Chapter 217 East Asian Integration Strategy (Part II)

Japan, as the object of the public's attention, has never been out of the control of the empire, and the Heike family is now the general of the Zhengyi who leans towards the government and the opposition, and as the representative force of Japan's strongest military power, it has long been able to influence the situation of the dynasty, but because of the imperial balance strategy, many shrines and temples in eastern Japan have also united to support the confrontation between Emperor Shirakawa and the peace family. Japan is showing signs of more and more splitting under the control of the two major forces, the Heike and the Shein.

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 prince of Japan, 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 fief 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 monopoly of power is just around the corner. ’

Emperor Shirakawa has been firmly tied to the carriage that passes through the crowd with these words. Staunch support for the Taira clan and the Seki family, gradually regained the disadvantage, and became the most powerful person in the imperial court, the Seki family was constantly weakened and marginalized, and the Taira clan continued to expand their armaments with the help of Emperor Shirakawa's righteous name and funding from the empire. It quickly became the most powerful force in Japan. Thieves, pirates, and horse bandits in various places were either exterminated by the Heike or co-opted. The social atmosphere in Japan as a whole has been revitalized.

Emperor Shirakawa also took advantage of this wave to gain prestige and public support, and quickly expanded his influence from the small area around Heiankyo to the entire island of Honshu. In 1938, Emperor Shirakawa became the supreme de facto ruler of the entire Japanese archipelago. 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.

How could the emperor, who had a monopoly on western Japan's trade with China, have the deep pockets to arm and buy off the army, and it is difficult for the emperor to rely solely on the central treasury to support the ministers, to subdue the newly promoted samurai officers who demand 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 corrupt and fragile as window paper. It only takes the weight of a coin to 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, literature, 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. Convinced that force and financial resources were everything, the Heike simply ignored the shoin, but they did not expect that the many shrines and temples that had gradually gained public opinion and popular support would also become an obstacle to the expansion of eastern Japan.

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 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, although the army, seaports, and customs of eastern Japan were in their hands. However, it has lost the personnel power to install cronies in the administrative system and the central decision-making power to make decisions on legislation.

Without a unified government, there will naturally be no cohesion, and the back-and-forth struggles between the two sides on various battlefields will naturally cheapen the empire, which is enough to influence Japan.

Until the outbreak of the Tai Student Mass Incident in 1952, Japan did not have a core force sufficient to call any power to emerge. The Ashikaga clan was born like a supernova suddenly appearing in the night sky. robbed the moon of its brilliance. In 1952, a student named Ashikaga Hide, the son of a Japanese aristocratic minister, who was directly awarded a low-ranking official position after graduation, wrote a letter proposing to end years of civil strife and turmoil. Emperor Shirakawa invited the suzerain, the Huaxia Empire, to send people to Japan to oversee local elections and set up a supreme authority similar to the Imperial Senate. to accommodate the various forces to compete in a peaceful environment, and reduce the damage caused by the struggle between the political forces of the country.

This earth-shattering proposal immediately roasted the power-hungry Heike and Emperor Shirakawa on the stove. Japan has long been a student of the Chinese Empire, and Japan will always know what is new in the Celestial Empire, and try its 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 held 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 other occasions. 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 Japan were to have a House of Councillors, it would be impossible for one company to have the final say, given the complexity of the origins of the House of Councillors.

If there is no shadow of the empire in this kind of proposal, the ghost will not believe it. Indeed, if the situation in Japan is more conducive to control, it is necessary to do everything possible to avoid strongman politics and the dominance of one faction in Japan, and according to the estimation of the Travelers, if this situation continues, there will inevitably be a samurai world ruled by the shogunate, and the emperor and the imperial 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 with nationalism, the interests of the empire in Japan 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, on the right battlefield, and the Japanese 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 nobles and lords converted from tribal chiefs, with the conquest of the Taira clan, these nominally subordinate local powerful factions belonging to the imperial court have been eliminated, and Japan has quickly entered the fast lane of the county system and centralized power. The prestige and power that the Taira clan gained in the war to unify Japan were all false, as long as he cut off his military and financial resources, the Heike would be finished, and everyone in Japan could do this, but the crossing people could, as long as the crossing people announced that the trade with Japan would change an agent or sign a zero-tariff agreement, the Heike would 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 clan fought to eliminate in the east and west were all working for Emperor Shirakawa, and the local governments at this time were all in charge of the children of the ministers who possessed 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 literature and art are even worse when they govern the localities, 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, with two-thirds of the seats in the empire represented by people from all over the world, who seemed to be quite scattered but had strong public opinion and mobilization forces, ready to launch a stormy attack on the Taira. But half of the agents were wall-riding factions who were verbally loyal to the Heike family. The Heike family, who thought they had mastered the House of Councillors, were anxious to install cronies in East Japan, which they had been unable to control, and slowly relaxed their work of building loyalty to the military, and the Imperial Military Instructors hired from outside naturally instilled the concept of loyalty to the country and society in the soldiers, and abolished the oath-or-allegiance ceremony and the establishment of private armed forces, which were not popular with the public, and all of them were converted into military districts under the Military Committee of the House of Councillors.

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 traversal successfully transformed the private armed forces of the feudal era into a national standing army, and no one has ever played the trick of traversing the masses at the institutional level. (To be continued......)