Warring States Survival Guide
Chapter 197 - 136: The Whole Family Elders and Young in One Wave

Chapter 197: Chapter 136: The Whole Family Elders and Young in One Wave

Building a fortress overnight is a classic trope in novels, with many famous battle cases—like pouring water at night to make an ice wall, or Kinoshita Fumijiro tying logs into rafts and floating them downstream, constructing Moyu Castle in a single night. But these stories are either folklore or tales of legend; whether they really happened in history is questionable at best.

Take Kinoshita Fumijiro building Moyu Castle overnight—odds are, it’s just made-up. The story originates from the Illustrated Taiko Chronicles, which was then copied into Martial Arts Night Talk; the former is a storytelling novel from the Edo Period, the latter has mostly been deemed pseudo-history by modern scholars—full of utter nonsense that doesn’t match up with any archeological evidence.

Most importantly, Harano once chatted with Ah Man about this and found out Moyu Castle had already existed long before; her grandfather had visited several times when he was young, and that castle is still standing, serving as a crucial Saito Family outpost against the Oda Family.

So, fortress-building overnight is basically bullshit—a gimmick from stories, almost impossible to pull off in the real world. Not to mention, when Harano went out for an on-site inspection, he realized he needed to build a stronghold on a mountain, two small forts by the river, and a main fortress between mountain and river as a defensive core, ideally with a few smaller forts to cover gaps and ensure the port’s absolute safety.

Put simply, he’d have to build a mini "Great Wall" before he’d have the guts to pick a fight with the Imagawa family, this monstrous beast, and have any chance to protect the port from being besieged and starved out.

This level of construction would scare people to death in ancient times. After a few rounds of surveying, Harano got back and walked in circles like a donkey on a mill, then rounded up a large crew of laborers, boarded a ship, and set out to sea. This time he sailed west, landed in a deserted spot in the Haixi district, and plunged into the Ise Mountains once again.

A few days later, he brought back almost half a boatload of volcanic ash, cinder, and a small amount of tuff and pumice mixed in.

With the fortification techniques of this era—digging foundations from stone, building walls from rammed earth, putting up wooden structures—if you really wanted to get a fortress built, forget three or five months; sometimes it could take a year or two. And with that kind of building time, the Imagawa family would have enough chances to kick him into the sea three or five times over.

So, classical building methods weren’t going to cut it. He figured casting in place would be better, and only by doing that might he have a fighting chance—barely—of having a stronghold that could withstand harsh tests when the Imagawa army arrived.

But if you’re going to do cast-in-place construction, you need concrete. For concrete, you need cement. To make cement during this era, pretty much your only option is volcanic ash cement.

This stuff isn’t anything new; it goes back to before the Common Era.

Some of the world’s most famous buildings—for example, the Roman Pantheon, built between 27 and 25 BCE (rebuilt in 120 CE)—have the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, with a diameter of 43.3 meters. The materials: pumice, porous volcanic rock, volcanic ash, and lime mixed into "Roman concrete." It’s light, sturdy, has lasted two thousand years, and is still intact—a famous tourist site in modern Rome.

Similarly, the well-known Roman Colosseum also used concrete. Its foundation is dense concrete made from volcanic ash cement and limestone to take the venue’s immense weight. The arches and dome use lightweight concrete—like pumice concrete—using volcanic ash cement with added pumice and other lightweight aggregate, keeping the structure stable while reducing overall weight.

That building is still around today—although more than half has collapsed, that’s not really about the material. It’s fair to say it’s lasted two thousand years and remains extremely sturdy.

In addition, places like Pompeii, the Ancient Roman Bathhouse, and ancient Roman aqueducts that stretch for dozens of kilometers all used massive amounts of volcanic ash cement and concrete. History has proven the reliability and convenience of these building materials.

At least, that’s what the middle school textbooks say.

Harano figured he could learn from the Romans and use volcanic ash cement, too. That way, he wouldn’t have to quarry stone or tamp down earth layer by layer, and could save a ton of time—construction speed would go way up. Building earth walls isn’t simple; the soil matters a lot, you have to mix various soils, add all sorts of weird binding agents, and tamp down each layer—otherwise it won’t stand or will be too weak. That takes forever.

So, volcanic ash cement was the only way forward. Harano took people to steal most of a boatload of volcanic ash, then started experimenting with mixing volcanic ash cement. This stuff was used on a huge scale before the Common Era, and the recipe is dead simple—just mix volcanic ash with lime; depending on the ash’s properties, the ratio is about 3:1 or 2:1.

Once mixed, you have primitive volcanic ash cement. Then, mix the cement with suitable aggregate—maybe the spongy, porous rock ejected by volcanos, or just river sand and gravel—and you’ve got concrete.

Next, constrain it with a bamboo and timber frame, add water and pour, then cover it with damp burlap to cool and prevent cracking during setting. Give it about a week, and you’ll have your "prefab piece" as desired.

The whole process is extremely simple, barely counts as technical at all. Once the "prefab piece" was done, Harano beat on it a dozen times with an iron hammer before it finally showed damage—confirming that the middle school textbooks are more trustworthy than Japanese history books and weren’t just bluffing. It’s definitely a pretty good building material. The only real downside is it doesn’t handle cold well—the cement gets brittle in harsh winters—but that’s no big deal. Chita Peninsula is even warmer than Kuno; winter lows rarely go below freezing, the water doesn’t ice up, the cement will be fine.

With building material sorted, and actually the best option for this era, Harano felt confident. By this time, the lunar New Year had just ended, so he didn’t hesitate to launch a full mobilization in Wanjin, announcing fort construction there. He began making a ton of lime kilns, burning lime like crazy, and searching for easily-dug volcanic ash layers. Once found, people dug them up and carted boatloads back to Wanjin. If there weren’t enough ships, he just paid islanders to haul with their fishing boats.

The local mighty families from the Lower Four Provinces of Owari didn’t interfere. He’d treated so many wounded for them before—earned a fair bit of goodwill. Digging up some useless dirt from their land wasn’t a big deal; nothing grows there anyway. Nobody cared. In fact, some families, like the Maeda Family, were happy to help. It’s not like they had anything to do in winter anyway, so they got their people digging and hauling to make a little extra money.

Oda Nobunaga knew about this right away, but didn’t care. Harano’s willingness to become a local Owari strongman was something he wanted to see. Anyone who wants to be a local lord has to build a fortress—that’s how it’s always been in Japan, with over fifteen thousand "city lords." Harano’s behavior was perfectly reasonable; Nobunaga barely gave it a thought and just ignored it.

So, ship after ship of volcanic ash, volcanic cinder, tuff, porous rock, and pumice was hauled to Wanjin—either finely sieved, taken to mills for grinding, or just pounded up by hand. In the end, they were mixed into bags of volcanic ash cement and concrete until Wanjin’s warehouses were nearly filled, closing in on the earthwork volume Harano had calculated.

He even built a small test fort at Wanjin, letting the civilian officials experience "being a contractor" firsthand, troubleshooting some odds and ends ahead of time so everything would go more smoothly when the real work started.

Endo Chiyoda, Maeshima Shichiro, and the other internal affairs officials were also on board. Wanjin’s population is four or five thousand now; they’re already a regional force. They’d been planning to suggest a fortress anyway, but Harano started it without needing their advice—they got super enthusiastic, doing all the prep, organizing labor as he asked, establishing the command system and hierarchy, accumulating timber, bamboo, and food stores, recruiting carpenters, making molds to Harano’s specs, and pouring some parts in advance.

Yu Da was also expanding the fleet, actively working with the islanders now that they had some trust built, organizing them into a temporary maritime transport squad.

From late winter to early spring, except for essential workshop staff, the whole of Wanjin was bustling. Everyone was hustled into a frenzy by Harano, working like crazy—luckily there’s no agriculture here, otherwise the workforce could never be this concentrated or so focused.

Of course, the new army’s training never stopped—that was top priority. They didn’t have to work on the construction. Even as the labor shortage began again, the recruits kept coming in, getting ready for the long wars ahead.

This was the all-or-nothing gamble Harano had worked for, struggling for independence and real freedom on his own land. He’d spent over a year preparing, even resorting to outright robbery for manpower. All of it for this very moment.

Even if it cost him dearly, even if half his people died, he was determined to gain a foothold on the Chita Peninsula, force the Imagawa family to tolerate his existence, and become an independent small Daimyo!

But to improve his odds, what he still lacked was the right timing to act. Oda Nobunaga is a bit neurotic—if he took his whole family and rushed into the Chita Peninsula, and Nobunaga suddenly freaked out and came after him, it’d be a disaster.

So even after getting everything ready, he still didn’t take action. He waited for warmer weather—since all this construction would be outdoors, and the cold could lead to injuries and illness. But the main thing was waiting for Nobunaga to act first—after failing to take Qingzhou City last year, Nobunaga wouldn’t let it go and was prepping for battle. Harano figured Nobunaga would strike again soon.

As soon as Nobunaga went to attack Qingzhou City and couldn’t spare the manpower to chase him down, Harano would take his whole family to Chita Peninsula and start building fortresses.

He patiently waited another ten-plus days, and finally received an urgent report from Ah Man: Nobunaga hadn’t even mobilized the local lords of the Lower Four Provinces of Owari; he led only his own forces straight at Qingzhou City—it seemed to be a highly secret action.

Harano didn’t hesitate. Even if he had no time to figure out Nobunaga’s real objective, he immediately ordered the fleet to set sail, rushing straight for the Chita Peninsula!

He was going to build a Great Wall within half a month, and make the Imagawa family bash their heads bloody against his fortress!