by Ellis Avery
The Mountain looked up in the long silence that followed and watched pained horror cross Jiro’s face. “Excuse me—” Young Master spluttered, his right wrist clamped in his left hand.
“Advisor Kato, congratulations and welcome,” the Mountain interrupted jovially. “Is this how the Westerners do it?” he joked, and before the Advisor could snap One Meeting in two and use it to pick his teeth, he detained both Kato’s hands by shaking them. As they laughed and spoke, Jiro, mortified, cleared away the Advisor’s half-eaten sweet—and One Meeting.
NOT SURPRISINGLY, Jiro was frayed and snappish by the time my oyster-eared Englishman sat down to tea and asked how I’d learned to speak his language. Thanks to my long, slow hours sounding out my Lamb Shakespeare tales, I could understand the man’s English, though sometimes his accent bent familiar words queer. He was a dealer in rabbits, he told me. Never before seen in Japan, the exotic lop-eared pets were all the rage in Tokyo, the calico-spotted ones pulling in a thousand American dollars each. Having made himself a fortune in just days, my companion was intent on enjoying his stroke of good luck. “In Tokyo I could have spent all day in the archery booths. Each one had a pretty little girl just like you. You’d shoot, and then she’d clap her hands if you hit the target or laugh at you if you missed. And then the little huntress would pour you a thimble of spirits and she’d shoot. They’d always hit, but they shot like girls, wide. So you’d cozy up and steady her bow. They were like little almond-eyed dolls. They’d laugh some more and have at you with their fans if you got too fresh.”
“These barbarians don’t stop talking,” said Jiro as the Mountain serenely wiped the tea bowl.
“He said he liked Tokyo very much,” I explained.
“There’s no better country for wasting time. Archery! Delightful! Hot baths! Delightful! And tea! Who would think it could take so long?”
Impervious, the Mountain sat on a stool drawing water from a kettle on a brazier set into a lacquered table, the wastewater bowl behind him on a stand of its own.
“Though if there were a pretty girl like you to watch,” Oyster Ears continued, “I wouldn’t mind at all. In Tokyo everyone was talking about a famous geisha who does the ocha ceremony, but the Jappers have got her all sewn up. There’s no seeing her for the likes of me.”
Jiro looked at the man abruptly when he heard those three words: geisha, Tokyo, ocha. The Mountain raised an eyebrow. “He said there’s a famous geiko in Tokyo who does tea,” I repeated, sliding down the bench away from the encroaching Englishman. In Yukako’s defense, I said, “She’s very popular. Everyone’s interested in ocha now.”
Another foreigner had paused to watch, slimmer and darker than Oyster Ears. “I’ve heard of her too,” he said, in an American accent. “I can’t imagine anything more charming than a Japanese girl making tea according to some ancient solemn rite, but when I visit my new friends at home, their wives and daughters never know how.”
Apprehensively, I translated as best I could. Jiro’s disgust was evident. The Mountain looked mildly perplexed. “Why would you want to pass the time with a man’s wife and children?” he asked, and I conveyed his words.
“Especially when you could meet him at night in the company of women far more delightful?” Jiro added politely.
“Why would a Christian man go out at night?” the American rejoined.
Without a moment’s hesitation, my leering benchmate chimed in, “What more does a man need than the haven of his family?”
I translated, and Jiro and the Mountain exchanged a barely perceptible glance of disbelief. Then they each extended an olive branch to the barbarians.
“Tell them that in Japan we think family is important too,” said Jiro.
“Tell them the temae they’re seeing is the true discipline as Rikyu taught it, samurai and warlord temae,” the Mountain said. “If they want to watch pretty young girls make tea, they can go to the floating world,” he added dismissively.
When Jiro flicked a glance at his interlocutors, his eyes held a tiny look that said, I’d rather be there than here.
“So it’s men who have the tea parties in Japan?” mused the Englishman. “It rather goes well with wearing dresses, eh?” he nodded at the Mountain’s kimono. I translated, when pressed, but I did not want to.
With his right hand, the Mountain turned the tea bowl twice on his left palm and passed it to his guest. The Englishman gazed at the bowl in his hands and gasped, bemused. “Why, it’s so green,” e declared. “Rather like algae, wouldn’t you say?”
“What is algy?” I asked.
The red-haired man laughed out loud, earning me a sharp look from Jiro. He turned to the American and made as if to pass the bowl on. “Cup of tea, good man?”
“Oh, after you, surely.”
“‘Let the cup pass from my lips,’” said the Englishman, like Jesus in Gethsemane. The American looked at him with disapproval.
“What’s wrong? It’s getting cold,” said Jiro.
“It reminds them of their holy book,” I said.
“Do you have any black tea?” the man asked, looking slightly stunned at the bubbles of the frothy tea, which had already begun to pop and dissipate. “Or coffee? Have you ever heard of a cappuccino? They get a good head of foam on top when they steam the milk. Looks just like this, but perhaps not quite so green.”
“Powdered tea, or matcha, has been used in tea ceremony for some three hundred years,” I admonished, I hoped graciously.
“Behold the Irish cappuccino,” he announced, pleased with himself. “How about if I just have a taste and give it back? Do you think old Sourpuss will mind? Or I could take a little sip and you could finish it for me?”
“Sir, please enjoy the entire cup of tea,” I said, reciting the instructions the Mountain had asked me to translate. “When you have finished, it is customary to show appreciation with a loud final sip. Then the guest is invited to inspect the teacup.”
“You can’t very well call it a cup, now, can you, if there’s no handle and no saucer,” the Englishman objected, stalling. “It’s rather bowl-like, in a crude way, though, isn’t it?” I’d chosen cup because I wanted to appeal to the English and their love of high tea. Perhaps, however, we wouldn’t come off so poorly if I were to shock them a little with bowl next time, I thought.
“Come on, Pappy, drink your medicine,” said the American.
“Cheers!” said the Englishman, knocking back the tea in one wincing gulp. “So now the guest inspects? Well. Lovely,” he said. “But don’t you think it’s funny they couldn’t come up with anything nicer?” he asked the American before turning back to me. “I mean, just two booths over, you can see some really good painted china; they’d probably lend it to you for the Expo, if you like.”
“They strive for unevenness and accident,” explained the American. “It makes them feel closer to their nature gods.” He was more or less accurate, though he made the Shins sound more quaint and tribal than they were. The Mountain had used a large black Raku bowl freckled with white, in one place so densely that it seemed to blush a band of white cloud.
“The head of the Shin family named it Amanogawa,” I recited, “whose meaning is River of Heaven, or Milky Way. In heaven there were once a shepherd boy and a weaver girl who married and fell in love. Their love o’ertopped all things to such degree”—as I spoke, they stared in such a way that I realized I’d been alone with Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare too long—“that the shepherd boy neglected his sheep and the weaver girl left her loom. So,” I said, grimacing at my stilted, breaking voice, “God set a river between them, so to keep them at their travails. And now they are two stars, and once a year they can cross the river and spend the night in concert.”
“How charming,” said the Englishman.
“Wait,” said the American. “They married and then they fell in love?”
“And so here are Japan and the West, treating across the ocean,” I concluded, finishing the Mountain’s story.
It was months late for the season, but the tale had been too fitting to pass up. The other two tea bowls we used for the Exposition were named First Frost and Leaf Brocade, which balanced out the unorthodox first choice.
“Very poetic,” said the Englishman.
“Japan has a winsome grace we’ll never capture,” sighed the American. “I would love to take an ocha tea set home to my mother. Could you box one up for me, with a little powdered tea?”
“I’m sorry, these are for demonstration only, not for sale.”
“Now, don’t be like that,” he cajoled. “This teacup, for example, how much would you charge for it?” He named a figure twice the annual stipend awarded us by the Emperor, and the Englishman raised his eyebrows.
“What are they saying?” demanded Jiro. I explained. “Ocha set?” he sniped.
I translated the American’s astonishing offer. Jiro and the Mountain exchanged a blank look of outrage. “They don’t know,” said the Mountain, regaining his composure. Unblinking, he named a figure fifty times what the American had offered, which I repeated, my heart racing.
The two men looked at each other, flabbergasted. “I apologize. I misjudged the situation. Perhaps this is some priceless family antique,” murmured the American sheepishly.
“This tea bowl,” I said, experimenting with the word, “was made this spring by the direct descendent of the Shin family’s first master potter, and was chosen by the Shin family head especially for the Kyoto Exposition,” I recited.
“So it’s not an antique?” The American looked at me, at the two men in kimono, and back at me again, his face fallen in confusion and anger. “For demonstration only,” he repeated. “I see.”
“HE DIDN’T KNOW what it was, and he offered all that money?” Yukako repeated that evening. “That’s crazy.”
“I couldn’t believe it,” I said, bouncing Tai in his sling on my back.
“And even crazier, they had nothing to sell him,” she said, cupping her hand over her belly. “What are you going to eat, Baby Two?” she asked. “My father’s not a foolish man. But until two years ago, samurai went from birth to death without ever touching money.” Yukako smiled with an exaggerated ratlike leer and stooped over, as if telling beads on an abacus. Then she flung back her shoulders like a samurai and grunted disdainfully, “‘That stuff’s for women and merchants.’” In her own voice, she sighed. “The foreigners aren’t ashamed of money, and look at where they are now.” She reached behind me and stroked her son’s head. “My father gave up his sword when he became a Shin, but he’s still a samurai about money.”
“And this one’s father?” I said, bouncing Tai. “He’s a merchant by birth.”
“One who’d rather marry out,” ukako said tartly.
17
1873–1876
KENJI—NAMED VIGOROUS Second Son to make up for coming small and early—was born on January 24, 1873. I say this with authority because the Emperor moved Japan to the Western calendar that year, decreeing that the third day of the twelfth month in Meiji Five was now the first day of Meiji Six. Meiji Five, cheated of its last month, was shorter than any other year in Japanese history: Yukako’s second son was born just before New Year’s would have fallen in the old calendar.
We were all uneasy about the lost month. Were we to put out New Year’s decorations twice? When the usual greetings from Chio’s son Nao arrived at the same time as they had the year before, we wondered, were they on time or late? We had already eaten toasted beans on New Year’s Eve to mark that we were a year older, but now that the plum blossoms had arrived a month later, should we eat them again? (We did.) Should we add another year to our ages? (We didn’t.) And one afternoon just after Kenji’s birth, Jiro decided to make another of his frequent trips to Sesshu-ji temple, this time in order to ring the bells for New Year’s Eve.
“New Year’s Eve has come and gone,” admonished the Mountain.
We were sitting that morning in the study by the garden with my Tales from Shakespeare. The Mountain had just announced that the next day he would need Jiro’s help teaching the younger students temae for tea in a Western-style room, and once again the next day turned out to be one that Jiro had long ago arranged to spend in contemplation and prayer. Wily enough to know he was being thwarted, and bent on leaving behind an heir able to meet the barbarians on some wisp of common ground, the Mountain had recently insisted I explain each of my Tales from Shakespeare to him and Jiro in Japanese. The week before, we had worked through A Winter’s Tale, my favorite, in which the lost girl Perdita is found, her dead mother secretly alive. Now we were reading King Lear.
After the Mountain spoke, I could hear Jiro’s resistance: his father hadn’t explicitly prohibited him from going to the temple, after all. Maybe if he kept silent, the Mountain would forget to forbid him. “Why should your monks hold themselves above the law? Even Advisor Kato doesn’t; he didn’t start his Christian school until this year.” It was true: now that the ban on Christianity had been lifted, effective Meiji Six, the Imperial Advisor had finally executed his plan to run a Christian school out of his home, employing the two American ladies from the Expo as teachers.
“So, how did Advisor Kato’s lesson go?” asked Jiro, making an attempt to be polite. Solicited by Kyoto leaders eager for a word in the Emperor’s ear, Kato was in turn eager to pursue the refinements that would identify him as worthy of their solicitude. Though Jiro had snubbed Advisor Kato’s friendly overtures, the Mountain had stepped in to save the relationship and, though his mother the Pipe Lady grumbled at how far he’d fallen, had begun teaching Kato temae once a week.
“It went very well,” said the Mountain coolly. “And he was so touched by the gift you sent in return.”
That was a jab. The Imperial Advisor had recently given Jiro a tea bowl which he had on good authority was of the age and style preferred by the Shoguns before even Rikyu’s time: a glossy Chinese piece stippled like a fawn. While the correct thing to do would be to return the gift with a piece of equal value, Jiro had responded with a tasteful but undistinguished incense holder he’d picked up at the monthly shrine market.
“I wasn’t convinced about the authenticity of Advisor Kato’s gift,” Jiro said, his words quiet and clipped.
“Maybe so. But you can be convinced that the Advisor believed the piece was genuine,” said the Mountain. “If I had known you would not behave accordingly, I would have chosen the return gift myself.”
“And so I should have given him, what? One of Rikyu’s tea bowls? Are you sure that’s the best way to dispose of the Shin treasures?”
“Elegant words,” the Mountain grunted. “One of the Shin treasures is time. Yours. And I am the one who will dispose of it.”
Jiro shrank back. “I only go to the temple to become a better tea person,” he groveled. “As you say, ‘Tea and Zen have the same taste.’”
The Mountain nodded, indulged. “You may go to Sesshu-ji today if you can be back by dawn tomorrow to help me teach. And you will treat Advisor Kato as if he were taking food away from his own parents to give us our imperial stipend. Do you understand?”
“I humbly understand.” Jiro bowed. When the Mountain left the room for a moment, Jiro glanced over at me and my Shakespeare Tales, the book left open to King Lear. “Maybe the king was in the way,” he said.
I WAS ONLY too glad to leave Jiro and the Mountain and join the hairdressers, who had arrived during our play-reading session. I kept an eye on the babies while Miki and her mother worked their combs through Yukako’s hair and shared news from their family in Tokyo, who were currently visiting.
“Remember that English Rabbit Man from the Expo you told me about?” Miki asked.
“How could I forget?”
“He went to jail.”
“No!” cried Yukako. Though spent from giving birth just days before, she was still glad for a laugh.
“Yes! You know how the calico ones fetch the highest prices?”
“He killed all
the others and sold the meat as beef?” I asked.
“No.”
“One of the spotted bunnies attacked an imperial guard?” ukako guessed.
“No! They caught him painting on spots with persimmon juice!”
“Eh!” we cried.
“Of course, he’s British, so he’s out of jail already.” Thanks to Britain’s unequal treaties with Japan, he would have been tried under British law instead of Japanese, which no doubt resulted in his swift release.
“And how’s your cousin?” I asked, but I really meant How’s Inko? Her contract of service with Koito was due to end anytime now, which meant soon she’d come back to Kyoto and get married. And find me! I hoped.
“She sounds well. She said last summer, there was a big announcement that everybody would be sent to school, boys and girls, but nothing’s happened yet. And she told me a couple months ago she saw the first steam train leave for Yokohama. If I ever go to Tokyo, I want to see that,” Miki said, the little cleft in her chin deepening as she grinned. “And she asked me to pass on another gift from your friend Miss Namiko.”
“Oh?” I said, containing my delight. I knew Yukako didn’t like being reminded of Koito; I saw her eyes narrow reflexively when Miki said this.
“I brought it,” she assured me. “Miss Namiko’s parents moved to Tokyo, too, like everybody. They found a boy for her, another Kyoto transplant. His family ran a sweetshop in Pontocho; they just opened a place in Tokyo last year.”
“Oh.” I had Tai strapped to my back as we talked, and was swooping from side to side to entertain him. When she said this, I stopped. Of course Inko would get married; I’d known this. But some part of me must have thought she’d always be fifteen, that she’d be coming back to Kyoto soon. “When is the wedding, do you know?” I asked, my voice strangely high.