Chapter 113: Tamahagane
To be in charge and make one’s own decisions, there are too many things to worry about, always lacking this or that.
Yuan Ye paced around the low table hundreds of times. If he had gotten a small stone mill set up here earlier, he could have at least ground half a bucket of soy milk. But after grinding for half the day, he still couldn’t recall where Owari had any rich iron ore. After all, Owari didn’t have any to begin with, so he couldn’t create something out of nothing no matter how hard he thought.
He pondered for a while, feeling like he had hit a dead end. He then changed his perspective and considered the problem: where did the armor and sabers and spears in Owari come from?
He had never really thought about this question before. When he didn’t understand “common sense,” asking A Man was always the right move. He sent someone to fetch A Man again and immediately asked, “I forgot to ask you earlier, where does Owari’s ironware come from?”
A Man was stunned for a moment, not quite understanding what he was asking. She replied strangely, “Of course, blacksmiths make it. Where else would it come from?”
“I mean the raw materials, like pig iron.”
A Man, as expected of a great treasure, actually knew. She immediately understood and said, “Oh, you mean iron material. From Atsuta, it comes from Hokuriku. For example, Kaga Province produces iron material. From the Shimazu side, it comes from San’yōdō and San’indō. Places like Bizen Province, Bitchū Province, Mimasaka Province, Izumo Province, Iwami Province, and Oki Province all produce iron material.”
Hokuriku Road, San’yōdō, San’indō…
These are too far from Tōkaidō. It’s impossible to reach them anytime soon, let alone raid them!
Yuan Ye asked with a sliver of hope, “Doesn’t Owari have any place that produces iron material?” If it did, that would be his next target. At the very least, he would have to find a way to get a share of the yield.
A Man directly extinguished his fantasy: “Owari only produces cloth, pottery, and rice. There are no other rare items. Moreover, producing iron material is something ordinary people simply cannot do; there are all sorts of family secret techniques. How could any random place produce iron?”
Family secret techniques? Is it that exaggerated?
But that’s not important. He needed an iron mine before he could even talk about smelting. And now, he couldn’t even raid for it?
“Alright, go back to your work!” Yuan Ye was greatly disappointed and sighed. Seeing that she couldn’t help, he directly sent her away.
A Man didn’t care. She didn’t even bother to ask what he wanted to do. Anyway, she had never understood what Yuan Ye was thinking about all day. She just assumed he was having another one of his usual fits, mumbled something, and patted her little backside as she left.
Yuan Ye continued to grind away in his office. After about another half bucket of soy milk’s worth of time, he was still not giving up and continued to ponder how to solve this problem. The cost of raw materials was too high. In the future, if he produced armor and matchlock guns, he would only earn the labor cost when selling them, which was a huge loss.
Fortunately, heaven favors the persistent. He pondered and recalled for a long time before finally stopping. He managed to come up with another method.
Owari didn’t have rich iron ore, but that didn’t mean it had no iron. It was just harder to collect. But he was in such a dire situation now, desperately needing money. Even if it was hard to collect, he had to try. Therefore… if all else failed, he could only try opening an iron field, though he wasn’t sure if it would be reliable.
…………
The next day, Yuan Ye woke up very early. After completing his daily tasks, he made some simple arrangements for Wanjin and then set off with his “expedition team” to search for iron outside.
The team was simple: just him, his personal guard A Qing, a few veteran followers from the household, and A Man, who insisted on coming along after hearing he was going to look for iron. Besides them, they only carried some weapons, tools, and food. They didn’t even bring horses, as they had to go upstream along the river to explore, and there were no existing roads, making horses a burden.
“Does Owari really have iron? Why has no one discovered it before? How did you know?” A Man was full of questions, completely unable to understand Yuan Ye’s thinking. She kept chattering beside him.
“I don’t know either, let’s just go look!” Yuan Ye couldn’t explain to her that iron is one of the top three most abundant elements in the Earth’s crust. If you don’t count oxygen, which is considered an impurity in minerals and something everyone wishes didn’t exist, iron should theoretically be everywhere. He could only give such a perfunctory answer and then walked upstream along the small river by himself.
This small river is a tributary of the Shirakawa River. The sources of most rivers in Owari are in the deep mountains of Mino Province, and the Shirakawa River is no exception. However, Japan is an island nation, with mountains accounting for over 80% of its area, leading to uneven terrain. The Shirakawa River is also winding and twisting, crossing more than half of Owari before finally branching out like a comb, forming numerous small tributaries that flow south into the sea.
In short, this small river originates from the deep mountains and has passed through a large mountainous area, so it should theoretically contain a certain amount of iron sand. Now, all that’s needed is to find a way to collect this iron sand.
This crude method was something Yuan Ye thought of out of desperation. Recalling a documentary he had watched about “Tamahagane,” he remembered it. That documentary was produced by NHK. NHK documentaries never spared any expense, as it was a publicly funded television station that didn’t overly consider commercial viability and spent money without restraint. Their research was usually quite detailed.
And in that documentary about “Tamahagane,” the raw material for Tamahagane was clearly stated: iron sand, specifically “akame” iron sand and “mame” iron sand sifted from the river.
Of course, Japanese people like to give strange names. No matter how strange the names of these iron sands are, their essence is iron tetroxide. The “Tamahagane” smelted from them is actually just a low-temperature steel accidentally produced due to insufficient furnace temperature, making it difficult for the iron sand to melt completely. There’s nothing special about it.
Of course, you can’t say this to sword enthusiasts. Looking down on “Tamahagane” can easily lead to them beating you to a pulp and arguing with you for three days straight.
In any case, “Tamahagane” is smelted from iron sand. There are many complicated and even superstitious details involved in its production. Yuan Ye doesn’t care about those; he only needs the by-product of “Tamahagane” production, which is pig iron.
As for how to obtain this iron sand, the documentary also mentioned it: digging rivers and opening “iron fields” to let the river slowly accumulate iron sand.
If this method doesn’t work, then he’s out of options. He doesn’t have any iron mines nearby. He’ll have to grudgingly buy expensive iron material, and expensive iron material with an unstable supply at that. His dream of becoming an arms dealer will likely be shattered, and many of his plans for building an army will also be greatly compromised.
He was full of uncertainty and didn’t want to bother with the curious A Man. He walked upstream along the small river. The river wasn’t wide, but due to the terrain, it flowed quite quickly from high to low towards the sea. He had walked out of his temporary territory before he saw the river forced to turn at a hill, slowing down and creating a muddy bay.
He felt this was a good place to test his hypothesis and immediately ordered everyone to stop. He had the followers take out the bamboo sieves they carried and sift the mud in the water. The method was similar to panning for gold: scoop up a handful of mud, shake it vigorously in the current, allowing the lighter mud and sand to be washed away, leaving only the heavy gold sand.
Of course, this is iron sand, but the principle is the same. At most, you just need to use a little less force when shaking.
He would naturally lead by example in such a harmless task and went down to play in the mud himself. Even though the plum rain season hadn’t arrived yet and the river water was cold, he didn’t care. He shook the bamboo sieve vigorously for five or six minutes, then raked through the remaining material in the sieve. He squeezed it in his hand and felt it was cold, heavy, and indeed black iron sand. Moreover, the quantity was much larger than he had imagined. A sieve full of mud yielded enough black iron sand to cover his palm, at least two taels.
This was a bit abnormal. Yuan Ye straightened up and looked around. He found that others were similar to him; the iron sand in their sieves wasn’t small. For a moment, he felt a sense of unreality, as if he had become the chosen one. He was worried about not having iron, and then he actually dug out iron sand from the mud. Could it be that heaven had opened its eyes and seen that he, an ordinary person, was having a hard time, struggling for a whole year, and had secretly lent a hand?
However, he had received a higher education and didn’t believe in ghosts and spirits. His thoughts, after a brief divergence, quickly refocused. With a little thought, he understood what was happening: there was a problem with this cursed place called Japan!
Anyone who had taken a geography class in modern times knew that Japan is located at the junction of Earth’s tectonic plates, with three seismic belts and four volcanic belts, making seismic and volcanic activity very active. It was likely that the underground magma belt had brought up rich iron-bearing minerals, which then rose to the surface through complex geological movements. After long-term erosion and transport by flowing water, the iron sand content in the rivers was much higher than in other parts of the world.
Furthermore, this small river bay was already close to the estuary. Since its formation, no one had ever paid it any attention. The silt here had been washed and sifted by the river countless times over the years, accumulating a large amount of heavy black iron sand.
Yuan Ye pondered for a while, feeling that he could explain this geological phenomenon from a scientific perspective. His worldview immediately recovered. He squeezed the iron sand in his hand and began to estimate the yield. A Man was waiting for him to fail so she could offer her hindsight, but she didn’t expect that by sifting, he had actually obtained a small handful of iron sand. She couldn’t help but exclaim in surprise, “Are there really so many iron sands in the river? Is this how they get iron material from Hokuriku, San’yō, and San’in?”
This was truly a pleasant surprise. He was rich again!
Copper is money, and iron is also money. Even if the quality isn’t good, it’s fine for casting iron coins, which he could use to reward the meritorious followers and pay off his past debts!
“I’m not sure about the situation there. There might be some small iron mines, but this is how we can collect iron here.” Yuan Ye wasn’t as happy as she was. He withdrew his gaze and replied calmly, his face showing little joy.
Mainly because he had already finished his estimation and felt that there wasn’t much iron sand here. Even if they turned over the entire river bay, they would probably only get about ten tons. This was a rough estimate, but it wouldn’t be much more. Moreover, this was iron sand, not iron material. After smelting, 20% would be lost, and the furnace would need to be repaired.
This quantity was still not enough. At least, it wouldn’t be enough in the long run, and it couldn’t compare to a proper iron mine. However, at least he confirmed that NHK hadn’t lied. Japanese rivers could indeed be used as a low-quality small iron mine. This indeed provided a basis for developing iron fields. More or less, it was a stable, long-term source of iron material.
With this in mind, he immediately turned to a follower and said, “Go back and call people. Send thirty men first, bringing all the shovels and sacks. We’re going to dig up the river.”
