Uchida’s head snaps up.
“Hikitoru? It’s been found?”
“I still have to perform some tests,” she replies, “but yes, I’m pretty sure that the tea bowl I saw last Friday was the one Yakibō called Hiki-toru.”
“When will you know for sure?”
“By next Monday. I might finish sooner, but just between you and me, I’m trying to delay handing over the results for as long as possible. As soon as I give the report to my boss, the tea bowl will be returned to the temple it was stolen from. And the head priest there . . . well, let’s just say that a foreign woman is the last person he’d allow to study it.”
“I’m sorry,” Uchida says, perplexed, “but which temple are you talking about?”
“Senkō-ji. In Tokyo. Hikitoru was reported stolen from their treasure house in 1945. According to the police inspector in charge of the case, that makes them the owner of record.”
“But . . . they’re not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because long before it was stolen from Senkō-ji, it was stolen from us.”
“From you?”
“In a manner of speaking. Yakibō entrusted my nine-times-greatgrandfather with his dying wish. But my ancestor couldn’t fulfill his vow, because he needed that tea bowl to make the offering, and it was stolen before he had the chance.”
“The same ancestor who tried to exorcize the ghost in the Hayashis’ Old Kiln?”
“Yes.” Uchida searches her face for a long moment. Then he grabs his cane and levers himself to his feet.
“Come. There’s something I want to show you.”
He stumps out of the building and she follows him through the gate to the priests’ private garden. Picking her way along well-worn stones sunk into a carpet of pillowy moss, the clamor of the outside world recedes. In this gently sculpted landscape, the quiet music of a waterfall trickling over smooth stones is interrupted only by the cheeps of tiny green birds, flitting through a plum tree’s leafy branches. Cedars that were giants long before she was born shade a red maple whose lacy parasol of leaves cascades to the ground around a gnarled trunk. The priest steps up onto the stone threshold of a small house at the very end. Even if she hadn’t seen the characters spelling “Uchida” next to the entrance, the way he opens the door and walks inside without hesitating tells her this is where he lives.
He doesn’t have to duck as he enters, and neither does she. As he fetches her a pair of slippers that’s not three sizes too small, he explains that when he took over the temple from his father, he used his patrimony to rebuild the head priest’s house to his scale.
“It’s a luxury,” he admits, a bit sheepishly. “But when you spend most of your waking hours feeling like an ox in a teahouse, it’s good to come home to a place where you don’t have to worry about bumping your head every time you turn around.”
“I know what you mean.” Does she ever.
The house is new, but constructed in the time-honored way. Planed wooden beams frame plaster walls the greenish-gold of fresh hay, and the tatami mats beneath her feet are smooth and springy. The main room is bare except for a low table in the center, surrounded by three plump cushions with backrests, and a short wooden chair. Uchida disappears into the kitchen. A hot water pot gurgles, and when he returns with the tea tray, he pours a cup for her, inviting her to sit for a few moments while he retrieves what he wants to show her.
The sliding doors to the cupboards lining the walls are brushed with a flock of sparrows, but Robin barely glances at them, because even the most enchanting of paintings is no match for the lush landscape framed by the window that stretches across the lower half of the far wall. Viewed from her seat at the low table, the composition of waterfall, maple, and tumbling stones rivals anything she’s seen hanging in a museum.
Uchida returns, carrying a bulky indigo-dyed carrying cloth, its faded wave design stretched over a collection of angular objects. Lowering himself stiffly to the chair across from her, he sets the bundle on the floor next to him and unknots the corners. He lifts out a kiri- wood box that’s been polished by time, and sets it on the table. The characters brushed across the top read “Hatsu-koi” —First Love—and the stamp in the bottom left corner is Yoshi Takamatsu’s.
Robin snatches it up, in disbelief. First Love is the fifth of Saburo’s Eight Attachments. She pries off the lid. Empty.
“What happened to the tea bowl inside?”
Uchida’s only answer is to line up six other boxes next to it.
Ude-jiman. Mikudasu. Kanzen-shugi. Ganko. Yabō. Fukushu.
“What . . .? How . . .?” She picks them up, one after the other, but they’re all empty.
“I can see that you know what these are.” Uchida takes a sip of tea.
“The Eight Attachments,” she whispers. “Where are the tea bowls they belong to?”
“Long gone. Except—you now tell me—Hikitoru.” He inclines his head. “Which, I hope you’ll agree, ought to be returned to me, not to that temple in Tokyo.”
“This is . . .” Unbelievable. She can’t take it in. “Where did you get these?”
Uchida refills her teacup, then his own. His backrest creaks as he leans back.
“Shortly before he died, Yakibō asked to see my nine-times-great grandfather. He made him promise to use the tea bowl he’d named Hikitoru to perform a ceremony on his behalf after he died, because he’d become too sick to do it himself. After the funeral, my ancestor accompanied Yakibō’s apprentice back to the kiln so he could fulfill his vow, but Hikitoru was gone. These empty boxes are all they found.
“They couldn’t figure out who could have taken it, because nearly everyone in town had been at the funeral. I’m sure they looked for it, but finding it didn’t become a priority until Hattsan’s next firing. When he went to unload the kiln for the first time after Yakibō died, every piece was broken. When it happened again, two months later, the apprentice became so convinced that the ghost of Yakibō was haunting the kiln, he abandoned it and began constructing a new one. That’s when my ancestor realized the seriousness of the vow he’d made—Yakibō’s spirit would refuse to move on to the next life until he fulfilled his promise.
“But by then, Hikitoru had been gone for months. The thief’s trail was cold. It wasn’t until later that summer that he had a small stroke of luck.” He tops up her teacup. “Orders for tea bowls began to pour in to local potters after the daimyō of Yodo Castle in Kyoto conducted a grand public tea ceremony with a Shigaraki-style bowl, and they became wildly fashionable. Every member of Lord Inaba’s circle wanted one, and retainers arrived in droves to commission them. My nine-times-great-grandfather overhead a samurai who’d been lucky enough to be present at the tea ceremony describe the unusually shaped tea bowl that had been used, and knew it must be Hikitoru.
“He packed his bag and went to Kyoto, determined to tell Lord Inaba that Hikitoru was stolen, to insist that it be returned. Of course, he learned pretty quickly that a poor parish priest didn’t have a prayer of getting closer to the Lord of Yodo Castle than the outermost gate. He did manage to discover the name of the thief, though. Twenty years before, an itinerant ne’er-do-well had repaid Yakibō’s hospitality by stealing a tea bowl from him, and that very same wastrel had risen to become the daimyō’s court poet.”
“Court poet? But . . . Lord Inaba’s court poet was Saburo!” Her eyes grow wide. “Are you suggesting that the tea bowl he brought back from his pilgrimage wasn’t a gift? That Saburo stole Yabō from Yakibō?”
Could that be true? Her gaze falls on the box with the characters for yabd brushed across the top. She picks it up.
“But if he stole the tea bowl named Yabō, what’s this?”
The tiny, precise handwriting on this box doesn’t look anything like the elegant calligraphy on the one marked Unmei. She searches her phone for a photo, compares it to the box on the table. Passes the phone to Uchida.
“The tea bowl in that picture is one of Yakib
ō’s few known works,” she explains. “It was called Yabō, before the name on its box was changed to Unmei. If the one that belonged to your box was the real Yabō, is that one a copy? Or is it the other way around?”
The priest studies it, unsure.
“My ancestor’s account only mentions Hikitoru, but the potter’s apprentice told him that Yakibō made a number of tea bowls before he chose one to represent his ‘attachment.’ Perhaps he gave one of the rejects to the poet . . .?”
But Robin doesn’t reply. If the boxes on the table really had contained Yoshi Takamatsu tea bowls representing the Eight Attachments —tea bowls that must have existed long before Saburo penned his masterwork, since their maker died before those eight classic poems were written—Yakibō did influence Saburo. This is the proof she needs. But she’ll only be able to turn this discovery into a glorious academic career if . . .
“Will you let me study these boxes?” she pleads. “Prove what you’ve just told me is true? The implications for Saburo scholarship are . . . are . . .” She throws her arms wide, at a loss for words.
The priest regards her thoughtfully.
“Yes,” he says, setting down his teacup. “But I want something in return.”
“Anything in my power.”
“My ancestor returned from Kyoto empty-handed. But he passed down Yakibō’s deathbed obligation to his son, who passed it down to his son, and so on, until finally, it’s been passed to me. If you return Hikitoru so I can perform that ceremony and put his spirit to rest, these boxes are yours. With my blessing.”
“Yes,” she agrees, stunned by his generosity. “Thank you. Yes!”
But Hikitoru is in Tokyo. And her boss has agreed to hand it over to the head priest of Senkō-ji a week from Monday.
“I’ll need proof,” she says. “To show my boss and satisfy the police. We’ll need to prove that you’re the rightful owner. Do you have any documents that authenticate the oral history? Did Yakibō record his wishes, so he could be sure they’d be carried out after he was gone?”
“Not in any detail. But my ancestor did. When he realized he was dying and wouldn’t be able to fulfill his vow, he wrote down exactly what the potter had asked him to do. That’s how I know what happened.”
“Is it signed?”
“It is. But it’s stamped with my ancestor’s seal, not the potter’s.”
“Is it dated?”
“Yes, the year he died. Genbun 2.”
Robin consults her phone and converts it to a modern date. 1737. The Eight Attachments wasn’t discovered, clutched in Saburo’s cold, dead hands, until 1753. The tea bowls predate the poems by more than a decade. Proof doesn’t get more ironclad than that.
“Do you have that document here?” she asks. “Can I see it?”
“I do,” he says, “but I’m afraid you can’t.”
“Oh.” She’s taken aback. “Why not?”
“It was meant to be read only by those charged with fulfilling the vow.”
“But . . .”
“I’m sorry.”
“All right.” She tries another approach. “But if I’m not allowed to see it, could you read it over again? Look for a loophole in the wording, something that would allow us to . . .?”
Uchida is shaking his head.
“My nine-times-great grandfather did try to, ah, ‘interpret’ Yakibō’s instructions when they discovered Hikitoru was gone. After the first kiln disaster, he tried performing the ceremony using a different piece of Yakibō’s pottery, but the next time Hayashi-san stoked the kiln, everything exploded again. The potter’s spirit refused to be satisfied with anything but Hikitoru.” Uchida spreads his hands helplessly. “I’m afraid I have to fulfill his instructions to the letter.”
Robin sighs. She believes Uchida’s tale, but her boss will want more than an oral history. If the priest allowed her to borrow the account his ancestor had written, the paper could be tested and dated. That would keep Hashimoto-san from handing Hikitoru over to Senkō-ji until more evidence is gathered. Without it . . . well, all she can do is try.
She clicks on her phone camera.
“Let me take pictures of the boxes to show my boss. I’ll do everything I can to persuade her that Hikitoru should be returned to you.”
40.
Present-Day Japan
MONDAY, APRIL 7
Tokyo
For the first time in forever, Robin wakes up before her alarm. She faces the mirror, cheeks flushed with the fever of discovery, eyes shining with an anticipation she hasn’t felt in years. Between the boxes calling to her from Shigaraki, and Mamoru Hayashi’s pottery shards burning a hole in her handbag, she’s never felt more alive. She dresses with care, considering it a good omen that even her hair is cooperating today. She’ll need all the luck she can get, to convince her boss that Hikitoru ought to be returned to Uchida-bōsan, rather than that small-minded priest at Senkō-ji.
When the elevator opens on the twenty-second floor, she waves a cheerful “Good morning!” to the receptionist and breezes through the security gate. Stopping before Eriko Hashimoto’s door, she straightens her jacket, and raps twice.
“Come.”
“Good morning,” Robin says, entering the light-filled office. Hashimoto-san is at her desk, frowning over some paperwork. She looks up, and removes her reading glasses.
“Oh, it’s you. Can you go straight to the lab this morning? I’m getting some pressure to deliver results on that Yakibō tea bowl. That lot of Bizen-ware can slip a day or two, if you don’t finish testing it by the end of the week.”
“Understood. But before I get started, may I show you something?”
Perching on the visitor chair, she recounts her weekend visit to Shigaraki, reciting Uchida-bōsan’s tale of thwarted obligation. Finally, she passes her phone across the desk, displaying the seven boxes bearing the names of Saburo’s Attachments.
“You see?” She can’t keep the excitement from her voice. “If the tests on Hikitoru prove it was made by Yakibō—and I’m certain they will—it won’t just be another example of his work. It’ll be the eighth in a set of tea bowls that correspond to Saburo’s Eight Attachments. The implications for Japanese literature will be absolutely groundbreaking. The study of one of Japan’s most important works of poetry will be . . .” she waves her hands, searching for the right words, “. . . changed forever!”
But the crease between her boss’s eyebrows only deepens.
“I’m sure the head priest of Senkō-ji will be very gratified to hear that,” she says. She passes the phone back, mouth pressed into a grim line.
“No, don’t you see? He isn’t the rightful owner,” Robin insists. “Hikitoru was stolen from Shigaraki long before it was given to Senkō-ji, which means that Uchida-bōsan is the rightful heir.”
“Where’s the proof?”
“This is the proof!” She holds up the photo. “How could he have these other boxes if his story isn’t true? I know we need to run tests to authenticate them and match them to the one in our safe, but once that’s done, there shouldn’t be any question.”
Hashimoto is shaking her head.
“I’m not sure Mr. Fujimori can be convinced of that, but you’re welcome to try.”
“Mr. Fujimori?”
Why would the big boss be involved in this? His specialty is selling art, not authenticating ceramics.
“The head priest of Senkō-ji was on the phone to us before you’d even left the temple on Friday,” Hashimoto tells her, face pinched with distaste. “He’s demanding that the tea bowl be returned without delay. I tried to tell him that we can’t deliver it to Senkō-ji until it’s authenticated, but he insisted on speaking to . . . someone else.”
A man. He’d insisted on speaking to a man. Hashimoto-san’s tight smile says she’s no more pleased than Robin to be dismissed for that reason.
“We should at least hold onto it until Uchida-bōsan’s claim can be investigated,” Robin argues. “It’s only fair.
It would be wrong to give it to Senkō-ji without—”
“I don’t disagree,” Hashimoto says, cutting short her pleas. “But it’s out of my hands. You’ll have to persuade Fujimori-san. I wish you luck, but be prepared for him to be . . . unreceptive. His interest is in making the most profitable decision for the company, and I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t already have an agreement with Senkō-ji to represent them if they sell Hikitoru.”
41.
Present-Day Japan
TUESDAY, APRIL 8
Tokyo
Nori sips her bitter Metropolitan Police tea as she waits for Inspector Anzai. The interview room looks exactly like the ones in TV detective dramas, with one mirrored wall, a small table bolted to the floor, and two hard chairs facing each other.
You’re here as a witness, she reminds herself, not a suspect. At least, she doesn’t think she’s a suspect. How could she be? She hadn’t even been alive when Hikitoru was stolen in 1945.
So, why does she feel guilty, even though she has nothing to confess? Every infraction she’s ever committed returns to haunt her. The five thousand yen note she’d found on the street, but didn’t turn in to the police box. The lipstick she’d stolen on a dare in middle school. The—
“Thank you for coming in to assist us with our investigation,” says Inspector Anzai, striding through the door. He slaps a folder on the table, and Nori jumps as if zapped by a live wire. Even upside down, she can read her name on the thick file. How could the police have so much information on her in such a short time? She wipes her palms on her skirt, shifts in the uncomfortable seat.
“As I mentioned on the phone,” the inspector begins, “you’ve been called in to make an official statement explaining how you came to be in possession of the stolen tea bowl, Hikitoru.”
The Last Tea Bowl Thief Page 21