I formed the strongest swordsman group

Back to Qingdeng's side——

From the perspective of modern jurisprudence, Qingdeng's violent beating of ronin who blocked the way and extorted money is a very reasonable self-defense. However, in the Edo period, there was a famous law called "Success or failure with noise".

"Huanhuo" in Japanese means disputes and violent conflicts between the two.

This law first appeared in the era of the Muromachi Shogunate (1336-1573). For those who make noise, regardless of who is right or wrong, both parties to the conflict will be punished.

Whether it is the Muromachi shogunate or the law of dividing the country in the Warring States Period, they all adopt the principle of "noise and failure" as the principle of arbitration.

After the establishment of the Edo Shogunate, although there was no clear stipulation in the Royal Decree, it still became a customary law handed down.

If some officials really come to the door, they want to hold Qingdeng and others accountable for "fighting with the ronin in the street"... Although they don't want to see this kind of situation happen, Qingdeng and his party won't feel bad about it fear.

There is no need for Tokugawa Ieshige and Tianzhangyuan to do anything, Qingdeng's own energy and contacts alone are enough to settle this little incident.

However, more is always better than less.

Ever since, adhering to the concept and mentality of "avoid trouble if possible", Qingdeng and others did not stay in Nihombashi for long.

Where are you going next?

Tokugawa Iemo thought for a while, and slowly spit out a place name that everyone in Edo knew, everyone knew: Kanda.

To sum it up in easy-to-understand words... Kanda is the only vegetable wholesale market in Edo.

Most of the vegetable merchants and vegetable vendors in Edo first approve the goods from Kanda and then sell them around.

Every day before dawn, a large number of farmers living in the suburbs of Edo will bring fresh fruits and vegetables to Kanda for sale.

Nishizuru Ihara, a famous writer who wrote "The Lustful Generation", which is known as the "Japanese Golden Plum Blossom", described the bustling scene of the Kanda vegetable market in the book "The World's Chest Calculation" (1692). He wrote: "The turnips come every day on horses, and it looks almost as if the fields move by themselves."

Qingdeng had never been to Kanda, even in his previous life, he had never visited any fruit and vegetable wholesale market.

So, after entering this bustling area where the air is always filled with the fragrance of plants, he was immediately startled by the novel scene in front of him, his eyebrows and eyes twitching slightly.

Looking up, fresh vegetables and fruits full of pits and valleys come into view.

"Eggplant! Eggplant! Anyone want some eggplant?"

"Spinach! Spinach is cheap!"

"Oranges in season! Come and see! Oranges in season!"

...

Pieces of stalls, large or small, stand on both sides of the main roads in Kanda.

A variety of vegetables and fruits decorate Kanda inside and out like a large farm.

Countless peasants in simple clothes shuttle back and forth across Kanda.

More than half of them can only rely on a stone back and a pair of iron shoulders to carry heavy fruits and vegetables.

Only a very few wealthy people have the financial resources to use livestock and use cattle and horses to transport goods.

If there are farmers selling vegetables, then there will naturally be merchants who come to buy goods.

"Tsk...why are these eggplants so stale..."

"Hey! Why is your cabbage getting more and more expensive?"

"Oh, sir, I didn't mean to lower the price on purpose! The recent market conditions are not good, and you know that!"

...

Rows of shoulders, crowds of people cheering and horses shouting—these two idioms seem to be the most appropriate to describe Kanda, which is still bustling even in today's New Year's Day.

However, Tokugawa Iemo, who watched all this quietly, did not show any peace of mind or relief.

"It's really thin..."

The words that Iemo Tokugawa muttered in a low voice formed particles, which were lightly passed into Qingdeng's ears.

Qingdeng knew the meaning of what he said—because he happened to feel exactly the same emotion almost at the same time—almost all the farmers who appeared in front of their eyes were really too thin.

Those with ruddy complexion are not one out of ten.

A skinny guy with little flesh on his body, he doesn't know how ordinary he is.

There are countless people with swollen legs and feet.

Obviously they are people who grow food.

Obviously, they carry a lot of delicious ingredients on their shoulders and backs.

As a result, they all looked hungry, and each became thinner than the other.

The peasants under the Tokugawas were thin—that was normal, and it would be abnormal if they were all strong.

The land tax stipulated by the Edo shogunate is "four publics and six peoples", that is, 40% of the total annual income must be handed over to the government.

In addition to such high taxes, there are various kinds of handymen on the shoulders of farmers.

All in all, whether in the shogunate or in the feudal lands, more than 80% of the peasants were shockingly poor due to exploitation, and the economy was extremely fragile. Any natural or man-made disaster would immediately ruin their families.

Only the landlords and some rich peasants could afford rice, while the rest of the peasants could only live on tares and red rice.

tares: weeds used in modern times exclusively for livestock.

Red rice: A crop with an extremely unpleasant taste. Because the taste is so unpalatable, the government always emphasizes "no red rice" when harvesting grain.

Eating these two kinds of food for many years...you will be a ghost if your body is not weak.

"Huh? Where are you going?"

Tenzhangin looked in surprise at Iemo Tokugawa who suddenly went straight to a vegetable stand next to him.

"Nowhere." Iemo Tokugawa replied flatly, "I just... want to ask someone a few simple questions."

The owner of the vegetable stand patronized by Iemo Tokugawa is an old man in his 50s. Like most of the farmers here, he cannot afford to use livestock, so he can only use a shoulder pole to shovel the vegetables thicker than his waist. Two large baskets of green vegetables in a large circle were picked from the countryside where I lived to Edo.

Qingdeng didn't know where this old man lived, but he knew that the nearest village to Edo was at least half an hour's journey away no matter how fast he walked.

Use a shoulder pole to pick up vegetables weighing at least 30 jins, and walk on rough dirt roads for half an hour or even longer... Such a difficult life is just the reality of the few farmers who are bustling in the streets and alleys of Kanda at this moment. Just everyday photos.

"Ah! Wu, Lord Samurai! Good day!"

Seeing Qingdeng and others walking to his booth, the old man who was rubbing his slightly swollen calf quickly stood up, stammered hello, and looked back and forth nervously and suspiciously at Qingdeng and others.

Qingdeng and his party's attire did not look like merchants who came to buy goods, so it's no wonder the old man showed such expressions and eyes.

"Old sir." Iemo Tokugawa asked with a smile, "How is your business?"

As soon as Iemo Tokugawa opened his mouth, the old man was startled.

Good guy, a samurai with a sword on his waist actually calls him Mr. Also used honorifics? A strong feeling of astonishment surrounded the old man's body.

The nervousness on the old man's face suddenly became exponentially stronger, and he didn't even know how to move his hands and feet.

He struggled to twist his tongue that seemed to be knotted, and stammered:

"I, I, I, I, my business today, so-so, so-so, so-so! I didn't sell a lot of vegetables!"

"So-so..." Iemo Tokugawa nodded lightly, then moved his eyes down to scan the old man's swollen feet, "Old man, your body...doesn't look very healthy, are you eating well?"

"Ah...?" The old man's eyes widened, with a look of doubting whether he had heard something wrong.

Iemo Tokugawa had no choice but to repeat the question just now.

"Eat well... this..." The old man sneered a few times, "Master Samurai, you, you are really joking, I am just a lowly farmer, I am satisfied if I can have a bite of food and not starve to death , dare not ask for more..."

"Then how is your current life?" Iemo Tokugawa persevered in further questioning.

Tokugawa Iemo's young face and kind attitude dissolved the tension in the old man's heart a lot.

The old man, whose demeanor gradually relaxed, was less nervous and stammered when he spoke.

"The current life...is just like that."

The old man sighed heavily.

"It's not much better, but it's not too hard to live on."

"However, I'm not dissatisfied with the current life. No matter how bad the life is...it's better than the time when the Tianbao famine..."

Tianbao famine—that is, the great famine that swept across Japan more than 20 years ago and caused countless people to starve to death.

No one can tell how many people starved to death during the Tianbao famine, which lasted for several years.

When the famine was at its worst, not to mention tares and red rice, even the bark in the mountains was almost eaten up by the victims.

Later, the increasingly corrupt form of disaster relief and the incompetence of the shogunate ignited the anger of the people, which directly triggered the "Oshio Heihachiro Uprising" (1837), which shocked the whole country and still haunts the shogunate until now.

The fierce fighting between the official army and the rebel army left many traces of war in Osaka today.

When he spit out the words "Heavenly Protection and Famine", the big man seemed to be recalling some unbearable past events, his face turned pale, and his body shook violently a few times.

After a moment, he sighed again.

"Master Samurai, I think you look like a kind person, so let me tell you something from the bottom of my heart..."

"In the past few years, there have been no major disasters, but life has become more and more difficult."

"The things on the market are getting more and more expensive. Not to mention the luxury items used by the rich, even salt, pots, bowls and bowls for eating... and so on, all the necessities of life are all on the rise. The price has been rising for a while, but it has never fallen.”

"In this critical juncture when money is needed far more than ever, the rice and vegetables I painstakingly grow, as well as the cloth woven by my mother-in-law, are getting harder and harder to sell."

"To be honest...if this continues, I'm really afraid that one day my family and I will starve to death because we don't have money to buy food..."

"I'm just a vulgar person, I don't know a single word, I don't understand the big principles and big questions, the only craft I know is farming, so I don't dare to give advice to the officials..."

"Hey... I just hope that the officials and lords can quickly implement some benevolent policies, so that the lives of us poor people can be better as soon as possible..."

Before the words were finished, the old man laughed bitterly at himself.

"..." Iemo Tokugawa fell silent with a complex expression, he raised his eyes in a numb manner, and inadvertently cast his eyes into the distance, his cheeks were full of elusive emotions.

Why does the old man feel that the current life has become difficult?

Due to the limited level of cognition, even in the West, where the culture and technology are the most developed, the major of economics has just started. Therefore, let’s not talk about a mere farmer. Even if you look at the whole of Japan today, no matter whether you are a scholar or a government official with rich experience in politics, there may not be many people who can answer this question.

As a time traveler, Qingdeng, who had studied the methods used by Western powers to exploit colonies and semi-colonies in middle school history class, roughly knew the answer.

The countries and places invaded by Western powers have basically the same fate.

What the old man said just now was actually wrong.

In recent years, this country has not experienced major disasters—just over 7 years ago, the big event known as the "black ship attack", didn't it plunge this country into a great change that has not been seen in a thousand years?

After the founding of Japan, foreign trade soared.

Economic commodities such as raw silk, tea, silkworm eggs, and cotton were exported in large quantities, causing prices to rise.

Leaving aside other commodities, let’s just take raw silk as an example: Due to the shortage of raw silk and rising prices, the silk weaving industry in Nishijin, Kyoto and other places has become difficult to sustain.

The soaring price of export products has also affected the general price of goods. The price of rice has been rising year by year since a few years ago.

Because the price of gold in Japan is far lower than the international market price, Western merchants and embassy personnel from various countries took advantage of the difference to obtain Japanese gold, resulting in a large outflow of gold and a drop in the price of money. It caused further hardship to the lives of civilians and middle- and lower-level warriors.

In a word - the semi-colonial and semi-feudal social environment has made the current Japanese economy go from bad to worse.

If we want to fundamentally solve this problem... it is far from enough to rely on the so-called benevolent policies and the promulgation of a few so-called policies to benefit the people.

Qingdeng thought to himself: Tokugawa Jiashige should also have a general understanding of the crux of the problem, so he showed this expression as if he had eaten a fly.

About 2 minutes later, Iemo Tokugawa took a long breath, and then slowly withdrew his gaze into the distance.

"Old man, thank you for your answer. Could you please help me choose the 10 freshest Chinese cabbages? I want to buy them."

Hearing that Tokugawa Jiamao wanted to buy his food, the old man suddenly became excited.

He smiled and responded loudly, "Okay".

The old face covered with wrinkles and dust did not show the distress when he just stated the hard life he was facing.

For the underdogs, happiness is as simple...and so difficult.

...

...

Qingdeng and his party carried 10 Chinese cabbages and left Kanda without a word.

After leaving Kanda, under the instruction of Iemo Tokugawa, they headed straight west to the next inspection site: Xiaoshichuan Health Center.

Koishikawa health care center - Yoshimune Tokugawa, the eighth shogun of the Shogunate, ordered the establishment of a facility for the poor in 1722, after receiving a proposal petition from the Kampo doctor Ogawa Shobune to be put into the Measan box (common opinion box). A medical facility, the Koishikawa Health Center. At the beginning, it could accommodate about 40 patients, and later increased to 150 patients.

Until now, this century-old hospital is still the most famous charity organization under the Edo shogunate.

The biggest feature of Xiaoshichuan Health Center is that you can receive medical treatment for free.

For the poor at the bottom who have problems even eating, the Xiaoshichuan Health Center, which can provide free medical services, is like a life-saving straw.

Ieshige Tokugawa probably wanted to take a closer look at the current status of the operation of this charitable hospital that countless poor people placed high hopes on.

Except for the time when he first crossed over, Qingdeng, who has never been short of money in his daily expenses, naturally has never visited the Xiaoshichuan health center that specializes in serving the poor.

In Qingdeng's imagination, this kind of charitable hospital should be crowded with poor people waiting to see a doctor.

But who knows... After arriving at the Xiaoshichuan Health Center, Qingdeng suddenly realized how conservative his imagination was...

At this moment, an indescribable picture appeared in the field of vision of Qingdeng and others.

Today's sunshine is so bright—but it is such a bright sun, when it shines on the surrounding area of ​​Xiaoshichuan Health Center, the light is instantly dimmed due to the influence of the environment.

The red soil road near the Xiaoshichuan Health Center is covered with a thick layer of variegated colors that look like grease.

The colors that make up this patch of variegated colors include: dark brown, burnt black, dark green... In short, all the ugly colors that can cause physical discomfort can be found here.

If you look carefully, you will find that these color blocks are actually vivid people.

There were men, women and children of all ages. According to a rough visual estimate, the number was about a thousand.

They gathered on the side of the street, in the middle of the road, and on every inch of land around the Xiaoshichuan Health Center.

The pungent stench of sweat, excrement, and body odor that hasn't been bathed for a long time diffuses in this crowded and heavy space.

Children's cries, feeble groans, comforting sobs, unbearable screams... These noisy sounds filled the ears of Qingdeng and others with an overwhelming sense of presence.

"Mom...my stomach hurts..." a little girl said angrily.

"Hey...you'll see the doctor soon, just bear with it...just bear with it..." The young woman holding the little girl patted the little girl's back with one hand, and gently wiped it away with the other. Tears in the corners of the eyes.

Although she said "I will see a doctor soon", there are still at least 200 people in line in front of her... It is already noon, and if there is no accident, it is absolutely impossible for the mother and child to cross the road within today. Pass the gate of Xiaoshichuan Health Center.

"Masters! I beg you!" A middle-aged man knelt on the ground and kowtowed tearfully to the crowd in front of him, "My mother... my mother is dying of illness! Please! Please do me a favor! Give me the place in line and let my mother see a doctor first! I beg you!"

A young man in front of him turned his head and scolded impatiently: "Your mother is dying of illness, but my son is also dying of illness! If I give you the place in line, what will my son do?" ?”

With the leadership of this young man, others immediately joined the ranks of condemnation.

"That's right! You can't be so selfish!"

"Your mother's life is life, but my daughter's life is not life?"

"I started queuing here before dawn! You want to take my place away with the touch of your mouth? It's a good idea!"

...

Facing the flood of reprimands and abuse, the middle-aged man did not make any rebuttals.

He only continued to kowtow silently, and silently begged everyone to give him the position in the queue, silently fighting for as much life as possible for his mother.

Similar pictures and similar situations appear everywhere in this not-so-large space.

Looking at the scene in front of them, Qingdeng and his party showed different expressions, but the emotions contained in them were quite consistent.

Sha Zhong drooped the corners of her mouth.

Yae lowered her head and eyes.

A look of sadness flashed across Tianzhangyuan's eyes.

Tokugawa Iemo remained calm, but his naturally hanging hands were now clenched tightly.

As for Qingdeng... like Iemo Tokugawa, he had no expression on his face.

But in fact, his heart at this time is not calm.

At this moment, in Qingdeng's mind, for some reason, this idea suddenly appeared:

——This is the true portrayal of the poor at the bottom of the feudal era...

From this thought, an unknown strange emotion grew out of Qingdeng's heart...

Suddenly, an angry shout attracted the attention of Qingdeng and his party.

"Hey! How can there be filth here? Hey! Smelly woman, get out of here quickly! This is a medical clinic for people to see patients, not a place for you filthy filth! The evil spirit in your body will Pollution of this place will make everyone sick!"

*****

*****

The author's biological clock and rhythm of life have gradually recovered! You see, the word count is starting to increase day by day! It is about to return to the previous update level!

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