My Gang of Swordsmen

Chapter 37: Chapter 25: A Chance Encounter with Chokata

Why did Arima only leave behind Inagawa and Ushiyama? Aoto could more or less guess the reason.

Most likely, it was to discuss how to help him get through the Tairō Assessment a month and a half later.

After Aoto’s father, Tachibana Ryuzo, passed away, Arima, Inagawa, and Ushiyama treated Aoto as their own, offering him all kinds of care. Now that Aoto risked being dismissed, they couldn’t just ignore it.

The friendship between these three and the Tachibana Family made Aoto reflect: ”Original Tachibana Aoto” left him more than just a heap of trouble...

Following Arima’s instructions, after leaving his office alone, Aoto held the sword at his waist and walked out of the Magistrate’s Office, ready to start his work for the day.

When there were no cases to handle, the daily work of the Fixed Town Patrol Dōshin was to patrol their respective jurisdictions.

Currently, Aoto had no cases on hand, so his job was to go patrolling his area of responsibility.

The patrol method of the Fixed Town Patrol Dōshin was not to make rounds of every corner or key place in their jurisdiction.

The reason was simple — lack of manpower.

South and North Guard Stations — at first glance, one might think the former controlled the southern half of Edo, while the latter controlled the northern half.

But that’s not the case.

Edo, the governance center of the Edo Shogunate

For such an important city, the Edo Shogunate would not trust the management to just one person.

Thus, the shogunate divided the Magistrate’s Office of Edo into two, forming the South and North Guard Stations, implementing the ”Monthly Patrol Exchange” system.

The so-called ”Monthly Patrol Exchange” was, in simple terms, a system where the two stations took turns managing Edo monthly.

This month, the North Guard Station was in charge of Edo. Next month, it would be the South Guard Station’s turn.

And when the North Guard Station was handling Edo, what would the officials of the South Guard Station do?

Take a full month of paid leave!

The leave would continue until it was their turn to manage Edo again.

Next month, when it’s February, when the South Guard Station is responsible for Edo, the North Guard Station, including Aoto, would take a full month of paid leave.

Of course — for a ”Three Times” Samurai like Aoto, given the special nature of their work, they only got a chance to take a full month of paid leave under very good luck.

Even when it’s another station’s turn to manage Edo this month, due to having an unresolved case, they have to continue working — a pretty common situation among the ”Three Times” from the South and North patrols.

And while on leave, if an emergency case suddenly arises, they could be urgently called back due to lack of manpower to support the currently active station, which is even more normal.

It’s January now when the North Guard Station manages Edo. Hence, those from the North Guard Station, including Aoto, needed to be on duty, whereas the officials from the South Guard Station, including its ”Three Times,” were mostly on vacation.

That is to say — with a total of 36 ”Three Times” from the South and North Guard Stations, under such scarce police force, unless a special call-up is made, the deployable police force is halved every month!

Every month, there will always be a station whose officials are on paid leave, so only half of the police are ever on duty each month!

Currently, those responsible for maintaining Edo’s security were just the North Guard Station’s four Yoriki and fourteen Dōshin from the ”Three Times”.

The Yoriki of the Fixed Town Patrol, as leadership-level staff, naturally did not participate in the patrol work of Edo.

Only the Dōshin of the Fixed Town Patrol participated in patrol duties.

The Fixed Town Patrol had only six Dōshin, so it was impossible for them to patrol every key place in Edo.

Hence — the Dōshin of the Fixed Town Patrol only patrolled each Jishinban in their jurisdiction.

What is a ”Jishinban”?

This brings us to the two special systems that allow the South and North Guard Stations to maintain Edo’s security with so little police force.

The first major system is the ”Townsmen Autonomy System”.

This system, in short, is a special ”bureaucratic system,” using civilians to manage civilians.

Under this unique bureaucratic system, the servants hired to assist in managing Edo are roughly classified into three levels: ”Town Elder - Town Lord - Patriarch”.

The ”Town Elder” positions were inherited by the families of the Tsuba House, Nara House, and Kitamura. Their duty was to assist the South and North Town Magistrates in governing Edo.

Their main tasks included: conveying the Shogunate and Magistrate Office’s orders to the people of Edo, maintaining population registers, assisting in managing merchants and craftsmen, helping to collect and submit various taxes and fees, among other tasks.

[Note: Population Register: a household register during the Edo Era]

Below the Town Elders are the ”Town Lords”.

Throughout all of Edo, there are 264 Town Lords, each overseeing as few as two or three, and as many as a dozen towns. Town Lords are all civilians from the landlord class, mostly inheriting their positions from generation to generation.

[Note: Town: the name of the city administrative division in Ancient Japan. During the Edo Period, Edo was said to have ”eight hundred and eight towns,” but in reality, there were far more. By the end of the Edo Period, Edo had nearly 2,000 towns.]

And below the Town Lords are the ”Patriarchs”.