of popular support, and in order to control the country's financial resources and military power, the Taira clan had to compromise with Emperor Shirakawa.

Without a unified political axe, there will naturally be no cohesion, and the struggles between the two sides on various battlefields will naturally cheapen the empire, which is enough to influence the outsider.

Until the outbreak of Tai Student[***] in 1952, the book did not have a core force that could command any force to appear. The Ashikaga clan was born like a supernova suddenly appearing in the night sky, robbing it of the moon's brilliance. In 1952, a student named Ashikaga Hide, the son of a noble minister, who was directly awarded a low-level official position after graduation, proposed that in order to end years of civil strife and turmoil, Emperor Shirakawa invited the suzerain, the Huaxia Empire, to send people to supervise local elections and establish a supreme authority similar to the Imperial Senate, so as to accommodate all forces to compete in a peaceful environment and reduce the damage caused by the struggle between the country's political forces.

This earth-shattering proposal suddenly roasted the power-hungry Heike and the White River Emperor on the stove, and he was a student of the Chinese Empire for a long time, and he would always know what was new in the Celestial Empire, and he would try his best to learn and imitate it, in order to catch up and be satisfied. However, this kind of practice that is obviously a spoonful of the warlords, chaebols, and gate valves is definitely not what the top leaders want to see. The creation of the Senate would inevitably nullify the power of the emperor, and at the same time weaken the Heike who had a monopoly on the military. When the various committees of the Senate grasped the real power, the monarch was a puppet, and the monarch of the Chinese Empire was simply a rubber stamp, and there was basically no one to see except for foreign affairs activities, canonization of nobles, festivals and celebrations. There is no way for the warlords to talk about it, and the Chinese Empire's use of troops abroad is simply stingy, and there has never been a general who can lead an army for a long time. The strict division of military regions and military commissions has almost eliminated all possibility of self-respect for troops. The professional army can only receive salaries and equipment from the Ministry of Defense, while personnel authority and budget are in the hands of the Armed Services Committee of the Senate. If Ben also runs the Senate, due to the complexity of the Senate's origins, it is basically impossible to achieve a situation where one party has the final say.

If there is no shadow of the empire in this kind of proposal, the ghost will not believe it. It is true that this is also the case, and if the situation is more conducive to control, it is necessary to do everything possible to avoid strongman politics and the dominance of one faction in the book, and according to the estimation of the people who have passed through the people, if this situation continues, the samurai world ruled by the shogunate will inevitably appear, and the emperor and the court will inevitably become a vase.

This situation is not in the interests of the empire, in the event that the pro-China head of the Heike family dies and is replaced by a new head of the family who is nationalist, the interests of the empire will inevitably suffer, and it is not easy to control a strongman, and it is also difficult to control a ruling samurai family, but it is much easier to control a large number of disunited parliamentarians to pass pro-China bills.

On the surface, this student seems to be for the country and the nation, but in fact it is a temptation arranged by the empire. This chess piece played the right role at the right time, at the right address, and on the right battlefield, and the top brass was entangled.

A large number of low- and middle-level ministers and local officials began to talk about this reform that could bring them benefits, after all, most of the members of the Imperial Senate were from influential people in various fields at the local level, and each of them had a great possibility of wielding huge real power, and had extremely high social status and income.

In this feudal country where blood determines everything, most of the resources and control power are in the hands of local wealthy clans and lords from tribal chiefs. The prestige, prestige and rights that the Ping clan got in the war to unify the Yue Ben are all false, as long as he cut off his military and financial resources, the Hei family will be finished, and everyone in the Yue Ben can do this, but the crossing of the public can, as long as the crossing of the public announces that the trade will change an agent or sign a zero-tariff agreement, the Ping family will die immediately. The Heike family, which is cut off from cash flow, will go bankrupt on the basis of huge debts.

In fact, the separatist forces that the Heike conquered and eliminated were all working for Emperor Shirakawa, and at this time, the people who were in power in various places were the children of the ministers who had knowledge and culture, and it was impossible for illiterate warriors and merchants to manage the government well, and the number of high-level literate samurai was very small, and it was not enough to serve as a high-ranking officer in the army, so how could there be a wealthy person to become a civil official.

This embarrassing situation was not alleviated until six years after the emergence of Senhuiin, and the talent gap of the Heike family showed signs of shrinking from the widening to the widening. And those children of ministers who are good at art are even worse to govern the place, the actual power is basically in the hands of the imperial compradors and tax collectors, and those waste children who spend all day in the wind and snow and tea parties as long as they pay their taxes on time, and every time the officials come to evaluate their political performance, everything will be fine. In order to accumulate wealth, the people of the Hei family only went to the wealthy coastal towns to serve as officials, and the inland areas were gradually controlled by the personnel sent by the empire.

By 1956, when Emperor Shirakawa was critically ill, the Heike had completed their transformation from a warlord to a chaebol, becoming a major force in the Senate that occupied one-third of the seats, and the imperial agents who held two-thirds of the seats came from all over the country, and seemed to be quite scattered but had a strong ** and mobilization force, which could launch a stormy attack on the Taira clan at any time. But half of the agents were wall-riding factions who were verbally loyal to the Heike family. The Heike family, who thought that he had mastered the Senate, was anxious to install cronies in the East Saying, which he had not been able to control, and slowly relaxed the work of building loyalty to the army, and the external imperial affairs instructors naturally instilled the concept of military loyalty to the country and society, canceled the oath of allegiance ceremony and the establishment of private armed forces, which were not liked by the public, and all of them were converted into various military districts under the Military Committee that belonged only to the Senate.

Although the Heike still held an important position in each military region and the Central Military Commission in this reform, they did not attach too much importance to the fundamental changes brought about by the change of system. The private armed forces of the feudal era were successfully used as the national standing army, and no one played the trick at the institutional level. (To be continued.) )