Chapter 846: Nobunaga's Decision

In the seventh year of Shaoming of the Great Zhou, 952 CE, in the city of Heijo-kyo, the setting sun bled like blood.

Yet redder and more blood-soaked than the setting sun was the true river of blood outside the city walls!

What should be done after taking Heijo-kyo? Of course, the city must be put to the sword! Could one possibly post notices to pacify the people and make a three-point covenant with them?

Murong Xinzhang donned the vajra face-mask he had once worn when he and Zhang Zhao suppressed the Hechuan rebel army in Guanzhong — a kind of psychological cue.

Whenever Murong Xinzhang put on this mask, the Murong in White — righteous to the heavens, championing the weak and upholding the wronged — vanished, and in his place appeared a cold-blooded sovereign.

A sovereign who, since the founding of the Great Zhou by the Zhang clan, had campaigned for the realm against great states of a million souls — the Khitan, Goryeo, and Wa — an invincible commander and cold-blooded king of imperial princely blood.

And the reason Murong Xinzhang so ruthlessly ordered the massacre had, in truth, little to do with Zhang Zhao.

His dear son did not know what history held; at this time, the land of Wa was still a small, insignificant presence beside the Central Plains, with no record of misdeeds.

The reason for the great slaughter was entirely the strategy he and Zhang Zhao had devised.

To bring the land of Wa fully into the cultural core of the Central Plains, now that they had begun to form their own cultural character, the most effective method was — killing!

And this time, it was unlike the Sui and Tang campaigns against Goguryeo in former days.

When Pyongyang fell in the past, Goguryeo had already been bled for decades on end by two dynasties, Sui and Tang; by the time Pyongyang was lost, of the hundred thousand armored men Goguryeo had once fielded, not one in ten of its males remained — its will to resist and most of its heritage utterly destroyed.

Even so, Xue Rengui still carried out a measure of slaughter within the city of Pyongyang.

But in Murong Xinzhang's case, the land of Wa had been swiftly crushed in three great battles, all within a little over half a year; they had only temporarily lost their armed strength, and were by no means fully subjugated — to say nothing of the need to purge the self-culture that Wa had already begun to develop.

Even merely to gain a temporary foothold, a great terror capable of cowing every potential resister had to descend!

Under these circumstances, Murong Xinzhang issued his cold-blooded orders: first, Xiang Xun led five hundred armored soldiers charging into the imperial palace of Heijo, putting to death every warrior, attendant, and palace official within.

Then the already maddened Suzaku Hoo, together with the Empress Dowager Onshi, Emperor Murakami, the empresses and court ladies of successive emperors, the Minister of the Right Fujiwara no Morosuke, the Senior Counselor Fujiwara no Akitada, the Middle Counselor Minamoto no Takaakira, and more than a hundred court nobles and aristocrats — all were dragged out under guard.

Then, before the Suzaku Gate, with iron-sheathed great clubs, they were hammered to death like pigs and dogs.

Afterward, the great army entered the city and began searches by ward and market; all officials in Heijo-kyo, from the Junior Seventh Rank Lower — the Junior Secretary of the Bureau of Cleaning, the Deputy of the Bureau of the Treasury, the Deputy of the Bureau of the Palace Storehouses — on upward, whether in substantive office or nominal rank, were arrested and killed without exception.

After that, all persons in Heijo-kyo skilled in the use of kana — including the so-called waka sages and the copyist scribes — were likewise arrested and put to death.

While the cruel slaughter proceeded, the two generals Chen Sirang and Wang Tingyi each led two thousand cavalry in a dragnet search outside the city, permitting not so much as a single dog or cat to escape from Heijo-kyo.

Smoke and flame rose on all sides; wailing filled the city. The search and slaughter that began at the end of the shen hour (five in the afternoon) continued deep into the night.

By the morning of the second day, Zhao Siwan and Qihuolang, rested for a night, entered the city.

If yesterday had been a pass with a wide-toothed comb, this was to be a fine-toothed lice comb going over it again, meticulously sifting through everything.

This is what is meant by "bandits pass like a comb, soldiers pass like a lice comb."

At this time, with refugees flooding in, Heijo-kyo held close to two hundred fifty thousand people; the task Murong Xinzhang gave Zhao Siwan was to take all those in the city bearing surnames —

whether of the Fujiwara, Minamoto, or Taira houses, or the famed families of Yamana, Oe, Ono, and the like, or some lesser house or minor surname — to find them all and put them to death.

Hah — many in Heijo-kyo still believed Murong Xinzhang would need the cooperation of these people, the cultural stratum of Wa, so as to better control the land.

But they were wrong. The plan of Zhang Zhao and Murong Xinzhang had always been to slaughter this entire class — no matter how many of them there were, kill them all, and that was that.

How does one annihilate a civilization that has begun to develop its own character? Simple: whoever begins to show character — no! Whoever has culture, kill them.

Kill all who can read, who can write, who possess a national consciousness — that is the only effective method.

This was precisely why Zhang Zhao had carefully allocated several hundred thousand subject people to Murong Xinzhang.

Zhang Zhao's plan from the very start was for these subject people to become the cultural stratum of Wa, replacing its original cultural stratum; as for the common folk at the bottom, there would be ample time to mold them slowly.

To destroy a nation, one must first destroy its culture — an iron law verified by the utterly ruthless colonizers of several centuries later.

While Zhao Siwan carried out the physical extermination, Murong Xinzhang also ordered his Secretary Han Kuangtu to lead the various clerks and staff officers into the city.

Once inside, they burned every book in Heijo-kyo — whether bamboo slips or paper, wooden boards or animal bones — anything bearing written records was consigned to the flames.

At the same time, all buildings in Heijo-kyo that did not conform to the forms and regulations of the Great Tang were torn down and demolished.

Throughout the city, apart from those of the monk Jianzhen, the steles, sculptures, and scriptures of all other monks of Wa nationality were likewise smashed and burned.

The slaughter and screening lasted four full days in all. At first they used blades to stab; later, growing impatient, they used great clubs to hammer; and when hammering proved too slow in the end, they finally resorted to fire.

Zhao Siwan ordered more than ten thousand of the Wa nobles who had been singled out to be driven into the offices of the Ministry of Popular Affairs, then doused with tung oil and set alight; the surrounding soldiers needed only to shoot down anyone who ran out — and indeed, the efficiency improved considerably.

On the twentieth day of the ninth month of the seventh year of Shaoming, supplies from Korea and the Central Plains arrived one after another at the utterly transformed city of Osaka.

And before their arrival, the great bloody calamity of this time and space — barely mentioned in the histories, recoverable only in fragments — had just ended.

In this catastrophe that befell the nobles of the Wa people, at least one hundred thirty thousand were slaughtered across the three capitals of Heian-kyo, Heijo-kyo, and Naniwa-kyo and the towns and villages around them; not even their corpses remained, most burned to ashes.

Originally, on the Osaka plain where these three capitals stood, more than seven hundred thousand commoners lived in the land of Wa — but the learned nobles, officials, and their collateral branches among them numbered at the very most around one hundred thousand.

If one accounts for both men and women, the able-bodied males among them would not exceed sixty thousand; and of the one hundred thirty thousand killed this time, more than eight in ten were males — in that case...

Ahem — many of these wealthy households and commoners had also followed the rebels; if some were not killed, how could the people be awed?

On the twenty-second of the ninth month, Murong Xinzhang withdrew from Heijo-kyo — now all but a city of ghosts — to the coastal city of Osaka.

At this time, the commoners of Heijo-kyo held in his hands still numbered seventy or eighty thousand; together with the commoners of Osaka, there were as many as one hundred thirty thousand in all.

Every one of them was terrified out of their wits, thinking Murong Xinzhang meant to take them to Osaka and drown them in the sea.

But matters having reached this point, the killing would in fact go no further; if it continued, there would be no one left to farm the land, no one left to serve as slaves.

And truth be told, in this age, conquest and being conquered had little to do with these common folk.

They were beasts of burden regardless; it made no difference to them whom they served.

Nor did they possess any national consciousness; looking after their families and neighbors was already the limit of their capacity — where would they find the wits to ponder such grand matters?

Moreover, even among the officials and warrior class of Wa, Murong Xinzhang had not chosen to kill them all.

Those spared were, naturally, the Qin clan branch headed by Qin Pingtong and his son, the Liu clan branch descended from the son of Okura no Haruzane, and the Western Documents Liu clan branch, which for generations had chiefly engaged in literary and historical work in Wa.

If one spoke of half a month earlier, these three branches had still harbored a faint intention of holding out for a better price — for at that time, in their view, Murong Xinzhang very much needed their cooperation.

But now, facing this terror who in half a month had ordered the killing of over a hundred thousand, whose demonic underlings could split a living man open in the street and steep his gall in wine — even Okura no Sakari, son of Okura no Haruzane, a man who had come off the battlefield, was frightened nearly to the point of pissing his trousers.

And Murong Xinzhang had spared them not simply because they were descendants of Han people who had crossed the sea, unlike the emperor and high court nobles, who were in all likelihood of Baekje descent.

There was another important reason for sparing them: he needed to rely on them to help control the provinces.

Destroying the political and cultural center of Wa could be done by slaughter, because the people there were highly concentrated.

But how to govern the people of the various provinces below, who could not even communicate in the language of the Central Plains — that would still require their assistance.

Murong Xinzhang's plan was simple: after continuing to crush the remaining resistance forces of the Wa kingdom in the future, he would begin large-scale enfeoffment.

Specifically, aside from the Three Capitals of the Osaka Plain, the area around the Dazaifu in northern Kyushu, the Kanto region with its obvious great development value, and the Ono Plain where Nagoya was located, everything else would be enfeoffed.

His Murong Xinzhang's fiefdom was different from the daimyo enfeoffments of Japanese history. In Japanese history, daimyo enfeoffment was produced through over a thousand years of continuous struggle, but now, Murong Xinzhang could decide it with a single word.

The good eldest son did not intend to make major changes to Japan's current administrative divisions. He only needed to demote the provinces to prefectures and the sub-provinces to counties.

As for noble titles, he might as well set them a bit higher. The great provinces and upper provinces would become upper prefectures, directly granted marquisates. The rest, the middle provinces would be middle prefectures, and the lower provinces would be lower prefectures, granted earldoms.

For the lower ranks of viscount, baron, and patrol commissioner — well, below the provinces there were still sub-provinces, and so on by analogy.

For example, Yamashiro Province, where Heian-kyo was located — if it were to be enfeoffed, it could be enfeoffed as the Marquis of Yamashiro.

Below it there were still the districts of Atago, Kuzuno, and others. If one district were to be divided out and enfeoffed as a viscount or baron, it could simply be enfeoffed as Viscount Atago or Baron Atago.

Since most of the Wa kingdom's place names were similar to those of the Central Plains, even the effort of changing names was saved.

However, Murong Xinzhang did not intend to enfeoff that many marquises. That is to say, those who independently held an entire province — by the standards of Japan's Warring States period, those with a kokudaka of three or four hundred thousand koku or more — would not be too many.

The majority would probably be minor feudal lords of one or two hundred thousand koku and vassals of ten or twenty thousand koku.

And when they went down to govern their territories, they would be allowed to recruit from the current army a portion of soldiers and officers whose merits did not reach the level of enfeoffment, to serve as their guards.

Otherwise, a count's domain often contained tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand people. Going to take office alone would not be taking office but going to one's death.

And because of the language barrier and unfamiliarity with the geography, Murong Xin had deliberately kept these descendants of the Han people who had crossed the sea several surnames ago.

When a titled lord went to take office, he would bring some of them along, and at the same time could have them help select some Wa people as companions to bring along as well.

In any case, among the provincial army troops that had gathered at Heijo-kyo this time, people from most of the provinces were present. Those who had luckily survived and been scared into cowards were exactly the ones who could be used.

In the seventh year of Shaoming, 952 CE by the common calendar, on the first day of the tenth month, with the arrival of Zhao Kuangyin, the troops under Murong Xinzhang's command had swelled to nearly forty thousand men, and in addition more than ten thousand Wa laborers had been incorporated.

And with the arrival of grain ships from the Wuyue region, Murong Xinzhang had stockpiled three hundred fifty thousand koku of grain in Osaka alone, completely eliminating any worries about his rear.

Thus, on the second day of the tenth month, Murong Xinzhang appointed Zhao Kuangyin as Grand General of the Kanto Expedition, leading twenty thousand naval and land troops, infantry and cavalry, along with tens of thousands of civilian laborers, advancing by both sea and land.

To go and conquer the provinces of Kai, Musashi, Kozuke, Shimotsuke, Kazusa, Shimosa, Hitachi, Mutsu, Dewa, and others still under Wa control — roughly the area of Tokyo and Sendai in later generations of the Wa kingdom.

At the same time, he appointed Wang Jing as Commissioner of the Southern Sea Expedition, leading five thousand infantry and cavalry to go and pacify the provinces of Tosa, Iyo, and others on the island of Shikoku, which belonged to the Southern Sea Circuit.

And Murong Xinzhang himself remained in Osaka Castle and began to pacify the people's hearts. He first issued the Land Survey and Assessment Law, recognizing as legal the landholdings of the manor lords that had formed after the collapse of the allotment system.

But each manor was limited to three thousand mu of upper-grade fields and five thousand mu of middle and lower-grade fields. All manor lords had to travel to Osaka Castle at the time specified by their respective provinces to pay homage and offer their loyalty.

This move was quite ruthless. A manor lord with seven or eight thousand mu would have several dozen to nearly a hundred households under him — not enough to have much influence, but if you made him give up this bit of family property, he certainly would not be willing.

And the moment they arrived in Osaka, a direct superior could immediately be assigned to them — or perhaps he should be called their liege lord.

Murong Xinzhang's conception was that one patrol commissioner would command twenty or more such manor lords, bringing along a guard of ten or twenty men, and directly escorting these manor lords, he could begin to take office.

Then under one viscount or baron would be placed ten or more patrol commissioners. Under a marquis or count would be placed five or more viscounts or barons.

Using this method, first establish a relationship of subordination among them, and after the whole territory was pacified, adjustments could be made.

On the fifth day of the tenth month, Murong Xinzhang again issued the Land Rent and Taxation Law, adjusting the terrifying tax of five parts to the public and five to the people that the Wa court currently enforced, to three parts to the public and seven to the people for independent farmers, and for manor serfs, one part to the lord, three to the master, and three to the people.

All commercial taxes were also adjusted from the four-to-six split that directly bankrupted small peddlers, to a two-to-eight split.

The remaining twenty-odd harsh miscellaneous taxes established by the Wa court, such as the plow ox tax and the silk cloth tax, were all abolished.

The independent farmers here referred to the common people who farmed on lands directly controlled by Murong Xinzhang, the Great King, and the court — the Osaka Plain, the Ono Plain, the Kanto Plain, the Dazaifu, and other lands.

In these places, no liege lords were established, and no manor lords were retained. Therefore, whether the common people lived well or not, they were all independent farmers. The policy was that seventy percent belonged to themselves, and thirty percent was handed over to the court.

Manor serfs referred to the manor farmers on lands with liege lords. Uh, or calling them serfs would also be acceptable.

Of their income, they kept thirty percent for themselves, the manor lord got thirty percent, the liege lord got thirty percent, and the Great King got ten percent.

Uh, it looked very miserable — working hard at farming and only getting thirty percent. But in reality, compared to before, when they ate wild vegetables in good years and directly starved to death in bad years, it was already much better.

And one should not just look at the manor lord taking thirty percent. Organizing production, observing the seasons, raising plow oxen, and minor repairs to irrigation all required the manor lord to contribute money and effort.

Overall, the manor lords' income had dropped considerably, but in this terrifying chaotic age they had preserved their family property, their basic rights had been recognized by the court, and the income of the common people below had increased to varying degrees.

Once these two edicts were issued, the Wa kingdom, which had been like boiling water, suddenly became as if a great basin of cold water had been poured into it, and its reactions became far less violent.

The common people at the bottom began to adopt a wait-and-see posture, no longer so willing to listen to the instigation of certain surviving court nobles.

Afterward, Murong Xinzhang began issuing edicts to release the common people of the three capitals — Heian-kyo, Heijo-kyo, and Naniwa-kyo — in batches, allowing them to reunite with their surviving family members.

At the same time, since the court nobles of these three capitals had almost all died out, Murong Xinzhang magnanimously allowed them to choose for themselves the residences of some former low-ranking officials, as a small compensation.

But all of this came with conditions. That was that the city residents, common people, and farmers of these three capitals all needed to be conscripted to work on a great construction project.

On the eighth day of the tenth month, Murong Xinzhang issued an order conscripting one hundred sixty thousand city residents and farmers from the three capitals to completely demolish the tombs of the emperors near the Osaka Plain and the tomb complex of the Fujiwara court noble family — whether real or merely legendary attributions.

At the same time demolished were the major Buddhist temples that had begun to develop Wa characteristics.

The reason so many people were conscripted for tombs that were not particularly large — many farmers were merely escorted over to register, then pushed over a few stones as a token gesture — was that it did not matter how much they did, but whether they did it at all.

With this single move, most of the city residents and farmers had essentially become accomplices and submitted their pledges of allegiance, and Murong Xinzhang could barely feel at ease about them.

On the seventeenth day of the tenth month, good news arrived from Shikoku in the Southern Sea Circuit. Wang Jing had broken the resistance of the Shikoku warriors at Agawa District in Tosa Province, slaying over a thousand in battle.

The former Southern Sea Circuit Pursuit Commissioner of the Wa kingdom, the Governor of Iyo Province, the Vice-Governor of Tosa Province, and other officials and officers great and small were all killed, and Shikoku was basically pacified.

On the ninth day of the eleventh month, Zhao Kuangyin reached the Kanto Plain, and immediately at Toyota District in Shimosa Province, he encountered a force of ten thousand from the eastern pioneer warrior clans.

At that time, most of Zhao Kuangyin's twenty thousand troops were still at the coastal crossing point. The soldiers under his command numbered only over a thousand cavalry and two thousand mounted infantry.

It was called an encounter, but in reality it was a carefully planned ambush by the eastern warriors, who were familiar with the terrain. Yet even facing an enemy several times his own number, Zhao Kuangyin was not the slightest bit afraid.

What a joke — the glorious battle to break Heijo-kyo had not included him. Fighting some eastern warriors, could he possibly flinch?

And so, the howling Wa warriors came out to battle, brandishing hair-tufted greatswords nearly as tall as themselves and spears taller than themselves, and then slammed into a wall of bronze and iron.

Zhao Kuangyin personally led his close followers and retainers in the vanguard charge. The three armies fought with all their might, routing the ten thousand eastern warriors, beheading over four thousand, and nearly annihilating the main force of this eastern warrior group.

Afterward, Zhao Kuangyin established a foothold in the fortress built during the rebellion of Taira no Masakado, and divided his twenty thousand troops into four divisions to strike out in all directions.

In barely half a month, amid heavy falling snow, the army successively broke through more than thirty settlements of the eastern warriors, beheading several thousand more and taking tens of thousands of prisoners.

The eighth year of Shaoming, 953 CE, the second month.

As the ice and snow of the Kanto melted, Zhao Kuangyin again personally led nearly ten thousand elite troops, campaigning all the way to the vicinity of what would later be Sendai City.

At this time the Emishi had not yet been utterly crushed by the Wa people, so although Zhao Kuangyin was a stranger in an unfamiliar land, the Wa had little room to maneuver either.

By now the Emishi still numbered over a hundred thousand, and though they had nearly been forced back to Hokkaido, they could still spare several thousand warriors.

With them blocking the Wa samurai's line of retreat, those wretches could only despairingly choose to fight Zhao Kuangyin head-on.

And Zhao Kuangyin had long known of the Emishi's existence — he had even made contact with them well in advance.

Thus in this battle, guided by Emishi who knew the roads well, the despairing eastern warriors were defeated once more. Several thousand were slain, and the Taira clan, the local power of the Kanto, was nearly wiped out to the last man.

In the whistling cold wind, Zhao Kuangyin gazed at the distant land and said to his trusted general Zhang Huan beside him:

"This place has an early spring, four distinct seasons, and a pleasant climate — far better than Lingnan or Hexi. The Sage once said the land of Wa was not a wilderness; only now do I know that was true.

In days to come, if waterworks are built here and wasteland opened up, it could easily sustain a million people."

In truth, apart from its somewhat frequent earthquakes, Japan did have some fine places.

The most representative were the later coastal regions to the east — Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo, Sendai, and the like.

There the climate is mild, the soil fertile, the fishing abundant; each place could support a million people with ease.

Zhao Kuangyin sighed softly. He knew his benefactor and elder brother Murong Xinzhang intended to implement in the land of Wa a system of enfeoffment — Xia rulers over Yi subjects. Murong Xinzhang had even indicated that, if Zhao Kuangyin were willing, he would enfeoff him with the two provinces of Mutsu and Dewa.

The title had even been thought out already. Murong Xinzhang had once heard his father, Sage Zhang, call this place Sendai, and so he expressed willingness to enfeoff Zhao Kuangyin as Lord of Sendai, ruling the two prefectures of Mutsu and Dewa.

Zhao Kuangyin was sorely tempted!

How could he not be? If this were the Warring States period of later Japan, this would be a super-domain combining the Sendai, Aizu, Morioka, Yonezawa, and Hirosaki domains.

Its assessed yield would be around two and a half million koku, with a population in the millions!

Even now, Mutsu and Dewa together could yield around seven hundred thousand koku, and the common people would number no fewer than two hundred fifty thousand.

To return to the Central Plains and serve as a general abroad and minister at court — or to stay here, under his benefactor's protection, and rule as a lone sovereign?

Truly a hard choice! Even Zhao Kuangyin, always cool-headed and decisive, began to grow muddled.

And just then, his subordinate officers came to report: the twenty-one great chieftains of the Emishi had been invited into the small town just named Sendai. They had come to receive their reward for helping crush the Wa.

Zhao Kuangyin looked at Luo Yanhuai beside him and asked, "Have all the Emishi warriors arrived?"

Luo Yanhuai chuckled. "All here — a full four thousand and more. Our men have already gone with fattened sheep and fine wine to feast them."

Zhao Kuangyin turned to his trusted man Zhang Huan and asked, "Are the armored soldiers I had you assemble ready?"

Zhang Huan's smile grew even more sinister. "Rest easy, Great General. I personally picked the men. The moment you dash your cup as the signal, we'll charge in and hack these savages into mincemeat!"

(End of Chapter)

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