Five Years of Long Harvest, Rice, Wheat, Millet, Barnyard Grass, and Taro: Ancient East Asian Crops

"Maitreya Buddha! So this is what rice tastes like—the taste that can make a man weep with happiness..."

"Haaha! Sukeichiro, this is the tastiest rice from Etsu Province, from the northern shore of Lake Biwa, Tsuruga District in Echizen Province—the very place where Rennyo Shonin preached the Dharma! The water there is good, the soil is good, and the rice they grow is fragrant as anything. Never mind Hokuriku—even under all heaven, it counts as fine rice!..."

"Buddha preserve us! Watanabe-kun, before this, I'd only ever eaten rice from Hiraka District in Mutsu Province at the house lord's banquets, and that was already better than what's grown around Katsuyama Castle. I never imagined the rice from Etsu Province would be so soft and sticky, so full of rice fragrance, and even leave such a sweet aftertaste!..."

"! Delicious! It's so good!..."

Venison and rice porridge rolled in the iron pot, sending up delicious white steam. The meat was reindeer meat from the snowy plains, and the rice was Etsu Province rice from Hokuriku. As for the area around Tsuruga District, it would be Fukui Prefecture in later generations, with excellent water quality and good soil, precisely the place that produced Koshihikari Rice and Gyokuro Tea. As for Hiraka District in Mutsu Province, it was where Aomori Rice was grown, and could be counted as one of the few places in Mutsu Province that produced good rice.

At that moment, beside the bonfire cooking the porridge, four men who were working hard at eating were seated in a circle: the warrior monk Watanabe Masumi, the ship magistrate Murakami Suemichi, the horse breeder Sukeichiro, and the shipwright Kim Seon-su. Each of them wolfed down the hard-won meat porridge, even shedding tears in their excitement. And with good rice and fragrant meat, one