CHAPTER 318: CHAPTER 228: PRIVATE GATHERING

Harano only stayed in Wanjin for a few days before taking Princess Dog and a thousand Wanjin soldiers to Komakiyama Castle, located in Komaki Township, Kasugai County.

This was Oda Nobunaga’s new residence, but it had just been completed and didn’t feel much like a place to live. Rather than a castle, it was more of a massive fortress complex, with military utility prioritized—there were more supply depots and barracks than actual houses.

Because of his status, Harano was stationed in one of the branch castles, whereas Princess Dog was personally escorted into Komakiyama Castle by Niwa Nagahide and his men, essentially returning to her mother’s side for a visit.

Maybe Nobunaga wanted Princess Dog to meet Ikoma Yoshino, her "true love sister-in-law"?

Harano couldn’t be bothered to care, so he prepared a few specialties from Kantou, the Northeast, and the North Land Region for Princess Dog to take home for show, and as a bonus, gifted two extra boxes of Ezo specialties—sea otter pelts—to Oda Nobunaga and Ikoma Yoshino.

This stuff was fairly rare in Owari, but practically everywhere in Ezo. A single tael of silver would get you three or four pelts, making them perfect gifts with some practical value—they could substitute for deerskin in making armor, or become popular accoutrements for women, like for sugoroku game pieces.

Harano rested in the branch castle for a day. It wasn’t until the next day that Oda Nobunaga invited him for a meeting.

The meeting spot was set in the open country, supposedly for a hunting trip, but Nobunaga brought along his whole family—by "whole family" he meant everyone at Komakiyama Castle, namely Ikoma Yoshino, their second son, and their little daughter.

Yeah, the eldest son born to Ikoma Yoshino had already been given to Nongji as a diplomatic offering—he was now Nongji’s kid and lived in Qingzhou City.

When Harano brought A-Qing into the tent, he saw Oda Nobunaga enjoying some family time, holding his daughter in his arms and dipping his chopsticks into rice porridge to feed her.

At least it wasn’t sake—Nobunaga was definitely the type who’d totally feed booze to a child.

Still, this was a rare sight.

In this era, men ranked high and never took care of kids—everything was left to women. Nobunaga tossing his child around already made him an oddball for these times. Even if he did pour sake down a baby’s throat, he’d probably still get labeled a "good father."

Of course, he might also be considered soft. Back then, doting on kids was hardly a lord’s shining feature.

When Nobunaga spotted Harano, he didn’t bother with pleasantries. It wasn’t a formal setting, and he’d always been a maverick who disliked pointless rituals. He just waved Harano to sit, then cheerfully showed off his daughter and joked, "What a pity—originally, we could have gotten even closer as in-laws, but now you’ve missed your chance."

He already had six or seven kids, while Harano—older than him by two or three years—didn’t have a single one. Judging by his grin, he probably felt he’d won this round.

Plus, he half-suspected Harano couldn’t have kids at all. He’d actually been pondering whether or not to give Harano a son to adopt, just to make sure Chita County stayed stable in the future—he’d just had another new illegitimate son this year and was wondering where to place him. Sending him to the Nozawa family someday didn’t seem like a bad idea.

Of course, that wasn’t something to bring up now, but he’d already told Ikoma Yoshino to ask Princess Dog what was going on. After all, Wanjin always had airtight security, and he had no idea what really went on in Harano’s household—he didn’t even know for sure how many concubines Harano had.

He couldn’t help it. As the Owari daimyo, he had to consider the stability of his retainers and allies, and according to the mindset of this era, not having a clear heir was the biggest source of instability.

From the Oda Family’s current strategic standpoint, their focus would be on the northern part of Owari for a long while, so the last thing he wanted was trouble cropping up in the south—he half worried Harano would suddenly kick the bucket.

Harano, on the other hand, didn’t worry about any of that. He wasn’t even thirty yet and felt no rush for kids. Besides, circumstances hadn’t been right until now—Princess Dog and A-Qing were both too young, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

That wouldn’t just be "old cow eats young grass"—that’d be the old cow chewing the grass seed!

He couldn’t be bothered with Nobunaga’s crazy talk, so he glanced at Nobunaga’s daughter, smiled gently at her, and asked Nobunaga, "This is Gotoku, right?"

Lady Gotoku—the daughter Nobunaga doted on most, though as for her name...

Gotoku had nothing to do with virtues like "benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faith"—it actually meant a portable cooking trivet, the five-legged iron stand you put under a kettle. Nobunaga was basically naming kids on a whim.

This wasn’t even unusual. Nobunaga did stuff like this all the time. His second illegitimate son was once called "Ledger Book Maru," because apparently Nobunaga was looking at the account books when the kid was born, so he casually named him after "ledger book"—a kind of ancient book binding usually used for account books.

But now the kid wasn’t called that anymore. Nongji got the child and thought "Ledger Book" sounded too tacky and ugly, so she took the "Kisuke" from her own old name "Kicho," and renamed him "Kimyo-maru."

Then there was "Tea Whisk Maru"—most likely Nobunaga was at a tea ceremony; and "Three-Seven Maru," because the child was born on March 7th, but at first glance it sounded more like an ointment—seriously. And "Snow Princess," which was acceptable, sounded girly enough, but Nobunaga probably just named her offhand because it was snowing at the time.

Anyway, that’s Nobunaga’s naming style—completely casual, whatever he was doing at the time, the kid got named after it. Maybe kids just weren’t worth much in this era—what daimyo didn’t have seven or eight kids?

Some had dozens, and the more you had, the less each one mattered. No reason to get too worked up about it.

"Of course it’s Gotoku. Your people are always coming and going in Owari, what is there to ask?" Nobunaga was in a great mood but still blunt as ever, clearly unhappy with the way Harano’s "Life-saving Group" kept snooping on the Oda Family.

But it was really just a passing comment. All the powerful clans did this, and not knowing what the neighbors were up to would make anyone anxious. Harano just did it on a bigger scale, sent more people to Owari—that’s all, nothing excessive.

And besides, he had no intention of playing any tricks on Harano and really didn’t care if Harano watched what the Oda Family was up to.

He even put Gotoku into Harano’s arms so this "uncle" could hold her, and Harano, taking Lady Gotoku, found himself a little at a loss for what to do.

For all the years he’d lived, he had zero experience holding babies. Fortunately, Gotoku was just past a year old—she could walk a couple of steps already, so she wasn’t a helpless infant, and he didn’t have to worry much about dropping or hurting her, but...

Soft, small, with big, pure, lacquer-black eyes—Harano couldn’t help but feel his heart soften.

Carrying on one’s bloodline and genes is a human instinct. Harano had been stranded in this godforsaken era for almost ten years—and with no sign of ever getting back to the modern world, maybe it was time to think about having a kid...

He gave Gotoku a little cuddle, and when she smiled at him, he couldn’t help fishing in his pockets. He pulled out a small nugget of dog head gold for her to play with—one of those he’d collected during a "trade expedition." Since this kind of natural gold was rare and considered auspicious, it had been presented to him, and he’d turned it into a trinket to carry. Seemed perfect to give the kid now.

Harano and Nobunaga played with the child for a while, and when Gotoku got sleepy, handed her to the nursemaid. Only then did Nobunaga get down to business and ask about Harano’s recent trading expeditions.

Harano didn’t mind, and just told him what had happened, not even bothering to hide the deals he’d made with the Imagawa and Houjou families—after forcibly opening up the shipping lanes, winning Wanjin merchants the right to anchor, trade, and be safe from water thieves at every port along the way, the Wanjin merchant fleet no longer depended much on Japan’s local shipping. Atsuta Port was less crucial, so he didn’t care whether Nobunaga was happy about that.

Nobunaga really wasn’t mad. Harano was just an ally, not a subordinate, and he couldn’t meddle that much anyway. Plus, the Imagawa and Houjou were just nominally Oda Family’s enemies and really had nothing to do with him; if anyone should complain, it was Matsudaira Mototaka’s job.

And anyway, thanks to their alliance, Atsuta Port wasn’t collecting much tax from Wanjin and actually ended up losing a big chunk of resources to them. Nobunaga had been hoping to see Harano take off for ages.

At the same time, while Wanjin folks shipped Kantou, Northeast, and North Land specialties back, if they wanted to shift them to Kinki or the Seto Inland Sea, they couldn’t get around him, or around Shimazu Port. The pirates of the Seto Inland Sea had been around for centuries and were way harder to deal with than Kantou bumpkins or Northeast wildmen; there was no way Harano could open the sea routes there too.

Nobunaga was still more interested in Owari’s eastern situation. His main priority was getting rid of the Owari traitors and conquering Minoh—every move was for those goals, and he wanted Owari’s east as stable as possible. Hearing it had turned into a mess there actually reassured him a bit, but also made him feel a sense of urgency.

Then he started demanding Harano honor their alliance and help him take Inuyama Castle, asking directly to borrow troops.

He didn’t expect Harano to attack—Oda would handle the bloody stuff—but wanted him to block the path so Minoh’s reinforcements couldn’t get through easily.

Harano started bargaining hard. Wanjin had gone into full production mode and was running low on people, with food supplies just barely enough for self-sufficiency and only enough reserves for basic safety. Planting things like ramie, cotton, mulberry, and indigo as cash crops was getting difficult. They were also critically short on old-school master carpenters and blacksmiths, and even on women—high female mortality meant not enough women of marriage and childbearing age, which seriously impacted population growth. Harano was secretly having the Wanjin theater spread anti-early-marriage propaganda through plays, so when the consensus formed he’d set minimum marriage ages by law.

So, if Nobunaga wanted help with the war, fine—Owari’s stability benefited Wanjin too—but there could be no free favors. Nobunaga would have to pay up: grain, cotton, raw silk, dyes, and top-quality timber, and let Harano expand Old Wanjin Port so he could ship goods to Shimazu Port faster.

The two haggled from morning till noon, each giving ground until they finally cut a deal. Then they had lunch together. Nobunaga was fascinated by the concept of the Great Anzai Copper Ship, called Harano a genius, and even felt tempted to build one himself—but since he was fighting at Inuyama Castle and Minoh, it was useless in war right now, so he only ordered a small "copper-clad yacht" to use as his inland river cruiser—for the style points, basically.

Time flowed like water. Nobunaga was nearly thirty now and had grown a pair of moustaches, looking much more mature. Recently, having his "true love" by his side day and night had mellowed him out and kept his nerves stable—Harano actually found him a lot less difficult to get along with this time around.

Honestly, unlike the "Sixth Celestial Demon King" of legend, as long as he wasn’t having one of his episodes, Nobunaga was a decent friend—clever, open-minded, un-fussy, nothing much wrong with him except for his fondness for sake.

After this little private get-together, Harano waited another two days before finally seeing Matsudaira Mototaka and Asai Nagamasa arrive.