The prose of Yang Yunsu, a former reporter of CCTV, is very beautiful, and it is ironed and posted on the Internet. She recently wrote an article titled "Six Levels of Spring Wind Chasing Ten Miles", about his foodie uncle Yang Ne, a well-known expert in Mongolian Yuan history, who bought spring shoots. The article begins with the scene of the samurai Inoyama family eating in the Japanese movie "Samurai Family Chronicle":
The family sat neatly together. The father is centered, the mother daughter on the left, and the grandmother and son on the right. All ate very quietly, with only a slight sucking of soup. The mother picked up a bamboo shoot and said the first line of the play: Fresh bamboo shoots. She took a bite and chewed it in her mouth, making a crunchy and tough clicking sound, admiring and enjoying it. The daughter had a little pride and smiled: It was brought from the countryside by the takenaka family. Takenaka is her future husband, and it seems that she is in love. The mother preferred, "Now Ah Chun, you have become a member of the Takenaka family." The daughter smiled but did not speak.
Just by looking at this description, the reader will think that the Inoyama samurai family lived a happy life with good years.
I like Japanese dramas, especially the works of directors Yasujiro Ozu and Yoji Yamada, whose themes are mostly based on depicting the living conditions of ordinary Japanese people, with a gentle rhythm and trivial stories, but they often make me feel empathy. But I didn't read the "Samurai Family Book", after reading Yang Wen, I found it from the Internet and stayed up late to read it. In addition to lamenting the exquisite life of Japanese people like Yang Yunsu, I also have more associations.
The deepest feeling that this movie gave me was that the Bushido spirit of the Japanese people, in addition to conquering and pioneering with swords, also had another side of calculating the world with abacus. This is probably why Japan was able to rise rapidly after the Meiji Restoration.
Life in the Japanese before the Meiji Restoration was really hard.
The protagonist of the film, Naoyuki Inoyama, grew up in a special samurai family in Kanazawa City, Kaga Domain (now part of Ishikawa Prefecture), the Imperial Fortune Teller (Accountant) Inoyama Family, who handled the finances of kaga Domain for generations, and by the time Inoyama Naoyuki was in his eighth generation, at this time in the late Edo period.
Naoyuki Inoyama has a typical Japanese craftsman spirit - to eliminate all interference, not afraid of hard work, to do one thing to the extreme. The head of the financial department of kaga domain withheld the relief grain distributed by the lord of the domain to the starving people, and joined hands to make false accounts to smooth out the end of the accounts, which caused social unrest. Naoyuki Inoyama is unwilling to go along with the flow, and through his own investigation, he privately leaves a real account book. After the East Window Incident, the lord of the clan severely punished those who made false accounts, and the upright Naoyuki Inoyama was promoted.
Kaga Domain was a large domain of the Edo period, and the lord of the domain was the Maeda clan, and although it was a foreign daimyō, it had a deep marital relationship with the Tokugawa family. Kaga Domain led 1025,000 stones, the largest of all the daimyōs.
Kanazawa Castle, Kaga Domain
Inoyama's father, inoyama Nobuyuki, the seventh generation of imperial reckoners, followed the lord of the domain, Maeda, to Edo many times – the Tokugawa shogunate stipulated that the daimyōs of each clan lived in Edo Castle and had regular pilgrimages to facilitate control – should be regarded as a highly valued technical talent, and after three years of apprenticeship, Naoyuki also became a professional imperial reckoner, and both father and son earned salaries, which can be said to be a typical middle class. In order to maintain the face of the imperial samurai family, the Inayama family is very particular about life. My mother liked exquisite kimonos, and the spring shoots she enjoyed were seasonal products, and although they were gifted by their relatives, they could see the exquisite food, clothing, and housing of the family.
Father and son served as important officials in the financial department of such a large domain, but their family's financial situation was on the verge of bankruptcy. When Nobuyuki followed the lord of the clan to Edo, he had a huge debt outstanding, and the family's income was not enough to make ends meet every year. If they do not save money, the Inoyama family faces the same fate as one of their superiors, unable to repay debts, the family bankruptcy, and the head of the household is detained in prison. So Naoyuki Inoyama, with the support of his grandmother, began a long period of saving money and paying off debts. In order to save money, naoji Inoyama (later renamed Naoyuki) was four years old and drew a valuable sea bream for each guest who came to congratulate him, which made his parents lose face. In addition to the necessary supplies, the family's other "luxuries"—the father's Go mother's kimono, and even the samurai's standing sword—were all sold to pay off the bills, but left an abacus. The money was still not enough to pay off the debt, so He signed an agreement with the creditor to repay the loan in ten-year installments. Every day, the use of the family, every cent of the millimeter, should be loaded in the home book, weekly accounting, to avoid overruns.
The ninth generation of Inoyama Makoto grew up under this kind of family education, and under naoyuki's strict requirements, he began to practice planning plates, and entered the calculation field apprenticeship at the age of eleven. His father, Naoyuki, was almost unkind to his education and extremely harsh. Father and son sometimes clashed. In the difficult life, Naoyuki's wife Aju is the most understanding person for her husband, and for the sake of the Inoyama family, she always tries her best to spend less money and serve a delicious meal to the whole family.
Inoyama's family belonged to the upper middle class in Japanese society at that time, and the Kaga he served was a large domain, and Rao was in danger of bankruptcy at any time. You can imagine the hardships of life for the lower samurai and ordinary people in Japan. Various contradictions in society are on the verge of erupting, and there are several times when hungry people make trouble in groups and ask the lord of the clan to open a warehouse and release grain. The lord of the clan and the elders of the family were overwhelmed.
From this film, it can be seen that at the end of the Edo period, the political pattern of the division of various clans and the self-sufficient agrarian economic model were already in crisis, and the traditional shogunate rule could not be continued, and chaos would inevitably occur without reform. The "Black Ship Incident" was an external factor that gave the Japanese nation a drink and accelerated japan's reform. Even without this external event, the political life of the Tokugawa shogunate came to an end.
In the great changes in society, Inoyama shows the shrewdness of an excellent abacus warrior at the straight place, under the premise of ensuring the economic security of a family, judging the time and sizing up the situation, and avoiding the reef of the times to the greatest extent. For example, he disapproved of the front of the Maeda and Tokugawa clans, and supported the Emperor's Choshu and Satsuma clans as enemies (later after the defeat of the shogunate at the Battle of Toba Fushimi, kaga domain defected to the new government's Hokuriku Town Fuku army). He did not agree to his son Makoto joining the Shogi Army on a trip to Kyoto.
In the end, it was Makoto's ancestral profession, his superb financial management skills that saved him and made him successful, and the new government army Omura Yoshijiro valued his talent and told him that the samurai with the sword was easy to find, but he chose one of the samurai with the abacus. Makoto was appointed as an accountant in the army, and soon after, Omura was assassinated, and he survived. After the "Great Political Restoration", the Meiji Restoration was promoted throughout Japan, and Makoto Inoyama was promoted to financial director of the Admiralty.
It can also be seen from the suffering of the Inoyama family that the Japanese market is small, and the lack of resources is a defect that it cannot overcome, and once the whole country is unified and the national strength is strong, it is almost an inevitable choice for the entire Yamato nation to seize the living space for the entire Yamato nation.
In the expansion, the samurai were still at the forefront, holding the abacus in addition to the bayonet. Born into an abacus samurai family, Makoto Inoyama served in the Meiji government's Admiralty, almost metaphorically.
After Japan's defeat in 1945, their swords were forcibly removed, and the role of the abacus became more prominent. Japan's post-war economic boom can be said to have been dominated by a group of abacus samurai.