Next Year, Let's Brew Sake

[Tier-Group 4]

Since there had been an announcement that the rearranging of the tier-groups was finished, the merchants who had been waiting in the various tier-groups came out of them at daybreak. Tier-Group 4, which until the night before should have been at ground level, had shifted to a considerably higher position, and out in the distant farming district, any number of buildings now stood lined up where there had been nothing but plots earmarked for future villages.

"It's over and done with. The Awa army won't be coming here."

"Echizen-ya-dono, are you telling me they were beaten back before they could even lay their siege?"

"Tamino-ya-san, Funatsu-ya-san, given that the dungeon is growing, it wasn't a matter of beating them back, but of wiping them out. Which is to say, the Awa army has gone to the next world, the money they brought for payment has been confiscated by this dungeon, and the several thousand koku of provisions you all went to such pains to haul out here, you'll have to go to the pains of hauling back again."

"Now that's just cruel."

"Fortunately, I have a connection with the dungeon here, so I can buy up all your provisions and deliver them to this dungeon. Sake I can't buy quite so much of, mind."

Echizen-ya was a fuel merchant and belonged to none of the foodstuffs guilds (the rice dealers', the grain dealers', the dry-goods dealers', the sake dealers', and so on), which is to say he was a reseller.

"You mean to beat down our prices, then?"

"I'll buy at the proper market rate, I assure you. Making enemies of you all would do me no good whatsoever."

"But then, Echizen-ya-dono, you'd turn no profit yourself, would you?"

"It earns me the dungeon's goodwill, you see. Why not go a step further and set up shops in this dungeon yourselves? While the settlers are still gathering, food will sell here in the dungeon, and once the dungeon's agricultural production gets up and running, you can do the reverse, buying up rice here in the dungeon to carry off and sell elsewhere."

[Tier-Group 34, Ground Level]

"Going forward, for the time being this Tier-Group 34 will be the ground level and serve as the dungeon's entrance, while above it Tier-Group 535, Tier-Group 310, and the lower section of Tier-Group 488 were originally shopping centers, so we'll use them for commerce."

"Shoppi? What's that?"

Naturally, Echizen-ya couldn't make sense of the foreign words Marie used.

"A place where many shops stand in a row and goods can be bought and sold. That's the gist of it. So then, Echizen-ya-san, and this gentleman is?"

"This is Sumida-ya-san, a sake dealer. He's been put through a wretched ordeal on account of the Awa business this time, and would like our help."

"Sumida-ya, at your service. I had a large order for sake, so I brought all my sake along, and then the buyer went and vanished."

"Rice we need in any quantity, and we're buying up grains and dry goods as well, but turning sake back into rice is impossible, and we can hardly go saying 'if they have no rice, let them drink sake,' so the dungeon can't buy it up. And yet selling too much sake to the residents…"

"Comrade Director of Books, this dungeon is pressing ahead with the 'Million-Chōbu Reclamation Plan.' With a million chōbu of paddy, how much rice can be harvested?"

"Erm… reckoning that the actual paddy comes to seventy percent, then with improved farming techniques and an ample supply of fertilizer, we could aim for a yield of two koku per tan, fourteen million koku. The nominal figure, at one koku per tan under the 'four to the lord, six to the people' split, all reckoned in rice, would put the annual land tax at around four million koku, I should think."

Under modern farming methods a yield of three koku per tan is attainable, but that's hard going for a dungeon with no basic industrial base, naturally.

"The farmers' staple food is the wheat of the off-season crop, so the great remainder, probably some nine million koku, will be sold on the market. Half the land tax, too, will likely be sold. Since the fertilizer is dungeon-produced, the final result is the same whether the fertilizer is paid for in coin or in rice. And the population of Bandō is somewhere around five or six million. Humans breed quickly, of course, but for a while rice should be in surplus."

"On paper it does look as though there'll be room to spare. Though without population control it seems it would soon come to nothing."

"And so, the idea is to have this Sumida-ya-san bring in a tōji master brewer, and brew sake from this dungeon's rice and water. The world being what it is, a certain amount of sake is necessary. And besides the Preta, there are all sorts of liquor-lovers, you know. Tanuki, snakes, oni, and the like."

"Ah, yes, we've some of those in this dungeon too. Sumida-ya-san, I'll have you sell me just the one barrel."

Marie called Vasanti's face to mind, and bought the sake.

"It's a poor, worthless sake, but I beg your continued custom hereafter."

In this world, there being no sea routes, large-scale transport is impossible, so kudari-zake, sake shipped down from afar, is hardly ever seen.

"You can take your time selling off the sake until winter, and though this winter we surely won't have rice enough to brew, from next winter on we may as well take up sake-brewing in earnest."

"This winter, we have to actually confirm the water. Next year we'll try planting several varieties of sake rice, and confirm which varieties and which cultivation methods suit the land. It'll take a good several years before we can make a sake to our satisfaction."

For reference: wheat yields around one and a half koku per tan. If half of the million chōbu (seventy percent of which is paddy) were wheat fields, the wheat harvest would come to seven and a half million koku. With four hundred thousand farming households, and the whole farming district reckoned at a million households and five million people, if the wheat needed is about one and a half koku per person per year, that comes to exactly seven and a half million koku. Saitama's staple is barley, but a fair amount of wheat is eaten as well.