23.
Present-Day Japan
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2
Tokyo
Robin shoves her front door shut with her hip, then breaks into the happy dance she’s been suppressing ever since that life-changing piece of luck walked through the door into Fujimori Fine Art this morning.
The Yoshi Takamatsu tea bowl she saw today has the same name as the last poem in Saburo’s masterwork, The Eight Attachments. Which confirms it’s no coincidence that the one Saburo acquired on his first poetry pilgrimage shares the name Yabō with his sixth Attachment. If the authentication tests prove that Hikitoru really was made by Yoshi Takamatsu, it will be solid evidence that the potter and the poet are connected. More than connected. Saburo didn’t compose The Eight Attachments until late in life—long after Yakibō had died—which strongly suggests the potter inspired the poet.
And she could be the one to prove it. A paper documenting the relationship between Yakibō and Saburo would rock the academic world. The professional journals would fall all over themselves to publish it, and she’d finally walk the graduation stage in the glow of early summer, wearing the cap and hood of a Doctor of Philosophy in East Asian Languages and Cultures. A discovery of that magnitude would guarantee a long and glorious career spent unlocking new levels of meaning in one ofJapan’s most beloved pieces of literature.
She waltzes to the main room with the armload of research papers she copied tonight at the library and piles them next to her seat at the low table. Returning to the kitchen, she peers into her refrigerator. Half a pack of shiitake mushrooms. A lone carrot. A bunch of komat-suna that will be shriveled green rags by tomorrow. It’s hot pot for one again tonight, unless she wants to gird herself up to go back out to the supermarket. Which she does not.
Tossing a half-used packet of frozen chicken into the microwave to thaw, she pours herself a glass of pinot in celebration, pants be damned. This discovery could be the kind of earth-shaking, academic triumph that will open doors she’d never dreamed of knocking on. She’d acquire an antique desk, a book-lined office, and a gaggle of graduate students. Best of all, she’d be an expert in the field she started out to study, not the one where the winds of available research subjects had pushed her. The copies she’d made after work tonight ought to help her start building her case.
She chops vegetables and piles them onto a plate. The microwave pings as she stirs instant bonito broth, miso, and sesame paste together in her tiny electric hot pot, then adds splashes of sake and sweet rice wine. Toting it to the table, she plugs it in, twisting the knob to “high.” By the time she has assembled her bowl, chopsticks, and reading material, the pot is bubbling merrily.
Topping up her wine, she settles onto her cushion, scrapes the chicken and vegetables into the fragrant broth, turns down the heat. Pulling the first article on Saburo from the stack, she begins to read.
This one is from the Journal of Japanese Art Studies. She sips her wine and highlights paragraphs detailing the leading expert’s text analysis of Saburo’s first volume of poetry, The Road to Destiny. It’s the paper that first suggested the poet had encountered the potter in the early 1700s, on his first poetry pilgrimage. Citing word pairings, the author posited that Saburo had spent time somewhere deep in the countryside with either a potter or priest, in a year with a legendary typhoon. The poet had set out on his poetic journeys during rainy season only once, on his first trip. Taken with the facts that somewhere along the line Saburo had acquired a tea bowl made by Yoshi Takamatsu, and that a writing box believed to have belonged to him had recently been discovered in the town nearest Takamatsu’s kiln, it strongly indicated that he’d met the Pottery Priest, may even have known him well.
She ladles a spoonful of cooked hot pot into her bowl. While it cools, she tackles the next document, her undergraduate advisor’s dissertation. It was the talk of the Japanese literature world when it was published, because her professor was the first to suggest a connection between The Eight Attachments and the tea bowl now known as Yabō.
At the time, her future advisor was rooming with a doctoral candidate in art history, who’d been examining the calligraphy on the box containing Saburo’s “lucky” tea bowl and said she was sure it had been altered. Until then, that tea bowl had been known as Unmei—Auspicious Fate—but her professor’s roommate had performed tests on the box and discovered that the original characters had been rubbed out and new ones written over them. Using modern technology to detect traces of the scrubbed-away ink, they’d been able to reconstruct the tea bowl’s original name, Yabō. “Ambition,” not “Auspicious Fate.” Which, her advisor had pointed out, is the sixth of Saburo’s Eight Attachments. She’d gone on to suggest that the potter’s influence on Saburo’s work extended far beyond the volume published shortly after he returned, that in fact—
Shitshitshit! Smoke is pouring from the nabe pot. Robin scrambles to pull the plug, grabbing a dish towel to snatch the boiled-dry pan and fling it into the sink. She twists the tap and steam billows up as the cold water hits the desiccated nuggets of vegetables and chicken now welded to the bottom. At least this time she got to it before the smoke alarm went off.
24.
Feudal Japan
MARCH, 1704
Shigaraki
At the fork where the path to Yakibō’s farmhouse meets the road, Saburo turns to bow his farewells, one last time. Goatee freshly trimmed and topknot fashionably oiled for the first time in months, he puts a cheerful face on his departure, but his smile fades as he strides away, knowing he’s about to betray the man who just sent him off with a full stomach and his blessing.
He rounds the bend, and the trees finally hide Yakibō and Hattsan from view. From the bridge ahead, he’ll double back through the forest, following the stream to the hut. By the time he gets there, Hattsan should be on the other side of the hill, chopping the wood they gathered yesterday, and Yakibō will be puttering around inside his kiln, arranging his latest batch of pottery for the spring firing.
The stream roars with snowmelt as the poet approaches the battered wooden bridge. He glances around to make sure he’s alone, then cuts into the forest, slipping and sliding up the hill, scrambling through the knee-high bamboo that carpets the ground. When the trees are thick enough to hide him from the road, he stops to catch his breath and adjust his sandal, then pushes on, keeping the torrent on his left. He’s just beginning to think he missed the hut when he spies its mossy roof through the trees ahead. He stops, listening for the sound of Hattsan’s axe in the distance. There it is. Thwock, thwock.
Melting icicles over the crooked door drip dark lines onto his back as he ducks inside. He stops to let his eyes adjust, and the six tea bowl boxes lined up on the shelf emerge from the darkness. Crossing, he snatches up the one labeled Ude-jiman, hoping he was wrong about its being empty. But Yakibō has already broken his attachment to Pride—it’s too light to have anything inside. His disappointment increases as he lifts Mikudasu, Kanzen-shugi, and Ganko. All empty.
The old fanatic must be getting pretty close to enlightenment, he thinks sourly, since he’s already managed to rid himself of Pride, Arrogance, Perfectionism, and Rigid Thinking, as well as First Love.
Yabō is the only one left. He unties his bundle, setting the box atop his belongings. But when he stretches his carrying cloth up around the addition, the corners don’t quite meet.
He groans. When he landed on Yakibō’s doorstep, his traveling cloth had held only a change of clothes, his writing supplies, and a magnificent lacquer box filled with strips of fine paper for jotting haiku as poetic inspiration arose. But during his time in Shigaraki, belongings that might actually keep him alive on his journey had joined them, and his clothes had multiplied. The kimono he’d arrived in (chosen because it fit his romantic image of an itinerant poet, even though it was made of laughably impractical silk) had been traded for thick, homespun leggings, hemp robes, a warmer cloak, and a shaggy waterproof cape. He’s wearing the wide coni
cal hat that will shield him from rain and sun, but two pairs of straw sandals (for when his current ones wear out), plus a set of wooden geta clogs to keep his feet out of the mud, have to be carried too. He hadn’t realized how bulky everything would be, and last night he’d been too drunk on sake and a sense of his own destiny to realize that adding the tea bowl to his already strained carrying cloth would be a problem.
But it is. If he wants to take Yabō, he’ll have to leave something behind. He considers the options. Not the footwear. It’s miserable to limp along in worn-out shoes. And not the flint, knife, or pot, because he’d learned the hard way how unpleasant it is to spend a cold, hungry night far from an inn. That left things that weren’t lifesaving necessities. He’ll need the brushes, ink sticks, and inkstone for writing poetry, but what about the writing box that holds his strips of blank paper? He gazes at its glossy golden lid, lavishly patterned with a design of clouds and dragons. His father had commissioned it from the finest lacquer artist in Kyoto as a going-away present, but it’s bulky. If he takes it out, the tea bowl will fit.
But he can’t leave it behind. It’s too valuable. Saburo shudders, remembering how unpleasant it is to be the target of his father’s ire. He can’t return without the writing box. But he could come back later for it, couldn’t he? He could sneak back along the stream, the way he came today, after he has a stack of fine poems to put inside it. Yes, that’s what he’ll do. He’ll hide the writing box now, and come back for it on his way home.
A nightingale trills outside the hut, and in the silence that follows, he becomes aware that the regular chopping sound of Hattsan’s axe had stopped some time ago. If Hattsan has already finished splitting the pile of wood they’d collected yesterday, he’ll soon be hauling it in to dry. Hauling it to this hut.
Stuffing the slips of blank poetry paper between his folded clothes, he casts about, looking for somewhere to hide the lacquer box. Dig a hole in the earthen floor? No time. Stash it outside? It’ll be damaged by weather. The best he can do is wrap it in his hand towel and thrust it behind the stacked logs, poking it down as far as he can with a stick of kindling. Unless Yakibō and Hattsan burn through the woodpile faster than usual, it ought to stay hidden until he sneaks back in a few months to retrieve it.
He hastily knots his traveling cloth with the tea bowl inside, slings it over his shoulder, and hurries back to the road the way he came.
25.
Present-Day Japan
THURSDAY, APRIL 3
Tokyo
Toting the copies she fell asleep over last night, Robin shoul-JL ders through the glass door at Coffee Tanuki and is cheered to see that at least one of the eight million Shinto gods is smiling upon tonight’s footnote mining. Not only is a quartet of chattering moms just leaving a corner table on the main floor, her favorite guy is working the counter. He always remembers she likes her medium latte in a to-go cup, and he never fake-compliments her on her Japanese. Plus, he swirls the foam atop her coffee into the café’s adorable raccoon dog mascot, even when he’s busy. In America, that would nearly be enough to vault him into her outer circle of friends, but here in Japan, she doesn’t even know his name. She’s been coming here for almost two years, and they’ve progressed to companionable chatting about the coffee and the weather while he counts out her change and stamps her point card, but she knows from mortifying past experience that’s as close as they’re likely to get.
She steps up, smiles, and orders. By the time her latte arrives, she has already pulled out the article on Saburo’s writing box and uncapped her highlighter. She glances up to thank the coffee artist for today’s tanuki face, then begins reading.
This piece appeared three years ago in Archaeology Quarterly, written by an art historian who discovered a lacquerware box on display in the back room of a small museum near Yakibō’s old kiln, and claimed it had once belonged to Saburo.
Robin soon discovers why the paper hadn’t been published in a more scholarly journal: it wouldn’t pass peer review. Though the author had traced the box back to the artisan who had made it for Saburo’s father, that only suggested that the poet had crossed paths with Yakibō, not that the potter had inspired Saburo’s work.
But that’s not the only intriguing discovery the author had made. The museum’s archives also yielded six haiku written on scraps of paper made in Kurodani. Saburo’s known works had all been brushed on paper from Kurodani, and although the sloppy handwriting bears scant resemblance to the fair copies of the poet’s work, the sheets were discovered among some old ledgers owned by the same family that donated the writing box.
The author’s text analysis made a strong case that they were drafts of a poem in Saburo’s first famous work, The Road to Destiny. The scrawled lines play with various combinations of the words snow, sweat, hard labor, salt, and sake, and whoever wrote them was obviously striving for the same meaning as the final version:
Hard labor in winter
Makes sweat taste saltier
And sake sweeter.
The author also pointed out that Saburo’s privileged upbringing was unlikely to have provided opportunities to do the kind of physical labor that inspired such insights, so the poem had probably been based on experiences he’d had on his journey.
Several poems written during his first pilgrimage mention the tea bowl now known as Yabō, so it must have been acquired soon after he set out. Add that to the fact that the winter months referenced in the poem coincided with when he passed through Shiga prefecture, it was likely that Yakibō the Pottery Priest was the hermit/priest/artist he had studied with along the way. The author suggested that the tea bowl Yabō may have been offered as payment for the kind of physical work that elevated an end-of-day drink to a reward, or that Saburo had received the tea bowl as a token of the mutual regard that grows through shared labor. Either explanation would shed light on one of the minor mysteries surrounding Saburo and his “lucky” tea bowl, namely, why a poet toting all of his belongings on his back for three hundred kilometers would have packed something as useless as a tea ceremony utensil.
It’s convincing, but Robin wishes the author had more concrete evidence of Saburo and Yakibō’s meeting. She flips to the footnotes. The Shigaraki Museum & Visitor Center is listed as the owner of both the writing box and the poetry drafts. Would it be worth visiting, to see if she can dig up more?
She searches the footnotes for the donor’s name. Hayashi Ceramics. Waking up her laptop, she keys in a search. The lone result is a website for some sort of merchants’ collective called Shigaraki Pottery Town. The subpage she lands on is headlined Hayashi Ceramics, and a single paragraph explains that it has been in business since the eighteenth century, taking its name from the family of the current owner, whose ancestor apprenticed under the famous potter/eccentric, Yoshi Takamatsu.
Yakibō’s old kiln is still in business? Coffee forgotten, Robin scans the primitive webpage, searching for contact information. The nearly unreadable black characters on a brick-red background grow blurry when she enlarges the window, and the postage-stamp-sized photos look like they were shot with a version 1.0 phone camera. No GPS map, no email link, just an address and landline number at the very bottom.
It’s so badly designed, someone who hadn’t spent much time in Japan might dismiss it as a dead end, but Robin is as thrilled as a prospector who’d just uncovered a seam of gold. The page is so unreadable and unfriendly to search engines that the Hayashi kiln just might be as undiscovered by other scholars as it is by the internet.
26.
Feudal Japan
JUNE, 1722
Kyoto
It’s only June, but Kyoto is already stifling. Even within the stout walls of the castle, it’s unpleasantly warm, and Saburo’s irritation with his wife isn’t helping. The poet smooths his distinguished, graying goatee and straightens his stiff, new, court kimono, even though it doesn’t need straightening. Footsteps whisper past in the corridor outside the room where he waits to meet t
he warlord of Yodo Castle.
As if it weren’t unnerving enough to be summoned by the new daimyō without explanation, why couldn’t his wife learn to hold her tongue? She’s given him three sons and a daughter, and is still as beautiful as on the day he’d met her, but her understanding of what it means to be a supportive helpmeet leaves much to be desired. How hard would it have been to say something encouraging, instead of bemoaning the fact that he’d agreed to meet Lord Inaba on butsumetsu, a bad luck day? As if he had a choice.
The more he tries not to worry about it, the more he worries about it. And then he worries about worrying, because dwelling on thoughts of bad luck might attract it.
He should try to distract himself by writing a poem. Yes, that’s what he’ll do. He casts about the nondescript room for inspiration. The plum blossoms painted on the folding screen? No. They’re not the least bit remarkable, despite being picked out in gold. The single bird trilling in the garden outside? That’s beneath his notice too. He’s already written a famous poem about uguisu. But what about that small spider, sitting in its web up in the corner? That has possibilities. Had it been allowed to live on purpose, or was it merely missed by the servants?
Voices approach in the corridor outside, and he spins toward the door, but they soon fade. He plucks at the chin tie of his hat. Is it too loose? It is too loose. What if it slips when he bows before Lord Inaba? What a disaster if it fell off, right in front of the man whose favor could vault him into the loftiest heights of Kyoto society! He summons the servant standing at attention outside the door.
The factotum fumbles around under Saburo’s chin, and the poet begins to regret fussing with his valet’s work. Now it’s too tight. He opens his mouth to demand that the hapless retainer fetch someone who knows what he’s doing, when a guard in Lord Inaba’s livery flings opens the door, announcing that he’s here to escort the esteemed poet into His Excellency’s presence.
The Last Tea Bowl Thief Page 13