The Samurai's Daughter

by Sujata Massey

  “Mrs. Shimura, hello. I—I had no idea your home would be like this.” Hugh’s voice was as hushed as if he had entered a house of worship.

  “Catherine,” my mother said warmly. “And it’s just a mix of family things.”

  “These screens you have mounted on the walls—are those from Rei’s father’s family? How unusual to have so many linear feet.”

  “You’re right. Well, that’s what you get when you marry into a samurai family.” A look passed between my mother and Hugh, and I felt a flush of embarrassment. For an instant I was back in old Japan, or in any one of the many countries where a girl’s worth was related to the dowry her family could provide. I loved my family’s Japanese treasures enough to want to document them, but I didn’t like the cavalier way my mother was talking—and the hint, not so subtle, of what our family could offer Hugh.

  “Ah, good morning!” A tiny voice piped up from behind, and I realized Manami had joined us. She bobbed her head, and her shoulder-length black braids brushed the tops of her white lab coat. She wore it over a sensible blue wool turtleneck and blue-and-green plaid pants. I loved Manami’s serious style, just as I loved her sweet demeanor. Maybe there were ten million girls like her in Japan; in San Francisco, there weren’t enough.

  “Good morning, sweetie. You must have had a good night’s sleep—it’s almost two,” my mother said, beaming at Manami. “Hugh, let me introduce Manami Okada, whom I told you about on the phone.”

  “Hajime mashite,” Hugh said, bowing slightly. It was the standard Japanese greeting for a first meeting.

  “Ah! You speak such excellent Japanese!” Manami’s eyes widened.

  “I don’t,” Hugh said, chuckling. “I just lived in Tokyo for a while…and hope to be returning. So you’re the doctor? Gosh, you hardly look old enough.”

  “Everyone says that, and I don’t know why.” Manami frowned. “I’m thirty, and I earned my MD several years ago. We have a slightly different training pattern than in this country. We study faster and become doctors at a younger age.”

  “But you came here for some advanced training, I heard. When you’re done with residency, do you want to stay on?” Hugh asked.

  “Not at all. I plan to return to Japan. I hope the pathology training here could perhaps add, how do you say, edges?”

  “An edge!” I smiled at her. Just the previous night, I’d spent a few hours working on slang and colloquialisms with her. Once an English teacher, always an English teacher. “Yes, I’m sure overseas pathology training will be noticed, especially since you’re doing so well.”

  “Oh, I’m not. I’m a very poor student—”

  “Well, that’s not what my father says. He would have loved to have a daughter like you.” I spoke without jealousy, just the knowledge that came from being a decade past high school—where I had done just enough in school to make the top 10 percent, yet not so much as to infringe on a busy social schedule. I’d thought it was healthy, but the fact was, I never really lived up to what my father thought I was capable of. Manami, on the other hand, had forsworn the pleasures of San Francisco society for the serious pursuit of medicine.

  Manami looked at her watch. “Excuse me. I must go. I slept so late today—I was on call yesterday, and felt tired.”

  “Of course, darling. Do you want to take some salad in your lunch box?” my mother offered. She was clearly as protective of Manami as I was.

  “I couldn’t trouble you,” Manami said, but her eyes brightened.

  “Come in the kitchen and we’ll put it together.” My mother rose, rolling up the sleeves of her cashmere sweater as if she was getting ready to do some serious cooking. “Hugh, Rei will show you the dumbwaiter so you don’t have to lug your things upstairs.”

  I picked up the lighter suitcase and went into the kitchen, where the dumbwaiter was.

  “So you don’t need a butler to get things up and down, eh? I feel as if I’ve stepped into a BBC period drama.” Hugh gaped at the mahogany door I swung open in the kitchen that revealed the dumbwaiter’s compartment. “You’ve totally shocked me, Rei. This is like some kind of bizarre Anglo-Japanese paradise. I can’t imagine a more beautiful setting for Christmas.”

  “Well, a snowy locale would help. Can we do the Japanese Alps next time?” I still didn’t know whether to be pleased or mortified at his reaction to my home.

  “Hugh, your family must be missing you dreadfully right now, just as I imagine Manami’s is her.” My mother stroked Manami’s head briefly, and the young woman pulled away slightly. It didn’t surprise me, because most Japanese don’t like to be touched in a familiar fashion by people outside their families. I made a mental note to tell my mother to be less hands-on with Manami. Out loud, I reminded my mother that Hugh had to get going. As I’d expected, she protested. “Why not have a quick lunch? I made a nice Caesar salad—”

  “My body clock’s still too confused to let me be hungry. I’m trying to hang in so I’ll have an appetite for supper.”

  My mother nodded. “Good. You’ll eat supper here? I planned to serve at seven, but could make it later—”

  “Seven’s perfect. And thank you so much, Catherine. You can’t imagine how tired I am of restaurant food.”

  Manami slipped out with her packed lunch box, and my mother escorted Hugh upstairs for the grand tour. Like a docent, she pointed out the original plaster moldings on the second floor, and the front staircase used for family, and the back staircase used for our nonexistent servants. On the third floor, she showed how the old servants’ rooms had been turned into guest quarters. She identified the closed doors that led to Manami’s bed and bath, various storage rooms, and an extra guest room that had a bath connecting it to Hugh’s guest room, which had once been my own little study.

  The dollhouse was gone, and so was the tiny desk where I’d painstakingly drawn the kanji characters that were taught to me at Japanese Sunday school. My mother had painted the room the color of ferns and decorated it with a few perfectly placed groupings of antique maps and prints of scenes in old San Francisco. She’d made up an old Empire campaign bed that I could already tell would be a few inches too short for Hugh with an antique quilt and a profusion of fancy pillows. But Hugh wasn’t even looking at the bed—his attention was taken by the wide mahogany desk with chairs on either side that occupied the room’s center.

  “An old partners desk,” Hugh said, touching its smooth surface. “This is what every junior lawyer would love to have someday. And such a gorgeous patina.”

  “I can find you a desk that’s similar,” my mother said with a gleam in her eye.

  I had to practically drag my mother out of Hugh’s room so that he could get going on his shower. While he washed, my mother and I had salad and sourdough toast—my favorite local treat—in the kitchen, and by the time I’d loaded the dishwasher, Hugh had come down to telephone for a taxi.

  “I’ll be back by late afternoon,” he promised, kissing me at the door and giving my mother a wave.

  After he left, my mother sighed. “This is going to be the best Christmas ever.”

  “I think so too.” We squeezed hands for a moment, and I thought about how I’d thought the house was too empty before. Now, with Hugh around, things seemed just right.

  My mother went back to decorating, and I slunk upstairs to my room to examine the slides I’d made from photos of some Shimura family heirlooms. The first was a close-up of a sword that was crafted for one of my ancestors during the late 1500s—the Muromachi Period, when there were still frequent wars between different feudal states. My father had said that it had been used by one of his direct ancestors, a Shimura nobleman, in defending the castle of his cousin—who happened to be the daimyo, or feudal lord, of a little-known wood-producing region. Our ancestor had lost his arm in the battle, but retained possession of the sword. I winced, as I always did when picturing this story, and began writing.

  Shinto, the ancient religion of Japan, fostered a belief that swords cont
ained the soul of a samurai, and thus were religious objects worthy of worship at a family’s altar. In the Shimura household, a legend was told about the heroic samurai Jun Shimura, who lost an arm in the defense of a family stronghold. His sword was carefully kept in its original sheath and hung for display several times a year, times at which the family bowed down to pray before it.

  I laid down my pen. I had an antipathy to weapons. In my opinion, a rice pot that had served the family through lean and lavish times was the kind of object worthy of family worship. I’d even revere a quilt patched together from old blue-and-white robes called yukata; my father had told me about such a quilt that his great-grandmother had made, and that he and his brother had slept under for many years, until it finally wore out. That was the problem, exactly: Crockery broke, and fabric frayed. The delicate things that I cared about perished, while the hard things like swords survived.

  I wandered down to the second floor, hoping to take a closer look at the sword, to get more excited about it than I felt. I knocked on my parents’ bedroom door and my father called for me to enter. He was sitting on a chaise with a checkbook in hand.

  “I thought you had to work this afternoon,” I said.

  “There were a few cancellations. Now I’m sorry I rushed out of lunch. Is your friend safely arrived?”

  “Yes, but he already had to go somewhere for a meeting. Dad, I actually came to your room to take another look at the sword.” It was hanging over a tall dresser.

  “Would you like me to take it down for you?”

  I shook my head. “Let’s do it later, when Hugh’s here. He might find it interesting. Anyway, since you’re here, maybe you can answer a few questions. How did you bring it into this country?”

  “It was quite difficult,” my father said, sighing. “My parents wanted me to have it, but the verification of its status with the government office seemed too daunting. So instead of going through the proper channels, I gave it to an American friend to carry, a military doctor who was being repatriated after the Vietnam War.”

  “So, it was important for you to have the sword here, even though you don’t worship it—at least, not that I can recall.”

  My father pressed his lips together. “Sword worship, some may say, is part of the Shinto religion. To me, it means other things. I cannot worship a gun; how can I worship a sword?”

  “I feel that way, too,” I said. “But why, then, does it hang on your wall?”

  My father sighed. “The temperature in the storage room is too uneven. And your mother likes the metalwork on the scabbard.”

  I suspected there was another reason, but I could tell that he wasn’t going to be helpful. I shifted gears. “Hugh liked the crane screens downstairs—the ones that are mounted on the walls in the foyer. I’ve never known who the artist was. Do you have any idea?”

  “None whatsoever. I’m not a good person to talk about it, as I don’t really care for it.”

  “I see.” My father was so peculiar. “How did the screen come into family hands? Was it from the old feudal days, or was it a more recent purchase, in Kyoto or somewhere like that—”

  “My great-grandfather acquired it. I’m almost sure he didn’t buy it, or if he did, he paid much less than it was worth.”

  “Sounds as if he shops the way Mom and I do.”

  My father stiffened. “Exploitative is hardly how I’d think of you two.”

  I bit my lip. “That’s a harsh thing to say about good antiques shoppers. Whether it’s us or someone dead.”

  “I don’t know if this was taught in your master’s degree courses in art history, but my country appropriated quite a lot of art and gold from other Asian countries.”

  “During the occupation of Korea, you mean?” I struggled, trying to figure out my father’s trajectory. “Our screen is not Korean.”

  “It’s Chinese. The Japanese military are said to have secretly entered Peking in 1900 and removed gold as well as treasured artworks from the imperial archives. The screen is so fine—much finer than a professor could afford. For that reason, I’ve always thought the screen probably was looted from China and given to my grandfather as a gift.”

  “But that’s even better,” I said. “It’s such a dramatic story! A stolen treasure, maybe.”

  My father shook his head. “When a country loses its culture, it loses its soul. What kind of a place would China be today if it still had all its treasures? Would it be more humane?”

  I snorted, thinking that once again, my father’s idealism was out of control. “Do you think we should give back the screen to the Chinese government?”

  “Not the government. The people!”

  I pointed out that the government in China was actually called the People’s Party, and that the Chinese family who’d owned the screen had to have been obnoxiously wealthy landowners, but my argument was a rhetorical one.

  I finally understood what my father was saying—and it made me uncomfortable.

  4

  Just after three, my mother interrupted me in a half-doze at my desk.

  “Hugh’s on the line.”

  I picked up the cordless phone she’d brought, mentally preparing myself for bad news. He’d be delayed, probably; that was the life of a corporate lawyer.

  Instead, he said that he was through with his meeting and was calling to see if I was game to run an errand with him, then head out for a drink with his colleagues at the Mark Hopkins.

  “This is weird,” I said. “You’ve never included me in so many things before.”

  “Well, after we broke up the last time, I went through the twelve-step program for bad boyfriends, and I learned a lot of clever strategies—”

  “Don’t joke about that.” Somehow, I didn’t like the word strategy connected to our relationship.

  “Why not? I think it pays off to become reformed.” His voice softened. “By the way, can you pick me up outside Sharp, Witter and Rowe? It’ll make things easier than if I return to Pacific Heights again.”

  “I’ll ask my mother if the car’s free.”

  My mother agreed to lend me the Infiniti, as long as I was careful on the hills. She knew I was deathly afraid of slipping backward, because I’d practically burned up the transmission on the Camry they’d let me drive when I was in grad school. My mother also asked if I would pick up a special order of votive candles at Williams-Sonoma, and recommended that I change out of my jeans, since I would be going to one of the most glamorous spots in the city for cocktails.

  “There are going to be tourists there,” I protested. “Tourists can wear anything!”

  “But we are longtime residents, not tourists, dear.”

  Honestly, American mothers were as bossy as the Japanese, I thought as I stared at my closet a few minutes later. Most of my career-girl clothes were at the cleaner’s, so what I had to choose from were leftovers from college and high school days: things like off-the-shoulder Flashdance T-shirts, straight-leg Calvin Klein jeans, and various miniskirts.

  The micro-mini and jeans didn’t fit anymore, but I was able to squeeze into a Commander Salamander black velour dress that ended at mid-thigh. All my old shoes were gone, so I went into my mother’s closet and came up with a pair of soft black suede boots that reached the knee. Now I was hardly exposed at all.

  I thought I looked rather presentable when I pulled up outside the handsome old brick building where Hugh was waiting. But when he tumbled into the seat before me, he seemed too stressed to notice. The joking ease he’d had on the phone was gone.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said. “It turned into a rather difficult afternoon.”

  “How so?”

  “After a brief meeting with everyone here, the translator and I went over to interview a potential plaintiff. I felt so bad about the whole thing that I wanted to stop in somewhere to get her a Christmas gift. Do you think we have time?”

  I looked at my watch. “Sure. But you should have booked my mother to help you. She’s the
only one who loves shopping as much as you.”

  “Well, one of the stops is the opera house, for tickets I ordered for her and your father, so I’m glad she’s not along. After that, we’ll get the goods for my client. I need to get her one of those things that boils water for tea and soup—”

  “An electric kettle,” I said, heading toward Sutter. Williams-Sonoma would sell one, and I could get my mother’s candles there, too.

  “Right. I’ll buy something for Manami there, too. And after that’s all accomplished, I need to buy food.”

  “Food? Our fridge is packed to exploding.”

  “Not food for the Shimuras, food for…my client.”

  I rolled my eyes, knowing this trip was going to be a lot longer than I’d first thought. It took the better part of an hour and a half to hit the opera house, Williams-Sonoma, and the Real Food Company. This San Francisco independent gourmet-to-go shop was seemingly packed with last-minute shoppers wanting complete Christmas dinners for ten. As we waited for service, Hugh and I argued the merits of everything: green beans almondine, wheat-berry salad or pasta salad, and whether or not to get her a cranberry-stuffed Cornish game hen.

  “Californians are fifty percent more likely to be vegetarian than other people,” I said. “In my high school class, I’d say the majority of girls lived on yogurt.”

  “She’s not that privileged,” Hugh said.

  “Oh, really? I think this lady is pretty darn privileged to have us running all over town like this.” I wished I could bite the words back after I’d said them, because his expression tightened. “I’m sorry, Hugh. It’s just that you rode into town a few hours ago hell bent on romance with me, and now we’re going to be late for drinks with your friends at six, and shepherd’s pie with my parents at seven, all because of an errand for your important woman client that can’t wait till after December twenty-sixth.”

  “I’m sorry, Rei, but I’ve simply got to go there tonight. I wanted to bring you with me, but if you don’t want to come, maybe you should go back.”