Yesterday afternoon, we cleaned Rafilia-san’s room and the courtyard.

In French, the noun ménage means both "housework" and "cleaning." When people say "housework," they mean cleaning — and it’s done very frequently with high importance.

In medieval Europe, people commonly used straw beds. Because dust mites and fleas liked them, they were frequently aired out and beaten to stay clean.

Straw also easily absorbed moisture, so it had to be dried regularly.

Straw beds were just a wooden frame filled with straw, so it was easy to move the straw aside and clean.

Furthermore, unlike expensive sheets or feather comforters used by nobles or upper-class families, cheap straw beds used by commoners meant that if bugs appeared, they could be easily discarded and replaced.

In other words, commoners had a household chore of rebuilding their beds periodically.

Probably one of the reasons the word ménage (meaning housework) strongly implies cleaning.

Note that high-end sheets used by nobles couldn’t be washed in water, so they would rub them with water mixed with cucumbers, sprinkle them with coriander, or apply soap made from cow bile.

There’s a common myth that medieval Europe was full of poop-filled alleys, but that’s because the subject is too huge and spreads unnecessary misunderstandings.

Only certain rapidly growing cities threw poop out windows.

Not every area of medieval Europe over a long period was unsanitary.

Modern European research now views the Middle Ages from the perspective that it was not necessarily unsanitary. However, overseas studies only reach Japan later, so Japanese books titled "Medieval Knowledge for Fiction" still portray the Middle Ages as filthy.

If you visit a Japanese library on a weekday, you’ll sometimes see local old men researching their region’s history, pencil in hand, filling notebook after notebook.

The big version of that exists in Germany and France.

After the Reformation, people stopped gathering at churches; the bourgeois revolution removed class-based community barriers; and after the Industrial Revolution ended the guilds, various associations were born as new communities linking regional people.

One of them was the Historical Association. There are others too — the Music Association was born, and Bach even played there in West Germany. These associations still exist today, though they’ve changed over time.

Over 200 years of tradition, people in these associations have studied old documents and now propose multiple theories that the Middle Ages was not necessarily unsanitary.

But in modern Japan, the massive subject "medieval Europe was full of poop" has taken over as the dominant theory.

Anyway. Even 20 years ago, books already mentioned that many medieval cities had public baths and that citizens kept themselves clean.

It’s probably just that the power word "medieval poop-filled" is too overwhelming and everyone believes it.

Urine was good for cleaning leather, and poop was used as fertilizer. In the countryside or small towns, people didn’t casually throw it out windows.

Whether they threw poop from windows varied by city, but you can tell from the remaining street layouts today.

For example, if upper floors jut out over alleys, it’s to keep poop from hitting lower windows. If lower levels have overhangs, it’s to catch falling poop.

If alleys slope, it’s likely they threw poop into them.

Alleys don’t slope because paving technology was crude — they slope to wash poop away. Some have high centers at the ends so waste can flow out, others have low centers so waste flows to the middle.

In the latter case, high-status people walked the edge of the alley while low-status people walked the middle. It’s an interesting mental image.

If you look up famous medieval poop-throwing cities on Google Maps, the alleys show either a dip in the middle or at the end.

Pigs, which breed easily, were valuable livestock in medieval Europe and raised in many cities, towns, and villages.

In some cities, pigs were allowed to roam freely and ate anything, including filth.

So if someone threw poop out the window, pigs would just eat it.

By the way, for orc monsters based on pigs, it feels more realistic for them to eat poop than to rape female knights. (Orcs do like anal, so maybe it’s still realistic.)

In actual medieval Europe, cleaning was widespread. In the Catholic Church, people cleaned the altar on Thursdays. Because of this custom, some say Catholics cleaned their homes on Thursdays.

The big spring cleaning done in Japan at New Year’s is called "the Great Spring Clean" in Europe and is still widely practiced. The reason it’s in spring is that they didn’t want to do it in the cold winter.

While I’m criticizing the huge subject, when I borrow a slightly larger one, in some French and German cities during the Middle Ages (after the 13th century), commoners also bathed.

The wealthy had the idea that donating to the poor was virtuous, so they built public baths and let the poor bathe for free.

Nobles and commoners even shared public baths, and bathing was also how Adiel (mentioned in yesterday’s Sage Mode) worked.

Thanks to examples like this, misunderstandings about the Middle Ages are huge because of the massive subject. In reality, things varied by region and era.

But let’s hypothetically assume that in this world, everything is covered in poop.

Would I be able to make soap and improve people’s lives?

I don’t know how to make soap, but I know things.

The conclusion is impossible.

It’s not because of lack of knowledge, technology, or materials.

Medieval Europe already had soap.

This world, based on medieval Europe, already has soap. In fact, the church has Rafilia-san’s soap.

If I tried to make soap now and act all smug, it would just get a "I see" reaction and end there.

Not even medieval Europe — in the 1st-century papyrus encyclopedia Natural History, soap-making methods are described. The original papyrus is lost, but a copied parchment book mentions that soap was used in Gaul (around modern France) alongside the manufacturing method. It was probably closer to a bleach, so it might not be true soap.

What we think of as soap — in southern France in the 12th century, something called Marseille soap was made.

Southern France is a huge olive oil production area, so there’s plenty of olive oil.

That’s why Marseille made soap from nearby Provence olives and exported it across Europe.

Cheap, smelly soap using animal fat existed in every village, and the priest taught the commoners the recipe.

Animal-based soap was made in rural areas and towns; plant-based soap was luxury and exported from Marseille to the whole of Europe.

Since soap already existed, I wouldn’t even think of announcing "I’ll make soap!" in this medieval fantasy world.

But suppose I really had the passion to make soap.

Without producing oil on a level comparable to olive groves in southern France, I couldn’t revolutionize the world with soap sales.

Furthermore, in 1430, there was already a soap manufacturing factory in Toulon (a trading port on the Mediterranean coast, now France’s 9th largest city by population).

There’s a high chance this world has a similar-scale soap factory. I’d have to beat that to win at soap.

To become king of soap, I’d have to defeat the rival city of Toulon with these conditions:

Warm climate nearby with olive groves (olive oil is the most important soap material)

Faces the Mediterranean and has a trading port

Located between large cities like Marseille and Saint-Tropez, a convenient trading hub (convenience later led to it becoming France’s largest naval base)

The Roman Empire already invented the press machine to extract oil from olives (presses were also used for wine, so the technology was inherited)

Large horse populations in the Camargue wetlands nearby (perfect for pulling giant presses — imagine a "mysterious rod turned by slaves" in the center of which is a mortar that crushes olives to extract oil)

Nearby salt-tolerant plants like glasswort

A city like Toulon with all these conditions for producing, selling, and exporting soap existed in 1371 in France.

(While I boast about a "medieval European" world, it’s actually early modern Europe, so there should be even more advanced soap manufacturing and distribution systems in northern Europe.)

I have no chance of winning no matter how I fight.

In short, what I’m trying to say is: medieval Europe already had nice-smelling soap made from olives, and cleaning was a habit, so girls didn’t stink!

Translators who say "girls stink in this other world" can go fuck your dick!