“Inside my nightclub,” Shibata said.
“Was that the one I went to?”
“No, no, before. Everything Japan changing then. Bernie love jazz and booking for me American soldier, Japanese and Filipino cats. Everyone play bebop, then. The country changing, opening, growing. Hard work, that club. But it burn down.”
“Burned down?”
“Insurance problem.” Shibata laughed. “I downsize now. No one insure this place. Too small.” He handed Jamie another photo of her father standing with a tall, handsome Japanese woman, about her father’s height.
“This girl nice. Takarazuka.”
“What’s that?” Jamie said.
Hiroshi said, “Takarazuka is a theater with all female actresses. This woman must have played the male parts she’s so tall.”
“She only play men. Big star that time. Famous. She love your father, but she kill herself.”
“What?” Jamie said.
“Not because your father, because she crazy. Your father very upset. Sad, she so pretty.”
Ken came out of the backroom where he had been preparing coffee, carrying a tray with dainty cups. His thick, muscled arms, in a tight cotton shirt, flexed as he set out the cups.
“This photo 1959,” Shibata said. Her father stood with young Japanese men in baggy button down shirts, pleated pants and round glasses. “Some these men at funeral. Your father, he respect Japanese people. That time, most military and American looking down us. We don’t like them either most time, but have to get their money, right?” Shibata let out an explosive little chuckle.
Jamie looked at the crinkle-edged prints and faded photos. Her father looked calm and relaxed, like she remembered him. He was never drunk around her that she remembered. A photo of him reading a book reminded her of when she used to sit in his lap and read books with him in the study, not always understanding the content, just loving the music of the words.
In the next photo, Jamie, her father, mother, and school friends sat in a boat on the Sumida River, everyone in light summer kimonos. For her, the best day of the whole year was the fireworks festival. Her father rented a small boat with a little kitchen and a rice-stalk mat roof. Boats jammed the river, vying for the best view of the phosphorescent colors that burst and dripped and dissolved into the black canvas of the night.
“I loved Tokyo summers! Oh, I lost so much,” Jamie said. “Can I make copies of these?”
“Copy? No, no, you take all. They all yours.” Shibata pulled another one up.
“Is that me?” Jamie asked, holding the photo of a young girl on a swing in a park. She could recognize her mother and father holding the chain on either side of the swing.
Shibata touched her shoulder. “You a beauty even then. I take that photo. In Asakusa. That playground still there maybe. Just across street. Your father joke it is Jamie’s private playground.”
Hiroshi politely looked at the photos one by one as Jamie passed them to him, then handed them back to Shibata.
Shibata put the top back on the shoebox and handed it to Jamie. “So, you go to archive, get his things?”
“We got robbed outside the archive.” Jamie dropped her eyes.
“What?” said Shibata, his eyes wide with alarm. “What happen? They take everything?”
Hiroshi set his coffee cup down.
“Hiroshi chased them and got some of it back.” Jamie touched Hiroshi’s arm.
Shibata looked at Jamie touching Hiroshi, pretended not to notice, and pressed for more. “What they look like? They speak Japanese?”
Hiroshi said, “They were Korean, maybe a gang that robs houses. We caught one, but he won’t talk.”
Shibata rubbed his head. He patted Jamie on the hand. “I talk detective in Japanese, OK?”
Shibata switched to Japanese to speak to Hiroshi. “When I talked to Bernie, he was going to publish what he found in the archives, but he said it’s better I don’t know.”
“You don’t think he stumbled on the robbery by accident?” Hiroshi asked.
“How many times do you police need to hear things before you get it?”
“How do you know it wasn’t bad luck?”
“I know. I came to the bar one day, last February or so, and Bernie was here, so drunk he couldn’t walk. He had a key to my bar, from long ago, so he let himself in and proceeded to get ‘stinko,’ as he said.”
“I thought he stopped drinking.”
“He did, but he got nervous. Fell off the wagon. He kept saying ‘poison, poison,’ but he was so drunk it made no sense.”
“Poison?”
“Then, he started singing.” Shibata finally laughed. “He was lying right here on the floor, until we put a blanket on him, and Ken and Setsuko and I took him back to the detox hospital.”
“What poison?”
“I don’t know. And don’t tell Jamie about his one time drinking again. Maybe she understands a little Japanese.” Shibata glanced over at her to see if she caught what he’d said and then went to the back room, quickly returning with a small spray bottle that he handed to Jamie. “Here, take this.”
“What is it? I can’t read it. Perfume?” Jamie started to open it.
Shibata snatched it from her. “Pepper spray. Strongest kind. You spray anyone come close you, OK?”
“I don’t need this,” Jamie said, setting it on the bar top back towards him.
Shibata pushed it back towards her. “I get from guy who come my bar. He say best brand.”
Jamie shook her head and left it on the bar.
Shibata reached over and put it in the inside pocket of her jacket. “You stubborn like you father. I say again, you go back New York today. Come back Tokyo later.”
Jamie shook her head no.
“He’s right, you know,” Hiroshi said. “You should go back to New York.”
Jamie looked up at Hiroshi. “I’m not leaving until I get my father’s manuscript and his speech and find out what happened to him.”
The bar had gotten dark as the sun dipped below the tall buildings on the main street and a chill came in through the half-open door. Shibata slid a colorful furoshiki under the box of photos, pulled the corners up and tied them to make a handle on top to carry the box. He handed it to her with two hands and a pleasant little bow of his head. “Take to New York.”
Jamie took the shoebox of photos with both hands as tears welled up. Shibata and Hiroshi both steadied and comforted her, one on each side. She nodded she was all right. “Oh, this jet lag,” she said, and sniffled and smiled.
“I have other thing from your father, papers he gave me. I send you in New York is best. What your address there?” Shibata said, not meeting her eyes.
Jamie sniffled again and said, “Send them to my father’s house.”
“It not his house anymore. Is your house,” Shibata said, his eyes opening wide to see if she understood. He handed her a set of papers.
“What is it?” Jamie asked.
Hiroshi took the documents and looked them over. “The deed to the house, and instructions for you to have it in the event of his death.”
“I sorry, he give me that and I forget where is. I think there is one more document, too. Important, so I look again. So long ago, he give me these, for safe keep. I not so good organize.”
“We have to go. I need to meet Setsuko.” Jamie gathered up everything on the bar and gave Shibata a hug.
“Is better return New York,” Shibata said again. He looked at Hiroshi, pleading with his eyes.
Outside the bar, Hiroshi looked at the flowers placed on the curb for the spirit of the thief, Sato. A wrapping of clear plastic kept the flowers from freezing and drying out too quickly in the cold.
Jamie smiled and hugged Shibata again. Ken came out and stood beside Shibata in front of the bar, both of them bowing again when Hiroshi and Jamie looked back one last time.
Chapter 22
When Hiroshi pushed open the door to the sword store, Suzuki, the sword deal
er, was knotting a string around a sword handle. Suzuki was not in his sagyo-bakama work outfit, but in a more formal iaidogi. The shirt, sash and pleated trousers were all neat, clean and sharply pressed. The blue and grey chrysanthemum pattern matched his tight, grey ponytail. Takamatsu’s contacts, Hiroshi had to admit, were different from everyone Hiroshi knew.
“You seem to be taking an uncommon interest in swords, detective. Are you considering one for the young lady?”
“I’m less interested in the swords than in the people who use them.”
“Swords are often the more interesting. Each sword lives its own life in the world.”
Jamie walked over to the sword racks and put her hand out to touch one, then pulled back. “Are these real?”
“What did she say?” Suzuki asked Hiroshi.
“She wants to know if they’re real,” Hiroshi said.
“Are all foreign women like that?”
“She’s only half-foreign.” In English, Hiroshi told Jamie, “They’re real, all right.”
Jamie ran her hand over the scabbard of a long katana sword and walked around the store, standing before the racks and racks of swords, mesmerized.
Suzuki pulled out a sword and set it on the counter for Hiroshi. “This is a tanto sword, the kind we discussed last time. Using the shorter tanto sword is a lost art. For samurai, the shorter swords were just as important.”
Hiroshi wondered why Suzuki was showing him this, but tried to push down his American impatience. If he let Suzuki talk, he’d eventually get to the point of why he called. He’d seen Takamatsu chat for an hour with an informant to get one little tip. The relationship, Takamatsu had said, was more important than the information.
Suzuki kept working as he talked. “My father fed us during the war by retying the special tsukamaki patterns the officers liked. After the war, the officers had to sell their swords to feed their families—the last treasure sold in any household. It was like selling your soul and the souls of your ancestors. My father bought them for next to nothing.”
Hiroshi observed his quick, practiced method of pulling two strands of braided string taut over the ray skin handle, and doing the same on the other side. Suzuki pulled the tip of the string around, pressed it under and over the grip and tucked its end into and under itself.
“My father was detained when the Americans rounded up all the swords, hundreds of thousands of them. The Americans dumped them in the Akabane Arsenal, where they rusted. It would have been like dumping priceless European artworks in a barn. That raised the price for the remaining ones, but if you were caught with a sword, penalties were severe.”
“Your father hid them?”
“He never told me where. Outside Tokyo, I guess, until the Occupation was over. My father always made sure the string fit perfectly at the end. I never learned how he gauged the length on the final turns of the knot. Lots of small skills like that get lost.” Suzuki held the sword up, turning it back and forth under the overhead light.
Hiroshi took a step away from the counter. Jamie came over and leaned close.
Suzuki wiped the blade from handle to point with a dry cloth and dusted fine powder along the steel. He wiped the blade clean and checked for blemishes under the light. At last, he put small drops of choji mineral-clove oil on the blade, working it in with a cloth and wiping off the extra with a cut of soft paper before sliding the blade into a black lacquer saya scabbard on the counter between them.
Hiroshi waited until he was finished and pulled out a list from his pocket. “We compiled a list of sword buyers. I wonder if you recognize any of these names?”
“Did you check these buyers against the registered owners?”
“They were all registered.”
Suzuki put on his glasses to appraise the list, slowing his finger next to a few names, but never stopping, until he came to the end with a shrug. “I’ve heard some of these guys sell historically valuable swords abroad.”
“So, no one on this list is worth checking into,” Hiroshi sighed. “Another dead end.”
“In Tokyo, there are no dead ends.”
Hiroshi folded the list back in his pocket.
“Did you ask Takamatsu about transporting a sword for that collector?”
“Is that why you called me?” Hiroshi wondered if Suzuki was finally getting to the point.
“The payment is high. Sword collectors have money.”
“And information?”
“The buyer knows swords and knows people. Runs a restaurant in Shin-Okubo.”
“Korea-town.”
“When Takamatsu goes, he’ll find out what you need to know.”
Hiroshi should have listened the first time to what Suzuki said. That’s why he called again, to insist Takamatsu go to the sword buyer. But maybe Takamatsu wanted Hiroshi to know about all this, too, to participate in the process. If it were just about money, Takamatsu would have done it on his own without involving Hiroshi. “I’ll get Takamatsu to do it.”
Suzuki said, “Have Takamatsu call me here. I’ll give him the number.” He picked up the sword he had just cleaned and polished. “Want to try this?”
“Where? Here?” Hiroshi looked around the small shop, confused.
“Out back,” Suzuki said. He locked the front door and turned the “Open” sign to “Closed.”
“I don’t know how to handle a sword,” Hiroshi said.
“The girl will like it,” Suzuki said.
Hiroshi turned to ask her. “Jamie? Want to see one in action?”
Jamie jumped. She was standing by a row of short swords, and shook her head as if woken from a dream. “I shot a gun once.”
Suzuki nodded for Hiroshi to translate, and then replied, “With a sword you look your opponent in the eye, both of you equal distance from death. Guns are made in factories and used from far away. They are machines. They dehumanize and intervene in the moment before death. Swords are extensions of human beings. They move as a human moves.”
Hiroshi didn’t translate for Jamie. He was thinking about what Suzuki said as he followed him into his workroom. Three worktops were covered in handles, hilts and tools. Screw-handle clamps held blades and scabbards. The far side of the room was lined by sliding doors with sagging, rippled glass that rattled when Suzuki slid one open to reveal a garden outside.
From the threshold of the sliding door, Hiroshi took in the simplicity of the garden’s design. Tall shrubs grew thick along one crumbling brick wall. Bamboo lattice concealed the other two. Pine trees pruned as tight as Suzuki’s ponytail arched over a cascade of rocks. A dry pool of light-grey pebbles was raked into undulating waves, with a few pebbles scattered out of place.
Suzuki stepped into wooden geta clogs to walk across the thick carpet of moss. In the middle of the garden, he set up a tameshigiri woven tatami mat on a bamboo holder that stood as tall as a man’s shoulders.
Jamie stepped down from the wooden overhang into a pair of wooden geta clogs watching Suzuki’s every move. Hiroshi stayed where he was on the overhang close to the sliding doors.
“I’ve been working on this blade for a long time.” Suzuki adjusted the target. “I’ll probably give this one to the sword museum, get it designated non-exportable.”
Suzuki brought his body to perfect stillness two steps from the practice target. He set one foot forward and the other back, working his feet in for traction. He drew the blade from the scabbard and pointed it straight ahead. To Hiroshi, the garden seemed to fall still, as if all sound and motion had ceased.
In two whispering strokes, two angled pieces of target toppled with soft thumps. The remaining piece trembled in place. Suzuki stood immobile with the sword pointed away and his right foot forward until the cut-off tatami pieces came to a rest. Stepping back with a sharp sideways snap of the sword and the traditional chiburi swipe of the blade to ritually cleanse it of blood, Suzuki slipped the sword into its sheath with a soft click.
Jamie said, “That was so fast, I couldn’t e
ven see it. What…?” She leaned forward, trying to process what she had just witnessed.
Suzuki turned to her and spoke in measured words. “Like water, swords exist in different states. A moving blade is unseen, hidden in the blur of motion, felt but not perceived. The rest of the time, its stillness allows its beauty to be revered.”
Hiroshi translated as Jamie stood entranced.
Suzuki turned to Hiroshi. “Want to try?”
“I was in the kendo club at high school and college,” Hiroshi explained. “But that was a wooden practice sword. I’ve never used a real sword before.” Hiroshi thought back to the dojo practice room for kendo at college. The grill-front helmet and thick pads blocked the blows of wooden swords during the long after-school practices.
“You aren’t Japanese until you do,” Suzuki said, stepping towards Hiroshi.
“Are you going to try it?” Jamie asked Hiroshi.
Hiroshi shook his head no. “It’s harder than you think.”
He remembered how liberating and invigorating it was to shout and strike an opponent with full force. He remembered, too, the look of Ayana’s flushed, sweaty face when she peeled off her helmet and shook out her hair, walking across the practice room to see how he was at the end of the workout.
He had given up Ayana, given up kendo, just like he’d always given up on the most important things too soon, stopping when they started to move toward greater meaning, shying away when they started to touch him closely, never letting people or practices or even work deepen inside him.
Suzuki—finished—bowed to the cut mats and turned to Hiroshi. “Let Takamatsu know right away about this sword delivery.”
“Hai,” was all Hiroshi could answer.
Chapter 23
Hiroshi had a hard time finding the kissaten coffee shop where they were supposed to meet Setsuko. The grid-like streets of Ginza, rebuilt during the Occupation, were just as confusing to Hiroshi as the winding, twisting alleys of the rest of Tokyo. He kept giving new directions to Ueno, apologizing each time since he suspected Ueno was about at his limit with Hiroshi after the night before. After helping Saito with security preparations at the International Forum, Ueno had to come back to chauffeur Hiroshi and Jamie around.
The Moving Blade Page 14