A tour of Japan's Warring States Period

If you want to talk about people, their subjective initiative is generally very poor. But when God forces you, you will find, Oh my God! The farmers in the Warring States Period were simply 666.

Because it is still frosty but not snowy, many fields without ditches and rivers have been abandoned for farming this year. Planting is useless, without water, nothing planted will be of any use.

Then, in the fields where wheat had been planted, there were all farmers shivering in the cold wind but holding hands and stepping on the seedlings side by side. What they do is also done by farmers in the north of our country, and there should be many people who know about it.

Wheat and barley were planted in the ground, and it wasn't too cold before it started snowing. The wheat seedlings have all been sprouted, but in order to ensure that the wheat can thrive next year, let its root system become more developed before spring. Farmers would trample and break all the wheat seedlings that grew up, so that the wheat seedlings would die and not consume nutrients.

Then next spring, the wheat with developed root systems will grow better and develop faster. This is the so-called "stepping on wheat before spring". Some farmers in the Hebei region of our country even drive motorcycles and use stone rollers to grind them directly in the fields. This is very scientific.

Secondly, in the water-scarce Hatata where farming is impossible, the farmers in Shinano may have almost zero scientific and cultural level, but most of them actually know the "frost-breaking method"!

Japan's East Country region has the Kanto Great Plains with the best water conservancy and terrain conditions. Why was the level of agricultural development still lower than that of West Country during the Warring States Period?

Baidu Feeding Chicken and Qidian.com writers and influencer Vs keep talking about flooded rivers, incomplete construction of water conservancy facilities, frequent wars, and no unified government to carry out complete planning and governance.

This kind of thing is something that comes with just a touch of lips, a slap on the forehead, and an opening of the mouth. Please just take it as a joke and ignore it.

Apart from the big problem of water conservancy facilities, the Kanto Plain itself is not suitable for farming! That's right! Can’t farm!

The large Kanto region, including Shinano, Kai and other countries, belongs to the geographical environment of the Kanto red soil layer! Now go to the Guandong Plain, find a piece of flat land and dig more than one meter into the ground, and you will encounter red soil with extremely high viscosity.

This kind of red soil not only has very solid soil, but also has high acidity in the pH test. It is very different from the weakly alkaline soil required by normal crops. Most crops cannot be grown on red soil and survive. Even if they survive, the soil's viscosity is too high to expand the root system at all, and eventually they all fail.

"Shang Shu·Yu Gong" also mentioned that the land in Yangzhou was only under the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. This is because the land in today's Taihu Plain and the lower reaches of the Yangtze River was also clay soil with high acidity in ancient times. It is impossible to farm and agricultural production is difficult.

my country's Jiangnan continued to develop until the Tang Dynasty, when it began to enter the era of promoting one and benefiting two. At this moment, it has been more than 6,000 years since the activities of Hemudu Culture and other ancestors! What a concept!

The transformation of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River lasted for six thousand years before it was successfully transformed into a prosperous land of fish and rice.

Japan's agricultural technology is already weak. Can they have such a long time to improve agricultural farming? of course not!

So why did Kanto still look so dead when Tokugawa Ieyasu entered the country? It is generally regarded as a remote area by everyone in the world. Although the plains are vast, the land cannot be cultivated due to insufficient development.

Returning to Shinano, the writer himself concluded that Ieyasu had learned the "Frost Breaking Technique" in Shinano!

During the time of frost in late autumn and early winter, dig out the soil at least thirty to forty centimeters above the ground. These clods of soil that are not suitable for farming and have been bonded together are invaded by water vapor under the sunlight during the day, and the gaseous water penetrates into every corner of the soil clods.

As night falls, the temperature drops and the water vapor solidifies into solid ice. Due to the larger volume of the solidified ice, under the force of nature, countless tiny ice particles are produced in the middle of the bonded soil blocks, and the soil blocks no longer stick together.

When the sun shines the next day, the ice melts, and the soil that has been fragmented by the ice cubes falls apart. In one fell swoop, the clay that people had nowhere to start with turned into loose and arable soil. The power of nature is truly endless.

As long as this process continues for two months, the thirty or forty centimeters of soil on the surface of this land will turn into loose soil that can be cultivated.

But that’s not enough. How to alleviate soil acidity?

The farmers of Shinano are so resourceful that you can hardly imagine it.

At the end of autumn, each village will organize workers to dig a large square pit half a meter deep and five meters long and wide. Then nail wooden stakes around it. It doesn't need to be too high, just about half a meter.

Then use straw to tie it up densely and thickly to form a straw wall to surround the pit and form an artificial fermentation tank.

Then he collected dead leaves from all over the mountains and fields and filled the pit. Then chop the straw, break it into pieces and throw it in evenly. Continue to add a certain amount of straw ash and rice bran, and finally human and animal excrement. 【Note 1】

Human and animal excrement is particularly important. Although every village in Shinano does not raise horses or cattle, the excrement of large livestock is still relatively easy to find. This is a favorable opportunity for the development of local composting industry, which is not possible in other places.

This has already filled the pit, let him bask in it for three days! After you've been exposed to a stinky smell, find a few warriors with weak noses or who aren't afraid of odors to go in and dig through it. There's a pile of compost about one meter deep. The farmers are only 1.3 to 1.4 meters tall.

Let these warriors turn him over in the pit for three or four days in a row until everything is evenly mixed together. Continue to use straw to tie a huge straw cover to cover this large compost. Just let it ferment in a relatively closed environment for three to four months. After the spring of the next year, it will become the secret technique in "Nobunaga's Ambition" - grass fertilizer (green manure).

Anyway, when this thing is opened and used next year, it will stink you to death. The rotten stench on your body will not be washed away even after three days of bathing.

But this kind of fertilizer is very good. When applied to the clay soil after breaking the soil, it can neutralize the acid and alkali of the acidic soil to a weak alkaline state.

The color of the soil will also change from red to black, turning it into a good land suitable for farming and with strong fertility.

If this process is repeated three or four times, no crops will be planted for several years in between. This piece of land will be able to completely wake up and become mature land. Finally, a few crops of soybeans will be planted to collect nutrients in the soil. As long as this land can be connected to water, it will be a first-class fertile field.

Now everyone can understand that Takeda Shingen believed that Shinano was his overlord, and why Tokugawa Ieyasu knew how to transform the land of the Kanto Plain after he ruled Shinano.

After that, the agriculture of Guanbazhou ushered in rapid development after the two-pronged approach of soil transformation and water conservancy improvement, and it became the fertile Kanto Plain.

But just when Koheta thought that the farmers in Shinano were already great and had mastered such good agricultural technology.

Xiao Pingtai saw the farmers shouting slogans, carrying shovels, and carrying pebbles up the mountain.

[Note 1]: The development of this composting method in Shinano is indeed closely related to the raising and cultivation of large livestock such as cattle and horses that are prosperous in the area.

I don’t have many manuscripts left to save, so I just went to work. I’ll update them on Tuesday and Friday next week. Thank you all for supporting me in the new year.