"You all leave first! I want to speak with the envoy alone, about the matter of ransoming people."
"Ha-i! Young lord!"
In the Kakizaki Clan's great tent, Kakizaki Mitsuhiro dismissed the guarding samurai, leaving only two of his own confidants, the Sanda envoy, and the Ainu People's interpreter. Afterward, he immediately had his confidant, Kinoshita Ichiro, test the fineness of the Gold Talisman. The other man checked it over and over, even disregarding the possibility that it might be poisoned as he bit hard into the heavy, soft gold—then his eyes lit up in an instant.
"Young lord, this is 'yellow' gold! Very high-purity 'yellow' gold! A full catty of 'yellow' gold!!..."
Hearing this, Kakizaki Mitsuhiro's spirits lifted. He stretched out a hand, and Kinoshita Ichiro, with some reluctance, handed the heavy Gold Talisman to him. The fineness of Wagoku gold was roughly similar to Great Ming's, also following the saying "seven is blue, eight is yellow, nine is purple, ten is red." And the "yellow" gold here meant that the Kingdom's Gold Talisman should contain about eighty percent gold!
Wagoku was the same as the Ming Dynasty: 1 catty was 16 taels, 600 grams. As for the Kingdom's one-catty Gold Talismans, because of inaccurate weights and measures and lower casting ability, they were usually made thicker and somewhat oversized, weighing between 500 and 600 grams. This Gold Talisman in Kakizaki Mitsuhiro's hand was very close to one Wajin catty.
In the Kyoto region, every 1 tael of gold was worth roughly 1 kan of highly valuable Eiraku Tsuho, or 4 kan of locally cast Wagoku Kyo-sen. As for the Kanto rice price of 0.7 kan of Kyo-sen for one koku of brown rice, converted into millet or mixed grains, it would be even more—enough to let an ordinary farmer