New Shun 1730

The wealthy merchants all turned their heads to the youngest among them, Honma Kosaku. Honma Kosaku, who had gained experience in Edo and Osaka and felt that grain speculation could make a lot of money, also had his heart beating fast.

The wealthy merchant who sailed the ship answered Liu Yu's question first.

"We usually don't do rice business. The surplus rice of each domain is usually stored in Osaka. Usually, the commodity is issued a few months in advance. There is no spot, but the price is set. When the time comes, either the transaction is completed or the commodity is transferred to others."

Liu Yu was also excited when he heard it. He thought that it was okay to play with the closed-door policy, anyway, the fluctuation would not be too large.

If it is open, there are Siamese rice, Ezo rice, and even Songjiang rice, as well as the huge funds of Dashun. Isn't it a death wish to play like this?

He had been staring at these people just now. Seeing that these wealthy merchants had been looking at a young man, he asked, "Could it be that the young man who had just come of age was actually engaged in grain trade?"

Honma Kosaku suppressed his excitement. He knew in his heart that if he could get on the Dashun Merchants Group, how could he not make a fortune?

Taking advantage of the situation, he stood up, toasted Liu Yu, and introduced himself.

The rise and fall of a family's wealth certainly depends on the family's struggle, but also on the course of history. The Honma family can be said to have made a fortune standing at the cusp of history.

As soon as Tokugawa Yoshimune came to power, he made a decision on the spur of his mind and issued an order prohibiting the renting of land. As a result, after two years of trouble, the price of rice soared, and the people suffered terribly. After two years, they gave up hastily, realizing that "regression" could not go on, so they followed the times and encouraged land reclamation.

Of course, the common people were not happy to reclaim land.

On the one hand, reclaimed land must be reported and taxed, and farmers rely on this hidden private land that does not need to pay tribute to grow some radishes to eat.

Besides, farmers have no money.

Under the orthodox feudal system, all feudal rulers wanted to protect the interests of small farmers and did not want an intermediate class between small farmers and lords, such as landlords.

But the reforms that Tokugawa Yoshimune came up with on a whim proved that regression was not feasible.

Farmers had no money to cultivate land, so they had to relax the control over merchants.

Encourage merchants to pay for cultivating land.

Since we want to encourage merchants to cultivate land, we must ensure the interests of merchants.

We cannot say that we encourage merchants to pay for cultivating land while prohibiting them from collecting rent after renting land. In that case, merchants are not stupid and will not invest money. They invest money to make money, not to serve farmers.

In the eighth year of Kyoho, the year when Tokugawa Yoshimune abandoned the order prohibiting land lease mortgages that he came up with on a whim, the shogunate issued "The Town People's Request for Changes to the Order on New Land" and "New Land Opening Announcement".

On the one hand, the feudal economy was disintegrating, and the leasing activities were allowed in the form of laws; on the other hand, the interests of merchants were guaranteed by the shogunate, which took food from the various feudal domains. According to the shogunate, the land registered on the Ishikoken land was the territory of the feudal domains; the wasteland not registered on the Ishikoken land was reclaimed and paid as tribute to the shogunate.

The feudal domains had their own difficulties, and the merchants were eager to try. The Honma family took the opportunity to reclaim a large amount of wasteland and became a famous landlord in Dewa.

Then, there was the Kyoho famine.

The cold summer and insect plague along the coast of the Seto Inland Sea had little impact on Mutsu and Dewa in the northeast.

At the same time, the development of the "Cao Mi" route on the previous westward return route ensured transportation, and the loss rate and sinking rate were reduced.

In this vent, the Honma family became prosperous all of a sudden. During the Kyoho famine, the price of rice was skyrocketing. By the time the famine was over, the Honma family had become a well-known wealthy merchant.

However, Honma Kosaku's father was rather conservative and believed that "business should be done in the right way", so he did not participate in the speculation of Osaka rice futures. Therefore, he was just a general wealthy man, but did not reach the level of "Sakata is sunny, Dojima is cloudy, and Edo Kuramae is rainy" when Honma Kosaku engaged in speculative futures.

This is roughly consistent with the history of the Dutch and East India Companies today: when they were struggling, they engaged in industry, fishing, shrimping, and spinning woolen cloth, and advanced to engaging in transportation and trade of buying low and selling high. Now they feel that trading is too tiring and it is better to lend money and speculate in finance, so that they almost died after the South China Sea bubble burst.

What Dashun had to do at this time was to go from the hard work of planting mulberry, raising silkworms, picking tea, and weaving to the step of buying low and selling high and overseas trade.

Honma Kosaku had already begun to think about directly engaging in financial speculation. However, in this situation, Honma Kosaku could not tell his father that he wanted to engage in speculative trade, so he could only introduce his family's rice industry and how it developed roughly.

The speaker has a heart, and the listener has a heart. Liu Yu was looking for an agent who had some basic knowledge in grain trading. When he heard Honma Kosaku introduce his family's rice plantation, he thought that this was indeed a suitable candidate.

The transportation around Jinghai is extremely inconvenient because of the obstruction of the Korean Peninsula and the existence of the Songliao watershed. Whether it is land transportation or sea transportation, it is impossible to sell grain to the food-deficient Central Plains before the emergence of railways.

Only by relying on the Japanese market can the grain in the Jinghai area be commercialized, commercial investment can be promoted, and the border immigration plan around Jinghai can be completed as quickly as possible.

This is Dashun's ultimate goal in the Northeast. Once the war with Japan is over, not only trading companies should be considered, but also border immigration issues at a higher level should be considered.

Although the Ezo land is still a wasteland, the soybeans in Liaodong and the cold-resistant rice of the Koreans already exist. Moreover, the Little Ice Age has passed, the weather is getting warmer, and with the existence of the Tsushima Warm Current, the difficulty of reclamation is not great.

Ezo has no food now, but the food trade must be established first. We can use rice from Siam and beans from Liaodong to gain a foothold in the market. We also need an agent to cooperate. After all, bulk food requires the cooperation of Japanese compradors.

It is not known whether this person can be used. Liu Yu is not in a good position to directly tell his plan at this time. He secretly remembers Honma Kosaku.

He nodded to him and drank the glass of wine with face, but then he did not mention the food trade.

Honma Kosaku was young after all, and he could not hold the momentum in his heart. He thought to himself, you asked about the food trade, but you didn't talk about it. What's going on?

But seeing that Liu Yu started to talk about other topics again, he couldn't interrupt and ask more questions, so he could only wait silently.

During the meal, Liu Yu did not mention the food trade again, but asked about the sales of Ezo's specialty products, the price of the goods they imported from the Seto Inland Sea along the way, what they sold, etc.

For more specific situations, Xu Tao and other sea merchants will talk.

After the banquet, Honma Kosaku, who was full of doubts, received an invitation.

He could no longer suppress his excitement, took a few deep breaths, calmed down, and followed the person who invited him to the boat.

There were no other people, only an interpreter and Liu Yu. After the meeting, Liu Yu asked about the price of rice in Osaka.

Honma Kosaku had gained experience in Osaka, and he had considered the idea of ​​rice speculation and studied the rice speculation for a long time.

He didn't say anything else after the question and answer. He knew that since Liu Yu asked him to come alone, there must be a chance.

During the period, Liu Yu asked about rice futures, and Honma Kosaku answered: "The kind that only has a voucher but no actual rice is called account rice. There is no need for spot goods, and it can be paid at the right time according to the three seasons of the year. This is approved by the shogunate."

"Trading usually starts in the morning and takes a break at noon. Trading resumes at 4:45 in the afternoon. At that time, a cannon fuse will be lit, and the length will be determined. When the fuse burns out, trading will stop."

"The starting price of the transaction the next morning is the price at the moment the fuse burned out yesterday."

After the interpreter finished translating, Liu Yu asked: "What is the minimum entry limit?"

"One hundred koku. The minimum is one hundred koku."

"In which year was this approved by the shogunate?"

"Kyoho 15."

After calculating the date, Liu Yu understood why the shogunate, as a feudal ruler, would allow such a weird thing to appear.

That year was two years before the Kyoho famine, which happened to be a once-in-a-century bumper harvest in Japan. In addition, the previous recasting led to too high a gold and silver content, which led to deflation. The price of rice in Japan was extremely low, which led to Tokugawa Yoshimune's financial collapse again after he had finally stabilized the situation.

Low grain prices hurt farmers and even more so scholars.

Officials in Dashun were paid wages, silver, and rice, but Zhang Juzheng's reforms have continued to this day, and it is basically a silver standard, with currency replacing physical goods.

In Japan, the salaries of samurai are still paid in rice.

If rice is too cheap, the samurai will be dissatisfied.

In this case, Tokugawa Yoshimune knew that this was a big pit. This account-combined rice futures could only be traded underground before, but in order to raise the price of rice and protect the interests of the samurai, he had to pinch his nose and accept it.

It can be said that the main line of the entire Kyoho reform is that the shogunate must ensure the hierarchy of scholars, farmers, merchants, and artisans, and suppress the profits of merchants. But the shogunate is not the centralized Dashun, and the merchants can't suppress it at all.

The prohibition of leasing land mortgages was ruined by merchants; the high silver content recasting forced the merchants to the lowest rice price in history; the development of new fields allowed merchants to take advantage of the situation and tell the shogunate that without merchants, you can't expect to develop... In the end, the shogunate could only introduce a policy in a humiliating manner. The shogunate no longer cared about the loan disputes between samurai and merchants, allowing samurai to reasonably default on their debts, but it only pinched those small merchants and shrimps. The real big merchants did not dare to default on their debts, and the lords of the various domains did not dare to do so. After defaulting on their debts, no one would lend to them, and the finances of each domain were a mess.

Merchants dug a big pit for the shogunate in rice futures trading. In order to increase the price of rice, the shogunate could only accept it with a pinch of the nose, and only hoped that rice as a speculative commodity could maintain a higher price.

If the rice price was lower at that time, the samurai class would collapse.

But once this pit was dug, it would be difficult to ban it.

Each domain was short of money, and they were counting on selling their rice at a high price in Osaka. They were already too deeply involved, and the shogunate could no longer do anything.

In order to confirm that it was too big to be removed, Liu Yu asked again: "Besides Osaka, is this kind of account rice also traded elsewhere?"

"Yes. Not only in Osaka, but also in Otsu, Shimonoseki, Matsusaka of the Kishu domain, and the castle towns of the Kuwana domain, all have this kind of transaction, and the shogunate also allows it."