New Shun 1730

After Xu Tao finished the ritual, Liu Yu took him and some sea merchants to find the ship owners of "Beiqian Ship" near Kokura and Shimonoseki, and talked about future trade.

The ship owners on the Japanese side did not show great hatred for the "invaders", but were very concerned about the future trade.

Liu Yu was very concerned about the existence of the shogunate. The unification of the shogunate led to the prosperity of the Beiqian Ship trade.

The several ports he chose were almost all centered on the Beiqian Ship trade on the Japanese side.

At this time of year in previous years, Japanese merchants doing trade would have been busy. But because of the war last year, many ship owners who ran Beiqian Ship trade were recruited to Shimonoseki to participate in the battle to block the strait.

Although they were all merchant ships, considering the strange terrain of the Shimonoseki Strait, it did work. The Dashun Navy did not have a steam engine, and faced with the narrow strait, it really did not dare to go in, fearing that it would be surrounded and killed by the fire attack ship tactics.

In the end, the Dashun and Japanese naval forces stared at each other across Shimonoseki for a few days, but did not fight, and then went to bombard Kokura and Fukuoka.

The ships of these merchant ship owners were not damaged, but this year's trade was indeed over.

When the wind direction changed in March, the sailors had to rush to Osaka, Shimonoseki, Nagasaki and other places after the New Year. Starting from Osaka, passing through the Shimonoseki Strait, with the help of the Tsushima Warm Current, they went north all the way to Sakata and Ezo.

Stopping at various places along the way to sell goods, they sold out when they arrived in Ezo, Sakata and other places. Loading salted fish, tawaramori, etc. from Ezo, they sailed down the wind against the Tsushima Warm Current, passed the Shimonoseki Strait, went through the Seto Inland Sea, and returned to Osaka for the New Year.

The prosperity of this route can be understood in terms of Dashun's canal trade.

The reason for opening this route in the beginning was that Edo and Osaka were short of rice. The rice from the shogunate's direct jurisdiction in the northeast had to be transported to Osaka and Edo, so this route was opened.

If there was no unified shogunate, there would be no such rice route. This is the benefit of a unified market.

Now that it is almost March, Japanese merchants don't care who wins or loses. What they care about is whether the first batch of goods from Dashun can reach Kobe, Nagasaki, Yonago and other places before May.

Dashun is only responsible for delivering goods to these trading ports. These merchants running to the north need to divide their respective interests as soon as possible.

It is also necessary to consider that Yonago is also open. Is the cargo to be resold enough to carry from Osaka to Yonago? Or is it enough to carry from Osaka to Sakata at one time?

Another thing is that Ezo was ceded to Dashun. Will Dashun open up the old trade of Ezo? Are Ezo specialties such as tawamono, kelp, and salted fish still sold?

And, the issue of gold and silver exchange, what kind of gold and silver exchange rate are the merchants of Dashun willing to offer?

As the saying goes, the one who is close to the water gets the moon first. Or, a blessing in disguise.

These sea merchants who were recruited to defend Xiaguan originally thought that they would lose all their ships, but they did not expect that not only did they not lose their ships, but they might get first-hand business intelligence, so they were ecstatic.

Several famous ship owners who ran north heard that Liu Yu wanted to introduce the sea merchants of Dashun to each other, and immediately found the best chefs, saying that if they were in Xiaguan and Xiaocang, it would be a waste not to eat puffer fish, so they asked people to cook puffer fish and other delicious food, waiting for Liu Yu and others to come.

After the meeting, Liu Yu was naturally asked to sit at the top, and Xu Tao and other sea merchants from Dashun sat down in turn.

Among the sea merchants and wealthy merchants on the Japanese side, there was a young man of sixteen or seventeen years old. He was so young that he could sit here. It can be imagined that his family must be rich somewhere.

The young man's name is Honma Kosaku, and his hometown is Sakata, Dewa Province. Before the Sino-Japanese War, Honma Kosaku went to Edo to gain experience, and then went to Osaka.

Ten years ago, two years before Liu Yu went to Edo to deliver sweet potatoes, a rice futures market was opened in Dojima, Osaka. This is not a new thing. Liaodong soybeans in Dashun also have similar ones, and even the Qing merchants in history have played this way.

Wherever there is such a thing, there must be speculation.

In the year before the Kyoho famine, there were only 300,000 stones of physical goods in total, and these merchants sold 1 million stones of futures. During this period, some people committed suicide and some made a lot of money.

Honma Kosaku had heard about it a long time ago. When he went to Edo and Osaka to gain experience, he suddenly felt that his father was really a country bumpkin. He was still doing business honestly?

How can you make a fortune by doing business honestly?

He should have used all his family's wealth in rice speculation. According to his idea, he could definitely make his family the first wealthy merchant in Northeast China within three to five years, and it would not be a problem to increase his wealth several times or even dozens of times.

In history, Honma Kosaku did it. At that time, there was a saying in Japan: It is easy to be a feudal lord, but it is difficult to be as rich as Honma. He was called "Dewa Tengu" at that time.

But at this time, Honma Kosaku had not had time to realize his ambitions. Not long after arriving in Osaka, his ship was requisitioned to Shimonoseki.

His family was a big businessman there, and the ship owners of the ships running to the north knew his father. Because of this face, he also had a share of the meal this time.

Honma Kosaku, who originally wanted to go back and persuade his father not to do serious business and engage in rice speculation, immediately keenly perceived the huge business opportunities after experiencing the Sino-Japanese War and learning about the peace talks and the opening of commercial ports between Dashun and Japan.

The major affairs of the country are planned by meat eaters.

He was just a businessman, the lowest class among the scholars, farmers, merchants and artisans. He didn't care about humiliation at all. All he cared about was whether he could seize the opportunity after the peace talks and the opening of the port to soar to the sky.

The goods of Dashun are all in short supply. In the past, trade in Nagasaki was directly under the jurisdiction of the shogunate, and the majority of the profits went to the people in the shogunate.

Now that the port has been opened, it is different.

As the wine flowed, the wealthy merchants who went to the north were mainly concerned about the pricing of Dashun goods. Someone asked: "After the Chinese goods arrived, are they the same price in Nagasaki, Yonago, and Hyogo? Who sets the price?"

Liu Yu was just a glue, and he didn't care about the trading company now, so he smiled and said: "I have an official position, and trade is not my business. Today I came to taste the deliciousness of pufferfish and make fish glue to glue the ship planks. You merchants will talk about business. Although the language is not accessible, gold and silver are accessible. Not to mention between China and Japan, even if you go to the West, the merchants there also recognize gold and silver. You guys take it easy."

He drank and ate by himself, just pricked up his ears to listen to the opinions of all parties to see the response capabilities of the trading company.

Xu Tao replied, "Everything is in accordance with the model of the Dutch trading house in Hirado. The branch trading houses in various places have unified pricing, and there is no difference. The prices in Nagasaki, Yonago, and Osaka Hyogo-zu are the same."

Several wealthy merchants who sailed the ship whispered to each other and discussed that if the prices in various places were the same, then they would not need to carry too many goods on the way north, and they could replenish them in Yonago.

After asking this, he asked again, "How about the trade in Ezo? Now Ezo belongs to China, and under the isolation order, we cannot go to Ezo to trade. Are the Ezo's taro and seafood still sold?"

Xu Tao thought to himself that I couldn't answer this question, and everyone at the banquet looked at Liu Yu.

"Well... the goods of Ezo are of course still for sale. But... the country remains closed. There will be patrol ships of the shogunate in the Tsugaru Strait in the future. The Celestial Empire respects the shogunate's closed-door order. The Three Sovereigns have different rituals, and the Five Emperors have different customs. What about the Celestial Empire and its vassal states?"

"However, the seafood of Ezo will be traded in Yonago. The development of Ezo will not stop, and your Kitamae ship trade can still continue. But north of Yonago, I'm afraid the profit will not be great. How do you take the return route as before?"

The guarantee that Ezo will continue to be developed made these wealthy merchants feel relieved.

They don't care who owns Ezo. As long as they continue to develop it, the profit of the northbound route can be guaranteed.

Moreover, the shogunate has not invested too much energy in Ezo. In recent years, Matsumae Fukuyama Domain has carried out some development and contracted it out with the tax-farming system. While thriving, it also faces the resistance of Ezo people and is often affected.

If Dashun can guarantee the development of Ezo, guarantee the stability of Ezo by force, and these goods can be sent to Yonago for sale, these people think that they can save a lot of trouble - they don't have to go from Yonago to Ezo, which is half of Japan.

Seeing Liu Yu asking about the route, the wealthy merchants also roughly explained their routes.

"Our ships cannot withstand strong winds and waves and need to stop constantly. Generally, we will leave Ezo in August, stay in Sakata in Dewa, and then go to Sado Island. Go around the sea to Jiangjin in Iwami, go to Shimonoseki, and go to Osaka via the Seto Inland Sea."

Liu Yu smiled and said, "That's right. In this way, you only need to maintain the route from Edo to Osaka, from Osaka to Shimonoseki, and then from Shimonoseki to Yonago. The merchants here will transport the specialties of Ezo to Yonago. By the way, there is also the ginseng of Korea. After the transaction in Busan, it is no longer the exclusive delivery of Tsushima Domain, but will be shipped to Yonago."

If you want the Whale Sea to prosper, you need to have a port facing the trilateral trade of Japan, Korea, and the Whale Sea. Liu Yu chose Mizi as the place. In order to attract enough merchants, Korean ginseng should also be sold here, and even the future American ginseng trade may also be placed here, just to have enough and complete goods, so that this place can develop as soon as possible.

Ezo is a treasure land, much easier to develop than Vladivostok.

Not only has the warm climate of the Tsushima Warm Current, but also because of the intersection of the Kuril Cold Current and the Tsushima Warm Current, it is considered one of the top three fishing grounds in the world.

Japan does not eat meat, but eats more fish. As long as the merchants can make money, they will naturally invest in Ezo under guidance.

With more people, immigration will become more and more convenient, and more people will gradually grow crops.

Liu Yu is determined to enclose land in the Whale Sea. Fill the population of the coastal areas first. After all, it is unknown when the train will appear. As long as the land is enclosed first, the technical level will be improved in the future, and the best swamp black soil plains in the center will naturally belong to China.

In addition to seafood, land reclamation is also necessary. He still has to consider the issue of growing grain around the Whale Sea. After all, the grain prices around Vladivostok are too low. If the grain prices in Ezo and other places are also so low in the future, it is really impossible to induce merchants to invest in reclamation.

Those colonies in North America made their fortunes by growing tobacco leaves. But Hokkaido is a good place for producing grain. If it can't sell for money, it will be difficult to deal with it. He thought about introducing sugar beets, but the sugar yield of sugar beets is too low now. Moreover, after Japan opens its doors, if Dashun succeeds in going to Southeast Asia, the quality and price of sugar cane will directly bankrupt the beet sugar in the north.

There must be money to be made in order to encourage private investment. Only relying on the Dashun court household government to pay, it is really impossible to move a few people through handling, deduction, and loss in the middle.

He had been to Yongning Temple in the past and had truly experienced the living conditions of the soldiers in the northern border army... On one hand, there was famine every ten years and disasters every year after passing the capital; on the other hand, the food in the villages of the soldiers was either fed to pigs or raised to dogs. The pigs and dogs probably ate better than the people in the flooded areas of the Yellow River and Huai River. The food could not be transported out, so they were looking forward to going to war with Luosha - if there was a war, the court would spend money to raise food.

So he asked: "Are you guys who run the Beiqian ship doing food business?"