CHAPTER 48: CHAPTER 26: PREPARING FOR DANGER IN TIMES OF SAFETY IS A VIRTUE

Harano went all out like a tiger, treating almost everyone in Hibi Village, so the number of patients dropped sharply. It was no longer as bustling as when the clinic had just opened, and this gave him a nice chance to take a break. After all, he’d been running around non-stop since he time-traveled here, the mental pressure was huge, and honestly, he was exhausted.

Just then, the twenty-first year of the Tenbun era arrived.

When he came, it was late winter—according to the Gregorian calendar, it would be early January. But in the Muromachi Era of Japan, they were still using the Chinese lunar calendar. That year’s Lunar New Year wasn’t until late February on the Gregorian calendar, so it was only then that "New Year’s" officially arrived—"Yuan Dan." There was no such thing as a "Spring Festival" yet, and if a time traveler wanted to celebrate Spring Festival, he’d have to wait for the Republic of China era.

But they did have New Year’s Eve. The night before Yuan Dan was New Year’s Eve, and by this time in Japan, there was already a custom similar to eating "year-crossing soba noodles." Ah Ping and Yayoi cooked up a huge pot and made sure everyone got their fill.

Of course, they were nowhere near as refined as in later generations. It was really just water-boiled soba and steamed soba. You had to dip it in bean paste to eat, and the flour was coarsely ground, so it was a bit rough on the throat.

Harano couldn’t get used to it, but he didn’t have the heart to let down all the effort Yayoi and Ah Ping put in, so he secretly moved all his noodles into Ah Man’s bowl.

He really wasn’t being picky. Back in modern times, he’d never been the delicate type and could handle hardship, but in Japan’s Middle Ages... he really just couldn’t swallow this stuff—if you know, you know!

Once everyone was done with the "year-crossing soba noodles," New Year’s Day arrived. Harano planned to go to Yayoi’s house to pay his respects, since technically he was "renting" her house, and she was the landlord. Plus, running that black clinic had dragged her into a lot of trouble too, so he figured he should show some courtesy—maybe even give her kid a red envelope or something.

Fortunately, he had enough self-awareness to realize he didn’t really know the customs of this era. So he watched how things unfolded and did a little subtle asking around. To his surprise, he found that in the Middle Ages, Japan did New Year’s visits on the second day of the new year. On the first day everyone just lounged about at home, didn’t cook, and only ate cold food—everyone could totally take the day off.

Have to say, life in ancient times was seriously slow-paced. Put that in the modern era? No way you’d get to rest a whole day during New Year’s!

He slept right through to the second day, and sure enough, the villagers started making New Year calls to each other. That was a lot like modern times—everyone spouting auspicious phrases. Harano, who was now widely respected as a "Mongolian Divine Doctor," got New Year’s greetings from Yayoi’s family, the Shibei Family, and many other villagers. If he hadn’t been adamant, someone probably would have organized the entire village to kowtow to him a few times.

On the third day, there was the well-worship ritual, hosted by Jiulang—he was both a member of the Hosokawa Family’s Lang Faction and a local "celebrity." Basically, he was a strong and battle-tested commoner—sort of a reserve lower-ranking Samurai, with a decent chance of becoming a Hosokawa Household Retainer, giving him higher status than regular farmers. He led all the village’s men to do a ceremony for the village well, giving thanks for its service in the past year and hoping it would keep the water coming in the new one.

After the well ritual on the fourth day, again it was Jiulang who took the lead, taking all the men to worship at the Otagawa river and Ise Mountain—meaning was probably about the same, praying they’d get lots of mountain goods this year and hoping for neither drought nor floods to ruin their precious fields.

Fifth day—worship the cow, hoping it would work hard, stay injury-free and healthy.

Since Hibi Village couldn’t afford an actual cow, they made one with mud and straw. After the ceremony, everyone carried the mud cow outside the village, smashed it up, and scattered the pieces evenly over their fields.

On the sixth day, they worshipped all manners of gods and monsters, hoping these beings would keep watching over the village—or at least not bring disaster.

Finally, the seventh day—"Human Day," basically "take care of your body day." All the women in the village would gather to brew a pot of "seven-herb porridge." Together, they’d head out of the village to pick five types of wild greens: water celery, cudweed, chickweed, stitchwort, and shepherd’s purse. Then they’d add radish, turnip, and a little rice, boil up a huge batch of veggie porridge and share it out, praying for good health and a disaster-free year.

At the same time, by turning the wild green gathering into a contest, they’d select the most careful, hardworking, and nimble-fingered "Zao Yini"—the rice-planting girls—to start nursery work and prepare for the spring sowing to come.

With that, the Japanese New Year of the Middle Ages was over, life in Hibi Village went back to normal, and it was already way busier than in winter. The Little Ice Age hadn’t happened yet, so there’d been no worldwide cold snap and the climate was pretty different from modern times. Once the lunar New Year was past, plum flowers had already faded; it was basically spring now, grass and trees sprouting, wildlands and mountain slopes bursting with edible wild greens. The entire village mobilized to dig up the first batch of wild vegetables.

Harano observed for two days and unlocked another mystery—he finally understood why large-scale peasant uprisings were so rare in Japan’s history.

The reason was simple: In ancient Japan, natural resources were just too abundant. Even if the lord took over 80% of their grain, the farmers still wouldn’t starve—they could just barely scrape by. This was totally different from China, where farmland was always pushed to the edge of its carrying capacity.

Here, rivers crisscrossed everywhere, hills and mountains made up over 80% of the land area, and the country was surrounded on all sides by sea. The climate had always been warm—and it was even warmer than modern times right now—so in spring, wild greens started sprouting round after round extra early, mushrooms and bamboo shoots were everywhere, and there was no end to foraging;

In summer, there were tons of aquatic plants and shellfish, with lotus seeds, lotus roots, and river clams all over, enough to eat their fill again and again;

Autumn meant wild fruits and nuts everywhere—wild persimmons, wild peaches, wild apricots, hazelnuts, pine nuts, and horse chestnuts covering the hills. Only the winter was a bit tough—people hunkered down in the village and lived off what little grain they’d saved up. But even in modern Japan, the winters are short, and now they were even shorter; all you needed to do was tough out a handful of weeks, and the wild greens would be all over the hills again.

This was probably also a major reason why the Ainu, the aboriginal people of Japan, never formed a country:

Food was so easy to come by, and winters were mild, so there was no drive to develop farming. There was no need to build proper food storage systems or develop sophisticated social divisions of labor.

So, after thousands of years, they remained little foraging, fishing, and hunting tribes. Their numbers never accumulated, and their fighting power was negligible. If things got dangerous, they’d simply move somewhere else—after all, they could find food almost anywhere—so there was no need to focus on military preparation.

As a result, when wave after wave of migrants from the Korean Peninsula brought Chinese farming technology across the sea to Kyushu Island, the population exploded within a hundred years thanks to the farming lifestyle, and all those people blended together, forming the so-called "Wa people." They started pushing eastward step by step, encroaching on Ainu land.

They drove the Ainu from Kyushu to the main island, then over Mount Fuji, past Mount Fuji into barren Kantou, then from Kantou into the North Land mountains, and finally, they weren’t even allowed to remain there—driven straight into the frozen wastelands of Hokkaido. At the time when Harano crossed over, the Ainu tribes were still battling the Japanese at the entrance to Hokkaido, fighting off wave after wave of rebellions against Japanese enslavement.

In the end, once Japan turned into a military nation and its technology advanced enough to fully exploit Hokkaido, it grew even more ruthless—shoving the Ainu into concentration camps and mines, squeezing every last bit of value out of them, and systematically cleaning them out. The methods were every bit as brutal as what the Germans did—maybe even worse. It’s just that the Ainu didn’t get to control global public opinion or make endless movies about their suffering, so in later generations barely anyone even knows about them.

By modern times, there are probably only around ten thousand Ainu left. As an ethnic group, they’re basically extinct.

Give it another few decades and probably no one will remember there was ever such a pitiful people on earth.

It’s a textbook example of "born from adversity, doomed by comfort." But it also sort of proves that the Japanese archipelago really is a land rich in natural resources. Even if it’s short on iron and oil, it’s not nearly as barren as most people imagine—there are tons of rivers, mountains packed full of resources, fishing and hunting to your heart’s content, and plenty of precious metals. It’s absolutely a treasure land.

At least, in the agricultural era, it was pretty darn great—even if it’s sitting at the crossroads of several tectonic plates, with three big earthquake belts and four volcano belts, it’s still quite livable.

Looking around at the villagers busy gathering wild greens, then surveying the vibrant wilderness, Harano found his old prejudices about Japan starting to crumble just a little.

At the same time, he felt a flicker of warning—maybe the idea that wars in Japan’s Warring States era were just "village brawls" wasn’t so reliable either; maybe that’s another stereotype. After letting his guard down for New Year’s, he now felt his alertness returning.

Being prepared in peacetime is a virtue; planning ahead is wisdom. Even though things look okay right now, he’d better stay cautious—and definitely not end up dying of comfort like the Ainu!

He’s got to keep on working hard just to survive!