"Buddha bless us! Uncle, when your fleet sailed north to Ezo Land, which Daimyo territories did you stop at for supplies along the way? Everywhere is in chaos right now, and the fleet is loaded with goods. You must be extremely careful!..."
"Mm. The world grows more chaotic by the day. The overland trade routes are always blocked, but the coastal routes are still passable... These merchant ships went from the Kamo River in the Capital Region to the shores of Lake Biwa, then put out to sea from a port of the Wakasa Takeda Clan. Your father and I both come from Wakasa, and among the merchant groups in Omi, we can be said to have a place of our own. The shores of Lake Biwa have always been rich, producing rice, wine, tea, cattle, lacquerware, paper... It's a fine place to trade in every kind of goods!"
Morino Kiyoshi smiled warmly. As he spoke of the prosperity and scenery around Omi, he was also broadening the horizons of his "nephew" from Ezo Land. Then he dipped a finger in tea, reached out, and sketched on the low table, outlining the two-thousand-li coastline from Wakasa to Ezo Land—the very route by which the fleet had sailed north.
"Following the coast northeast from Wakasa, the Asakura Clan holds Echizen, and the Ikkō sect holds Kaga and Etchu. I don't have many connections in those two places, so they're not good for stopping. But the Hatakeyama family, which holds Noto, is one of the Shogunate's three great kanrei and has always had close dealings with Kyoto!... We resupplied once on the Noto Peninsula, and traded for some of the local specialties—fish, salt, and rice."
"Farther east from the Hatakeyama family, the Uesugi Clan are the Kanto kanrei, a distinguished clan where