Chapter 1121: Japanese Refugees (Please Subscribe)

In Japan, within Bungo Province's Saiki Bay, the moon was bright and the stars sparse at this hour. Waves crashed against the rocks on the shore one after another, each surging in with great force, yet in the end all dissolved into countless fine droplets of water.

A small boat was laboring through the troughs and crests of the waves. A man stood at the bow, looking back over his shoulder, wanting to take one more look at the land of Japan.

No one knew how long had passed before he abruptly turned his head and looked forward, and there he saw a light shining somewhere on the sea's surface, faintly flickering through the hazy sea mist. The several sailors on the boat, stripped to the waist with only strips of cloth wrapped around their buttocks, were greatly invigorated and hurriedly pulled at the oars and worked the scull, rowing toward the place where the light shone.

Before long, the small boat had drawn near. The source of the light turned out to be a rather old ten-thousand-dan Chinese-style great bird ship. The sailors on its deck had also spotted the approaching small boat and immediately threw down several rope ladders. The man standing at the bow was sharp-eyed and quick-handed, catching one of the coils in an instant. Then he turned his head once more to glance at the distant, indistinct mountain ridges, sighed, and climbed up the rope ladder.

Several lanterns hung from the deck of this Chinese-style great bird ship, casting a dim light. By that light, the man climbing onto the deck could see two tall Westerners coming forward to greet him: "Lord Shimazu! Lord Shimazu!"

The man boarding the great bird ship was none other than Shimazu Mitsuhisa, who had lost the war to overthrow the shogunate and had no choice but to flee Japan by boat.

Those welcoming him aboard were the Spanish ambassador to Japan, de Velasco, and the chief artillery instructor of the Shimazu army, Barbosa. These two Spaniards were quite reliable. When the Toyotomi army began losing the war, they had worked hard to prepare an escape route for Shimazu Mitsuhisa and his subordinates — for the Kingdom of New Spain on the other side of the Pacific, Shimazu Mitsuhisa and his men were all rather fine warriors!

Arranging the escape of the Shimazu family's people was a trivial matter for the Spaniards, who were thoroughly familiar with the North Pacific sea routes. In particular, the great explosion of the Ming shipbuilding industry over the past dozen or so years had made ten-thousand-dan great bird ships — large hard-sailed vessels capable of crossing the Pacific — a common, run-of-the-mill sight.

Even the Spanish navy, which was in a state of war with the Ming, could obtain quite a few great bird ships — some were captured, and some were purchased with money from merchants of other nations. Within a few months they had acquired as many as fifty or sixty of them!

As for sailors capable of handling hard sails, they were not scarce on the Shimazu side either, because there was a sea route between the Satsuma domain and the Ryukyu Kingdom, so the Shimazu family already possessed no small number of sailors skilled in working sails and boats.

Moreover, the Spaniards in the Shimazu army were all former sailors of the Eastern Invincible Armada. Although they did not know how to handle hard sails, hard sails were easier to use than soft sails, so after a short period of training, many of the veteran sailors among them could already use hard sails proficiently.

After Shimazu Mitsuhisa steadied himself on the deck of the great bird ship, he looked around and found that there were quite a few short-statured Japanese on the deck bowing to him in salute. So he forced out a faint smile and also bent slightly at the waist: "You are all men of loyalty and righteousness. Though we have suffered a temporary setback, as long as we persevere, there will surely come a day when Japan is restored!"

Then he asked de Velasco: "Your Excellency, is this the last ship?"

"It is the last one," de Velasco nodded. "The other ships have all already set out one after another."

"Then... how many people have been transported out in total?" Shimazu Mitsuhisa paused. "How many Japanese?"

"Around eight thousand have been transported out," de Velasco said. "A total of fifteen soft-sailed ships and fifty-seven hard-sailed ships took part in this evacuation — seventy-two ships in all. On average each ship can carry one hundred and fifty passengers, for a total capacity of ten thousand eight hundred people. In addition, the fifty-seven hard-sailed ships have more than two thousand three hundred sailors drawn from the evacuees themselves... In all, more than thirteen thousand one hundred people have been evacuated.

Of these, more than five thousand three hundred are Westerners, and around eight thousand are Japanese... half men and half women, most of them strong and fit, able to survive in the New World. Moreover, the Duke of Florida will set aside a piece of land within the Kingdom of New Spain even larger than the Satsuma domain for you and your men to live on."

"Truly?" Shimazu Mitsuhisa could scarcely believe it — the Satsuma domain was a considerably large domain, after all!

"Truly, truly!" de Velasco laughed. "New Spain is enormous — perhaps as large as one hundred Japans, with a population of only a few million, so there is no shortage of places to settle you. As long as you are willing to fight for the Kingdom of New Spain, the Duke of Florida will treat you well."

De Velasco was not speaking idly. He had already received a personal letter from Don Juan José.

In the letter, Don Juan José told de Velasco that the Indian exploration party employed by the Kingdom of New Spain had already reached the Ming-held Gulf of America and had sent back extremely valuable intelligence — the place was farther north than Don Juan José had originally imagined, but what was surprising was that the climate there was very pleasant and quite suitable for Europeans to live in.

Furthermore, because that land was cut up by mountain ranges and rivers, it had no large expanses of plain, and therefore had few Indian native inhabitants — the Indian natives on the great plains survived mainly by hunting bison, and the number of bison around the Gulf of America was not large (relative to the great plains), so it could not support too many Indians. Although the agricultural conditions there were excellent, the Indians did not know how to farm.

It seemed the Ming people had truly found a very fine piece of land!

In the foreseeable future, they would multiply there in great numbers!

And because the Kingdom of New Spain was too far from the Gulf of America, it was for the time being incapable of sending an expeditionary force. So the wise Duke of Florida (Don Juan José) had devised the brilliant strategy of using Asia against Asia — he ordered de Velasco to carefully select six to eight thousand "refugees" from among the Shimazu family's samurai and peasants, with a suitable ratio of men to women, carrying agricultural tools and seed grain, and to transport them all to California, where they would open up land and farm. In the Duke's plan, California would become the great base for attacking the Gulf of America! And the samurai Shimazu Mitsuhisa brought to the New World would become the vanguard of the Kingdom of New Spain's assault on the Gulf of America!

"One hundred Japans, with only a few million people!" Shimazu Mitsuhisa's heart gave a jolt. No wonder the Ming people want to make enemies of you! If I were the Ming Emperor, I too would fight you bunch of landlords to the death for such a vast territory!

No, I cannot let such a huge piece of fat meat slip by! Shimazu Mitsuhisa thought to himself: Once I reach the Americas, I must have many children! Each woman must bear at least ten — I will use women's bellies to give birth to a new Japan!

I must make these white devils know the prowess of Japanese women!

Japanese women who can endure hardship, are obedient, and are willing to bear children were, of course, a strategic resource in the New World! Especially for Ming colonists of the same divine-race stock — to occupy more land in the New World, one relied not only on the army, but even more on women's bellies!

And transporting women from the Ming homeland to the New World was both difficult and costly, because the commoners willing to go to the New World were almost all bachelors — once a man had a wife, children, and a warm kang bed, he was not so willing to go to the Americas. Even if he were willing, the price the United States government would have to pay was very high, so it was not economical.

The United States was, after all, a capitalist nation, so of course it had to consider economic interests!

The most economical method was to transport young bachelors from the Ming homeland to the New World to farm, work, and hunt. At the same time, buy young girls cheaply from chaotic and impoverished Japan and ship them to the New World to resell to those Ming immigrants who had earned a bit of money...

So at the very time when Philip IV's clever son was hoping to use Japanese refugees to counter the Ming immigrants (was there any difference between them?), the first batch of Ming immigrants to set foot in the New World, Xu Kan and Liu Liang, had already established a trading house specializing in "trans-Pacific marriages" — trading Japanese women obtained almost for free for sable pelts, then shipping the pelts back to the Ming to sell.

How utterly wicked!

(End of Chapter)