Chapter 362 21. The Rainy Season Arrives as Expected

"Bathroom?" Yamanouchi Yoshiharu touched his head.

"There is no hot spring in Yamanouchi, how to draw water to make a bathroom?" Hosokawa Harumiya was also confused.

"Water can be boiled! There is no need for hot springs. Besides, hot springs are so comfortable, there must be many people willing to come." Xiao Pingtai looked at the rigid thinking of these two people, no wonder that the spread of any technology in ancient times was slow.

"Boil water? Firewood is not a small amount of money, right?" Yamanouchi Yoshiharu always cares about the money issue.

Xiao Pingtai had thought about it a long time ago. In fact, the best fuel should be coal. The price of burning firewood is too high, which is definitely not cost-effective. But unfortunately, Japan's coal is either not easy to mine or very far away from Shinano Province.

On the small island off the coast of Hizen Province, Xiao Pingtai remembered that there was a large coal mine with high reserves and convenient mining. But in order to open a bathroom, rush to Hizen, Kyushu to dig coal? It doesn't exist.

The person who inspired Xiao Pingtai was actually Ishida Mitsunari, isn't there an anecdote?

Toyotomi Hideyoshi promised to give Ishida Mitsunari 10,000 koku of land, but Ishida Mitsunari refused and declined such a large territory. He only asked for the ownership of the reeds along the shore of Lake Biwa.

Others laughed at him for being stupid, but after he harvested the reeds and sold them as firewood, not only did his income far exceed the 10,000 koku of land, but it was also several crops a year. After all, reeds grow fast, and you can harvest many waves a year.

Kobayata, who became the Kanjo Bugyo, discovered that among the heavy taxes of Yamanouchi Yoshiharu, there was one called "dizi", which means that all the territories of Yamanouchi belonged to the daimyo Yamanouchi family. The common people entered the non-agricultural lands such as mountains, forests, swamps, and river beaches to obtain firewood, food, and materials, and they had to pay the Yamanouchi family a usage fee, which was dizi.

Kobayata meant that Yamanouchi Yoshiharu didn't have to pay, and asked his good son Yamanouchi Yoshikatsu to order the people along the river swamps and beach not to pay the few cents of dizi money, and directly cut reeds and cattails. As long as it can be delivered to Yamanouchi, the land fee will be exempted.

This gave Yamanouchi Yoshiharu and his son another chance to make a fortune out of nothing. How much money did the people along the river earn from the land? The money earned by the bathhouse is several times more than this, it is just picking up money for free.

This will solve the fuel problem, and the fuel does not need to be spent, the biggest cost item is solved.

Multilateral win-win! Xiao Pingtai solved the fuel cost reduction, Yamanouchi Yoshiharu and his son made money while lying down, and the farmers along the river did not need to pay monetary taxes, but could use labor to compensate. This is in line with the core values ​​of XXism!

"Since it is Xiao Pingtai who did it, there is nothing to say, so let it be." Yamanouchi Yoshiharu can still make this decision for his son. The matter of a few dozen kan of land fees is insignificant.

Besides, when Xiao Pingtai ran a business, he never lost money, just waited at home to get the money.

As for the old father-in-law, Hosokawa Harumiya, he was mainly an investor. The money earned by miso last time was more than 7,000 kan divided equally among all the people in the mountain. The old father-in-law now has at least a few hundred kan of private money. If we don’t cheat him to make money, who else can we cheat?

As for Koyata, it must be a technology investment. Without Koyata’s idea, how could they make money this way.

Moreover, Koyata’s suggestion to give free bath tickets to all the samurai in the mountain was also supported by two people. They were local accomplices, and they would see each other everywhere. They were happy to do such a benefit without spending money, and it was good to gain a reputation for being lenient.

Two plus one plus five, the three of them finalized the matter in a few words. They did it right away. The big town of Yamanouchi Fuzhong City with a population of 20,000 was full of business opportunities. [Note 1]

The two old men made use of their remaining energy and started the activity immediately. The bathroom had never been opened, but many people went to the hot spring. They built a pool with stones, built guest rooms for rest, and a kitchen for boiling water and supplying water.

This also involves a problem, that is, the status of samurai and common people is different. Common people have to bow to samurai. But it is impossible to open a bathhouse for only samurai or common people, and it is not cost-effective to set up separate pools.

There are only a few hundred samurai, but there are 20,000 ordinary foot soldiers and common people. It will definitely be a loss to open a pool specifically for samurai.

Yamauchi Yoshiharu thought about it and wrote a sentence in a very coquettish way, "No matter how big or small the bath is, you can see people naked and no one comes and goes." He planned to post it at the door after it was built.

How could you kneel and bow in the bath? You don't have to bow in the bathroom.

As a representative of the samurai class, Hosokawa Harumiya felt that he might be dissatisfied with the samurai, but there was no other way. It's impossible for a samurai to come in and everyone in the pool will stand up and kneel down immediately, right? 【Note 2】

After another hundred years, there will be tens of thousands of samurai in Edo Castle, and people will come and go on the streets, and everyone will have to kneel. Then the people of Edo Castle will not have to live, and they will just have to kneel on the ground every day.

Kobayata also believed that as long as the samurai were not offended, the samurai would not have much resistance. Besides, the samurai in the mountains were known to most of the people in the city.

At most, when the samurai came in, everyone would bow their heads and salute. The samurai's hair was easy to recognize, so it was no big deal to bow their heads when they saw it.

This is the troublesome part of the feudal hierarchy, and it is also the part where the feudal hierarchy is "well-ordered". The common people have no objection to bowing their heads to salute the samurai, and they just give orders.

The last one is the service content of the bathhouse. The two big guys were calm and had a look of approval when they were talking about the dirty bath.

As for the basic services such as back rubbing, back tapping and leg massage, they are definitely required. This kind of basic work is easy to recruit people.

Then we need to set up guest rooms for the convenience of "overnight" customers, right? We also need to sell alcohol, snacks, and meals, so that people can eat, drink, sleep, and bathe all in one place.

This is probably the rule, and Kobayata just gave up. Because the summer harvest is over, the people need to pay taxes quickly so that they can continue to grow rice.

As the Kanjo Bugyo, Kobayata had no choice but to go out in the sun to urge all places to pay the money quickly, and to calculate the accounts without any mistakes. He couldn't allow any corruption to happen during his tenure.

Heihei Roku and Kurosawa worked hard for half a month before they collected and paid the tribute for this round.

The rainy season also arrived as expected!

[Note 1]: Taking the Kanazawa domain as an example, there were more than 20,000 samurai. So how many people were there in the town under Kanazawa Castle? More than 100,000! The Yamanouchi family had about 3,000 regular foot soldiers, and 300 to 400 samurai, multiplied by 4 or 5 people in a family. Adding the townspeople, the population of more than 20,000 was just an underestimation.

[Note 2]: In the Edo period, the bathhouses in Edo Castle actually didn’t care about this anymore. Commoners and samurai washed in the same pool. There was no such thing as a samurai kneeling down when a samurai came in during a bath.