The 47th Samurai

by Stephen Hunter

  “So what does the sword have to do with any of this?”

  “Miwa has to win that election. If he loses it, he loses everything. So he needs to do something bold to make himself a beloved institution. He has to transcend porn and become a hero to the people. At that point, the smaller studios and Imperial cannot vote him out. He’s too big. He in essence becomes president-for-life. He maintains control of AJVS and the commission and ipso facto the industry; he prevents the American product from coming into Japan. His business thrives; Imperial withers and dies.”

  “Now I get it. Yuichi Miwa understands how sword-nuts the Japanese are,” Bob said. “It will be his publicity masterstroke: he will make a big-deal announcement that he found the most revered relic in Japanese history. It’s the actual blade used by the great Oishi in the attack of the Forty-seven Ronin against Lord Kira in seventeen-oh-three. It’s the thing that took Kira’s head. He’ll get all kinds of media. He becomes a hero. That’ll establish him as the Great Man of the People who cannot be replaced.”

  “The little guys know if the election goes against him, it will be a complete loss of face for the industry. They cannot afford the shame.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes,” she said, “and now it swings into line. That’s why the Yanos had to be wiped out. It had to be entirely a Miwa production, his campaign, his search, his recovery, his restoration, his presentation, all under his auspices. The Yanos mess up that narrative and show the random nature of the process. He’s not a campaigner for the culture, he’s just a rich guy who bought something off someone. So they had to be eliminated entirely, and their deaths had nothing to do with anything else in their lives. They were just the people who were in possession of the sword. They were in the way. They had to be destroyed for the welfare of the Shogun, their property confiscated.”

  “So the Yanos had to die,” Bob said, “so some creep could win an election for king of teacher-blows-Johnny.”

  “Well, you could have put it more eloquently, but essentially that’s right.” Suddenly a deep melancholy seemed to overtake her. “The terrible thing is, I think he wins.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Now it’s too late. He has the sword. It’s protected, it’s guarded, it’s hidden. No one could ever get it back. There’s no connection to the Yanos. He’ll announce it in time for this ridiculous porn election, get all the media, get the TV and the print, and win his little contest. I don’t see a legal way of reaching him. I suppose you could give a statement to the police identifying the sword as the one you brought into the country, I suppose we could find police factions that would see it our way, I suppose—”

  “Yagyu Munenori, sixteen thirty, The Life-giving Sword: ‘It is missing the point to think that the martial art is solely in cutting a man down. It is not in cutting people down. It is in killing evil.’”

  “Forget it, Swagger.”

  “I can’t. I didn’t come across no ocean to give a statement.”

  “It’s moot. You forget, we don’t even know where it is. You can’t be Toshiro Mifune because there’s no place to be Toshiro Mifune.”

  “I’ll find the goddamn thing in ten minutes.”

  “Swagger, you’re proposing a felony. I have a duty to report you to the authorities. I always told you this.”

  “Okada-san, you know the authorities have been bought off by Miwa. There ain’t no authorities in this case. It’s just you and me, redneck and cheerleader. We do something or that little girl is orphaned and there’s no justice in it at all. It’s just a thousand years of history all over again: big guys with swords cutting people down and laughing about it.”

  “That sword is locked and guarded in one of Miwa’s seven estates around Tokyo.”

  “I can find it in ten minutes.”

  “Swagger, it is locked and guarded in—”

  “It’s being polished.”

  “What?”

  “The blade needed restoration. He would hire the best polisher in Japan to bring out every last wiggle of the hamon on the blade. It has to be beautiful, don’t you see? He can’t take the blade into his mansions, because the sword polisher’s equipment is heavy stone and the art of polishing a sword is delicate, slow; it demands total concentration. Somewhere right now, within a few miles of us, there’s a sword polisher working the blade to perfection under heavy guard. The polisher probably doesn’t want to work on the sword, but Miwa and his pal Kondo Isami don’t care what the polisher wants. They don’t care what anybody wants.”

  She looked at him.

  “So what are you proposing?”

  “I go to the shop. I get the sword.”

  “That’s a plan?”

  “I’ll knock on the door. I’ll say, ‘Please give me my sword back.’ They will say, ‘No, that is not possible.’ ‘Hmmm,’ I will say, ‘I’m afraid I must insist.’ We will have a spirited discussion.”

  “You are insane. You’re not a samurai.”

  “The samurai left town. You’re stuck with the old white guy.”

  “They’ll kill you, Swagger.”

  “Think of something better.”

  She couldn’t.

  31

  BATTLE

  Susan dropped him at the museum at 6:30 p.m. and it took some yakking to get by the guards and the receptionist as the institution was about to close. But Dr. Otowa himself okayed the entry, came down and met Bob at the elevator, and took him through the somber gray light, the solemn quiet, the dignity of the displays, up to the office, where they sat among swords. The swords, behind glass in a humidity-controlled environment, were everywhere, except for the large black door that signified the presence of a vault. Inside it, there had to be more swords.

  “Doshu said you learned well. He was very impressed with your skill and character. He is an astute judge of men.”

  “Well, sir, glad I came through and that he thought I did okay.”

  “Now, you said an emergency.”

  “Yes, sir. I think I know where Philip Yano’s stolen sword would be. Well, it would be in the restoration process. That being the case, odds are it’s at a polisher’s because that’s the longest, hardest part of the process. I could kick around making phone calls and visits for a week, but I know you’re wired into that world. You could find out in a second.”

  “You want me to make some inquiries?”

  “Sir, the way these people operate, I don’t think an inquiry digs them out. These people want this blade restored now. They want someone good working crazily to finish the project in a certain time frame. They’re running low on time, they have a schedule to meet. They also have to restore the furnishings and scabbard, all at the very top of the art. What that means, I’m afraid, is that there’s a polisher who has suddenly disappeared. He’s no longer a part of the mix. He hasn’t been heard from and his friends are getting worried. He’s out of the loop, he’s gone off on an unexpected ‘vacation,’ something like that.”

  “I know a journalist who would know. Please sit down while I e-mail him.”

  The doctor went to his terminal, logged on.

  Bob sat and let his eyes trace the curve and shimmer of the beautiful blades that surrounded him, while hearing the tappity-tap of keys. You could watch the comings and goings of designs, as the curves got deeper and deeper, then began to shallow out and rise toward a straight line. Or you could watch the tsuba change from a single iron ring, as rugged as a Viking oar, to an elaborate, gold-etched carving, elegant, too beautiful for its ostensible purpose, which was to keep enemy blades from sliding down one’s own, to cut the hand off. You could watch the points elongate or shorten, the grooves on the blades reach farther and farther, double up, shrink, then disappear altogether. You could see the play of hamon, sometimes feathery and insubstantial where the hard tempered steel of the edge met the softer embracing steel of the spine. All in all, it was quite a display, and even knowing as little as he did, Bob had the sense now of a secret world. Kissaki, yo
kote, mitsugashira, hamon, shinogi, shinogi-ji, hira, ha, mune, munemachi, hamachi, mei, mekugiana, nakago, nakagori, that was it, tip to butt, and he knew what each meant. It was a universe.

  “Mr. Swagger?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The best sword polisher in Japan is in London, restoring blades for the Victoria and Albert Museum. The second best is in San Francisco, giving a seminar for your countrymen. But the third—”

  “The third.”

  “The third used to be the best. Only time eroded something of his skill. He is eighty-four. His name is Tatsuya Omote. I have his address.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re on to something. I fear that three weeks ago, he abruptly canceled an appearance at a conference in Osaka. He’s missed the deadline on a commission he undertook for a shrine in Hiroshima. His shop doesn’t answer and he no longer responds to e-mail. This is very troubling to his friends, but he did send one e-mail several weeks ago telling them not to worry, he was fine, he simply had an all-consuming project.”

  Bob looked at his watch. It had taken seven minutes.

  “What now?” the doctor asked. “Should we call the police?”

  “I think that’s likely to tip people off rather than set anyone free. I think I’ll drop by and see what’s going on.”

  “That could be dangerous. Are you armed?”

  “No, sir. Of course not.”

  “Come with me.”

  The doctor led him to the vault and spun the dial of the combination lock. He pulled the door back, and Bob had the sense of a great weight shifting on ball bearings.

  Bob didn’t enter because he wasn’t invited. But the doctor emerged in a few seconds with a white weapon.

  “Gendaito wakizashi. Modern short sword. It was forged in nineteen forty-three by one of the leading showa smiths at the height of his powers. It was meant for the smith’s son, who was then an officer on an island called Tarawa. Obviously, the son never came back. After the war, the smith remounted the blade in the civilian furniture you see now, which is why the saya, the tsuba, the same, the saego are all white. White is our black. It reflects grief.”

  The doctor held the sword before him, cutting edge up, and with his left hand removed the white-lacquered saya. The naked blade gleamed in the light, beautiful and hungry.

  “The old man told me, when the museum acquired his collection, that this was the sharpest, strongest blade he ever made. It was made with love to protect his son. But his son never got to carry it. The old man gave it to me with the idea that I would give it to my son, to protect him, but my son never got to carry it. He died early also. So I give it to you, because you are a son too. I give it to you in hopes that it can protect you with its magic ingredient of a father’s love. So this is really a gift to your father, from me. I hope he was a good man.”

  “He was a very good man,” said Bob.

  “Good. I’m praying that you don’t have to use it, but if you do, I know this: it will cut swift and fast and true.”

  They drove through the suburbs, then farther into the farmlands surrounding Tokyo, the famed Kanto plain. Mountains loomed on the edge of vision, including the great one, Fuji, gigantically big, the clear fall day revealing it vividly. It looked like an advertisement for a Japan that only existed in the minds of western tourists.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said. “I have the bike. I could have found the place on my own.”

  “Suppose you get cut. Suppose you’re bleeding and you can’t work the bike. Suppose someone calls the cops and you have to run away and have no place to run. You’re just a big gaijin and they’d pick you up in thirty seconds. No, Swagger, I do have to do this. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  “And that’s why you’re carrying something under your jacket? Something about the length of a sword.”

  “Otowa gave it to me, just in case.”

  “Swagger, you are going to be so dead or so locked up and my career is going to be so over.”

  “I can handle this.”

  “Yeah, the white guy with a week of training. Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t forget, I beat a little girl.”

  At last they found it, on a nondescript street in a nondescript town, a nondescript commercial building with a few ground-floor shops, one of them clearly closed, its curtains drawn. The others in the line sold noodles, sushi, sex movies, liquor, and software games. But the sign over the closed shop simply read Nihonto.

  “That’s it. That’s Tadaaki Omoto’s place. God, it looks like a place where they sell cheeseburgers.”

  “Tatsuya Omote. Can’t you get the name right?”

  “You’re very edgy, Ms. Okada. I know what you need. How about some shopping? It’s time to go shopping.”

  “What?”

  “Sure, that always settles folks down. Let’s go buy some stuff.”

  He got out of the car and strode across the lot. A few steps behind, she followed. He went straight to the liquor store. By the time she’d caught up to him, he had bought a pint of Jack Daniel’s.

  “This is a very fine drinking whiskey,” he said. “Would you like some?”

  “Swagger, I—”

  He paid, about 3,600 yen. He held the bottle out to her, but she shook her head no.

  “Okay, in a few minutes. Now, what about a nice cup of noodles?”

  “Mr. Swagger, have you had a breakdown? Really, I—”

  “No, ma’am, I am fit as a fiddle. I do think we should have some noodles.”

  “You are—”

  “We should watch for a while before I go into my Toshiro imitation. Come on.”

  So the samurai and his companion went into Solo’s noodle-rama and had a nice cup of noodles each, and a diet Coke. It was actually pretty good. They sat near the window.

  “What do you see?” she asked.

  “Well, I see a large Mercedes S-Class, black, very shiny, parked in the lot. Your standard yakmobile.”

  “You have no idea how many of them are in there. We should call the police.”

  “Yes, and what do they find? An old man polishing a sword in the presence of several thugs in suits. Where would the crime be? Would the old man say, ‘These guys have terrorized me into polishing this stolen sword’? He would not, because he fears retaliation, and rightfully so. The cops would say, ‘How is this sword stolen? Has it been reported stolen?’ And of course we’d have to answer, ‘We have no proof except for the crazy accusations of Slim Whitman here who claims it’s a sword he brought into the country a few months ago.’ Then the yaks would say, ‘And here’s the license for the sword,’ which they got from Yano-san. So the sword goes back to the yaks, we’re booted out of town, and Mr. Tatsuya—”

  “Mr. Omote, dammit. Can’t you get anything right?”

  “Mr. Omote gets back to polishing. Meanwhile, the cops discover my passport ain’t no good and I’m arrested. That don’t sound too good to me.”

  “Come on.”

  She led him back to the car.

  “Get in.”

  She opened her purse, a rather large green leather bag, and handed it to him. He looked inside and saw the grip of a small pistol.

  “It’s a sterile Chinese Makarov. I got it from a couple of the Agency clowns on the fourth floor. It’s loaded with some magic candy called three-eighty hollowpoints, whatever that means, it had the boys all giggly. Take it.”

  “No.”

  “Swagger, you can’t go in there with just—”

  “Yes, I can. This game is called swords. It’s their game. I beat them at it and that makes me the winner. And throw that thing into Tokyo Bay. It’ll get you sent to Japanese women’s prison for the next fourteen years and they don’t have no Kate Spade bags there.”

  “I hope you survive long enough to tell me how a bumpkin from Utah who sounds like Johnny Cash before the cure can identify a Kate Spade.”

  “I’m from Idaho out of Arkansas. My
daughter made me buy her one. I also bought one for my wife. You must do okay. They ain’t cheap. Sure you won’t have a drink?”

  The question wasn’t even sane enough for an answer. She just looked at him. He took the small, flat brown bottle out of the paper bag, cranked off the cap, smiled, toasted her, and said, “Cheers.”

  Then he poured some of it into his hair, and ruffled his hair with his other hand.

  He splashed some on his neck.

  He handed her the bottle.

  He pulled down his tie and unbuttoned four buttons on his shirt and tugged his shirt up on the left side.

  “‘The foundation of the Way is always deception.’ Yagyu, sixteen thirty-five,” he said.

  “All right, Swagger. I give up. Go to your little war.”

  “See ya,” he said, stepping out.

  “I’ll be waiting for you to come out, that is, if you come out.”

  Nii was amazed. The old man, barefoot and in black like some kind of hipster, with glasses so big they blew his eyes up like a bug’s, sat on a low stool on a platform. He looked like some kind of musical performer. He was bent over the long curve of steel, his eyes fiercely concentrating, his left hand securing the blade against a block of wood, his right gripping a piece of flat stone. A water bucket sat at his right foot.

  He was in the part of the process called finishing. It had been a long, slow war, starting with foundation stones and the full power of his imagination and his stamina and his know-how, all applied against the blade in an act that was part love and part hate and all art. The blade, for its part, fought him stubbornly. Its scars were proudly earned in forgotten battles, its surface was stained by the blood of many, some justly taken, some not so justly taken. It did not want to return to the ceremonial pristine.

  In the war, the old man’s weapons were stones. There were dozens of them, each with a specific name, a specific grain, a specific face, to be used in one place, in one direction—arato, kongoto, binsui, kasisei, chunagura, koma-nagura, uchigumori hato, uchigumori-to—and the art of the campaign was in knowing the place for each in the time-consuming ritual. The old man’s face was as wrinkled as a prune’s, but his hair was long and fluffy. He looked more like a saxophonist than a warrior, but a warrior he was, and the glitter of a million particles of ground steel were the evidence of his attack, even if, every hour, he vacuumed them up, for an unvanquished particle could slide between stone and blade and cause havoc.