Chapter 2082
Although landing reconnaissance action plans were formulated for Hirado Port and Nagasaki Port before departure this time, considering the specific conditions of the two places, Nagasaki is actually the key target, and there are even Portuguese businessmen there. The museum can provide a certain level of assistance. The Hirado Port may have the existence of the Eighteen Shiba Yu Party, and the risk of entering the local area will be relatively high, so the action plan for Hirado is actually only an alternative plan. If the presence of a Chinese warship had not been discovered nearby, Amakusa Shiro would not have taken the initiative to risk going ashore to implement this matter.
After being promoted to an officer many years ago, Amakusa Shiro had never performed a reconnaissance mission alone like this again, so this mission of sneaking into Hirado also made him quite excited. Although the water temperature in March was still bitingly cold, he swam to the nearby coast in one breath without any pressure.
Amakusa Shiro opened the waterproof bag and took out all the items, dried himself with a towel, put on dry clothes, put all the wet clothes into the bag, put a few stones in, and tied it with the deflated sheepskin tire with a rope. Sinking into the sea together. After handling these things, he counted all his belongings one by one and took them with him. He raised his head to roughly identify the direction, and then headed south along the coast.
After spending half an hour climbing over a low hill, Amakusa Shiro had already seen the harbor he had seen during the day. There were dots of lights on the coast, pointing out the way forward for him.
Usually there are some entertainment venues near the port wharfs dedicated to sailors to kill time. This is an essential industry in all trading ports under Haihan's rule. Amakusa Shiro believes that this place is no exception. After all, the sailors who come ashore are very idle. What else can they do besides drinking, gambling, and finding women?
It is not difficult to find these places. After nightfall, just go wherever there are lights on near the port. When you get nearby, you will definitely smell the aroma of wine and hear the voices of sailors laughing and cursing. Although Amakusa Shiro was not interested in eating, drinking, prostitution and gambling, he knew everything he needed to know, so there would be no obstacles in getting into these places.
Sure enough, when he was still some distance away from the bright lights, Amakusa Shiro could smell the aroma of wine and food wafting in the air, which convinced him that the place he was looking for was in front of him.
Soon he saw a small tavern next to the pier. There was a lantern at the door. The words "Yoshida House" were written on the lantern with a brush. He could faintly hear shouting coming from the house. Amakusa Shiro walked to the door and paused for a moment. After confirming that there was no problem with his condition, he opened the door curtain and walked in.
This small tavern is not large, with only three small square tables in the room, but there are already about ten people sitting there. Amakusa Shiro looks at their clothes through the dim light, and they must be poor people. And his rash entrance didn't seem to attract the attention of these people. Everyone was still drinking and having fun on their own, and no one was curious about this newcomer.
It was the owner of the store who noticed Amakusa Shiro first, invited him to sit down at the counter, and asked him what he wanted to drink. There are no waiters in this tavern, so the boss himself is busy doing all the cooking and drinking. Amakusa Shiro ordered a pot of wine and a plate of sashimi, then sat at the counter and started drinking. Although he was not talking to anyone, his ears had already begun to listen to the conversations of the people in the room.
Amakusa Shiro's appearance and speech are not obviously different from those of the locals, and there is no sense of dissonance in this tavern. He soon discovered that he had come to the right place. There were actually people talking in Chinese in this small izakaya.
Amakusa Shiro listened for a while. Although he couldn't hear everything intermittently, he got some useful information from it. Most of the Japanese-speaking locals drinking here are shipbuilders and low-level sailors, but the few Chinese-speaking people seem to be one level above others, shouting and drinking at others without being polite. .
These Chinese-speaking people are also proficient in Japanese. It seems that they either live here permanently or travel here frequently. From the corner of his eye, Amakusa Shiro noticed that these people were dressed similarly to the locals, so he judged that these people probably lived in Hirado all year round, so they dressed like the locals. However, these people only used Chinese when talking to each other, and they were obviously not Japanese who could speak Chinese.
However, the Chinese spoken by these people had a relatively strong accent. Amakusa Shiro was proficient in Haihan Mandarin, but he could not quite understand the content of the conversation between these people. He could only be patient and wait for the people in the tavern to leave first, and then try to find out the information from the store owner.
After waiting for a long time, Amakusa Shiro drank most of the second bottle of wine, and the empty plates with food and wine began to pile up in front of him. Most of the people in the tavern finally dispersed, leaving only two or three people lying on the table. There was no movement at all, and someone was snoring. They must have been drunk for a long time.
Amakusa Shiro was actually still conscious at this time, but he pretended to be slightly drunk and asked his boss to come over to settle the score. While paying the bill, Amakusa Shiro said that he was a sailor who had just arrived here and hoped that the boss could introduce a place where he could stay overnight. The boss was not polite, and said that he could stay overnight in his small tavern, and the price was negotiable. It seemed that he would not let it go as long as he made money.
So Amakusa Shiro waited for the boss to clear out the other drunkards and close the shop, and then asked him if he could buy some wine. He could pay for the boss to drink some with him. The boss even accepted the hotel business, so naturally he would not refuse, so the tavern immediately became Amakusa Shiro's exclusive property.
After getting drunk, Amakusa Shiro took advantage of the opportunity to inquire about the situation nearby, and he actually got a lot of information from the boss who was above Jiu Jin. This boss probably didn't expect that Shiro Amakusa seemed to be a pure Japanese, but he was working for another country. He didn't have any defensiveness at all when talking to him, and he answered everything he was asked truthfully. Very cooperative.
This conversation continued until late at night. Both of them were so drunk that they were dizzy. The boss was so happy that he stopped charging Amakusa Shiro for the night and brought out a set of bedding and pillows for him. Just make a bed on the ground in the shop and sleep soundly, and then leave after dawn.
After Amakusa Shiro lay down, he endured his sleepiness and reorganized the information he had received that night. According to the store owner, more than half of the people he saw in the store previously were people working for the Tagawa family. The Tagawa family is quite influential in the Hirado Domain, and the shipyard and cargo terminal near the tavern are all properties under their name.
As for why there are some Han people under the Tagawa family, the boss can't explain. He only knows that many of these Han people are quite powerful, and their status is even similar to that of the top samurai of the Hirado clan. The main industry of this small harbor called Tasuke Bay is actually not shipbuilding or cross-border trade, but the export of timber. The large tracts of mountain forest nearby provide abundant forest resources, and the shipyard is actually an industry built by the Tagawa family in recent years. In addition to the natural harbor here, another very important point in choosing the location is probably Tasuke. The forests near the bay are suitable for making ship materials.
Before the Tagawa family developed this area, most of the wood here could only be transported to Hirado Port or farther away to be used as building materials, or local fishermen built some small sampans no more than two or three feet long. Nowadays, there are a series of industries surrounding the newly built docks and shipyards, such as this tavern. After all, there weren't so many sailors with spending power operating in this area before, and now the local economy has been revitalized by the Tagawa family.
The surname Tagawa is not unfamiliar to Amakusa Shiro. Before setting off, he had also studied investigation reports from other places. Naturally, he knew the story behind a series of business institutions related to gun cases that were seized in the Fujian Strait area some time ago. There seemed to be a Japanese named "Tagawa Kenji" operating. This was also a major clue that allowed the intelligence agency to follow the clues and find out who came to Japan, and listed him as one of the targets to be implemented in this reconnaissance operation.
There is currently no concrete evidence as to whether there is a direct connection between "Tagawa Kenji" who is active in Fujian and the Tagawa family in Hirado, Japan. However, judging from the information Amakusa Shiro learned here tonight, there is a possibility of a connection between the two. Sex is quite big, and this connection point is the Han people.
There are many Han people under the Hirado-Tagawa family, and these people are not engaged in the lowest level jobs, but also have some vague authority. Amakusa Shiro speculates that this may be related to shipbuilding technology. The Japanese businessman Kenji Tagawa who once operated in the Fujian Strait also had many Han people under his command, who were responsible for operating and commanding the latent agencies deployed in various places.
The fact that the Han and the Japanese can achieve this level of cooperation is reminiscent of the Japanese pirates that were once rampant along the southeast coast. Only driven by huge common interests can it be possible for two people belonging to different ethnic groups to cooperate groups to eliminate barriers and cooperate. And Shibazhi just met this condition. Zheng Zhilong stayed in Japan for a long time and had a good relationship with the Hirado clan. He even married a wife and had children here. Among the people he later brought to Fujian were Japanese from the Kitakyushu region. If the Eighteen Shiba Party chooses to make a comeback in Hirado, it has to be said that there may be quite favorable environmental conditions for them.
However, the industry in Tasuke Bay is relatively simple, and more than half of the floating population are people who work for the Tagawa family. Therefore, the information that the owner of this tavern can provide is actually very limited. He can't even tell clearly about the relationship between the Tagawa family and the feudal lord Matsuura. What is the relationship between families? If Amakusa Shiro wants to find out more information, he probably has to go to Hirado Port.
But Amakusa Shiro did not plan to rush to Hirado Port. He planned to go to the shipyard to confirm whether the ships built here were the Chinese warships parked at the dock before leaving Tasuke Bay.
Amakusa Shiro was also very worried. After thinking about the matter, he fell into a deep sleep and was not woken up by the store until noon. He asked for a basin of water to wash himself briefly, then paid and left the tavern.
After going out, you can see the whole port town that you didn't see last night. This town is actually a street extending along the bay. There are docks and shipyards on the east and west ends, and in the middle there is a restaurant like "Yoshidaya" that provides food and drink. Places to have fun, as well as shops like Mihang Grocery Store. The local people's settlements are further inland, and only a few people who rely on the sea live near the coastline.
Of course, whether it is a dock or a shipyard, the scale of operations here is far smaller than most of the ports Shiro Amakusa has visited. If I hadn't taken a few glances when passing by here before, I might have missed this small place. Bay.
The location of the shipyard is right opposite the entrance and exit channel of the bay, so when he passed by here yesterday, Shiro Amakusa noticed the shipyard here at a glance. Based on his own experience, he judged that the sailboat under construction in the dock should be a large ship with more than 400 materials. This was a very large project for Japanese shipbuilding technology, and there was no reason why it would be hidden in such an inconspicuous little place. In the bay. Later, he discovered that there were several Chinese warships in the bay covering the gun emplacements on the decks, and he associated the two things together.
Compared to the dock where Haihan builds military ships, the security measures here are very sparse. There are no shelters installed around the dock, and the construction inside the dock can be seen from a long distance away. Although Amakusa Shiro was not in the navy, he would definitely have no problem identifying the general type of the ship. About 70% of the hull was built in one of the dockyards, and he could already tell from the outline that it was indeed a Chinese sailing ship. The construction of the other ship is still in the stage of installing the hull on the keel, but judging from its size, it should be of the same standard as the ship next to it.
The two sailboats still under construction in the dock are the same size as the other three Chinese warships docked in the bay. Amakusa Shiro believes that these should be standard armed sailboats built in batches.
Amakusa Shiro had no way of inferring which sea areas these armed sailing ships would appear in the future, but just the situation he saw in front of him already made him smell the danger.
Just a few of these warships, which may be equipped with several deck guns, can form a small fleet to perform low-intensity combat missions at sea, such as blocking waterways, monitoring sea areas, tracking at sea, plundering civilian ships, etc. . Once the number reaches a large scale, its power will increase rapidly. At the beginning, the Eighteen Zhi relied on the numerical advantage of warships, so that both the Dutch and Spanish colonists had to bow to it in the Fujian waters.
For local daimyo like the Matsuura clan of the Hirado clan, having an armed fleet will undoubtedly greatly help protect their maritime interests, and can even help the Hirado clan expand its sphere of influence from the sea.
(End of chapter)