There is a saying in China that says, "If you don't hit the south wall, you won't look back." ”

The Chinese people are such wisdom. The long history, the vast territory, and the huge number of people who have always ranked first in the world have allowed the Chinese people to accumulate a lot of experience through extensive practice.

The exploration of objective laws is a long and tortuous process. Wang Shuhui's advantage as a modern traveler who has received a comprehensive education in the past lies in the fact that although he has not practiced many things, history has provided a full system of advanced experience that has been tested by practice.

Countless sages have provided Wang Shuhui with clear, definite and fruitful theories and knowledge.

It is precisely for this reason that Wang Shuhui will be so firm and resolute in implementing all the transcendent policies and systems that the indigenous people would think are not suitable for this era after traveling to the end of the Ming Dynasty.

And it is precisely because of Wang Shuhui's persistence and self-confidence that an industrialized and modern China is being fully built 20 years after Wang Shuhui arrived at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

Also as a leader, Tokugawa Iemitsu, the third shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, was not a general. Although Tokugawa Iemitsu had a higher starting point than 99.99 percent of the people in the Wa Kingdom because of his blood relationship, the process of inheriting the supreme power of the Wa Kingdom was definitely not a smooth sailing process.

Eccentric parents, complex internal and external environments, brothers with ulterior motives, and factions within the ruling class with various interests surrounding his brother have always threatened Tokugawa Iemitsu's future and even his life.

However, through perseverance and struggle, through countless confrontations and battles with enemies both open and covert, Tokugawa Iemitsu rose to prominence in the struggle for the heir to the supreme power of the Wa Kingdom, achieved final success, and finally became the supreme ruler of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the entire Wa Kingdom.

Normally, a person like him must be the kind of calm person who can judge the gains and losses of interests through reason, but we also have to admit that because the feudal system and the Tokugawa Iemitsu, the supreme ruler of the Wa Kingdom, which was the main part of the feudal system, had serious and fatal limitations due to the intellectual barrier.

For example, after learning about the various malices of the Chinese Empire towards the Wakoku, especially the various arrangements made entirely for the stability of the Shogunate's rule over the Wakoku, Tokugawa Iemitsu realized very rationally that if the Chinese Empire could not be drawn to the side of the Shogunate, and if the Chinese Empire had been allowed to unscrupulously shake the foundation of the Shogunate's rule over the Wakoku by supporting the daimyo and rebellious parties in various places, the Tokugawa Shogunate would never have ever wanted to truly establish a systematic and comprehensive samurai rule.

Therefore, under this cognition, Tokugawa Iemitsu can even make a sacrifice in honor like the former Emperor Taishang, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu General. He was willing to bear the humiliation of being a vassal of the Chinese Empire in exchange for the support of the Chinese Empire.

Tokugawa Iemitsu was very confident that as long as the Chinese Empire cut off the arms trade with the daimyo in various places, and as long as the Chinese Empire no longer continued to support the rebels in the Nagasaki region in terms of food, weapons, various materials, and even instructors and officers, the shogunate's army could easily suppress the rebellion of the rebels with the strength of the shogunate itself, deter the restless daimyo in various places, and bring the Wa kingdom back to the peaceful and prosperous era of seclusion and seclusion set by him.

Even with the help of the shogunate's officials and ministers, Tokugawa Iemitsu believed that China, which had always been known for its pride, would not only not continue to support the rebels, but would also actively support the Tokugawa shogunate.

As a relatively qualified feudal ruler, when Naotaka, an important minister of the Tokugawa shogunate, whom he had high hopes for, returned to Edo with the text of the "Treaty of Friendship between the Chinese Empire and the Wakoku Clan" (referred to as 21 for short), Tokugawa Iemitsu's first reaction was not to spit and shout angrily like the ministers of the shogunate, but after a moment of astonishment, he began to reflect on what his judgment was wrong.

After spending nearly an hour carefully reviewing every detail of the planning process, Tokugawa Iemitsu suddenly discovered that the biggest problem with the shogunate's plan was not that it had misestimated its own side, but that its estimate of China was completely based on completely time-limited and all the materials were indirect and historical.

So after figuring out this problem, Tokugawa Iemitsu immediately asked Naotaka Ii to carefully introduce everything he had encountered in China.

In this way, as the highest level of the entire ruling group of the Japanese Kingdom, it took a day to hear a somewhat magical and magical Chinese story with a lot of horror flavor.

When Tokugawa Iemitsu heard Naotaka Ii talk about the changes in Chinese clothing and etiquette, he didn't feel much about it. Although he was not a scholar, Tokugawa Iemitsu's historical knowledge was enough to tell him that the etiquette system and clothing of China, the largest country in the world, were constantly changing over the course of thousands of years. Therefore, he did not think that there was anything wrong with this, as some ministers in the shogunate believed in Zhu Zixue.

Even, because of his understanding of the history of the Great Song Dynasty, Tokugawa Iemitsu also knew that the prime minister of the Great Song Dynasty named Wang Anshi once openly proposed that "the sky is not enough to fear, the ancestors are not enough to be afraid, and the words of people are not enough to be compassionate." So Tokugawa Iemitsu believes that even such subversive remarks can become the core theory of China's legal reform, so it is not a big deal for the new Chinese empire to change its own system, etiquette, and clothing.

Of course, Tokugawa Iemitsu paid special attention to the arguments put forward by the ministers who believed in Zhu Zixue that the Chinese Empire, which "respected the law and abandoned Confucianism", would turn into a brutal Qin Dynasty.

By the time Tokugawa Iemitsu and the other shogunate ministers heard Naodaka Ii mention the huge ships he had seen in China that had no wind or oars, and were driven by fire; Steam locomotives and trains made of steel, which can run fast on the tracks by burning coal; There is no need to burn any fuel, just a rope that can be "lit" with a pull; a car that does not need to eat grass or drink water to carry a large number of people on the highway; and the incredible "big spaceship" (airship) that could fly on a fixed route with people and goods in the sky, Tokugawa Iemitsu and the shogunate ministers became incomprehensible and dumbfounded.

You must know that for people in an agrarian society, this industrialized China between the first industrial revolution and the second industrial revolution is indeed an incredible world of gods and demons.

Although Tokugawa Iemitsu and the samurai of the shogunate were not as proficient in Sinology as the ministers and the imperial family in Kyoto, they were also well-educated.

In all the countries of East Asia in this era, the so-called upper-level perfect education is actually Sinology education. Therefore, Tokugawa Iemitsu and his shogunate ministers understood Chinese history and culture to a certain extent, so they also knew that compared with the Wa Kingdom, China was always a very advanced and very developed country, and it was countless times more advanced and civilized than its own barren island country.

It is conceivable that if even ordinary maritime merchants of the Japanese Kingdom can make things like "the country is compared to the Central Plains, and the people are the same as the ancients." The well-dressed Tang system, the courtesy of the Han monarchs. The silver urn stores sake, and the golden knife is covered with scales. Every year in February and March, the peach and plum spring from Yangyang. If this kind of poetry is regarded as the inheritor of Chinese culture, then high-ranking rulers of the Wa Kingdom, such as Tokugawa Iemitsu and the shogunate ministers, who have received special education, can still rationally realize that the Wa culture is inherited from China, and the civilization of the Wa Kingdom is different from China.

However, this understanding is based on an understanding of the gap between China and the Japanese state.

For example, if the Chinese people who are proficient in Chinese poetry read Tang and Song poems, even if they can't write poems of the same high level as Tang poems and Song Ci, they will definitely be able to understand the beauty of Tang poems and Song Ci.

For example, if the Japanese people were asked to build Tang-style buildings, although they could not build a truly glorious and great city like Chang'an and Luoyang, they could still build a copycat version of Kyoto City.

However, the China of trains, automobiles, ships, and airships that Ii Naotaka spoke of was completely beyond the comprehension of Tokugawa Iemitsu and his shogunate ministers.

In fact, if Naotaka Ii hadn't seen these things with his own eyes, Naokaka Ii himself wouldn't have believed what he said.

At this point, without further explanations and introductions from Naotaka Iii, Tokugawa Iemitsu has already realized that the matter is big.

As the head of a military bloc that controlled state power through military means, and especially as the head of government of the Wakoku Province, which had a long tradition of military juntas, Tokugawa Iemitsu knew what great ambitions could come with great power.

The predecessor of the Tokugawa family, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the monkey Taiko Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had unified the Wa Kingdom a few decades ago, had just mastered the strength to claim the throne of the Wa Kingdom, and he had the delusional idea of establishing a super-empire that included China, Tianzhu, and Korea, and thus conquered Korea, which eventually led to the complete severance of formal diplomatic relations between China and the Wa Kingdom for decades.

Therefore, if the Chinese Empire really has an incredible, god-like power, as described by Naotaka I, then the "Treaty of Friendship between the Chinese Empire and the Japanese Empire", which looks a bit like the nonsense of a mentally abnormal person, means that the Wa Kingdom has become an island with only one island, Honshu, and all the politics, economy, and military are controlled by the Chinese Empire, and there is a strong smell of national extinction, it is really very likely that it is the official attitude of the Chinese Imperial Government.

Tokugawa Iemitsu and the ministers of the Tokugawa shogunate were not unaware of the might of the Chinese Empire.

As Naotaka Ii reported, they still remember very clearly the fact that the Tokugawa shogunate shook the Tokugawa shogunate by appearing in Edo Bay because the shogunate acquiesced in the Satsuma domain's invasion of the Ryukyu Kingdom, sinking all the local ships and destroying all the defenses in the bay.

It's just that because the Chinese Empire at that time was still like the Ming Dynasty, there was no official exchange with the Wa Kingdom, so everyone in the Tokugawa shogunate couldn't figure out what was going on.

In addition, because there were not many warships and merchant ships in Edo Bay, and because there was no construction or investment in the navy due to the policy of closing the country to the outside world, and because the fleet that suddenly appeared did not attack Edo Castle, Tokugawa Iemitsu and the other shogunate ministers actually took this incident as an opportunity to further promote the policy of closing the country and eliminate all foreign forces in the country, without conducting further in-depth research on the incident itself.

Now that the Tokugawa shogunate, which has received the most unbelievable but authentic first-hand information, it is difficult to begin to face up to this "Treaty of Friendship between the Chinese Empire and the Wakoku Clan."

As for the content of the treaty, such as the reparation for land cession, as a feudal ruler, to a certain extent, like the Manchu government, they believed that "the Wa Koku is not the Ho Wa Koku", and the Tokugawa Shogunate rulers did not find it really so unacceptable, as the interests of the Shogunate and the Wa State were not completely identical.

If the criterion of judgment is based on the fact that the Chinese Empire was really like a god and a demon, as Naotaka Ii said, in addition to the fact that the territory of the cession was a bit too huge, and in addition to the outrageous amount of indemnity, Tokugawa Iemitsu even felt that if the amount of rice was replaced by silver, and then the amount of land ceded was further reduced, and the scope of the cessed land was reduced to Ezo Island and Kagoshima, which had already been de facto ceded away, the content of the treaty regarding the reparation for the cession of land was not completely unacceptable.

However, it was not until the other contents of the treaty were analyzed, such as the opening of treaty ports, the liberalization of road construction, the surrender of customs management rights, and so on, that the political, economic, and military rule of the shogunate over the Wakoku was kidnapped, and more importantly, the contents of the entire emperor's family to the Chinese Empire, that Tokugawa Iemitsu really felt the full malice of the Chinese Empire towards the Tokugawa Shogunate from the bottom of his heart.

These contents are the things that really make Tokugawa Iemitsu and the shogunate ministers unacceptable at all, and they feel extremely angry.

For Tokugawa Iemitsu, the emperor is not the emperor and there is nothing to worry about at all. To all the samurai families of the entire Wa Kingdom, the emperor was nothing more than a mascot, a domestic animal kept in the ornate pigsty of Kyoto.

However, the livestock had to be kept in captivity by the shogunate, and once the animal passed from the shogunate's hands to someone else's hands, the animal was likely to become a reason for all the daimyo of the Wa kingdom to oppose the shogunate's rule.

The Tokugawa shogunate, like all former shogunates, did not think it was a big deal that the Tokugawa shogunate, like all former shogunates, demanded that the emperor be punished and dealt with in the treaty. If the identity and purpose were different, the daimyo of the whole country would still be happy to see the face of that sour and unaware idiot being trampled on.

However, from the point of view of maintaining its own rule, the emperor was a legal and nominal talisman for the shogunate.

Feudal rulers were like that. They don't feel that they can't do anything that harms the interests of the country. But if it hurts their own interests, they are Jedi who will resist to the death.

After fully analyzing the "Treaty of Friendship between the Chinese Empire and the Wakoku Clan" brought back by Naotaka Ii, and clearly recognizing the great threat of this treaty to the rule of the shogunate, the Tokugawa shogunate decided that for the sake of the dignity of His Majesty the Emperor and the survival of the Wa country, the shogunate must stand up and lead the Wa kingdom and the Chinese invaders in a war.

The Tokugawa shogunate's self-talk, whether or not the local daimyo who were still doing business with the foreign trade fleet of the Chinese Empire believed it or not, anyway, the bigwigs of the Tokugawa shogunate believed it themselves.