$ Chapter 42 1. Appointment of New Acting Official

Kobayata was promoted from a 30-kan magistrate to the 120-kan magistrate of Uchida County. Although he was still nominally lower than the family's chief magistrate Kitabatake Daigaku, he was actually only one step away.

Then go to the post. There is no such thing as a new official taking office and starting three fires. In the entire Edo shogunate for more than 200 years, only dozens of magistrates were punished for corruption. Maybe it's really because of historical heritage and social atmosphere. Almost all magistrates are honest and incorruptible.

This honesty is real, but it depends on how you look at it. They only treat people above this level as honest, and don't explain people below this level. The ruling class is all the same.

This clean-handedness is really clean-handedness. By the middle of the Edo Shogunate, the income of samurai could not keep up with the economic development and the rise in prices. Many daiguan were so poor that they had to eat roasted sweet potatoes every day, but they had to maintain the dignity of local parents. They could only use their salaries to hire guards and buy expensive kimonos as official uniforms for office work. It was really superficial.

But even so, these people still maintained extremely high professional ethics, not greedy or taking advantage of their power, and even daiguan with slightly better family conditions paid out of their own money to subsidize the poor lives of the public.

The Tokugawa family, which claimed to have 4 million people and 80,000 hatamoto, actually had more than 5,000 hatamoto families. Many of them were sent to various parts of Japan as daiguan. In the 200-year history, they were punished for corruption and abuse of power and bullying the people, and their families were reduced to no more than the number of fingers on their hands and feet.

Kobayata couldn't tell whether it was better for hereditary nobles to pass down poetry, books and morality, and have a sense of honor to be officials, or for the imperial examination to select some people who travel thousands of miles to be officials just for money.

Anyway, from what Kobayata has learned in the past few years in the Yamanouchi family, the atmosphere of the entire samurai bureaucracy is very good, which is completely different from the plot of punishing evil officials in the TV series "Mito Huangmen". Most people are cruel and ruthless, but also love the people (military service personnel with an annual income of more than 5 kan) like their own children, and have the virtue of thrift and diligence.

Most of the public servants and samurai are loyal and dedicated to their duties like in "The Samurai's Household Account Book". This war-torn era is actually a prosperous and energetic era.

It is really the best time, and the worst time.

And Kobayata has no time to be busy with other things now. The biggest thing at this time is to harvest rice. There is no disaster in the four borders this year, so there is no need to guard against enemy troops coming to grab the harvest. The autumn harvest of the people can be arranged normally.

It's not necessarily that busy. Normally, I have to pretend to go to the fields and urge the people. But firstly, Xiaoping is very lazy, and secondly, he is not willing to pretend to do these empty things.

Besides, this is rice, extremely precious rice, which can be used as a general equivalent! No need to urge, any people will collect it seriously. After all, the policy of the Yamanouchi family's five officials and five people can leave some for the farmers, and there is still enthusiasm for production.

As for the subordinates of his own magistrate's office, most of them are just clerks who can read and write. I haven't seen any famous surnames. Most of them are the second sons of local rich peasant families, the youngest sons of samurai families, and so on. There is no talent with abacus skills and construction talents. As for serving the public casually, I found the plot of Murai Sadakatsu in novels. Don't joke with me, brother.

There are also official duties, mainly dealing with household registration and litigation. Some people think that the people are slaves of the lords. Although the lords do have the power of life and death, after a long period of local uprisings and people's riots. Everyone has learned the good habit of sitting down and talking, and basically determined that the people are self-cultivating farmers and free people, and legally occupying land can be traded normally. (In the middle of the Edo period, due to the reduction of samurai income and the increase of expenses, farmers began to be cruelly oppressed. The number of self-cultivating farmers who went bankrupt and fled increased day by day. Finally, an order was issued to prohibit land transactions at certain times, forcing farmers to be tied to the land and bear heavy taxes and corvée labor)

The lords only have economic advantages and feudal military obligations on the territory. Although the deprivation and personal dependence of the people are very strong, they are still self-cultivating farmers, not slaves.

This is a relatively mature feudal agricultural society, and there are basically few situations where people can take whatever they want. Most lords have channels for direct dialogue with the people. There are often records of anecdotes such as Asai Nagamasa personally handling disputes over the wells of the people, and Mori Motonari guiding the people to grow melons.

Kobayata only needed to ensure that the household registration of the military conscripts, that is, the self-cultivating farmers with an annual income of more than five kan, was correct, and the total number of more than 2,000 military conscripts in the county was guaranteed, and that each piece of land and property had a fully armed foot soldier to fight when called up.

So in ancient times, it was very necessary to give birth to a boy. If your man died in the war, and you had a son of ten or eight years old at home, then no one could take away the land. An honest and upright official like Kobayata would come to your house to measure how much land your family had, whether the annual output value was greater than five kan, and whether you really had a son. As long as there was a son, Kobayata would register this kid as a military conscript with a solid feudal military obligation system, and anyone who violated the personal safety and property of others would be cruelly punished by Kobayata. And this little boy had to pay the annual service fee before the age of fifteen, and when he was fifteen, he had to wear his father's armor to respond to the military service of the Yamanouchi clan. Unless your men died out, there would be laws of the country to strictly protect every military property class.

Feudal society is not without merit. If you are useful to the ruling class, your life and property will be protected by the law and officials. It is a bit serious and a bit sad.

The rest is to deal with disputes over water sources and inheritance division. Such cruel murders can basically top the national news list. It is a joke that people do not pick up things on the road and do not lock their doors at night, but such a big murder case requires careful investigation and logical reasoning. It is rare to see such a case in ten or eight years.

Don't think that being a minister is too difficult. The country is small and the affairs are simple. Moreover, under the stubborn feudal hierarchy, many things are indeed self-digested and often not put into official litigation.

The previous county representative had already counted the number of soldiers who could be mobilized in the county, and Xiao Pingtai actually took over on the most perfect day. The government is simple and the punishment is light, and there is great governance without doing anything.

By the end of the autumn harvest, there were no blind bullies or powerful landlords jumping out to slap Xiao Pingtai in the face, nor were there any Sky Roller Coaster murder cases (fog) to show off their skills.

Before the midwinter, the document for the general service came down. The people in the distant states who had not been on the expedition together before had to prepare a few days of dry food, gather together to repair the city and streets, and fulfill their feudal obligations.

The people in the states were also more conscious, knowing that they could not run away, and basically gathered in Fuzhong City on the day.

I don't know what this year's general service is specifically for.

A new volume, a new beginning, thanks to the recommendations of the big brothers.