Chapter 840: Now Isn't That a Coincidence

If one had to use a single word to describe Heian-kyo in the Heian period with any accuracy, it would be: a great quagmire.

Truly, no adjective could be more fitting than this.

And the reason Heian-kyo became a great quagmire in the first place stems from the Japanese overestimating their own abilities.

Two or three hundred years ago, after large numbers of envoys to the Tang returned from the Great Tang, they praised Chang'an and Luoyang as peerless in all the world, until the Japanese king was left drooling with envy.

So, at the envoys' suggestion, the Japanese king decided to build a Chang'an of his own in Japan, moving the realm's powerful families and wealthy households there — thus he could both raise a great city and keep the local magnates under control.

In the end, before Heian-kyo was even half built, the entire Japanese state's finances collapsed, and they barely managed to throw up a budget version of Chang'an.

And even that budget version did not last long, because the right capital — built in imitation of the eastern and western markets of the Great Tang — was constructed directly on top of a swamp.

When first built, the houses were new and all was well, but after a year or two, not only were the buildings soaked through by the swamp's moisture and the paved streets turned back to mud, even the foundations of the palace halls and a great number of common dwellings began to sink. Gradually, the right capital became uninhabitable.

By that time, however, many wealthy and powerful households from across the land had already been moved there, and most of the common folk nearby had also come to Heian-kyo to make a living. Everyone was forced to crowd into the left capital, making the left capital relatively overcrowded.

And while the right capital was built directly on a swamp, the left capital was honestly not much better, lying as it did in a low-lying valley.

Moreover, the Japanese had learned the scale of Tang-dynasty Chang'an and Luoyang, but had not fully learned their water supply and drainage systems, which caused serious drainage problems in Heian-kyo.

That was simply too "wonderful."

Building a city on low-lying, damp ground with almost no drainage system — it was practically a paradise for viruses and plagues.

And so, as time dragged on to the present day, the entire left capital came to hold more than a hundred thousand people, while the low-lying terrain and extremely crude drainage system made the accumulated water very hard to drain away.

On top of a city filled in over a little marsh, the household waste and sewage of more than a hundred thousand people eating, drinking, and relieving themselves continually piled up and seeped downward, causing all manner of epidemics and plagues to spread widely, erupting once every year or two.

And because of the extreme overcrowding and the heavy use of wooden buildings, the fire risk in the left capital was also very severe. Even the imperial palace frequently caught fire, forcing the imperial family to keep moving from place to place.

What a fine Heian-kyo! When it rained, it became a land of floods; when the weather turned dry, it easily caught fire. The surging moisture sent shit and piss flowing everywhere with the water, while the blazing sun baked the stench into the air on all sides, and plague and famine struck in endless alternation.

Now everyone understands why Heian-kyo is so fantastical in Japanese culture — as it turns out, this "night parade of a hundred demons" was all realism!

Emperor Murakami had long since stopped returning to the Heian palace north of the left capital, because he disliked the stench of the place.

In the great hall, a man and a woman sat to the left and right above Emperor Murakami.

The man was his elder brother, the Retired Emperor Suzaku, the previous emperor who had abdicated in his favor. The woman was their common mother, Onshi.

This woman Onshi was no simple figure, for what little real power these recent emperors possessed was basically all clutched in her hands.

And in order to hold that power firmly, she had mercilessly forced Retired Emperor Suzaku to abdicate in favor of Emperor Murakami.

But at this moment, this Empress Dowager who would clutch at even the tiniest scrap of power wore an unprecedented look of terror on her face.

At first, what arrived was news of Goryeo pirate raids, and the court had been preparing to send someone to Goryeo in the spring to make contact.

Yet even as they argued over who should go on the mission — or whether they should send anyone at all, since Wang Geon had long wanted to open communications with them, and frequent exchanges might expose their true weakness —

just then, word of rebellion came from Buzen Province in the Saikaido, and the rebels had badly defeated several hundred soldiers of the Dazaifu. This left Empress Dowager Onshi, Minister of the Left Fujiwara no Saneyori, and Minister of the Right Fujiwara no Morosuke frantic with worry.

The Taira no Masakado rebellion and Fujiwara no Sumitomo's rebellion had only just been put down, and the latter, ten years before, had been marked precisely by the capture of the Dazaifu.

And in both those rebellions, the court had been able to muster almost no strength of its own to suppress them, relying entirely on the conflicts and entanglements of interest among local powers to put them down.

Ever since his mother Onshi had coerced him into abdicating, Retired Emperor Suzaku's mind had become somewhat unhinged.

His intelligence had been on the low side to begin with, and now, sunk in the pain of being abandoned by his mother, he was historically destined to die of depression the following year. Therefore, Retired Emperor Suzaku's opinion at present was utterly irrelevant — practically nonexistent.

Onshi had no intention of asking his opinion either, and so she directly asked the two ministers: "Now that trouble has broken out again in Buzen Province, should we not send troops? If the Dazaifu falls once more, the whole realm will be shaken again."

The Minister of the Right, Fujiwara no Morosuke, said nothing, because real power was held by the Minister of the Left, Fujiwara no Saneyori. Saneyori frowned.

In the Tengyo Rebellion ten years before, whether it was the army of the Pursuit Commissioner Ono no Yoshifuru or the great host of the Great General of the Western Expedition Fujiwara no Tadafumi, both had been formed by drawing sons and warriors from the two capitals and the various meritorious noble houses.

Although the Tengyo Rebellion of Fujiwara no Sumitomo had been quickly suppressed, the cost had been enormous.

For although the Minister of the Left, Fujiwara no Saneyori, was the leader of the court nobles and meritorious houses, he was not the court nobles and meritorious houses themselves.

Every time these men were mobilized, they had to be placated afterward with offices and honors, and every act of placation meant the Minister of the Left had to make concessions of resources to those below him. Therefore, Fujiwara no Saneyori did not want to send troops.

And the reason things had come to this was that in present-day Japan, after the collapse of the court's handen system — roughly equivalent to the equal-field system — the court could no longer summon military force from the common people, and the original legions had become empty shells.

At present, the only reliable military force in Japan consisted of the warrior retinues formed from the sons of the various court nobles and meritorious houses and local warriors, along with the armed settlers colonizing the Kanto frontier.

The former largely practiced a manorial system, not unlike the fortified manors and powerful clans of the Eastern Han.

The latter practiced the fumin system, roughly equivalent to a tax-farming arrangement: a tract of land and its peasants were contracted out to you, and you were responsible for delivering the agreed taxes to the court; beyond that, you could do as you pleased.

Thus, the responsibility for sending troops fell upon their heads, and when one must ask favors of others, one naturally has to offer benefits.

And when these men gained benefits and swelled in strength, the court's own strength would weaken — after all, the cake was only so big.

With the Minister of the Left, who held real power, refusing to speak, Empress Dowager Onshi turned her gaze toward Emperor Murakami before her.

Emperor Murakami, like his elder brother Retired Emperor Suzaku, held almost no power in his hands, but he was the emperor after all, and his words still carried some weight. As long as he spoke, Fujiwara no Saneyori could not simply ignore him.

Emperor Murakami's intelligence was relatively normal for the imperial family, partly because the imperial house's practice of consanguineous marriage had not yet reached the perverse extremes of the centuries to come, so imbeciles and deformed children were still somewhat fewer.

Though his back was to Empress Dowager Onshi, Emperor Murakami could clearly feel his mother's burning gaze fixed upon his back.

He opened his mouth, about to say something, but then suddenly caught the extremely unfriendly look in the eyes of the Minister of the Left, Fujiwara no Saneyori, and the words on the tip of his tongue were immediately swallowed back down.

His mother Onshi, who ruled in the name of Retired Emperor Suzaku, could indeed manipulate him, but Emperor Murakami also feared the Minister of the Left, Fujiwara no Saneyori!

And so the matter fell into an awkward deadlock, with neither side able for the moment to think of a way acceptable to both.

In politics, this is called a loss of face — and since they would not save face themselves, someone would naturally come along to teach them how.

In the awkward silence, the Grand Counselor Fujiwara no Akitada burst in, flustered and frantic. Paying no heed to the pretense of court ceremony, he rushed in and began shouting:

"Minister of the Left! I have just received word — the great Han army of the Central Plains has begun crossing the sea from Tsushima!

The rebellion in the Saikaido is no mere uprising of local petty warriors; they are answering the great army of the Central Plains.

Even those Goryeo pirates were driven to the San'indo by the Central Plains' great host, because the kingdom of Goryeo was already destroyed last year, and the King of Goryeo has lost both his state and his life!"

The news was so shocking that everyone in the room fell into a brief silence.

Only after a long while did Fujiwara no Saneyori come back to his senses. He drew a sharp breath. "I must ask the Grand Counselor to confirm the source of this news. If it is truly the great Central Plains dynasty coming to attack, then we must summon the whole realm to resist."

The sixth year of Shaoming of the Great Zhou, 951 CE, the eleventh month.

At this time, the entire northern land lay under drifting snow and biting wind. Murong Xinzhang had originally planned to wait until the third or fourth month of spring before leading his army across the sea to attack Japan.

But all of that could not withstand how swiftly the situation changed. The most important factor was that he had never imagined that a country like Japan — with a population of three million and by no means a narrow territory — could have such utterly pathetic military preparedness.

The entire country actually had almost no standing army; all military mobilization had to be borne by aristocratic soldiers and frontier settler warriors.

Against a state like this, one absolutely could not let it slowly mobilize all its local forces — it was necessary to destroy its effective strength very quickly and in large quantities, and only then would it be easy to govern.

So after waiting only until the eleventh month, Murong Xinzhang ordered Chen Hui to lead the navy of the Heng Hai Garrison out first, and with the speed of a thunderclap too sudden to cover one's ears, they seized Tsushima Island, which lay between Korea and Japan.

At this time only a small number of rear-guard personnel remained on Tsushima. Out of fear that Murong Xinzhang would send troops to wipe them out, they had moved most of their families off the island immediately after occupying Toyoura District in Nagato Province on Japan's San'indō.

But they had not expected Murong Xinzhang to move so quickly, and they were a little slow in fleeing, so Chen Hui caught hold of their tail.

Akamagaseki was not far from the later Japanese city of Shimonoseki, situated on the northern shore of the famous Bakan Strait.

The Bakan Strait was the narrow strait between Japan's Kyushu and the Chūgoku region of Honshu.

At its narrowest point the strait was only seven or eight hundred meters wide, so fortresses on both shores could control the strait very well, and it had always been a place Japanese military strategists were bound to contest.

If one could control both shores of the Bakan Strait — or even hold just one side — one could cut Kyushu off from the main island of Japan.

In history, more than two hundred years later, the crucial battle of the Genpei War, the Battle of Dan-no-ura, broke out here. In that battle the Taira clan lost the last of its strength and completely lost the ability to resist the Minamoto clan.

Of course, for Chinese people the most famous thing here was another event in modern times: the famous Grand Chancellor "when Hefei grows fat, the realm grows thin" signed the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki right here.

At this moment, the Goryeo pirates occupied this crucial strait, and they knew they could not rampage through Japan with only these two or three thousand men and ten or twenty thousand family members.

So this band of pirates, originally a Goryeo naval force, decisively enthroned Wang Yu, the eighth son of Wang Geon, whom they held hostage, as king, and sent men to explain the situation to the Japanese court, requesting that the Japanese court accept them.

The news quickly spread to Heian-kyō, and then throughout all Japan.

How to put it — thanks to the innate insecurity of an island people, although Japan's military preparedness was pathetic, its cohesion was still very strong, far stronger than Wang Geon's Goryeo.

Because everyone living on these few islands knew that, given their living environment, they had no vast land to maneuver in and no territory to which they could flee. When a powerful enemy came, apart from fighting to the death, they had no other choice.

And the Goryeo pirates had their reasons for this choice: at this time the richest region of Japan was not on the San'indō, but in the stretch from the San'yōdō to Heian-kyō.

That is to say, even if a navy were sent to attack Japan at this moment, it would not strike Iwami or Nagato, but would pass through the Bakan Strait and continue east into the Seto Inland Sea, finally choosing to land at places like Hiroshima or Osaka.

So as soon as the Goryeo pirates occupied Akamagaseki, they began requesting that the Japanese court take them in. Only if they received Japanese reinforcements could they possibly resist the Yan navy.

On the seventeenth day of the eleventh month, Chen Hui, pursuing the Goryeo pirates closely, reached Akamagaseki.

By this time the Goryeo pirates had already occupied Akamagaseki, and they had concentrated all their two hundred or so ships, large and small, in the harbor protected by the water fortress and the pass fortress.

In a head-on fight, even ten armies of the size of these Goryeo pirates could not defeat the more than ten thousand soldiers of the Heng Hai Garrison under Chen Hui.

So the Goryeo pirate leader, Hong Sang-dong, formerly Chief Commander of the Goryeo navy, very wisely chose to pull his navy back.

He was forcing Chen Hui to come ashore, because if Chen Hui ignored them and continued east, the Yan navy would be in danger of having its rear route cut off.

And if Chen Hui attacked them, then relying on the defenses of Akamagaseki and the cold weather, they might be able to hold out until the great army of Japanese reinforcements arrived.

Of course, this was Hong Sang-dong's wishful thinking. After Chen Hui reached the Bakan Strait, he paid no attention to him at all, but directly led his troops to occupy the fortress on the Kyushu side of the Bakan Strait, and then began contacting the father and son Qin Pingsheng and Qin Pingtong.

Then, led by this father-and-son pair of Japanese collaborators, on the eighth day of the twelfth month, Chen Hui stormed into the Mizuno Castle of the Dazaifu amid heavy snow, killing more than three hundred officials from the Governor-General of the Dazaifu on down.

This sturdy fortress, built in former years by Japan precisely to guard against an attack by the Great Tang, probably could never have dreamed that its final fall would involve no bloody battle at all.

Because the Dazaifu, which several hundred years earlier had stationed four legions and a full six thousand elite soldiers, now had hardly anyone guarding it.

Afterwards Chen Hui, at the Dazaifu, raised the great banner of the Six Dharma School of Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva, symbolizing Murong Xinzhang's status as a Son of the Buddha, and used religion as a pretext to recruit impoverished samurai from Kyushu.

This was a vicious scheme Wang Pu had devised for Murong Xinzhang. At present, although Japan used Chinese characters and Tang pronunciation, that was only among the upper classes; the common people still spoke a crude, obscure Japanese tongue.

To rule this place, although in the end one would certainly have to carry out a "teach the people correct pronunciation" campaign in Japan so that Tang pronunciation was used by high and low alike,

at the very beginning it surely could not be promoted, and could only proceed slowly, so there was an urgent need for a batch of second-rate collaborators to help get things done.

These impoverished Kyushu samurai were just the ones to use. For one thing, they were far from the Kinai region and had only limited loyalty to the so-called court and emperor.

For another, the Japanese dialect of Kyushu was likewise relatively difficult for other Japanese to communicate with, belonging to the stage of being usable but not quite sufficient.

This could force most Japanese to choose between Kyushu dialect and Tang pronunciation. Since they had to change their speech anyway, they might as well go all the way in one step.

On the twentieth day of the twelfth month, in just a dozen or so days, Chen Hui recruited more than a thousand impoverished Kyushu samurai. There was no helping it — these samurai far from the political center were simply too poor.

They were called samurai, but in reality they were miserable wretches who drank wild-vegetable gruel every day, picked up a broken iron sword, and dreamed of gambling their worthless lives on a leap up the social ladder.

Of course, there were also some who refused to submit, loyal subjects who believed they should still serve the Heian-kyō court. They quickly gathered in the provinces of Satsuma, Ōsumi, and Hyūga in southern Kyushu.

It was just that the cold weather and the powerful enemy blocked the footsteps of their continued clamor. Chen Hui, for his part, was busy turning the Dazaifu into a base for advancing east, and could not be bothered to wipe out these one or two thousand clownish figures who did not even have armor.

In the seventh year of Shaoming of the Great Zhou, 952 CE, on the fifteenth day of the first month, the Lantern Festival, Murong Xinzhang at Fu Mountain received Chen Hui's military report, and his heart was greatly settled.

Even a strategic stronghold like the Dazaifu, akin to a Protector-General's seat, had almost no defensive force in Japan. It seemed Japan's military preparedness had indeed decayed to the extreme.

Afterwards, Murong Xinzhang, on one hand, did his utmost to send naval vessels through the wind and snow, continuously delivering supplies and provisions to the Dazaifu and the Bakan Strait, so that Chen Hui could firmly hold the Mizuno Castle of the Dazaifu.

On the other hand, he kept slaughtering pigs and sheep at Busan Harbor. He wanted to feed his officers and men until they were strong and sturdy, and then deal with Japan directly.

At the same time, the Japanese court in Heian-kyō had also completely figured out the situation.

The Minister of the Left, Fujiwara no Saneyori, in the name of the emperor, appointed the Goryeo pirate Hong Sang-dong as Acting Protector of Akamagaseki, ordering him to hold Akamagaseki at all costs.

Because after Fujiwara no Saneyori had summoned civil and military officials to deliberate, they concluded that the Yan navy could not be allowed to enter the Seto Inland Sea.

In the eyes of the Japanese, the Yan navy was clearly stronger than their own. If they were allowed into the Seto Inland Sea, the Yan army could freely choose its landing point, and with the Japanese court's paltry forces, it would be impossible to guard against every possibility.

It would be better to block them outside the Bakan Strait and use the advantage of terrain to defeat them.

At the same time, Fujiwara no Saneyori also began issuing, in the emperor's name, a great edict of conscription to protect the nation, preparing to summon at least fifty thousand samurai troops to resist the Yan invasion.

Even the Kantō samurai and armed settler groups guarding the frontier far away in the Kantō, as well as the pirate bands in the Seto Inland Sea, all received conscription orders.

This could indeed be counted as a moment of life and death. The local magnates who had followed the emperor for hundreds, even a thousand years all began to respond one after another.

For a time, no one knew from where great numbers of mountain bandits and pirates came down from the mountains and ashore, all arriving together at Heian-kyō to eat Fujiwara no Saneyori's white rice, which pained this somewhat stingy Minister of the Left beyond endurance.

But at almost the same time, after a council of war, Murong Xinzhang also concluded that the first battle should be fought at the Bakan Strait.

Because he had not come to Japan to grab something and leave, nor to plunder, but to put down roots.

To put down roots, he had to sweep away completely the upper stratum of Japan that could still struggle. So he did not seek to occupy much land at all; what he pursued was killing as many as possible.

If Japan curled up and gave him no opportunity, then once Murong Xinzhang entered the Seto Inland Sea he would still have to go around cracking eggshells everywhere. How could that be as convenient as fighting one big battle directly at the Bakan Strait?

You tell me — isn't that a coincidence.

I'm truly sorry. Yesterday after a business trip there was a drinking party, and I got completely drunk.

Regarding this book, there are still about seventy chapters, around two hundred twenty or thirty thousand characters, before it ends. In this coming month or so, Tiger's update speed may not be too fast. I'll try to guarantee an update of around five thousand characters per day, because I still need to think about what to write for the next book.

(End of Chapter)

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