Chapter 78
"Didn’t Confucius say not to speak of the uncanny and the supernatural? You’re not unaware of that teaching, so why are you paying attention to such things?"
Put simply, when Confucius said not to discuss the uncanny and the supernatural, he meant that he would not talk about things beyond human common sense and excluded them from discussion altogether.
Whether it’s what becomes of the soul after death—hell, heaven, or whatever else—or the principles behind lightning, there’s no way to figure it out no matter how hard you study it, so he meant we should focus on the life we’re living now.
Because of that, the early Joseon scholar-officials, living in a Confucian state, officially distanced themselves from Buddhism, which spoke of the afterlife, calling it uncanny and supernatural, and they also suppressed shamans.
"Confucius only said not to discuss it; he didn’t deny its existence, did he? Local magistrates even summon shamans to hold rites when a drought drags on."
Joseon is a country that officially denies superstition, but will use it whenever it helps.
So when public sentiment turns bad, the royal family will even spend the budget to hold a Suryukje rite and pray for wandering souls to be reborn in paradise.
According to the Annals, that bastard Ryu Jeong-hyeon also seems to have thought in his later years that he’d go to hell when he died, because he spent 5,000 seom of white rice on a Suryukje rite.
In the Joseon of my previous life, though, I was branded a traitor and executed before I ever got to hold one.
"Holding a rainmaking rite doesn’t make rain fall, and holding a Suryukje rite doesn’t send the dead to paradise. But if we can use such methods to manage public sentiment and calm discontent, then we do it even if it counts as something uncanny and supernatural."
"Kim Jeong-rang, you’re right. When the people are unhappy because it won’t rain, it’s right to hold even a rainmaking rite. Otherwise public sentiment could become chaotic and some troublemaker might stir up an uprising."
"Therefore, I intend to adopt the practices among these uncanny things that I believe will help Joseon."
"So what is it?"
"You should wash your hands with water several times a day, and once every two or three days wash your whole body with a little lye water. The shamans of Hanyang say that the evil spirits that cause disease like filth and hate cleanliness, so anyone whose body is clean will be safe from the disease-spreading spirits."
Joseon people also prefer clean things to dirty ones.
They just don’t know that a clean body means you’re less likely to get sick.
"And while I’ve been going back and forth to Hanseongbu for the past three months to recruit the Chuito troops, I heard that once this superstition spread, the number of people falling ill dropped noticeably. Hyeminseo and Hwalinseo also reported to Hanseongbu that the number of patients during this period had clearly declined."
Jo Mal-saeng tapped the table with his fingers.
"We shouldn’t dismiss it as mere superstition. If that superstition really works, then it could save the soldiers stationed in the Ten Divisions and in Pyeongan-do and Hamgyeong-do from plague and all kinds of disease."
Without exaggeration, the biggest problem that tormented Admiral Yi Sun-sin, whose Joseon troops achieved a 1-to-100 exchange ratio against the Japanese, was the absence of any concept of hygiene.
Because he didn’t know the principle that water had to be boiled before drinking and that the body needed to be washed often, he couldn’t establish proper sanitary measures.
As a result, Admiral Yi lost 7.5 percent of his troops to infectious disease.
Joseon’s central army, the Ten Divisions, aren’t starving now because this isn’t wartime, so the death rate from infectious disease is far lower than that...
Still, noncombat losses from infectious disease are quite serious.
"I’ve long had my concubines, servants, and slaves wash their bodies and hands often. As a result, they hardly ever fall ill. And even when epidemics spread nearby, that disease has never dared enter my household."
"As the Minister of War, I can’t possibly ignore this story."
Jo Mal-saeng’s eyes widened.
Yes, I’m the one proposing and leading this project, but you’re the one who sees its true value and signs off on it...
A certain share of the credit for my success in multiplying gunpowder production several times over will belong to Jo Mal-saeng.
Moreover, if this project goes well and dramatically cuts the number of soldiers dying from epidemics, that too will be partly Jo Mal-saeng’s achievement and greatly help his promotion.
You’re aiming for the post of Chief State Councillor after Hwang Hui, so you won’t be able to resist this.
And you wouldn’t want to miss the chance to take your cut while the project is underway either.
"However, there is one thing I’m worried about."
"What are you worried about?"
"The jeongbyeong (regular soldiers) drafted for military service hate training, and they hate fighting too. They’re always thinking about how to slack off and only like mealtime. They find everything a nuisance."
I’d probably be the same.
In fact, while serving, they’re provided with food somehow, but they have to pay out of pocket for their weapons and uniforms, so many even end up in debt because of military service...
There’s practically no such thing as a salary during military service.
Well, there is a system called bongjok, in which the head of a household who isn’t on military duty sends another household a small allowance. But how much can that really be?
If you’re trying to feed your family, even if you, as the household head, start plowing before dawn while the stars are still out and work yourself to the bone until sunset, it still wouldn’t be enough.
If I were in their shoes, I wouldn’t want to faithfully perform military service either.
"If you told such people to keep washing themselves regularly, do you think they’d really follow that order?"
Making them wash themselves regularly would feel exactly like this.
If the duty officer on weekend guard made you do gear maintenance, weapon cleaning, and sun-drying, you’d feel really strange, wouldn’t you?
I was someone who passed the civil service exam before going into the army, so I went in as an officer and came out having done nothing but administrative work, but according to a colleague who served as an enlisted soldier...
He said that when the company sergeant major on weekend duty started with, ‘You know I won’t bother you as long as you do what you’re supposed to, right?’ and then started making trouble, it was really hard to take.
Naturally, complaints would come out of their mouths.
"Isn’t the army an organization where, when orders come from above, those below have no choice but to obey? We just need to make the commanders of each garrison and naval command comply."
I suppressed an awkward smile and said to Jo Mal-saeng,
"I have a plan."
**
Orders had come down from the Ministry of War for Kim Mu-seon, who served as the general commanding the Chungmu Guard, part of Joseon’s central army.
When he checked it, Kim Mu-seon was dumbfounded.
"Why on earth did Minister Jo suddenly issue such an absurd order?"
The order was as follows.
Recently, the shamans in Hanyang have been urging people to wash their bodies often as a way to drive off evil spirits.
But after this superstition spread, the number of people falling ill with diarrhea and other diseases dropped sharply, and this was also confirmed by a report Hwalinseo submitted to Hanseongbu.
Although the source of this superstition is a shaman—a being of the uncanny and supernatural—it has been highly effective in preventing epidemics... As Minister of War, I cannot ignore this.
Therefore, General, instruct the soldiers to wash their bodies with water and lye at least once every three days, and make sure they wash their hands before eating.
After reading it, Kim Mu-seon was so dumbfounded that he was seething.
No matter that he was the highest-ranking official in the Ministry of War, they were telling him to order the soldiers to follow a plan said by a shaman to help drive off evil spirits simply because it had proved effective at stopping epidemics.
"At this rate, we’ll end up building a temple in Hanyang to enshrine Buddha too. Courtesy and propriety have fallen to the ground. If the sages of old saw this, they’d be so furious they’d burst out of their graves."
What Kim Mu-seon said later actually came true.
His Majesty King Sejong, in his later years, built Naebuldang inside the palace to pray for the repose of Yi Bang-won and Queen Wongyeong, and Sejo, who didn’t even have the strength to swing a mace himself and made a slave swing it for him, went and built Wongaksa in the middle of Hanyang.
Before he knew it, he’d become a prophet; as much as he wanted to defy the order on the spot, a mere junior third-rank official couldn’t go head-to-head with the Ministry of War, his direct superior in the chain of command.
The Ministry of War was already boasting that it would increase gunpowder production by at least threefold, and perhaps by dozens of times...
And this project, too, was said to be a policy brought about when Junior Secretary Kim Daebung of the Ministry of War personally proposed it to Minister Jo Mal-saeng, the man at the center of all that momentum.
He had no choice but to do as he was told.
And Kim Daebung gave Kim Mu-seon one more reason why he absolutely had to make the soldiers wash.
"...... If another unit adopts this and no plague breaks out this year, with no one dying from illness, His Majesty will be very pleased..."
Reading that line in reverse, it meant that another unit, obediently following the Ministry of War’s order and making its soldiers wash, would see its noncombat losses reduced... while only his own unit, the one that defied the order and didn’t make its soldiers wash, would suffer noncombat losses?
A very sad thing would surely happen.
Even if there was nowhere higher to go after reaching junior third rank as a military official, what if every other unit got good results and he alone ended up with the disgrace of failure?
If the other men of his rank were praised while he alone failed and lost face.
That was absolutely unacceptable.
And when you thought about it, how hard was it to make soldiers wash?
Getting lye water and water to wash with wasn’t even difficult.
"Anyway, if this went wrong, the blame would fall on the Minister of War who issued the order."
And so, soldiers stationed in the Ten Divisions were given a new duty.
The duty to maintain cleanliness.