The Apothecary Diaries Episode 54 Sees Raised Taxes Bite Rural Families
Episode 54 of The Apothecary Diaries follows Guen, the rear palace's quack doctor, home to a papermaking and farming family squeezed by the imperial government's preemptive tax raise ahead of the locusts.
1 source 15h ago
Reporting from 1 source: Anime News Network.
Why it matters
The episode shows the locust contingency playing out at street level: prevention policy raising money for relief is already producing winners and losers among the people it is meant to protect.
Key Facts
- Episode 54 of The Apothecary Diaries follows Guen, the rear palace's quack doctor, to his papermaking and farming family.
- The imperial government raised taxes in advance to fund relief for the coming locusts.
- Guen's family grows rice and barley and makes paper, and their landlord wants the family's paper mill.
- The family's land agreement with the landlord's late father has five years left of a twenty-year term.
- Jinshi travels with Guen's party in the role of Basen's servant.
Their landlord is using the higher taxes to push for control of the family's land and paper mill, with only five years left on a twenty-year land agreement made with his late father. Jinshi, Maomao and Basen travel with Guen.
Guen's family grows rice and barley and makes paper, and by Maomao's reading their relative wealth ought to absorb the higher grain taxes. The problem is the landlord, who has raised objections to the family's tenancy before and now wants the mill. A prior dispute over the agreement with his late father gives the tax increase its opening.
The family cannot pay down what they owe, partly from earlier trouble with the paper and partly from the new taxes, and cannot surrender the land either. They mean to ask Guen to plead with the emperor, on the strength of a story about delivering Gyokuyo's and Lihua's children that Luomen actually did the work for. Jinshi travels as Basen's supposed servant and stays quiet, while Maomao and Basen are less pleased with the arrangement.
Written with AI by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited. See our editorial policy.
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Sources
- Anime News Network The Apothecary Diaries Season 3 Episode 54