Chapter 3 Nonhuman Life
Since his parents passed away one after another a few years ago, Kiryū Mantsumaru took over the family head smoothly, but found that his life became more difficult. He even began to miss the days when his father was alive. At least those despicable hereditary vassals didn't dare to show off in front of him, and Yamamoto Kanbei wouldn't be dragged around by him every day, making his good days come to an end.
ōkōchi Nobusada taught him the basics of Chinese studies every day, and occasionally lectured on military classics such as "Hōgen Monogatari", "Heiji Monogatari", "Heike Monogatari" and "Azuma Kagami". Fortunately, most of these classics were written in Chinese characters, so it wasn't too difficult to learn. However, ōkōchi Nobusada's teaching level was not very good, he would read the text aloud once, and then let him memorize the rest on his own, using the method: "Read a book a hundred times and its meaning will appear."
"What a scam! Who said that the more you read, the more meaning you'll see? And to have to recite it in the authentic Kyoto dialect, sentence by sentence! This is simply unreasonable!" No wonder Kira Yoshinaka was grinding his teeth with rage at this teacher. The Taira clan's education method, which bordered on being abnormal, had been tormenting the Kira family for generations. It was said that this tradition was established by the founder of the Kira clan, Shin'indōden no Kira Nagashige, who decreed that as a noble family of the Minamoto clan, they must be well-versed in both learning and martial arts."
It was for this reason that, starting with Kira Yoshichika, the ōguchi family, who had served as the chief retainers of the Kira family for generations, took charge of managing the Kira family's documents and assisting in the education of the heir to the head of the house. Previously, this responsibility had been carried out by the elderly head of the ōguchi family, but he was very old and his eyes were failing, so that after reading a few lines from a book, he would unknowingly begin to doze off, and thus his days passed fairly comfortably.
But heaven has unpredictable winds and clouds. Since his old man, Kira Yoshinaka, died, ōishi Yoshio deeply felt that his age was no longer able to assist this young lord, and immediately decided to retire and hand over to his son, ōishi Yoshitaka. This ruined Kira Manshirōmaru. This guy's energy is not inferior to Yamamoto Kansuke, and he also has the habit of nagging that Yamamoto Kansuke does not have. Once he starts nagging, it never ends. The family tree of the Kira house can be recited fluently, a bunch of bushido righteousness comes out like a machine gun, until he is sprayed to the point of seeing stars before he is satisfied.
As the Kiryū family's hereditary retainer, they have served the Kiryū family for over 300 years. Their family also has a glorious history of producing many notable figures, including Kiryū Mimasaka no kami. Overall, their family is also part of the Seikō Genji clan and are descendants of Minamoto no Yoritoki, who was appointed as the steward of the Kiryū family in Mikawa Province's Nukata District during the Kamakura period. In Mikawa Province, their power and influence were not to be underestimated, and within Nukata District, they ranked second only to the Matsudaira family among powerful warrior families.
They not only did that, but also took the opportunity to enrich their own knowledge by collecting and managing the documents of the Kira family, and followed the head of the Kira family to Kyoto to serve the Imperial Court, exchanging knowledge with cultural figures in Kyoto, and thus claimed to be a cultural family and a scholarly family from Mikawa Province.
"This is not something a human can do, if I keep studying like this I'll go crazy! This is absolutely going to kill me!" Holding a volume of the Northern Song edition of "The Book of Han", Yoshirō Manzōmaru sat up straight and read aloud with great care, one word at a time. If he made even one mistake, ōuchi no Shigenaga would stop him, and then he would repeat the recitation, striving to make sure that every single tone was correct before continuing.
In the eyes of everyone in the Warring States period, the people of Kanto's Tsuchigumo country can never understand Kyoto's unparalleled elegance. The Kanto dialect is a tone that exudes a rustic atmosphere from top to bottom. The Kanto samurai are a group of stubborn and unenlightened representatives who have no culture, don't appreciate, and can't communicate at all. In his mouth, Kanto is the most terrifying place in the world, second only to Kyushu, Iwate, and Hokuriku, ranked fourth among the places that absolutely cannot be visited.
Kirishima Manatsuru really can't understand how he came to the above conclusion, and it's hard to see that he is still a stubborn regional discriminator. The Kanto region during the Warring States period has always had a special status, both valued and guarded, while also carrying a few points of contempt and disdain. This principle is very complicated, and even ōuuchi Nobusada doesn't know how to explain it.
Although he didn't agree with Oda Nobunaga's theory, he didn't dare to refute it. Every day, he had to face this wolf-like teacher and read books seriously, word by word, with a stiff expression. It was easy to imagine how great his mental pressure was. Sometimes, when practicing basic etiquette like smiling, he would feel that his cheeks were stiff, all of which was forced out of him.
Since arriving in this era, he realized that the illiterate turtle warriors accounted for 90%, those who could barely recognize some characters and read books and write letters accounted for less than 1%, and only a small number of people were truly considered cultured. The self-proclaimed cultural warriors were either high-ranking martial artists with deep backgrounds or a few lucky ones who had entered the door of famous scholars, but that tiny probability was even lower than winning the lottery, almost negligible.
The successive heads of the Kiryū family received many gifts from the Emperor and Shogun, and some high-ranking samurai families also gave them books as presents. They also exchanged duplicate versions of books with each other to deepen their friendship. In addition, they acquired a large number of books through purchases from merchants in Sakai-machi and other channels.
The Kiryū family's former head of the house had long served by the shogun's side, and had more opportunities to obtain books than a feudal lord hiding in the countryside. The way they collected books was somewhat like a starving person grabbing at food, without regard for whether the book was good or bad, useful or useless - just getting them first and sorting later. This trend of collecting books in a nouveau riche manner gradually stopped as the shogunate's power declined. Although there were no new additions to the collection, the several thousand volumes of various types of books in the entire library still looked quite dazzling.
Even the old father of ōkōchi no Mitsune, who is the previous head of the ōkōchi family and has been assisting the three generations of heads of the Kira family, now retired for over a decade, ōkōchi no Daisuke no Suke no Shinsei, gave him a long list of books to read slowly, under the name of increasing knowledge reserves, making it extremely hard for him to read books now.
He sat opposite, holding a book of "Zizhi Tongjian", it's really unknown how his ancestors got this kind of esoteric book back then. The cover was new and well-preserved, looking like it had hardly been touched. Daimon Masayoshi came over to urge him to study under the guise of official business, but instead sat down beside him, holding a book and slowly appreciating it. If he read any slower, he would be scolded, but he was sipping tea brought by the maid, feeling quite at ease.
It's just the right time to catch up with the autumn harvest, and this year's harvest is not bad. The farmers are singing and celebrating the most important harvest season of the year. It seems that the prospects for this year's autumn harvest are good, and it will bring a considerable amount of annual supplies to the Yoshida family. Therefore, today, Hachiro's mood was particularly good, and after listening to him recite books for more than an hour, he let him stop and simply asked him a few questions about the era names, minister names, and events that occurred during the Two Han periods, and then released him very quickly.
