Made in Japan

by S. J. Parks

  As she scanned the beer, fruit and isotonic drinks, he mimed feeding her a 100-yen coin; her eyes warned him not to and he stopped. She asked for iced coffee. A can hit the pocket with an engineered thud, as satisfying as delivering a bowling-ball strike. She let the cold can roll down her neck across her chest until she realized he was watching. She gave another warning glance as his hand hovered over her chest to take it from her. The jeep rounded the corner and Iwata drove up just as Mochizuki appeared to have his hand down her shirt. Iwata wound the window down to ask if he could give them a lift.

  With a wave of his hand Mochizuki dismissed him and Iwata sped off, accelerating as if he had many better things to do with his time than chauffeur the girl around.

  Mochizuki held out his hand for her ring tab and then threaded it onto his little finger. The bitter coffee was as close to the real thing as she was, now, to Columbia. He contemplated her a moment, and suddenly seemed to change his mind. He turned and insisted she go on without him, directing her the rest of the way.

  ‘I’ll catch you up,’ he promised.

  Chapter 52

  ‘The kimono sash my wife has tied,

  Will never by my hands be undone?

  Though the sash be cut or severed,

  I cannot that knot untie,

  Until I see her again.’

  −The Man’yōshū (eighth-century anthology of Japanese poetry)

  The Mochizuki house was a few roads back from the beach; a modernist beach house in a line of off-the-peg American builds: a simulacrum of average which no one had thought to finesse before repeating a bad joke so often it became a semiotic nightmare. Their house was saved by the isolation afforded by the garden that shielded it from its neighbours. A mature pine tree had been accommodated in the construction and half of the grey, timber façade was deferentially set back against a different plane to give it room to grow. The patchwork timber door was ajar, expecting her. The blades of a traditional black fan rotated noiselessly as it moved from side to side in the blind surveillance of an abandoned ship.

  Mrs Mochizuki’s tanned bare feet announced her approach across the bleached wooden floor. She was well-groomed and wore a crisp open-necked white shirt and capri pants; her dark hair closely cropped. She paced towards Naomi and her strong smile made up for the vague western handshake.

  ‘Hajimemashite, Kazuko desu.’

  Naomi guessed she must be about thirty-five. Her eyes were bright, but not themselves illuminating. The brighter the light, the stronger the depth of the contrasting shadows. She was definitely staring.

  ‘My husband does not accompany a guest’s arrival to the house?’

  Naomi was unsure whether this was a question or a statement of fact.

  ‘But we like him even so. He can be forgiven.’ She signalled Naomi to go on in ahead.

  The open-plan living room was light and spacious without a colour register besides indigo and white. Two large fig-like plants guarded the doors with huge textile hangings, like pieces of modern art, to animate the sparse scheme.

  Kazuko explained how she collected these unfathomable blue textiles made by farming communities. Strands of cotton were resist-dyed before they were woven with depictions from folklore: moons, masks, fish sushi.

  ‘You eat chicken?’ she asked as forcefully as if it were a statement of fact.

  Naomi nodded.

  As Kazuko moved to the kitchen, Naomi snatched a glimpse of the kitchen behind her, like a shutter exposure on another world: riotously stacked shelves, colourful cookbooks, tea caddies, angular pots and plants and a pastel-coloured rice cooker besides a shelf of plump white-cat votaries in varying sizes, all holding up a left paw and decorated in red and gold. The door swung shut. There was something strikingly confident in Kazuko’s manner and her voice was strong and resonant, unlike some of the other Japanese women she had met.

  ‘Ikat,’ she said, referring to the textiles. ‘Always have these designs with blurred edges.’ She shared her passion easily.

  They stood to admire a large indigo hanging of a carp that seemed to swim across the threads with a muscular flick of his animated tail.

  ‘He will bring you good luck,’ Kazuko concluded, and turned back to where the open shutters offered a view of the garden, which seemed part of the room itself.

  Kazuko offered her a chair, which Naomi noted was in the style of a George Nakashima.

  She poured two glasses of iced mint tea. ‘Nice to see you.’

  She had immaculate English, Naomi thought. ‘So kind of you to have me to lunch.’

  ‘Mochizuki tells me your boyfriend’s away in Australia and so we thought that was tough. I am away a lot myself. My job.’

  ‘What is it that you do?’ Naomi asked.

  ‘I am involved in climate change conferences. Translation.’ Naomi nodded appreciatively. ‘I was involved in the Kyoto accord.’

  They passed pleasantries until the ice had melted in their drinks, and still Mochizuki had not joined them.

  ‘How long will your boyfriend be away?’

  ‘Only a fortnight, but he is covering Asia-Pacific and in the months we have been here he is at Narita Airport more often than the flights are scheduled.’

  ‘You are not married? ’

  ‘No.’

  The older woman got up to take Naomi’s drink.

  ‘May I show you something?’ And she led her upstairs.

  Upstairs it was cooler. Kazuko spread a kimono over the corner of the bed, as if she were casting a net, so that the design was flat and easily visible. Immediately she looked round to gauge Naomi’s reaction, to see perhaps, whether she too would be entranced by the subtle art of the silk painter as she herself had been. The background was a heavy, apricot silk that had been embroidered to look rippled and watermarked. Naomi scanned the heavy decoration on the sleeves and at the base of the T-shaped kimono.

  ‘See the dragonflies on the sleeve panels?’ The upper part of the garment was unembellished but at the hem there was a deep blue of semi-circles. ‘Fish scales. Like every kimono it is made of panels of the same size. One size fits all.’ Kazuko laughed. She lifted the kimono. ‘Will you?’ And she held it open for Naomi to wear.

  It was so long that it enveloped her. She stretched her arms out and curled her hands upwards.

  Kazuko laughed again. ‘You look like a kimono stand but not quite so wooden.’

  She tried to collect the sleeves that fell to well below her knees.

  ‘This is a kimono for an unmarried woman. The sleeves are long. Short sleeves for a busy married housewife.’

  ‘I guess that would be more practical,’ Naomi offered. For some reason she felt uncomfortable discussing marital status in this curiously empty bedroom with Mochizuki’s wife. She hoped it was a spare bedroom.

  The hem of the cloth was woven in eddying circles. A figurative cherry tree hung over a vestigial pond and, dotting the cloth, stray crimson blossoms fell in a snowstorm scattered on the water.

  ‘It’s beautiful. Exquisite.’ She felt slightly awkward under Kazuko’s searching eyes.

  ‘Hana fubuki, we say: cherry-blossom snowstorm.’

  Kazuko untied a woven band and slipped it from its hold around another box. Inside, beneath the tissue paper, was another silk kimono.

  A crane with feathers of gold thread flew over a large cart from the Edo period that spilled over with embroidered flowers. It was garish and overworked in reds and oranges.

  ‘It is a very traditional design,’ Kazuko said, reading Hana’s hesitation, ‘and I now prefer the folk craft. But I must see you in it. This kimono has sleeves for a married woman. See, they are shorter. I wore this before my own marriage ceremony. If I wear a kimono now it is the short-sleeved.’

  Naomi swung the large wings of satin around her. ‘Those nineteenth-century habits seem hard to kick. I suppose with housekeeping and carrying children short would be easier.’

  Kazuko came up close, so close they might be breathing the same
air. She smoothed the fabric slowly and then turned swiftly away.

  ‘Try on the whole outfit?’ she suggested. ‘As far as possible.’

  Naomi had no reason to object and no reason to want to dress in her satins.

  Kazuko started to pull out lacquered boxes from the wardrobe and revealed neatly folded satin obis, woven silken ties tasselled in mauve, purple and rusts. None of the colours met with Hana’s western understanding of harmony.

  ‘And your shirt?’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Politeness would demand she would not remove her shirt.

  Dressing Naomi in the kimono, Kazuko crossed one side of the kimono over the other and very deliberately smoothed down the silken lapels, ironing out the creases right over left, and then, changing her mind, closed it left over right, carefully across Naomi’s breast. Looking her in the eye, she smiled reassuringly, cool in her crisp cotton shirt but for a bead of sweat that rested on the down above her upper lip.

  The under belt was tied about Naomi’s waist at which point she became a mannequin and gave in as the obi sash followed.

  She felt frisked. ‘Hello, airport security.’ Naomi immediately regretted her flippancy as Kazuko looked at her quizzically. ‘It feels as though you’re checking me like airport security,’ she explained.

  Kazuko was lost in her role as dresser. Once finished she stood back to admire the effect and broke into Japanese.

  ‘Oningyo mitei.’ She laughed, pleased with the transformation of the western girl. ‘You look like a doll,’ she translated. ‘How does it feel?’

  Hana was stiff and bound.

  Kazuko pointed to her capri pants. ‘I am the westerner today. You are the beautiful Japanese woman.’

  Naomi obliged her in a catwalk move across the room to the window, the delicious sound of the silk train following her like audible shadow.

  Kazuko clapped. ‘Bravo, but you must take smaller steps; you are in Japan now.’

  Naomi gave herself up to her hostess and it would not have been so easy were she not alone in the room with the other woman and so many miles from home.

  She stepped lightly. ‘How is this this?’

  ‘That’s good. Dan dan, we say: slow and gradual.’

  Naomi felt a kindled interest in Kazuko’s gaze, a searching look that seemed beyond the critique of someone merely entertaining her lunch guest.

  ‘I am sure you look very beautiful in these.’

  ‘Oh, I never wear them; they were made for the wedding-ceremony day.’

  She would not ask how long it had been since Kazuko married.

  ‘The silk is hand-painted. I keep them in cedar, lined with tin; in the rainy season humidity reaches over ninety.’

  ‘You will have to keep them for your own children, one day.’

  ‘No. We don’t have children. We can’t.’ Her response as rapid as it was blunt.

  It was too soon to ask where between a discomfort and personal tragedy this fact chose to nestle in her consciousness. It was too soon to say ‘sorry’, to ask why, to talk of adoption. She wanted to move on.

  ‘Let me show you a hairpiece too.’ Kazuko brought out two lacquered combs set with mother-of-pearl.

  ‘Just beautiful.’ Naomi had enough of playing mannequin. ‘I am sure it’ll take an age to unbind me? I don’t want to wear them for long in this heat.’

  Both women were distracted by the voice of Mochizuki from downstairs.

  ‘Tadaima,’ he called.

  Kazuko watched Naomi for an interval of time, which prompted Naomi to suggest that they go down and join him. And again she asked whether she could take the kimono off. The knot on the obi was so carefully tied she hesitated to start unravelling it herself but as she fingered it the older woman broke into a smile and urged her to keep it on for lunch.

  ‘It’ll take too long, He’s back already. Come, come down.’

  Chapter 53

  Mochizuki arrived to find Naomi walking down the stairs for lunch, coming towards him dressed like the Queen of Sheba. Tentatively holding the banister, she attempted to make her way down in the blanket of cloth. He threw out a manufactured cheer of approval and glanced swiftly at Kazuko but it was too short to question her, dressing the gaijin in her own wedding robes. He had fleetingly wondered who it was descending the stairs in the familiar kimono.

  Kazuko set down a platter with a rough, uncontrived beauty, styled with a knowing naivety and attributable to one in a line of followers of the fertile union between the potters Shōji Hamada and Bernard Leech.

  They were to eat kneeling beside the small charcoal brazier on the terrace, Japanese-style, overlooking the traditional garden. Mochizuki slumped like an etiolated boy in a misshapen baggy shirt.

  ‘I smile to see you in my kimono. You know when I first met him it was at the environmental conference in Kobe. Here was this young architect talking about his great plans for sustainability.’

  Mochizuki gave her a look of: don’t start.

  ‘Wood as a renewable resource. No steel. No concrete. No manufacturing costs. And you plant in its place. You know, we Japanese we have a long history of building in timber. He was a great speaker.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Now he’s getting rusty.’

  The jibe was lost on him; for it was made in good humour. He responded like a teenager on the edge of some conjured indignation.

  She—’ as he often called Kazuko in the course of conversation ‘—is translating at the talks on climate change in Canada next month.’

  Kazuko leant forward to balance bamboo sticks of food on the hibachii stove.

  ‘Yes, it is an important step in the negotiations to get governments heavily involved on the issues. The scientists have been pressing for this for years but not until the stratospheric “ozone hole” did anyone take real notice.’

  ‘So now there’ll be some action?’ Naomi asked. The events of her own life had left this problem way down a priority list with her. Like the Doppler effect – the noise about it had moved on.

  ‘You know, it’s like if your relation is suddenly diagnosed with something, only then they finally give up smoking.’ She excused herself and added, ‘I mean, detecting that tear in the sky was lucky.’

  Mochizuki relaxed his languorous hold from the arches of his feet, idly brushing flakes of wayward cigarette ash that had settled on the zabuton

  ‘So now we buy up the suntan-lotion companies,’ he quipped.

  ‘I remember when it was in the papers back home; it was as if a meteor had fallen to earth in your own garden and we all felt vulnerable. But after that …’

  ‘I would miss my garden,’ he said wistfully.

  He caught Naomi staring in the direction of the moss-covered stone lantern. Constructed in five sections, it was small and squat and lay hidden in the undergrowth

  ‘The ishidoro. You can see it often at shrines.’ He held his hand away to count from the lower little finger, enumerating the levels of the lantern with each digit. ‘This, the stand of the lantern, is earth. Then you have water.’ His head cocked to one side as he looked out to register the plinth. ‘The body of the lantern is fire. Fire contains fire,’ he said, beating his chest for their amusement. ‘The roof is the symbol of wind, and this ball on the upper section is air. Earth, water, fire, wind, air,’ he reiterated. ‘Ancient Chinese symbols. This is the harmony.’

  She understood his deep-seated affection for the ways of an older culture and its inherent poetry. She felt, and not for the first time in his company, that, through his eyes, she was getting closer to something elemental and to a wholly different way of looking at things. She felt at ease with him, but the heavy kimono had begun to be uncomfortable.

  Mochizuki sat cross-legged, pressing his feet together, unaware of the effect he was having.

  They watched the glow from the naked fire with a primitive fascination. A faintly acrid smell of charred soy sauce hung in the air.

  Kazuko brought different bowls of sticky white rice and
they ate without conversation. Kneeling in the kimono and eating over the silks was quite a trial but there was no pressure to trade views and and they relaxed as they listened to the garden.

  Kazuko went to bring salty pickles in a tiny pottery saucer. A strong gust blew in, lifting the fine wisps of hair framing Naomi’s face.

  ‘Ame,’ he predicted, rightly so, as just then the rain started to fall. He smiled at the timing of his prediction, and poured her tea that smelled of wood smoke but tasted clean and refreshing.

  Instantly gaining momentum the rain suddenly blew through the sliding doors; they had believed they were beyond its reach.

  She was mindful of the silk as they leapt up, objecting loudly as the zabuton cushions were peppered with spots of damp. It touched the skin on her bare arms like an unwelcome overture.

  They hastily pulled back and retreated to a safety zone within the room and, with hypnotic fascination, watched through the open windows as the porch changed colour. A rain chain ran from the eaves of the porch; one bronze cup after another pooled and spilled as the water clung to the chain in a kind of physical insecurity and moved like plastic to swell the brimming cup below. They sat water-watching like ancient samurai in repose.

  ‘You have a great garden here,’ Naomi said to Mochizuki.

  ‘It’s hers. She made it some years back.’

  Kazuko, at this point, had decided lunch was over. ‘You got a fax from Daichii,’ she threw over her shoulder as she walked off. He punctuated the air with a grunt.

  On entering the kitchen Kazuko displaced a large white cat who tiptoed over to Mochizuki and began courting his affection, getting as physically close as it possibly could, winding its long tail up his leg entreatingly. The air inside was now perfectly still and slightly suffocating.

  ‘Neighbour’s cat,’ he said, by way of apology.

  Naomi’s kimono became heavier and she rose to change. Kazuko followed her upstairs to help and when she untied the innermost sash of the dress Mrs Mochizuki said gently, ‘You must look after him while I am away. He has a business trip coming up to Gifu.’