Made in Japan

by S. J. Parks

  It was as if she also her own scald to contend with. It was too late for her to disguise the charged reaction and she looked away.

  ‘So you knew Naomi? You met her?’

  Saved by a call for more genmai tea from the builders, Miho left quickly, to serve them. Jess grew curious until Miho finally returned to sit down with her.

  ‘So …’ Jess leaned in confidentially, aware that she had stumbled on something.

  ‘So tell me.’

  Miho shook her head.

  Her face was grave as if it was a subject she could not bring up now. ‘That woman—’ She couldn’t look her in the eye, as it all came flooding back ‘—that woman was responsible … for …’

  ‘For what?’

  Miho wrung her hands as the memory took hold and she looked pained.

  ‘You can tell me,’ Jess encouraged, coaxing her with a pat to her hand.

  Miho hesitated searching the wall shelves, as if struggling to line up her thoughts. ‘She was responsible for the …’ She held her breath until, barely audible, in a whisper she exhaled, ‘… the death of a good friend.’

  ‘You can’t mean that? Is this true?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Jess.’ Her voice hardened. ‘Not to you, not to your English friend.’

  Jess was silenced. She sat back as the unexpected blast from Miho continued – Miho who was usually so mild, whose age had taken the edge off life’s disappointments: ‘And you are not to encourage her in this, and you are not to tell her.’

  Jess was shocked.

  Miho’s animated breathing counted the beats of the silence between them. ‘It is for the best,’ she said, more kindly. ‘Trust me. The truth would hurt.’ She was calmer now. ‘So you won’t tell?’

  Jess searched the line of a knot in the pine table, finally nodding her head and pursing her lips.

  ‘I’m closing early. I have to go.’ Miho got up. ‘Aren’t you coming to the memorial?’

  Jess pushed on the heavy handle of the glass door. ‘I may not get there,’ she said, and chose not to mention she might see Hana there.

  Chapter 15

  Tako had given Hana the directions for the temple where the memorial service was to be held. He had not, thankfully, offered to take them. She knew that waiting for Jess to return was pointless and she left the homestay in good time to take a short train ride, planning to walk beyond the residential area before it started.

  By the time she found the site on a wooded hill, the black jersey wrap skirt she had borrowed from Jess was clinging to her legs. The air had changed. In silence the grey, tiled rooves of the temple swept up towards birds of prey circling in deep thermals of blue. Under mottled pine shade she walked towards the red torii gate, and it felt as if, since leaving the homestay, she had travelled to another country, in the tranquility of the gardens.

  She would not have chosen this day as a first visit to the temple. It must, she guessed, be where the local teahouse was sited and, though it was an inauspicious day to do so, she would take time to find the small wooden building, after the ceremony. She walked beneath the torii to fall behind the guests.

  Beyond the torii gates was a couple, old enough to be walking towards their own goodbyes, They were among the few individuals left from Ukai’s life-scape for whom his passing wrote off their indebtedness or those who celebrated his death as marking an end to his potential to intimidate. Some had profited from his insistence on minimum disclosures and creative accounting and some were merely of such advanced years that they had forgotten who he really was but they had been garnered to attend through custom to pay their respects. It was a small turnout for the man who once owned real estate worth the city of Shanghai and Beijing put together.

  Hana made her way to the main building, until the heavy scent of incense bore down on the clear air.

  The body lay in an elevated cask in front of the altar, and on either side sat Ukai’s immediate family, Noru and her son Tako, flanked by a sparse number of elderly guests. Hana found them a rough lot, more than one bore a facial scar. It was not high society and it certainly put Tako into context.

  Beyond the body in the depths of the shadowy interior, gold leaf flickered across the offerings like fish scales, the light coming to rest for a moment on the cheeks of the serene Buddha. Out on the airless terrace, Hana chose to kneel in empty space on one of a pair of zabuton cushions, beside an elderly lady with dyed black hair. The powdered woman wore a light, summer, gauze kimono, coloured like raspberry fool.

  In the heavy heat all Hana’s discomfort focused on her dislike for this misshapen jacket deforming the elderly woman. She watched as a trickle of sweat released a dark line of temporary hair dye from her temple. A triangle of white handkerchief trimmed with lace arrested the falling beads at the pressure of her lined hands. The woman interrupted her gaze and introduced herself,

  ‘Saito-san.’

  Hana bowed her head in return.

  Hana was thankful she could not see the body of the old man. Trails of curling smoke from incense sticks below the casket, and the waxy blooms of lime green chrysanthemums, began to add to her nausea. As the monk began chanting mantras, Noru and the other guests added their voices.

  Saito-san rose uneasily to add another quill of incense to the ashes in the copper bowl and returned to her cushion. Hana became nervous that she too would be expected to take part and that she too should make some offering. The sweat ran across her knees and, during the quiet hypnotic drone of the priest, she followed the rigorous curve of the mighty dragon across the beam beneath the eaves; like the reputation of the master builder who had raised it, fading in strength with the peeling paint.

  Jess still had not appeared and Hana worried that the square void of cushion beside her yawned like an insult. But, as she’d said, who was Ukai to them? They hardly knew him and the ceremony was so unfamiliar it belonged to another world. As the monk rang the bell it sounded like a human voice. A feeling akin to heat exhaustion took hold and she forgot how she found herself sitting in the small gathering amid the haze of stifled and conflicting emotions around her. After more prayers had been said the mourners began to rise individually, like random seeds on the air, as the incense was left to drift over and purify the body.

  A man’s shoes, black, pointed and highly polished, passed closely, as she knelt. Iwata paced over to speak with the priest, who addressed him,

  ‘Iwata-san.’

  Iwata-san bowed ‘Kare wa konakatta?’

  ‘Arimasen,’ the priest replied.

  Hana listened to them but couldn’t make out much. He’s not here?

  She understood very little – they had expected another guest? She watched Saito-san get up with difficulty and peck, in two-toed wooden geta, towards the priest and the shiny-shoed man with complementing hair oil.

  ‘Kare wa doko ni imasu ka?’ she asked.

  Hana heard – ‘And where is he?’

  Saito-san bowed reverentially over her heavy obi.

  ‘Mochizuki wa Arimasen.’ Who ? Hana wondered was Mochizuki?

  The small party was lead to the back of the traditional buildings by the priest who paused and smiled at her.

  ‘Welcome. I am Hakuin, abbot here. ‘

  She might have taken his prolonged look as recognition, since he hesitated as though he had a great deal more to say. But he was distracted and his eyes left her to follow a tall woman in the clean-cut Shimada jacket in the distance. Was it Miho? Hana couldn’t be sure as her silvered bob was hidden behind a veil. She had become a totem for the other guests who greeted and circled her as if they participated in a Japanese folk dance, and so Hana kept her distance.

  Joining the trail of wry strangers retiring to the tatami room, she began to feel faint. They were a small, ageing crowd and many, clinging to the past in traditional dress, cooing over the tall, elegant woman. Hana couldn’t make out any of their exchange. Who were these strangers to her?

  Iwata San acknowledged Saito, in th
e manner of one well-known to the other but fallen recent strangers.

  They all asked after the Mochizuki, as if his absence would fill a vacuum.

  A tentative woman in black approached Miho, her veil adding another layer of separation between them. Her caution was well chosen, as her reception remained cold and barely acknowledged. It was easy to read their lack of warmth for each another and the strange absence of connection among any of them.

  She thought for a moment that the woman she took to be Miho had seen her. Falling in with the milling group, drifting with as much purpose as the eddying incense, she would eventually reach her beside the door. But the woman appeared to be skirting the line to find an alternative entrance.

  Wordlessly ushered in by Tako, the guests filed inside, laying crisp white envelopes, tied with elaborate black knots, on a dish in the hall; money shrouded in elegance. With nothing to give, Hana clutched her wrist and bowed gently when it fell to her, excusing her own breach of etiquette. As the waves of nausea overcame her, she left the assembly to stand under the trees in the lifeless air.

  The teahouse might just lie beside cool waters further into the grounds, and in the wilting heat she decided she should leave the strangers and try to find it.

  Just as she was going, Noru approached her, asking if she would come to eat with them.

  She felt obliged to follow and there was the consolation that she might find Miho to talk to, but when she joined the mourners the woman in the veil had gone.

  Chapter 16

  ‘I am so sorry,’ Jess exclaimed, blowing into their room at the end of the day. ‘They kept me late for another class. You okay?’

  ‘You went to Tsukiji market?’

  Jess raised a flat hand for her to wait, for her to stop right there. It looked as though it was a rehearsed denial.

  The hand pushed further as Jess read her skepticism.

  ‘You didn’t go?’ Hana jumped to the conclusion she preferred.

  ‘I …’ Jess lingered. Nobody could easily challenge a silence.

  Hana toyed with her hair, weaving the braids of a plait, waiting. She was sick of listening to silent replies. She should be told. But Jess had only to walk the length of their short room for her resolve to challenge her to dissolve. But a niggling disappointment that Jess could possibly be unreliable left her feeling insecure. She was strong, she was creative, and she was forgiving. Amaterasu. ‘Are you telling the truth, Jess?’ It was so little to ask.

  Jess turned emphatically and looked at her wide-eyed and innocent.

  Hana was as ready to swallow this as a pill. She bound the plait and said they missed her at the memorial.

  Jess vehemently kicked aside an obstruction on the floor and mumbled about school as if she were offended to have been challenged.

  Why was it, Hana wondered, with a sense of injustice, that Jess singled out her walking boots for attack? ‘I won’t ask why you couldn’t get them to assign someone else to class today and come with me.’

  She left it open for Jess to convince her that she had had no choice in the matter and the effort she made to persuade her was payment enough. Hana did, however, have difficulty in imagining that Jess lacked the ability to coerce them into a timetable change for a memorial service.

  In the small room, the clutter, lately an object for her own complaints, made the space smaller still.

  ‘I don’t know why they asked us to the ceremony,’ Jess said finally ‘Still, it’s not everyday you go to a reincarnation. How was it? ’

  ‘Very complicated and involves forceps.’

  ‘Forceps?’

  ‘For the rebirth.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ Jess shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘And rubber gloves.’

  Jess finally got it and laughed hard and loud. When the laughter trailed off, Hana opened up.

  ‘I had the feeling—’ She paused, not sure if she should broach it. ‘I had the feeling that the priest recognized me.’

  Jess snorted. ‘You think he knew your mother? Some random Englishwoman from decades back?’ She closed the subject down, though she was on the back foot that afternoon.

  She regretted mentioning it.

  ‘It can’t be that easy,’ Jess continued. ‘How old was this priest?’

  ‘He was old,’ Hana replied.

  ‘How old? I know you want to believe it but the chances of him knowing her are miniscule.’

  Hana was hurt. It was, of course, unlikely and she dismissed the idea. She slumped resignedly and stuffed the neon laces inside her boots.

  Jess felt obliged to be more encouraging. She was reluctant to raise the other option but she went ahead anyway.

  ‘Or maybe you look like him?’

  Hana knit her brows.

  ‘I mean your own father.’ Jess’s tone was softer now. ‘How did he die, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  Hana had never known a father and so could not mind.

  ‘I never said he died.’

  Chapter 17

  ‘Un bel di, vedremo’

  −Puccini, Madama Butterfly

  Imperial Palace Hotel, Tokyo, 1989

  Naomi was getting used to the heavy thread count of the cotton sheets on her bare skin. Changed daily, they barely bore a trace of his heavy sleep. At first, the starched arrival of room service, bringing so many scratched and buffeted chaffing dishes, had delighted them, though it had never been possible to eat it all. They had tired of the cloying delights of the international hotel and Josh now preferred to eat breakfast elsewhere, partly because he wanted the company bill to bear scrutiny, and because they had lived in the hotel for so much longer than expected.

  Naomi was charged with finding a rental apartment and so far they had failed to agree on anything suitable. This morning they were again going to meet the agent who would find their rental in the city. Tokyo housed one hundred and twenty million people and there should be a good deal of choice out there for their budget; it was just that she didn’t speak the language and she had no idea where the signs might direct her.

  Her morning start had become increasingly languid when the rest of her day stretched to a distant vanishing point.

  Today, as he slipped the last limb into his blue suit, Josh warned, ‘It’ll be busy so do leave early.’

  And, like a skimming stone, he threw the glossy city plan entitled ‘The Detailed Map of Tokyo for Business Man and Tourist’ onto the bed beside her.

  ‘I am neither.’ She reached to catch it and was genuinely daunted by the question of what lay between the two but Josh had no time for her existential meanderings this morning and was keen she first found them a place to live.

  ‘I’ll meet you there.’ He dropped a kiss on the crown of her head and left her alone with her question. He was generally more comfortable with imperatives and they would talk over breakfast.

  In the three weeks since their arrival she recognized her rootless existence had begun to strain the relationship that she had cherished so much as to drop everything and follow him to nurture it. The heavy closure of the fire-retardant door reduced her to the privileged isolation of an inmate of a luxury Wandsworth prison. And this brought back thoughts of her home in Clapham. Annoyed at her own distortion of the privileges she enjoyed, it brought her once again to ask why she had made the rash decision to leave her course at the Architect’s Institute in London and follow him to Tokyo.

  If she did not leave the room soon she would suffocate. She threw the map aside and leapt out of bed. She left the lobby in summer whites, prompting the hotel staff to whisper about the ghost on the 47th floor who kept time like no other guest among the business clients in the hotel.

  At Shibuya Station she was caught in the spring tide of dark heads, where a crowd the size of a billing at the Hammersmith Palais negotiated six or more optional exits. She was carried across the eddying tide of people to a pillar where the current divided as if at the foot of a bridge spanning a river in spate. She retrieved the city plan we
dged in her bag; Josh would be waiting for her. A master in origami had ingeniously folded the map and once opened it clung unhelpfully to her body as a set of streamers escaped on a strong downdraft. She gave up trying to scan the oscillating paper as it flapped aggressively at her face and tore as she tried to restrain it. He had given her a couple of landmarks to head for; first was the Hachikō Statue on the south-west side of the station. Below her a grid of crossings led like an Escher print to every point on the compass in a Kafkaesque joke. From one of the branches she should take the hill up to where they were to meet. She checked her watch and it was nearing 9.30 a.m. She was lost for a lead and he would be exasperated again. She closed her eyes.

  Though now used to the city’s disregard for personal space, she became aware of an individual standing beside her.

  ‘You lost? Want some help?’

  The girl was about her age, unusually tall and her hair was styled in a short bob. Naomi began folding the map, very roughly.

  ‘I’m trying to find the Hachikō exit.’

  Her short, close-fitting cotton dress was covered in old roses. And she led her towards the exit.

  ‘You know about Hachikō?’

  All it took was a shake of the head and she started on a story as if she were a complementary city guide.

  ‘Every day an old professor left his dog outside the station for the day when he commuted.’

  Her English was good. She probably made a habit of picking up lost souls for language practice. A dog story. Naomi looked at her watch.

  The girl upped her pace and continued her explanation.

  ‘He was old and—’ They scuttled down a flight of stairs on a second wave of commuters ‘—one time he didn’t return and the dog waited for his master for days.’

  They emerged from the station at street level, to an obscured sun. Beneath animated screen-clad buildings the massing crowds were cowed in the electronic din of commercialism. Where would Josh be waiting? It was the most kinetic urban space she had ever seen and she drew her attention back to the girl, glad for a moment to have a guide.