"Maitreya Buddha! This is the taste of rice, the taste that can make you cry with happiness!..."
"Haha! Sukeichiro, this is the most delicious Etsu rice. It comes from the Tsuruga County of Echizen Province on the north shore of Lake Biwa. It is also the place where Renyoshou taught the Dharma! The water and soil there are good, and the rice grown there is also good. It’s very fragrant. Not to mention in Hokuriku, even in the whole world, there is good rice!…”
"Buddha bless you! Watanabe-kun, I have only eaten the rice from Hiraga County of Mutsu Province at the master's banquet before, and it is already more delicious than the rice grown in Katsuyamakan. I didn't expect that the rice from Yue Kingdom is so glutinous. It’s sticky, full of rice flavor, and has a sweet aftertaste!…”
"! Delicious! So delicious!…"
Venison and rice porridge were boiling in the iron pot, and fragrant white smoke was rising. The meat is reindeer meat from the snowfields, and the rice is Hokoku rice from Hokuriku. The area around Tsuruga County was later known as Fukui County, with excellent water quality and good soil. It was the origin of Koshihikari rice and Gyokuro tea. As for Hiraga County in Mutsu Province, it is the origin of Aomori rice, and it is also one of the few places in Mutsu Province that produces good rice.
At this moment, around the bonfire where the porridge was being cooked, four rice cooks were sitting around, the monk soldier Watanabe Masumi, the boatman Murakami Kitichi, the horse breeder Sukeichiro, and the boatwright Jin Zenshu. Everyone devoured the hard-won meat porridge, and even shed tears with excitement. The rice is good and the meat is fragrant. After a mouthful of hot venison porridge, your whole body warms up instantly in this cold ice and snow.
"Phew! The master of the house is generous! I can eat such fragrant rice porridge for the rest of my life even without a big pickle and only eat rice!...Ah! How could lower-level warriors like us do it if we weren't sailing and trading? Eat rice like this!”
"That's right! Maitreya Buddha has appeared! Ordinary villagers in the village cannot eat rice even once throughout the year!"
"Haha! Suichiro, you said that the villagers are poor and cannot eat rice even once throughout the year. I believe this..."
Hearing the sighs of the two retainers of the Oyezaki family, the monk warrior Watanabe Masumi's eyes flashed and he asked with a smile while eating venison.
"But Murakami-kun, you are the captain of the Oyizaki family. Don't you have rice to eat on weekdays?"
"Huh! Witness the Buddha! Mr. Watanabe, you are a direct descendant of the samurai family and you have been staying in the prosperous Gyeonggi Province. How could you know the sufferings of us Ezo warriors... let alone our Oyizaki family, even the southern family that produces good rice , Ordinary middle- and lower-level warriors cannot eat rice twice a month! How luxurious a family must be to be able to eat rice every day? I am afraid that even the head of the family, Xin Guanggong, is reluctant to part with it!..."
After finishing the rice porridge and licking the pottery bowl in his hand clean, Murakami Jidong, the ship leader, exhaled a long and satisfied breath. He was so satisfied that he felt as if he had ascended to immortality. Then, with his fingers crossed, he told Watanabe Masumi, who was already called "Sir", a good talk about the daily life of ordinary samurai in poverty.
"Watanabe-sama, in the poor Mutsu country, rice can be a valuable food for banquets. The rice of the Oyizaki family is strictly preserved in Takakura. In fact, Katsuyamakan has some bitter cold, and there are paddy fields where rice can be grown. , not much…”
"Oh? Then if the villagers and samurai of Mutsu don't grow rice, what do they grow and eat on weekdays?"
"Witness the Buddha! What the villagers and warriors usually grow are wheat, millet, barnyard grass, and taro!"
Talking about the work of farming, Murakami suddenly became energetic. In the War Kingdom, it was impossible for poor lower-level samurai to leave their jobs. Even if it is a 50-stone land grant and a 20-stone salary, you have to support a large family and pay tribute to the head of the family. Those days are still tight, and you have to work in the fields.
It is Japan at the end of the 15th century. Water conservancy facilities are very lacking, and there are a lot of mountains, dry lands, and saline-alkali lands. There are not many paddy fields suitable for growing rice, and the output is also very insufficient. Rice is indeed an expensive commodity that only daimyo are willing to eat regularly. Even a hundred years later, Date Masamune's wish was just "One day when the world is peaceful, I want to eat red bean rice, taro and radish soup and fresh sardines!"
As for the daimyo's standard meal, Oda Nobunaga had one meat and two vegetables, a bowl of soup, and his favorite tea-leaf rice. Tokugawa Ieyasu, on the other hand, was more frugal. He only had rice for pickled radish and very little fish. The most fundamental reason for this standard of dining is that the Republic of China has many people but little land, many mountains and few fields, and very scarce supplies! Needless to say, compared with the rich Ming Dynasty, even North Korea across the water is completely inferior.
"On weekdays, you grow wheat, millet, barnyard millet, and taro? Murakami-kun, please tell me carefully! Is the wheat the kind of wheat that is ground to make flour in Tang Dynasty?..."
"Ha! Are you talking about wheat for eating noodles? Oh, no! Wheat, like rice, is also expensive and generally cannot be eaten... The wheat that villagers usually grow is barley or highland barley!..."
"Barley or highland barley? I have drunk ale wine, and the taste is quite refreshing. But I remember that this crop does not produce much!..."
"Haha! Mr. Watanabe, I'm afraid you have never farmed before, right? The most important thing in farming is to be able to plant and produce seeds, and not to have no harvest! ...Wheat is slightly better than rice, but it requires more water. There are still too many, they are too picky, and they are too delicate. Otherwise, the harvest will be lost! On the contrary, barley is very drought-tolerant, and highland barley can especially be grown in the mountains, adapting to cold and barrenness... No matter how much water there is this year, When it’s cold or hot, there’s always a harvest!…”
Looking at the confused Watanabe Masumi, Murakami Kidomi smiled and continued to explain patiently.
"As for growing millet, that's millet! Ordinary warriors eat the most millet. Millet can be grown in mountains and plains. It is drought-resistant and has low farming requirements. In a word, it is not picky. The land is much easier to grow than wheat and rice! And the yield of millet is higher than that of barley and barley, and it is also easy to store... In the entire Ezo and Mutsu countries, most of the serious fields are planted with millet. This time I went north , part of the food brought by the fleet is the rice prepared by the merchant Morino Kiyo, and the bulk is the millet that the owner took out from the warehouse!..."
"Yeah! When we were in the temple, the senior monks ate rice, and the junior monks ate millet. I was a monk soldier, and I also lived on millet!..."
Watanabe Masumi, the monk soldier, touched his chin, savoring the taste of millet porridge. That is the most common taste of hometown, and it is also the taste that I have been accustomed to since I was a child. He thought about it for a while, then sighed quietly and continued the previous topic.
"Blessed by Bodhisattva! Tell me again about growing barnyard grass and taro!"
"Oh! Planting barnyardgrass and taro!..."
Murakami Jitong rubbed his full belly, pressed it down hard, and then filled up another bowl of fragrant venison porridge. Then, he glanced at Sukeichiro and gave instructions.
"Sukeichiro, your family grows barnyard grass and taro, come and tell Mr. Watanabe!"
"Yes! Taro and taro are the daily rations for the villagers... taro is the wild wheat grown in young children, and taro is the aquatic grass that can be eaten by its roots in the planting water..."
Sukeichiro looked respectful, lowered his head and thought for a moment, then explained with gestures.
"Mr. Watanabe, compared with wheat and corn, the advantages of tares are that they are easier to grow, are less picky about the land, and are tolerant to salty soil! In the salt land by the sea, you can only grow tares, and nothing else... It is relatively easy to grow. There is less, but there is a lot of chaff. Villagers are very lucky to be able to eat chaff without starving to death because they have been favored by gods and Buddhas and Maitreya Buddha has appeared!…"
"As for taro, it can be found in the mountains around the lake, but it's almost impossible to grow it in Ezo. You need a warm place in the south. There are people growing it in Mutsu... That thing is very easy to grow, so you don't have to worry about it at all. You just need to plant it near the water. Hey, even though it’s small, it tastes delicious…”
The taro here is naturally not the high-yielding sweet potato that only exists in the Americas, but the water taro cultivated by the Chinese dynasty since ancient times. The "taro" in "The Book of Han" says "I eat rice, beans, soup, taro and Kui". Water taro is small, has many seeds, likes water and warm temperature, and was a staple food before the Han Dynasty. As for the reason why taro was later withdrawn from the staple food, it was naturally because the output was too small. After the agricultural technology of the Chinese Dynasty fully developed in the Tang and Song Dynasties, the warm waterside areas were all converted to higher-yielding rice.
"That's it!...In addition to these, is there anything else?"
"Buddha Maitreya bless you! Of course, in addition to barley, millet, taro, and taro, the countryside will grow various other crops and eat all kinds of edible things... such as soybeans and peas that are fed to the horses on the boat. Those are all villagers. It’s such good food that we are drooling over. Oh! You can’t grow rice and wheat all the time in the fields. You have to plant beans in rotation to maintain the fertility of the soil. Soybeans prefer warmer temperatures, while peas are more cold-tolerant. In Ezo, peas are mostly planted..."
(End of chapter)
