Chapter 20: Shocking! A Blacksmith's Shop Secretly Hides...
Upon entering the Land of Hot Water, Dana's group came across a blacksmith's shop in a border town. The place was so large that they initially thought it must be the workshop of a famous master smith. The shinobi in the group were even planning to restock their ninja tools, only to be told that the shop only produced semi-finished goods.
There were no finished swords, only the rough steel blanks used to forge them. No kunai, only the unprocessed iron bars.
The ninja were sorely disappointed. A forge more than twice the size of a normal blacksmith's shop, and all it made were half-finished parts.
But Dana's interest was piqued. Being curious about everything, he naturally went to investigate and struck gold.
It turned out the shop had once belonged to a renowned sword smith. The master had left behind many famous works and had died a successful man. But his son, Kitanouji, was a man of mediocre talent. Though he made no major mistakes, in the years after he inherited the forge, not a single famous blade was produced. His father's reputation gradually faded, and the shop became just another ordinary smithy. But Kitanouji, upon realizing his own limitations, didn't despair. Instead, he chose a different path.
Kitanouji discovered that the initial stages of making any sword—good or bad, even a legendary one—were largely the same. The process always began with melting and hammering the iron into a basic sword blank. He also realized that even for the most skilled smith, there was always an element of luck involved. There was a high probability that a perfectly forged blank could be ruined in the later stages of the process.
Kitanouji saw a business opportunity. He stopped trying to forge finished swords and instead began to specialize in producing high-quality blanks to supply to other smiths.
His father had been a master, so the Kitanouji family still possessed a deep understanding of the fundamentals. The blanks they produced were of a higher quality than most. And the other smiths were more than happy to be freed from the laborious initial forging process, allowing them to focus on the more prestigious finishing work. After all, the blanks they forged themselves weren't necessarily better than what the Kitanouji shop could produce.
From that day on, the Kitanouji Blacksmith's Shop never produced another finished sword. Its name faded from public memory, but its sword blanks, iron bars, and other semi-finished products became bestsellers in the surrounding regions, earning a fortune.
Kitanouji also realized that ninety percent of the work in making blanks was pure physical labor. So, he hired a team of young men to do the heavy lifting while he simply supervised. He even spent a large sum of money to bring in craftsmen from the Land of Waves to build a water-powered trip hammer, which dramatically increased both the quantity and quality of his output.
Initially, Kitanouji had been reluctant to speak with Dana. But Dana had simply revealed his identity, stating that he was from the Hidden Cloud and wanted to establish a long-term partnership.
Kitanouji was skeptical of the six-year-old boy, but the large group of adult shinobi, including Dodai, tacitly endorsed his actions. With so many powerful Jonin backing him up (Arashi, who looked older than his years, was also assumed to be an adult), Kitanouji eventually believed him.
In this era, the great hidden villages were the true powers. While they might lack the soft power of the Daimyo, their hard power and ruthless methods were far more fearsome. The opportunity to form a long-term partnership with one of the Five Great Villages was something Kitanouji couldn't pass up. Only then was he willing to speak with Dana seriously.
Dana expressed his desire to understand the forge's operations in detail. Kitanouji gave him a thorough tour, and Dana was very pleased with what he saw.
This is the prototype of a factory, Dana thought, very pleased indeed.
The primary mode of production in the ninja world was still a holdover from the Warring States Period: the workshop model. Production was centered around families or villages, with everyone working together to create a specific product.
The difference between a factory and a workshop could be broken down into three key points:
Workshops generally focus on creating a final product. A factory can specialize in producing intermediate goods.
Factories are highly specialized. No single worker is involved in the entire production process. A small number of technical supervisors oversee the whole operation.
A factory is not dependent on any single individual. New workers are trained, and once trained, they can be plugged into the standardized workflow.
And Dana knew that this blacksmith's shop was far from reaching its full potential.
If production was increased, wouldn't that give them greater bargaining power over the price of iron and coal? Wouldn't it be easier to upgrade their technology?
If the cost of raw materials went down, the price of their products could also go down, while the quality improved. This would fundamentally destroy the desire and motivation for smaller, workshop-level blacksmiths to forge their own blanks.
Once everyone stopped forging their own blanks, the skills, tools, and even the will to produce them within those workshops would gradually disappear.
Then, the other blacksmiths' dependence on the factory would increase dramatically. And then, couldn't the factory control the entire industry by simply adjusting its prices?
In an extreme scenario, if they cut off someone's supply chain, that person wouldn't be able to forge swords at all. Or if they tried, the quality would be inferior and the cost higher than their competitors, potentially driving them out of business.
Of course, this would only be possible once the factory reached a certain scale.
In the ninja world, the forging of swords and ninja tools was a core industry. And now, a golden opportunity was laid out before Dana.
It wasn't that seeing this shop was what gave him the idea of a factory. It was that this was the first time he had been outside the village, the first time he had seen the world with his own eyes. Only now did he understand what could be done, what should be done.
If he could control the ninja tool industry of this world—or even just the industry in the surrounding few countries—the possibilities were unimaginable.
Just thinking about it made his head spin.
Dana wiped the drool from his chin. He assured Kitanouji that the Hidden Cloud would have big business for him in the future. Kitanouji just thought he was talking about a large order; he had no idea of the deep, comprehensive partnership Dana envisioned.
Back at the inn, Dana summoned Arashi and Dodai to his room. He had Ume stand guard outside and then had Dodai cast a sound-proofing barrier jutsu. As someone who often accompanied the Raikage on confidential matters, Dodai was proficient in such simple barriers.
"What's with all the secrecy?" Arashi asked, confused.
Dodai was also curious. He hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary at the blacksmith's shop, but he knew Dana must have made a significant discovery.
"What I am about to say is of the utmost importance," Dana began. "It concerns a matter of great significance."
Arashi just smirked, waiting to see what his little brother would come up with. Dodai, on the other hand, had already taken out a pen and paper. He had learned from experience that when Dana talked about a "big plan," he meant big, and it was best to take notes.
"That blacksmith's shop today," Dana began, "did you notice..."
As Dana explained, the expressions on Arashi's and Dodai's faces gradually shifted from "Oh, I see," to "It can do that?!" and finally to "Shocking! That blacksmith's shop secretly hides the power to subvert the entire ninja world!"
In the process of explaining, Dana also organized his own thoughts. In the main storyline, thirty years from now, the production of ninja tools was still at the workshop level. But outside the world of ninja, given the existence of computers, movies, and televisions, it was logical to assume that factories had appeared. The disconnect was likely due to the separation between ninja and civilian society. But in any case, the opportunity was huge.
He was only six, and his situation was unique. He didn't have the time or energy to dedicate himself to this project full-time. The correct path for him was to provide high-level planning and advice from behind the scenes, using his knowledge from his previous life (in other words, to be an armchair general). He couldn't just go and be a factory foreman at his age. This was the ninja world, after all. He hadn't been reincarnated with the wrong script, had he?
Therefore, this plan had to be carried out with the help of a collective. And he, the humble son of the Raikage, the precious jewel of the Yotsuki clan, was in the perfect position to make it happen.
Of course, Dana had his own selfish motives. That was why he had summoned Arashi and Dodai, and not Kawanishi and Anzai. Dodai was a retainer of the Yotsuki clan, and Arashi was his brother. If this plan was to be realized, it would be much easier to manage if it was under the name of the Yotsuki clan, rather than the Hidden Cloud Village.