Big Luo Luo and Xiao Luo Luo are rolling all over the ground and selling cute monthly passes, are there any monthly passes?

On June 16, 1847, Zhu Jishi, who had stayed in Penghu for 10 days and did not wait for the counteroffensive fleet of the Fujian Navy Division of the Great Qing Dynasty, decided to continue his trip to Japan.

In fact, this Penghu naval battle and the subsequent sneak attack on Penghu were all outside Zhu Jishi's jihua. If that Chang Suyi had listened to Shi Degao's words to protect the ship and avoid the war, Zhu Jishi would have passed through Penghu and went directly to Japan, and he would have already arrived in Edo and Tokugawa Ieke to drink and talk.

Now I can pick up the grass and beat the rabbit, and it's not bad to get a Penghu in my hands. With this stronghold, Fujian's peaceful and prosperous era is also over, and even the entire southeast sea frontier is almost under the threat of Zhu Jishi! However, compared to the gains that can be obtained from the trip to Japan, Penghu is really nothing. Because Japan is not only the little sister who will be pressed by the Ming Dynasty in the future, but also an important part of the Pacific trade route at present.

Well, you can sail directly to Hawaii or even the Americas without going through Japan, right? That's not a bad thing, but the sailing boats of this era had a limited capacity and required a large crew. In order to maintain the needs of the crew, it is necessary to load a large amount of fresh water and supplies, and the load of the ship is limited, and the more supplies it loads, the less cargo it can carry. If Zhu Jishi's ship sailed directly from Shanghai to Hawaii, it would be about 8,200 kilometers, and if it could stop in Japan, it would be only 6,200 kilometers. It can also be sold from Shanghai to Edo, and then the freed up space can be reloaded. Similarly, sailing ships returning from Hawaii were able to transport cane sugar for sale in Japan. Then buy Japanese specialties and sell them in Shanghai. Such. An important trade route was revitalized.

As for what Zhu Jishi wants to ship to Hawaii. Needless to say, the population, of course! There are fewer Hawaiians, fewer people on the west coast of the Americas, and more populated southeastern China. And after Zhu Jishi carefully studied the Shijie map that was often changing in this era, he also found something that he hadn't noticed before.

The Russian Empire actually had a neighboring territory on the North American continent! Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, now both are sacrosanct parts of Tsarist Russia! And between China and Russia, it seems inevitable that there will be a war in the future, with the temper of the Russians. Probably won't miss any opportunity to expand the territory, right? In the future, when the Ming and Qing dynasties are decisive, the Russians will definitely intervene. And the future Ming Dynasty, can take the opportunity to get the Russian Far East and Alaska together?

Anyway, Zhu Jishi really wants the Far East and Alaska. As the saying goes, the tiger hurts people's minds, and people harm the tiger's heart. Therefore, for the sake of the future war between Ming and Russia, it is time to fool the Tokugawa shogunate into a staunch ally as early as possible, and by the way, build several logistics bases and strongholds in Japan. It will be much more convenient to really fight with Maozi in the future, and now that the Trans-Siberian Railway has not yet been opened, Maozi will not be able to maintain too many troops in the Far East and Alaska. Therefore, the key to this battle with Maozi lies in logistics, who can solve logistics. Whoever will win.

And Maozi is likely to have the support of the Manchus, so the Ming must pull in Japan.

Of course. It is also extremely important to prevent Japan's door from being knocked on by the eventful Yankees. Zhu Jishi knew that there was a black ship visiting in history, but he couldn't remember exactly what year it was, and it was estimated that it would be in the near future. So this time, no matter what, let the Tokugawa shogunate realize the importance of coastal defense and training a new type of army! Even if you want to lock the country, you have to have the strength to lock the country, right?

……

Outside the port of Edo, Japan.

Japan's largest city, located on the fertile Kanto Plain, next to Edo Bay, has been the stronghold of the Tokugawa family since Tokugawa Ieyasu converted to Kanto. It took the Tokugawa family 46 years to expand the castle in Edo, making it the largest castle in all of Japan. After Tokugawa Ieyasu founded the Tokugawa shogunate, Edo remained the center of Japanese national politics.

By 1847, the authority of the Tokugawa shogunate was declining, but Edo Castle was unprecedentedly prosperous, surpassing Kyoto and Osaka to become the largest and most prosperous city in Japan. The Port of Edo is also a busy port, but the ships that come in and out are just a few large offshore transport ships. Compared to them, the Lanfang, which is more than 1,200 tons, is simply a huge sea city. When they sailed into Edo Bay, they even scared the shogunate navy in charge of coastal defense into a cold sweat, thinking that it was a foreign power that had come to harass the peace of Japan.

Later, when I learned that it was Zhu Jishi Zhu Dasheng who was invited by the shogunate to visit, I was relieved and politely sent Lan Fang, Maria. The three ships, the Clementina and the Dameiyama, were released into Edo Bay and waited for the shogunate ministers to meet them in Edo Port.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Zhu Jishi carefully observed the port of Edo in this era. The port was built on both sides of an inland river estuary, and Zhu Jianyu told Zhu Jishi that the inland river, called the Sumida River, was also an unusually busy waterway. Most of the supplies from the Kanto Plain were transported from this river to Edo Bay and then to various parts of Japan. Next to Edo Port is the so-called castle town, which probably means business district and slum area. The castle town in Edo is huge, almost half the size of London! I don't know how many times more prosperous than Hong Kong. However, there are not many tall buildings, only dense low-rise wooden houses, which look a bit like the slums of the later Indian Asan, giving people a sense of oppression that almost freezes the air.

It's not a vibrant city. Zhu Jishi came to such a conclusion in his heart.

Edo was a gloomy metropolis, and the Tokugawa shogunate was also less vibrant.

On the way to Japan, Zhu Jianyu and Saigo Takanaga gave Zhu Jishi a general introduction to the situation in Japan. Zhu Jishi found that the current Japan is a country with a fixed class! When you are a Japanese, the first thing you need to do is to be reincarnated - well, it seems to be similar in other countries! However, the situation in Japan is absolute. The son of a farmer goes to farm, the son of a merchant goes to do business, the son of a minister is born with an official job, and the son of a monk of course goes to recite the scriptures -- a Japanese monk can get married, otherwise wouldn't there be no successor to the profession of a monk?

As for the son of a samurai, he was naturally also a samurai. Moreover, there are clear hierarchies of samurai at all levels, which are extremely difficult to overcome. For example, Zhu Jianyu and Saigo Takayong and the like, no matter how talented they are, they are the life of middle-level officials. According to the current Japanese system, it is impossible to become the elder of the shogunate, and even the head of the feudal lord has no hope. Because both of them are family lords of tens of stone to two or three hundred stone, to become the head of the clan lord, they generally need to have more than 1,000 stone of family roku, and among the shogunate elders, there are many feudal lords or reclusive feudal lords! If you want to be a feudal lord, you naturally need an old father.

In contrast, the Manchu system, while rotten, did not completely block the path for the middle and lower elites to rise. For example, Lin Zexu, a high-ranking official with a first-class official residence, is just a middle-level landlord, similar to Zhu Jianyu and Xixiang Takayong's family background. In the Manchu Dynasty, he could become a feudal official, and in Japan, he was a small and medium-sized official like a secretary.

Moreover, in Japan, there are hundreds of thousands of low-level samurai who are not as good as Zhu Jianyu and Saigo Takanaga. Many people have a samurai status and no family, and it is really difficult to become an official! There were many such low-level samurai among the southwestern feudal domains such as Satsuma, Choshu, and Tosa. Because these feudal domains were once powerful in Japan's Warring States Period, they were all powerful on the hegemonic side, and the number of samurai they had naturally increased. Later, because of the defeat of Toyotomi and Tokugawa, he lost most of his territory, but he could not reduce all the surplus samurai under his command to civilians, so there were many low-level samurai who had no family or few families. After 200 years of breeding, such a samurai, who was so poor that he only had a sword and a life, was about to flood the Satsuma and Choshu domains. And in the whole of Japan, there are probably no less than hundreds of thousands of such destitute samurai! I'm afraid everyone is looking forward to a troubled era of warring states, right?

Liliang, the core of the Tokugawa shogunate, as the banner of the shogun's direct ministers, is only about 5,000 in total! With 5,000 banners to suppress hundreds of thousands of poor samurai, the situation of the Tokugawa shogunate is really the same as that of the Qing Dynasty! (To be continued......)