A tour of Japan's Warring States Period

Yamauchi Yoshiharu looked at the place where he was kneeling on the ground, looked at it for a while, and then thought about it.

"Sakuheiji?"

"Yes, yes, it's a small one. What are your orders from His Highness?" Jiutou didn't even raise his head when he answered, but his excitement at being remembered by Yamauchi Yoshiharu was beyond words.

"Go get a sickle." Yamauchi Yoshiharu ordered.

"Okay!" The landowner and the landowner ran back to the village in a hurry. Within a few minutes, a large group of people came running to the field ridge with handbags on their shoulders.

Sickles for cutting rice, bamboo poles for drying rice, straw hats and bamboo hats, paper umbrellas, new straw sandals and socks to replace, and buckets filled with clean water. I brought basically everything I could, and the place was very thoughtful.

"Sakuheiji, give the sickle to Taro."

Um? ……………

its not right!

Shouldn't it be Yoshiharu Yamauchi who went to the fields to cut rice in person, showing that he loves the people like his own children, and that the king and the people are one family? Giving a sickle to three-year-old Taro is useless. He has trouble holding the sickle and can cut a lot of rice.

"Here, His Highness Taro is still young. Let's cut it for him." When I looked at the field, I saw how big Yamauchi Taro was.

"No, let Taro do the cutting." "Here, brother, Taro is still young, it will be bad if he gets hurt." Chief Yamauchi came over and advised.

"Taro! Go pick up the sickle!" Yamauchi Yoshiharu ignored his brother's dissuasion.

Taro Yamauchi had no choice but to grab the sickle in the farmer's hand. A sickle was naturally not heavy at all for an adult. But for a child over three years old, it is a bit strenuous.

"Come, let's see how I cut the rice, and you can cut it too." After saying this, Yamauchi Yoshiharu picked up the sickle, pulled it lightly, and cut off a bunch of rice.

People who have had some experience in farming should know that rice straw may seem to be easily broken, but it is actually quite tough. When cutting rice with a sickle, it will be very difficult if you can't cut it slightly diagonally along the edge of the knife and can't pull out two bunches.

Therefore, the rice stubble in fields that are not cut by machines but are cut by farmers' manual labor actually looks very neat. If you rely on brute force to do it, you will be exhausted and half dead, but you won't be able to cut off a few bunches.

Yamauchi Taro's cutting posture was wrong and he had no strength. Even if it was a dozen rice plants in a bunch, he could not cut it at all.嗯嗯啊啊的叫着，最后把镰刀都丢开，一根一根去拔，弄的满手满脸是泥土，也不过弄下来十几株稻谷。

Xiaopingta looked at Yamauchi Taro for a while, and beads of sweat hung on his little head. He pretended to be watching, but in fact he quietly stood over and helped him completely block the sun.

Yamauchi Yoshiharu was about to say something, but when he opened his mouth, it was his grandson after all.

Others looked worried, how could such a young child do farm work, not to mention that this child had never experienced any hardship since he was a child.

"Don't stop! If I don't allow you, keep cutting!" Yamauchi Taro was really tired and sat down on the field ridge. Yamauchi Yoshiharu did not allow him to stop and ordered.

Yamauchi Taro howled out with a "wow". How had he ever suffered such hardship? When had his grandfather, who was so doting on him, become so strict?

This cry, come on, where can the Yamauchi retainers sit still? Those who hold umbrellas hold umbrellas, those who fan them, those who wipe sweat, and those who give water. After much fuss, Yamauchi Taro stopped crying.

Yamauchi Yoshiharu sighed and stopped forcing Yamauchi Taro. Taro Yamauchi, who had stopped sobbing, looked at his grandfather in disbelief, his little eyes red.

Yoshiharu Yamauchi picked up Taro Yamauchi, walked to the landowner, and asked Taro Yamauchi to look at him.

"Tell Taro, how many times have you eaten rice this year?"

"Your Highness... I have eaten twice this year, once for the New Year and once for the battle." The landowner stammered in reply.

"Taro, how many times have you eaten rice this year?" "Eat rice every day?" Taro Yamauchi, who has little concept of time, still knows that he eats rice every day.

"Come on, open your mouth and show it to Taro."

As soon as Yamauchi Taro saw it, he immediately covered his nose with his small hands. He could see that his teeth were full of rotten teeth, which had been worn to a bad state. They almost all looked rotten and black, with a bit of a pungent smell.

“Bring a little tares and chaff.”

"Taro, eat and watch!"

Taro Yamauchi, whose teeth had only just grown in, could not eat tares and chaff. As soon as they entered his mouth, he only felt his throat tightening and could not chew. Before I chewed it twice, I spat it out.

"It doesn't taste good, it doesn't taste good." Yamauchi Taro shook his head.

"Isn't it delicious? But this is what the common people eat every day! But they can hardly eat the rice they grow themselves!"

This made it hard for Yamauchi Taro to believe that a child's thinking was so simple. Even the smart Taro Yamauchi didn't understand how those tares and rice bran could be food for humans.

"This man grows his own rice, but cannot eat it, and he still carries a gun and fights for our Yamauchi family!"

"Every such citizen is the backbone of the Yamauchi family, and every rice plant is the backbone of the Yamauchi family!"

"This is as important as fighting! You can't ignore it!"

Although Taro Yamauchi still doesn't understand much, at least what happened today left a deep impression on him, and he may never forget it in his lifetime.

"The people under your leadership are living in hardship. As a daimyo lord, Taro, you must be benevolent, love the people, and put people first!" [Note 1]

With that said, he handed the sickle to Yamauchi Taro again and asked him to remember this.

Murakami Yoshimitsu who followed quickly took out his money and bought the sickle from the field. He was forced to give it to others after being rejected by the local people.

Only then did everyone return to the city.

[Note 1]: The writer himself will say a few more nonsense. Putting aside the large landowners and large farmers in Japan, the life of ordinary small individual farmers is still "difficult" today (excluding the problems of food and clothing brought about by social development). Except warm! ).

The so-called flattering content about the life of Japanese farmers on the Internet is partly true, but there is also a lot of embellishment. Farmers all over the world are generally miserable. Regardless of China or foreign countries, farmers will always be at the bottom of society, and their lives are really miserable.

I don’t know if you eat KFC, but now there are two ice cream cones, Shikoku yuzu flavor and Okayama white peach flavor, which happen to be specialty fruits in Japan.

We might as well talk about the price of Okayama white peaches in fruit stores in Tokyo, which is 1,000 yen each, which is equivalent to RMB 60. Is it expensive? Have Japanese farmers made huge profits?

wrong! The average age of farmers growing Okayama white peaches in Japan is over sixty, and there are almost no new young farmers joining the planting! There is only one reason! Not making money, extremely not making money!

Some Gangshan white peach farmers are so poor that they cannot afford rice, so they can only abandon their peach groves and work part-time, part-time jobs, so that they can barely make ends meet.

The reason is the existence of the Japanese Farmers' Association! It imposes regulations on the quantity and standards of Okayama white peaches on the market. If they are too big, they will not be allowed, and if they are too small, they will not be allowed to be sold through the farmers' association even if they rot in the ground after a good harvest.

The purchase price of the farmers' association is not disclosed publicly, and the author does not know the price. But it is clear that it is difficult to maintain the livelihood of farmers.

Did anyone ask at this time? The Japanese Farmers' Association is so overbearing, why don't the Japanese farmers just quit the association and sell it themselves?

The answer is almost impossible!

You have withdrawn from the membership. Almost all shopping malls and convenience stores in Japan have entered into agreements with farmers' associations and will not sell agricultural products that have not been wholesaled by farmers' associations. Forget it, some people say to sell it online. Unfortunately, Japanese agriculture is also connected to the Internet.

Farmers only have the option of peddling along the streets and selling at their doorsteps, and there is no way to sell them.

Forget it, the most exaggerated thing is that farmers who return goods will automatically lose all agricultural insurance, and all agricultural machinery, fertilizers, seeds, and pesticides will be controlled by the farmers' association. If you withdraw from the membership, you will not be able to buy even a bag of fertilizer, which will directly cut off your possibility of farming.

Let’s talk about Shikoku yuzu. Taking Uwajima as an example, it has been the most important citrus crop producing area in Japan since the Edo period.

At the peak of the Meiji era, there were 5,600-5,900 households and more than 40,000 farmers engaged in citrus fruit cultivation, accounting for more than one-third of Japan's total output! Thanks to the unremitting efforts of the Japan Farmers' Association in the seventy years since the war, the number of farmers has reduced to 1,800-1,900, and output has declined to less than one-fifth of the country's total.

Similarly, for an orange, farmers’ purchase price is as low as 4 yen, which is RMB 2.4 cents.

It is also stipulated that large ones are not allowed, small ones are not allowed, and only a certain amount is purchased every year. In order to ensure the market price, local citrus farmers in Uwajima are brutally squeezed.

Often, 200,000 tangerines are sold, and the income is 800,000 yen. After paying the agricultural insurance premium, deducting the cost of water, electricity, fertilizer, medicine, etc., not counting the labor of the farmers, this is almost a mere 800,000 yen. Yuan.

The citrus farmers have their hands full and are busy from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. Not only do they not earn a penny, but they also have to pay back! Life has been so dire that it’s almost unbelievable!

If anyone travels to Uwajima, Shikoku, Japan, you will truly find that the citrus groves all over the mountains and plains are all left to rot or even the fruit groves have been abandoned.

It’s not that I don’t want to plant, it’s that I really can’t and cannot afford to plant!

And to what extent has the Japanese Farmers Association reached? Because it controls farmers, in the last parliamentary election, the Farmers Association recommended a total of 40 candidates, and 36 were elected. Far exceeding the so-called electoral success rate of the ruling and opposition parties.

Limited to the issue of review, I dare not mention the deeper content and the current situation of many farmers in our country.

In short, Japanese farmers are suffering from cruel oppression that is even more exaggerated than feudal society.

I just want everyone to know that farmers all over the world are suffering, really suffering, too miserable! The only people who suffer in this world are farmers!