Warring States Survival Guide
Chapter 63: Revised - 36 - So It’s Not You Who Got Hit?

Chapter 63: Revised: Chapter 36 - So It’s Not You Who Got Hit?

Japanese monks blatantly plagiarize advanced Chinese handicraft techniques, then go back home to set up workshops in their temples and rake in money like crazy, but absolutely refuse to admit where their technology came from. Everything gets blamed on the Buddha, as if Buddha just gifted it all to them. This really pissed off Harano—if you’re gonna copy, just admit you copied, at least give a "citation." Forcing it onto Buddha like some kind of divine bestowal? Who wouldn’t be annoyed about that?

But for now, there’s nothing he can do about it. He’s just one guy—totally outnumbered by the thousand-odd people at Hosokawa Guanyin Temple. Annoyed as he is, he’s gotta suck it up for the time being and see about it later. But this book in front of him is kinda interesting, so he wants to take it back for a closer look.

Zhizhu the little monk is only eight or nine and has no clue how expensive firewood and rice are—not his job to keep house. He doesn’t treat precious books as anything special, so he easily agrees, "Of course! Feel free to take it back and read, kind patron!"

Fat monk Fa Xing panic-hears this and rushes over, "Little master-uncle, my master said books can’t be taken out on loan, it’s just that..."

The book belongs to his master—if Harano borrows it and never returns it, the blame’s 100% coming down on him. His master definitely won’t let him off easy—at best, dock a few months’ wages. Books are crazy expensive in Japan at this point; each one priced by the string, and often you still can’t even buy one.

Especially these technical books—almost impossible to get a hand on. Buddhist scriptures and Confucian classics are everywhere, but loan a few to Harano to look over? No big deal.

"Um, Second Brother..." Mentioning Fa Xing’s master, Zhizhu hesitates a little, but since he’s already promised Harano, he thinks it over and says: "Just say you lost it! At most he’ll beat you a few times, but he won’t really do anything. Once the book comes back, he’ll get over it."

Fat Fa Xing’s face instantly contorted. Is that something a human would say? So getting whacked isn’t your problem, you little monster, huh?

But even in Japan, being a monk is a strictly hierarchical business. Zhizhu’s the favorite disciple of Elder Hai Xin, with a pretty fancy background—there’s no way Fa Xing can fight that, so he can only watch with utter despair as they head out.

He tried to do Harano a favor by explaining the tech’s source—now he not only gets no benefit, but probably a beating too!

If only he’d just kicked Harano into the kiln earlier. God, what a shameless bastard!

......

"So the patron really likes to read?" Zhizhu totally ignores Fa Xing and his panic, focusing instead on his mission: to properly host Harano the guest. Eagerly, he suggests, "Want me to take you to Shanben Hall for a look?"

"Oh, Shanben Hall? Is that where the temple keeps its books?" Harano was about to leave, but now he’s interested again.

"Yup!"

"Then let’s go!"

The crew takes another turn, following little monk Zhizhu toward the southeast corner of Hosokawa Guanyin Temple. After a twisty fifteen-minute walk, they finally arrive at a Buddhist hall with side rooms.

The hall sits alone in a little courtyard—no trees or buildings around. There’s a row of giant water tanks by the door, so clearly, fire prevention is a big deal. In future inspections, they’d totally pass on fire safety.

Zhizhu gives some extra info: "You can only come here during the day. The doors are locked at night, and you’re not allowed to light lamps inside."

"Makes sense."

Harano nods and goes in behind Zhizhu. Two monks at the entrance glance up, see them, then go back to their books, not bothered at all.

Inside, Shanben Hall is a bit like a modern reading room: rows of wooden racks with trays on them, each tray holding a few volumes or scrolls. Unlike modern libraries, which shelve books upright with the spines out, here, the books are all stacked flat together.

You can vaguely hear the sound of reading too, though it’s not all that clear.

Zhizhu notices Harano’s listening closely and explains: "That’s from the temple school next door. It’s not far from here."

Oh, right, Japanese monks also moonlight as teachers. Most of the students are local nobles’ or samurai families’ kids, but you get a mix of merchants, Lang Faction folks, and sometimes even a couple of poor common boys lucky enough to catch a break and get an education.

Kinoshita Fumijiro—the protagonist of "Taiko Risshiden 2"—apparently went to the temple school here before making it big. He learned to read and write kanji and kana, picked up math, debate, tea ceremony... all the proper skills for becoming a samurai later. Though Harano isn’t sure if he specifically studied at Hosokawa Guanyin Temple.

Anyway, Harano isn’t interested in the "monkey" right now—he’ll probably run into him eventually anyway, so there’s no need to go searching. The real priority is books.

After all, nothing beats books for learning. That "Original Ninja" Ah Man can only give him the lowdown on recent events, and nothing too systematic at that.

He goes from tray to tray, flipping through books. Most of these first ones are Buddhist scriptures, plus lots of handwritten "reflections" on Buddhist philosophy. Not useful to him—so he skips that whole first row and checks the back shelves, pulling out a book called "Supernatural Chronicles."

Ancient novels?

He flips to the middle and finds a collection of short stories. This page: some guy borrows money from a temple, can’t pay it back, so he drags his whole family into the mountains to dodge payment—and overnight, he wakes up as a cow.

His wife and kids freak out, rush to the temple with the cow to beg the monks for help. The monk instantly spots the karma—he’d planned to default, and it’s divine punishment. He’s doomed to be livestock for life.

No other choice, the family has to stay at the temple to work, leaving the cow behind to help farm. In the end, once the loan is paid off, they swear with tears they’ll never slack off again, and finally, the curse is lifted, turning him human again.

Harano flips through some more—the rest are all the same kind of little stories, not quite even parables. He’s speechless—there are tons of red-ink edits and comments, suspiciously like stock stories for public preaching, meant to fool the flock.

This book is no use to him either, so down it goes. Next up: "Record of Striking Smell"—but it’s just another collection of stories meant to scare simple villagers. Seems Japanese monks are pros at coaching their followers.

Harano goes through a few more—same stuff everywhere. Looks like this whole row’s worthless for him.

He keeps going, and finally finds some relevant ones—"Upper Palace Chronicles," "Ancient Chronicles," "Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves," "Colorful Leaf Category Collection," "Records of the Land," etc. Old books, mostly a mix of kanji and manyogana, some printed, some handwritten, mostly with handwritten annotations. Basically, these count as the era’s histories, geographies, dictionaries, and primers.

These he really does need. He can read and write Japanese fine as a modern exchange student—but thrown back into the Middle Ages, that might not be enough. He’ll almost certainly have to write plenty of letters in the future, so a crash course in classical Japanese won’t hurt.

Classical Chinese is also worth brushing up on, but that’s no biggie for him.

He stacks these books to the side and scans the neighboring racks, picking out a few more—"Song Conversations," "Tang Rhymes," "Hanwen Catalog," stuff like that. Looks like these monks are super keen on foreign languages—they’ve even made their own textbooks.

On top of that, he also finds a whole set of the Four Books and Five Classics, plus all kinds of Confucian writings. Some have seven or eight different versions. There are handwritten Tang and Song poems, and even drama scripts and brothel ditties. No clue if the monks collected these or just copied them down for fun.

He sifts out the good stuff to the side, and keeps browsing. After that, most are handwritten treatises—samurai essays, collected works, diaries—a lot of really private stuff. No idea how monks got their hands on these.

Probably, some useless descendants of the original owners pawned them off at the Earth Store when borrowing money and never managed to buy them back?

He goes through them a while, and some are worth keeping—so he picks a few with the neatest handwriting and stacks them up too.

An hour flies by. Altogether, he’s pulled out a few dozen books he finds useful—and thankfully, ancient writers had some integrity, not like today’s web authors who shamelessly churn out millions of words. Dozens of books together don’t even make a big stack. But even so, Zhizhu is stunned: "Patron, you’re gonna read all these?"

"It’s not that much—I could fit them all into a small box."

"Patron, you really are hardworking!" Zhizhu’s impressed—he never liked reading himself, only does it because he’s forced to. Being able to slack off for a day, all thanks to Harano.

"Then I’ll take these!" Harano thought he’d have to do some fast-talking to get all these books at once. Never expected Zhizhu to be so generous despite his age. Feeling he owes the kid now, Harano laughs, "Next time you visit my village, I’ll cook you mountain mushrooms! Simmered with herbs, fragrant and healthy—you’ll want bowl after bowl!"

Zhizhu is obviously tempted, swallows hard: "Really? You have to remember, patron! Don’t trick this little monk!"

"Don’t worry, you’ll love it!" Harano promises with gusto, though looking at all these books he can’t help but feel a bit greedy—he can’t possibly take away more. With any other monk but Zhizhu, three or five would be the limit.

The rest, he’ll deal with in the future.

Hosokawa Guanyin Temple is this shameless—he can’t shake the feeling this temple and he are fated. Maybe someday, all these books will be his.

Harano muses on this, empties out A Qing’s medicine box, tosses some of his own herbs, and stuffs all the books in. Then he leaves Shanben Hall, bidding Zhizhu goodbye.

Once he reaches the bottom of the hill, he glances back at Hosokawa Guanyin Temple and its towering main gate. The Dobao Pagoda gleams in the setting sun. Only then does he head straight for Hosokawa Castle.

He used to wonder why Oda Nobunaga spent the second half of his life going nuts beating up monks—even burned down Mount Hiei—just to earn himself the nickname "Sixth Celestial Demon King" and "enemy number one of all Buddhas." Now he gets it—he’d go nuts and beat up Japanese monks, too.

Of course, his reason is that Japanese monks are just too shameless and deserve a good thrashing. But for Oda Nobunaga? He probably wanted to unify the country, and thought "advanced means of production" had to be in his own hands—so he just had to break the monks and control their industries.

Eight or nine chances out of ten—that’s exactly it!