Edo Castle, 1845.

In a magnificent Japanese-style palace, the breeze blows through the wind chimes and makes a crisp sound, and the beautiful cherry blossoms fall with it.

The man sitting cross-legged on the tatami mat was Masahiro Abe, the chief of the shogunate, one of the most powerful men in the country.

At the age of twenty-seven, he became the chief elder, which is unique in the history of the Edo shogunate.

It's just that at this time, Masahiro Abe didn't have the spirit of "Young Zhide" at all, and he was not in the mood to listen to the pleasant wind chimes, and the falling of cherry blossoms made him feel an inexplicable sadness.

Within the shogunate, Masahiro Abe was called "Ladyboard Catfish", which shows the high expectations of him.

Legend has it that a huge catfish was carrying the Japanese islands on its back, and when it moved, an earthquake would occur, so the god Ebisu pressed the catfish with a gourd.

In addition to the meaning of destruction and destruction, catfish also has the meaning of revival and transformation, and is known as "the catfish that transforms society".

And the gourd itself in Izumo has the meaning of no disease and no disaster, so the scoop catfish has the meaning of turning evil into good fortune and eliminating disasters and misfortunes.

It's just that Masahiro Abe, as the chief elder, knows better than anyone that the shogunate at this time is already declining, and the tax and forced labor have reached an unparalleled level, but he still can't pay off the debts owed to the merchants.

The weakness of the central government led to turmoil throughout Japan, and careerists continued to gain greater power through foreign smuggling trade and further exploitation of the people.

The half-dead peasants were the secret of rule.

However, by this time the peasants could no longer survive, and there were repeated riots, and even some low-ranking samurai and merchants joined the rebellion.

The shogunate had to borrow money from merchants to cope with the immediate crisis, and many of the big merchants were already in a much higher position than the samurai class.

What Masahiro Abe didn't know was that the root cause of this strange circle was the development of the market economy, and the simultaneous decline in the market share of tribute rice and the price of rice meant that the wealth of the lords of the shogunate domain had plummeted.

At that time, Japan's tax revenue was mainly corn, so this caused general financial difficulties for the daimyos, and it also meant that the real value of rice for retainers and samurai decreased.

As the saying goes, the warehouse is honest and knows the etiquette, and now these warriors can't even eat enough, where do they get loyalty, filial piety, festival, and righteousness.

(The Japanese pay attention to the integration of loyalty and filial piety, or loyalty and filial piety, so they are not separated by a dunnage.) ）

At the same time, the shy samurai class became more and more dissatisfied with the status quo of society, after all, according to their traditional ideas and learning, merchants should be the last business.

At this time, they rode on top of their heads to make a fortune, and what was even more hateful was that those samurai who swore allegiance to the daimyo actually colluded with the merchants, which was simply unbearable.

Some samurai began to try to change the situation, but the most capable and intelligent samurai usually chose to be loyal to the merchants.

In fact, it was not easy to be loyal to the merchants at that time, after all, there were many monks and few meats, but this was difficult for this nation who was familiar with the "Three Kingdoms".

Many samurai chose to "recognize the thief as their father" and become the adopted son of a merchant. At the same time, the merchants began to covet higher powers, and became the adopted sons of the daimyo and the Chinese.

It's just that these adopted sons of theirs do not intend to "fulfill their filial piety", but to seize power. The culture of adopted children in Japanese history is very complex, so I will not go into detail in this book.

As long as you remember that the adopted son has the right of inheritance, and can also inherit the position of the governor (patriarch), and because of his own power, he will usually have an advantage in the succession battle.

In the mid-to-late Edo period, there were even "merchants who were angry, and the world was afraid." ". (The original version was "The merchants of Osaka were angry, and the princes of the world were terrified", but I didn't think it was imposing, so I changed it.) ）

In fact, the ruling class of the shogunate was not unaware of this chaos, and at the same time adopted a lot of reform measures to save itself.

Let's not talk about the conventional method, but just talk about the most outrageous of them, that is, you can use "rude bargaining" on the person who asks for the account.

(Rude bargaining is often referred to as the privilege of a samurai to kill casually, but in fact this right has been very narrow after several revisions.) ）

That's right, it is possible to openly repay debts and hack to death those businessmen who force debts. However, soon Jin Quan overpowered Wu Quan, and he no longer tried to force debts if he was rude.

On the whole, these reforms of the shogunate did not have much effect, after all, with the development of the productive forces and the commodity economy, the decline of the feudal landlords was almost inevitable.

At the same time, the emergence of wealthy peasants and wealthy businessmen was essentially an early product of capitalist economic development.

The wealthy peasants were the agrarian bourgeoisie who annexed through land, and the wealthy merchants were the financial capitalists analogous to Europe.

These people, after the initial primitive accumulation, wanted to develop further, but that would inevitably further weaken the power of the original ruling class (shogunate, daimyo).

This situation would be repeated with the growth of the wealthy farmers and merchants, and the decline of the shogunate, until the status of both sides changed.

However, at that time, the germ of capitalism in Japan was still very weak, and there was no tradition of merchant autonomy and sufficient social status to support their revolution, so it was very different.

Masahiro Abe's predecessor, Tadakuni Mizuno, was an interesting man who held high the banner of anti-corruption on the one hand, and on the other hand, he took bribes in private.

But the shock of the war in Asia was too strong for the shogunate's top officials to accept.

A strong sense of crisis led a high-ranking shogunate bureaucrat named Shiotani to release a large amount of information about the war at the risk of his own life.

In Japan at that time, Tang style storytelling (Daqing) and Lanfeng storytelling (Dutch) were top secret, and only a few high-ranking shogunate bureaucrats had the right to know.

Shiotani's actions immediately caused an uproar in Japan, especially for the samurai class.

Because their faith collapsed, and then it was the traditional art of the Yamato nation - suicide by cutting their stomachs.

"Woohoo, the huge cannon shook the sky and destroyed the city, and the Han army entered the port and left. Alack! Talk about peace and gold millions, and go to buy the chief of Yi once saki! ”

This is a poem written by a poet who lived in the Tenpo period, and to a certain extent, reflects the shock that the war brought to the Japanese.

As a result, the shogunate began a reform under the auspices of Mizuno Tadakuni, and the two biggest problems facing Japan at that time were insufficient food production and the lack of money for the ruling class.

At this time, Japan was plagued by natural disasters, and famine occurred in even the richest Osaka region, not to mention other areas where the land was barren.

If there is no food in the fields, people cannot stay where they are and starve to death. As a result, a large number of water swallows and Komae (the lowest class of poor Japanese peasants) began to flee to the cities in order to survive.

In a sense, this provided a large number of cheap labor for Japanese industry and commerce, but the more farmers ran, the lower the grain production, the price of grain continued to rise, and more people went bankrupt.

In order to break this cycle, Mizuno Tadashi issued the "Decree of the Return of People" to let those peasants go back and forth from where.

This practice offended not only the peasants, but also the merchants.

The former thinks that he can make money in the city, but he can only wait for death in the countryside, so why should he continue to be a cow and a horse?

The latter felt that it was hard to get so much cheap labor, and the smuggling trade had finally improved somewhat, and now that they were gone, what could they do to compete with foreign countries?

Mizuno then regarded the merchants as his greatest enemy of reform, and he knew that the cause of the famine was not only natural disasters, but also the hoarding of merchants, so he issued the "Price Limit Order" to break this situation.

However, the merchants united and did not sell food, and the shogunate did not have enough food to help the victims. Wealthy businessmen can endure this situation, but the victims can't stand it.

As a result, the "Price Limit Order" was declared a failure.

Mizuno wanted to improve coastal defenses and build new warships, but the problem arose again, and there was no money. The above plans can only be empty talk,

In the end, he relented and promulgated the "Fuel and Fresh Water Supply Order", the actual content of which was similar to Cixi's routine, that is, as long as foreign ships had fuel, food, fresh water, etc., the local government should immediately meet them, so as not to make friends resentful.

Later, Sakamoto Ryoma, a Meiji Restoration activist, angrily called it a "comfort order".

Mizuno Tadashi's reforms finally led to the assassination, and his reforms failed.

In fact, Japan at this time was a bit like Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. Between 1819 and 1845, Japan's currency was devalued 21 times, which eased the economic pressure on the shogunate, but passed it on to the samurai class.

Soaring prices, combined with the fact that the salaries of samurai who did not have to fight for several years made life extremely difficult. Many of them have to borrow to get by, or even become artisanal producers.

At that time, the daughters of wealthy merchants were the object of many samurai's pursuits, and the daughters of samurai were also willing to marry merchants, or even concubines, who they had simply despised in the past.

Social status is also reversed

In short, Mizuno Tadakuni's reforms will not succeed and cannot succeed.

The failure of the Tenpo reform dealt another blow to the shogunate, which was already in decline.

At this time, Masahiro Abe was facing the same predicament as his predecessor, and he had to face more challenges than Mizuno Tadakuni.

From 1778, when the first Russian ship appeared on the northernmost island of Shimo-Ezo (Hokkaido), the Russians were constantly trying to trade with Japan.

And the Russians have always been a bunch of unscrupulous guys to achieve their ends, and after several unsuccessful requests for trade, they have started to use their brains.

The Russians began to pretend to be pirates to harass the northern part of Ezo Island, and even directly plundered the population and set up schools to teach Russian.

In 1821, Tsar Alexander suddenly grew tired of this sneaky game and announced:

"The coast of the North Pacific and its affiliated islands between the south of the Bering Strait and fifty-one north latitudes are owned by the Russian Empire."

Despite the protests of many countries, Alexander I still went his own way. It was only after Nicholas I came to power that aggression in the Far East and the North Pacific subsided.

After the war of 1840, Russia feared that British expansion would affect its interests in the Far East and the North Pacific.

Tsar Nicholas I devised the infamous East Russia Plan, and its first step was to establish trade relations with Japan, using its abundant furs, whale oil, and torpedoes in exchange for food, coal, and other daily necessities for the establishment of permanent settlements.

Then try to get the ports of Japan in preparation for further southward movement.

In 1845, the Russian envoy again came to Japan with a letter from Nicholas I, but the shogunate still refused.

The Governor of Eastern Siberia, Muravyov, threatened revenge, but this plan fell through a major rebellion in Chechnya.

After all, the Caucasus threatens the South Russian steppes, and Russia is much more of a threat than the Far East.

However, the shogunate had no way of knowing this, and they could only live under the clouds of war.

In 1808, British warships disguised as Dutch merchant ships broke into the port of Nagasaki, taking hostages and extorting fuel and fresh water.

Around 1820, a large number of British and American whaling ships entered the North Pacific Ocean and began to harass the coastal areas, and even direct armed conflict broke out.

Among them, the Americans were most interested in Japan, and in 1837 they even brought in a group of Nanyang Japanese who tried to enter Edo Bay, but were expelled by the Uraga artillery.

In fact, the Americans are planning a new kind of engagement, and Pocker, the most powerful president in American history, is ready to knock on Japan's door by force, for which he is ready to use two of America's newest frigates

(Actually, Perry only took four ships with him.) ）

However, what made Masahiro Abe most troubled at this time was a letter from the King of the Netherlands, in which the "merchant king" Wilhelm II suggested that the shogunate should either abolish the policy of closing the country to the outside world, because it was out of touch with the times.

Either to establish relations with a more powerful dynasty, and by the way it was revealed that at this time there was a fleet of the Austrian Empire heading for Japan.

The Netherlands was the only Western country in the Edo period to be licensed by the shogunate to trade, and relations between the two countries were fairly good.

Lanfeng storytelling and Tang storytelling have always been important tools for the shogunate to understand the world, and when the shogunate tried to understand what kind of country the Austrian Empire was from the mouths of Dutch merchants, the answer was that it was a formidably powerful diplomatic power.

Yes, this country does not seem to be able to fight land wars, naval wars, and economic battles, but it has been able to stand in the West for hundreds of years.

The Dutch had a much higher opinion of the Austrian Empire than the British and Russians, after all, Austria had helped the Netherlands regain the Flemish region and increase its economic power to a certain extent.

Britain is a feud with the Netherlands, and it is unrealistic for the latter to say good things about the former. As for Russia, it is regarded as a barbarian at all, and its practices are indeed worthy of the word barbarian.

When asked about the relationship between the Netherlands and Austria, the Dutch businessman said that the latter was the chairman of the German Confederation and that the Netherlands was a member.

If you have to use words that the Japanese can understand, then it can be understood as the relationship between the daimyo and the shogun.

This answer shocked the high-ranking officials of the shogunate, including Masahiro Abe, because the Netherlands was already very strong in their hearts, especially the fourth-class battleship responsible for delivering the message to Wilhelm II, which simply refreshed their perception of warships.

You must know that at this time, the largest naval warship in Japan, the Tiandi Maru, was only 500 materials (600 tons).

And the total weight of that fourth-class battleship of the Dutch Navy exceeded 1,500 tons, and the two sides were not on the same level at all.

At this moment, there was a neighing of a war horse from the direction of the palace gate, and Abe Masahiro clenched the white bone paper fan in his hand.

There was a jumble of eager footsteps on the side of the porch, and he knew that the day would come sooner or later.

"My lord! Big things are not good!! Big things are not good!! The fleet of the Austrian Empire has sailed into Edo Bay."

(End of chapter)