A tour of Japan's Warring States Period

Let me ask a very simple question, is it more expensive to build a homestead or a house?

If we put this problem into modern times, it must be that homestead land is expensive. One hundred square meters of land can be stacked thirty or forty stories high. You can't imagine how expensive it is.

But what about in ancient times? The homesteads of the samurai under the castle were all given by the daimyo lords, and they were free of charge. They were divided according to their ranks, which had a sense of universal fairness.

Compared with the free homestead, the samurai house built at a high cost is naturally more expensive. If you use some good wood, you can build hundreds of pieces every minute, but you still can't build a big house.

Uncle Tsunaliang's house, including the garden and the mansion, totals about a thousand square meters. The house is not too big. In current terms, it is less than 200 to 300 square meters on a single floor. Instead, gardens, stables, and warehouses took up a lot of space.

Especially the garden, the pond is about 100 square meters, very grand, and there are many ornamental dwarf pines and seedlings planted. Samurai otakus don't like the very showy dry landscape, which requires "elegant" people with "culture" and "artistic conception" to play it.

If uncle Tsunaliang's house was demolished, the flowers and plants would indeed be worth nothing, but that house cost at least several hundred yuan. That would be a real reluctance to part with it. Not only would it be reluctant, it would be considered a national treasure in modern times. After all, Uncle Tsuna's roof rafters were made of Sado red pine, which is now a nationally protected tree species.

Then there is only one simplest way, and that is Hikiya!

What is a drag house? As the name implies, dragging the house away.

This profession is considered rare in modern times. It is mainly seen in the relocation and protection of ancient buildings. Very few ordinary people's houses will use this method. It’s not worth it after all!

How much does a brick cost? Hiring a relocation team is enough to build three small Western-style buildings in the countryside.

But it was different in ancient times. It would be a waste if Uncle Tsunaliang's house was demolished. Although it is made of wood, if you take good care of it, you can live there for two to three hundred years without any problems.

…

"Send someone to Hamamatsu to ask for Zaemon and ask for his help." Koheita wanted to find Hikiya people who were rare in any era.

According to Koheita's knowledge, there was a clear Hikiya community in Edo during the time of the third shogun Iemitsu. At the same time, sporadic records also say that it existed during the Muromachi Shogunate period, so it is not too rare.

The soil of its birth is naturally large cities like Kyoto, Sakai, and Edo with a population of more than 100,000, or even more than one million.

Anyone living in a big city can appreciate that every inch of land in a big city is at a premium, but ancient city planning cannot be said to be perfect. In other words, even if the planning is very good, it is not very standardized when it comes to individual buildings.

In addition, Japanese-style houses are not built on the ground, but are built on pillars and wooden frames, which makes it easier to move the house.

So when it was inevitable to move the house to make way for the vacant land, the drag house crowd appeared.

Edo was still small at this time, so it might not be easy to find the Hikiya people, but Sakai had no problem finding them. What's more, the wages of people like craftsmen are very low nowadays, and it doesn't cost much to hire them in Yamauchi. It is really the best helper necessary for moving.

The people who went to Hamamatsu to ask for help from Zaemon also invited Uncle Tsunaliang back because they wanted to move his house after all.

"Hikiya?" Uncle Tsunaliang was also stunned. This was the first time in his life that he had encountered one.

"Yes, after all, the open spaces on the left and right are not big enough, otherwise I wouldn't use this method." Xiao Pingtai was very sincere.

"Can you help me? This house was given by His Highness Mihamamatsu." Uncle Tsunaliang shook his head and looked at the people measuring the house in front of him.

The Hikiya people were hired from Sakai Town by Koheta Tai at the price of 30 kuen for the general project. They heard that there was a bastard in Shinano who was willing to pay 30 kuen of gold for the Hikiya, and they wished that the whole family, young and old, would come out.

The level of the hikikomori is roughly the same as that of current carpenters, with the top level being those who can take on jobs independently and do all the work from design to construction. There are also a series of levels below such as handyman, monk, etc.

And every great craftsman has his own method. Some of them use steps, some use arms, some use wooden sticks, and some use folding rulers.

Since Mrs. Koheira has provided enough money, half of the big workers in the Sakai Town Hikiya clan are here. Including their subordinates, there are no less than fifty people. It is a big expense to feed them every day.

But people have real skills. Whether they use feet, hands, sticks, or rulers, the difference in the data obtained by everyone is no more than three centimeters, which is amazing.

After measuring the size of the house, they moved it horizontally for tens of meters and began to set the bottom pillars of the house according to the measured data.

Uncle Tsunaliang's house was in a panic and everything was evacuated, including furniture and pots and pans. Even the tatami mats and floors were removed to reveal the specific layout of the ground floor of the house.

The big craftsmen of the Yiwu will use wooden boards to enter the house and draw every fulcrum in detail, while the handymen will go to the roof to lift the tiles and remove all the tiles to reduce the weight of the house.

Then the people in the house were divided into two groups, and one group went to the new foundation to completely copy an identical foundation. Another group of people began the actual preparations for the trailer house.

Destroy the elevated brick walls or wooden railings on the ground floor of the house. While destroying, start to fill the inside with sleepers, support all the main roof beams and components, and finally remove the pillars.

In this way, the entire house is actually completely suspended, completing the first step of the operation.

The house is then gradually raised by adding wedges to the sleepers on all sides, until it is high enough to fit a huge log under the house.

This is not over yet, we still need to saw off the wooden supports under the floors of the numerous houses. Make sure there are no obstacles under the floor of the house that would prevent the logs from rolling so they can be easily dragged.

At this time, someone asked, if you saw off the bottom of the main wooden pillars of the house, even if the house is erected in the future, the pillars will be in two sections. Wouldn't that make the house float on the floor?

Don't worry, there will be a way to solve this later.

At this time, the dragging of the house has officially begun. Hundreds of people, including handyman monks and temporarily hired laborers, tie the ropes tied to the beams of the house to their shoulders, and the people in front pull. Another group of people were behind using wooden sticks to pry logs to move the house.

Even if it was just manpower, the distance of tens of meters would only take two or three days.

In this way, the entire house was moved to the newly built pillar stone foundation, which was still elevated with sleepers. The pillar stones that did not fit perfectly with the beams and columns were slightly adjusted, and they could only be placed after they sat in a perfect fit.

How to install a house that has all the wooden pillars under the floor flattened?