Made In Japan

Hana made her way to the main building, until the heavy scent of incense bore down on the clear air.

The body lay in an elevated cask in front of the altar, and on either side sat Ukai’s immediate family, Noru and her son Tako, flanked by a sparse number of elderly guests. Hana found them a rough lot, more than one bore a facial scar. It was not high society and it certainly put Tako into context.

Beyond the body in the depths of the shadowy interior, gold leaf flickered across the offerings like fish scales, the light coming to rest for a moment on the cheeks of the serene Buddha. Out on the airless terrace, Hana chose to kneel in empty space on one of a pair of zabuton cushions, beside an elderly lady with dyed black hair. The powdered woman wore a light, summer, gauze kimono, coloured like raspberry fool.

In the heavy heat all Hana’s discomfort focused on her dislike for this misshapen jacket deforming the elderly woman. She watched as a trickle of sweat released a dark line of temporary hair dye from her temple. A triangle of white handkerchief trimmed with lace arrested the falling beads at the pressure of her lined hands. The woman interrupted her gaze and introduced herself,

‘Saito-san.’

Hana bowed her head in return.

Hana was thankful she could not see the body of the old man. Trails of curling smoke from incense sticks below the casket, and the waxy blooms of lime green chrysanthemums, began to add to her nausea. As the monk began chanting mantras, Noru and the other guests added their voices.

Saito-san rose uneasily to add another quill of incense to the ashes in the copper bowl and returned to her cushion. Hana became nervous that she too would be expected to take part and that she too should make some offering. The sweat ran behind her knees and, during the quiet hypnotic drone of the priest, she followed the rigorous curve of the mighty dragon across the beam beneath the eaves; like the reputation of the master builder who had raised it, fading in strength with the peeling paint.

Jess still had not appeared and Hana worried that the square void of cushion beside her yawned like an insult. But, as she’d said, who was Ukai to them? They hardly knew him and the ceremony was so unfamiliar it belonged to another world. As the monk rang the bell it sounded like a human voice. A feeling akin to heat exhaustion took hold and she forgot how she found herself sitting in the small gathering amid the haze of stifled and conflicting emotions around her. After more prayers had been said the mourners began to rise individually, like random seeds on the air, as the incense was left to drift over and purify the body.

A man’s shoes, black, pointed and highly polished, passed closely, as she knelt. Iwata paced over to speak with the priest, who addressed him,

‘Iwata-san.’

Iwata-san bowed ‘Kare wa konakatta?’

‘Arimasen,’ the priest replied.

Hana listened to them but couldn’t make out much. He’s not here?

She understood very little – they had expected another guest? She watched Saito-san get up with difficulty and peck, in two-toed wooden geta, towards the priest and the shiny-shoed man with matching hair oil.

‘Kare wa doko ni imasu ka?’ she asked.

Hana heard – ‘And where is he?’

Saito-san bowed reverentially over her heavy obi.

‘Mochizuki wa Arimasen.’ Who ? Hana wondered was Mochizuki?

The small party was led to the back of the traditional buildings by the priest who paused and smiled at her.

‘Welcome. I am Hakuin, abbot here. ‘

She might have taken his prolonged look as recognition, since he hesitated as though he had a great deal more to say. But he was distracted and his eyes left her to follow a tall woman in the clean-cut Shimada jacket in the distance. Was it Miho? Hana couldn’t be sure as her silvered bob was hidden behind a veil. She had become a totem for the other guests who greeted and circled her as if they participated in a Japanese folk dance, and so Hana kept her distance.

Joining the trail of wry strangers retiring to the tatami room, she began to feel faint. They were a small, ageing crowd and many, clinging to the past in traditional dress, cooing over the tall, elegant woman. Hana couldn’t make out any of their exchange. Who were these strangers to her?

Iwata San acknowledged Saito, in the manner of one well-known to the other but fallen recent strangers.

They all asked after the Mochizuki, as if his absence would fill a vacuum.

A tentative woman in black approached Miho, her veil adding another layer of separation between them. Her caution was well chosen, as her reception remained cold and barely acknowledged. It was easy to read their lack of warmth for each another and the strange absence of connection among any of them.

She thought for a moment that the woman she took to be Miho had seen her. Falling in with the milling group, drifting with as much purpose as the eddying incense, she would eventually reach her beside the door. But the woman appeared to be skirting the line to find an alternative entrance.

Wordlessly ushered in by Tako, the guests filed inside, laying crisp white envelopes, tied with elaborate black knots, on a dish in the hall; money shrouded in elegance. With nothing to give, Hana clutched her wrist and bowed gently when it fell to her, excusing her own breach of etiquette. As the waves of nausea overcame her, she left the assembly to stand under the trees in the lifeless air.

The teahouse might just lie beside cool waters further into the grounds, and in the wilting heat she decided she should leave the strangers and try to find it.

Just as she was going, Noru approached her, asking if she would come to eat with them.

She felt obliged to follow and there was the consolation that she might find Miho to talk to, but when she joined the mourners the woman in the veil had gone.

Chapter 16

‘I am so sorry,’ Jess exclaimed, blowing into their room at the end of the day. ‘They kept me late for another class. You okay?’

‘You went to Tsukiji market?’

Jess raised a flat hand for her to wait, for her to stop right there. It looked as though it was a rehearsed denial.

The hand pushed further as Jess read her skepticism.

‘You didn’t go?’ Hana jumped to the conclusion she preferred.

‘I …’ Jess lingered. Nobody could easily challenge a silence.

Hana toyed with her hair, weaving the braids of a plait, waiting. She was sick of listening to silent replies. She should be told. But Jess had only to walk the length of their short room for her resolve to challenge her to dissolve. But a niggling disappointment that Jess could possibly be unreliable left her feeling insecure. She was strong, she was creative, and she was forgiving. Amaterasu. ‘Are you telling the truth, Jess?’ It was so little to ask.

Jess turned emphatically and looked at her wide-eyed and innocent.

Hana was as ready to swallow this as a pill. She bound the plait and said they missed her at the memorial.

Jess vehemently kicked aside an obstruction on the floor and mumbled about school as if she were offended to have been challenged.

Why was it, Hana wondered, with a sense of injustice, that Jess singled out her walking boots for attack? ‘I won’t ask why you couldn’t get them to assign someone else to class today and come with me.’

She left it open for Jess to convince her that she had had no choice in the matter and the effort she made to persuade her was payment enough. Hana did, however, have difficulty in imagining that Jess lacked the ability to coerce them into a timetable change for a memorial service.

In the small room, the clutter, lately an object for her own complaints, made the space smaller still.

‘I don’t know why they asked us to the ceremony,’ Jess said finally ‘Still, it’s not everyday you go to a reincarnation. How was it? ’

‘Very complicated and involves forceps.’

‘Forceps?’

‘For the rebirth.’

‘I didn’t know.’ Jess shifted uncomfortably.

‘And rubber gloves.’

Jess finally got it and laughed hard and loud. When the laughter trailed off, Hana opened up.

‘I had the feeling—’ She paused, not sure if she should broach it. ‘I had the feeling that the priest recognized me.’

Jess snorted. ‘You think he knew your mother? Some random Englishwoman from decades back?’ Hana closed the subject down, though she was on the back foot that afternoon.

She regretted mentioning it.

‘It can’t be that easy,’ Jess continued. ‘How old was this priest?’

‘He was old,’ Hana replied.

‘How old? I know you want to believe it but the chances of him knowing her are miniscule.’

Hana was hurt. It was, of course, unlikely and she dismissed the idea. She slumped resignedly and stuffed the neon laces inside her boots.

Jess felt obliged to be more encouraging. She was reluctant to raise the other option but she went ahead anyway.

‘Or maybe you look like him?’

Hana knit her brows.

‘I mean your own father.’ Jess’s tone was softer now. ‘How did he die, if you don’t mind me asking?’

Hana had never known a father and so could not mind.

‘I never said he died.’

Chapter 17

‘Un bel di, vedremo’

−Puccini, Madama Butterfly

Imperial Palace Hotel, Tokyo, 1989

Naomi was getting used to the heavy thread count of the cotton sheets on her bare skin. Changed daily, they barely bore a trace of his heavy sleep. At first, the starched arrival of room service, bringing so many scratched and buffeted chaffing dishes, had delighted them, though it had never been possible to eat it all. They had tired of the cloying delights of the international hotel and Josh now preferred to eat breakfast elsewhere, partly because he wanted the company bill to bear scrutiny, and because they had lived in the hotel for so much longer than expected.

Naomi was charged with finding a rental apartment and so far they had failed to agree on anything suitable. This morning they were again going to meet the agent who would find their rental in the city. Though Tokyo housed thirty eight million people there should be a good deal of choice out there for their budget; it was just that she didn’t speak the language and she had no idea where the signs might direct her.

Her morning start had become increasingly languid when the rest of her day stretched to a distant vanishing point.

Today, as he slipped the last limb into his blue suit, Josh warned, ‘It’ll be busy so do leave early.’

And, like a skimming stone, he threw the glossy city plan entitled ‘The Detailed Map of Tokyo for Business Man and Tourist’ onto the bed beside her.

‘I am neither.’ She reached to catch it and was genuinely daunted by the question of what lay between the two but Josh had no time for her existential meanderings this morning and was keen she first found them a place to live.

‘I’ll meet you there.’ He dropped a kiss on the crown of her head and left her alone with her question. He was generally more comfortable with imperatives and they would talk over breakfast.

In the three weeks since their arrival she recognized her rootless existence had begun to strain the relationship that she had cherished so much as to drop everything and follow him to nurture it. The heavy closure of the fire-retardant door reduced her to the privileged isolation of an inmate of a luxury Wandsworth prison. And this brought back thoughts of her home in Clapham. Annoyed at her own distortion of the privileges she enjoyed, it brought her once again to ask why she had made the rash decision to leave her course at the Architect’s Institute in London and follow him to Tokyo.

If she did not leave the room soon she would suffocate. She threw the map aside and leapt out of bed. She left the lobby in summer whites, prompting the hotel staff to whisper about the ghost on the 47th floor who kept time like no other guest among the business clients in the hotel.

At Shibuya Station she was caught in the spring tide of dark heads, where a crowd the size of a billing at the Hammersmith Palais negotiated six or more optional exits. She was carried across the eddying tide of people to a pillar where the current divided as if at the foot of a bridge spanning a river in spate. She retrieved the city plan wedged in her bag; Josh would be waiting for her. A master in origami had ingeniously folded the map and once opened it clung unhelpfully to her body as a set of streamers escaped on a strong downdraft. She gave up trying to scan the oscillating paper as it flapped aggressively at her face and tore as she tried to restrain it. He had given her a couple of landmarks to head for; first was the Hachikō Statue on the south-west side of the station. Below her a grid of crossings led like an Escher print to every point on the compass in a Kafkaesque joke. From one of the branches she should take the hill up to where they were to meet. She checked her watch and it was nearing 9.30 a.m. She was lost for a lead and he would be exasperated again. She closed her eyes.

Though now used to the city’s disregard for personal space, she became aware of an individual standing beside her.

‘You lost? Want some help?’

The girl was about her age, unusually tall and her hair was styled in a short bob. Naomi began folding the map, very roughly.

‘I’m trying to find the Hachikō exit.’

Her short, close-fitting cotton dress was covered in old roses. And she led her towards the exit.

‘You know about Hachikō?’

All it took was a shake of the head and she started on a story as if she were a complementary city guide.

‘Every day an old professor left his dog outside the station for the day when he commuted.’

Her English was good. She probably made a habit of picking up lost souls for language practice. A dog story. Naomi looked at her watch.

The girl upped her pace and continued her explanation.

‘He was old and—’ They scuttled down a flight of stairs on a second wave of commuters ‘—one time he didn’t return and the dog waited for his master for days.’

They emerged from the station at street level, to an obscured sun. Beneath animated screen-clad buildings the massing crowds were cowed in the electronic din of commercialism. Where would Josh be waiting? It was the most kinetic urban space she had ever seen and she drew her attention back to the girl, glad for a moment to have a guide.

Her voice rose against the half-truths of advertisement jingles. ‘The professor had suffered a seizure and he died and never returned.’

They came to a halt in front of a statue of a dog.

‘Here is Hachikō. This is your Hachikō exit.’

Naomi stopped out of politeness but had an eye on the next waymark as a pedestrian claxon sounded on the massive crossing. She hoped to make the lights but she could see the crowd thinning and the last stragglers beginning to run to beat the change. She would miss it anyway.

‘The emperor heard about this act of loyalty so admired in the Japanese character and he agreed to this statue.’

The girl followed her eyes towards the sea of people.

‘Where do you go from here?’ The girl doll tugged at the line of her sharp fringe.

The lights changed. Naomi’s mounting anxiety dissipated as she surrendered to being very late.

‘It’s near PARCO, Udagawacho,’ she said, reading the biro on the back of her hand.

‘I know the store. I’ll go that way with you.

She might be difficult to shake off, Naomi thought.

‘Is it out of your way?’

‘I guess not.’

Waiting for the sea of people to move from the edge of the road. Languid little questions followed as they made their way through the crowd.

‘Yes, almost a month. An amazing city. ‘

The Japanese girl was time-easy and very laid back. It was late; it would rile him but there was little she could do about it. Her responses were short.

‘An architect but not qualified. And you?’

‘PR. My friend is an architect. You should meet him.’

She might be the type who knew everyone. Over the sea of heads a digitized figure cartwheeled across the face of five buildings as the accumulation of bodies waiting to cross deepened.

The girl beside her bridged the alien space between her and the crowd, somehow emphasizing it. The otherness of the place was daunting. Had she really committed to living here? They crossed to walk up the hill together. At the Seibu Store a six-foot seed pod filled a window and shook like a silent maraca; the first sign, in the urban landscape, that was organic. She wished the seed would grow to a pantomime vine and she could climb it and escape.

‘PARCO,’ the girl announced.

‘Thanks.’ Naomi hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult to shake free of her politely.

‘I’ll leave you here.’ The girl began backing off easily, waving as she left.

‘Thanks. Thanks so much,’ Naomi yelled back.

And then, on a second thought, the girl turned again, taking a paper from her clutch.

‘I’m Miho. Give me a call sometime.’

Chapter 18

A B-52 bomber wingspan formed the lintel entrance to the café. A self-conscious witticism from an international designer. Josh was sitting beside a half-drunk cup of coffee at a table just inside and she met him with an emollient kiss. With a copy of the Economist to hand and his leg crossed high, he had the distant ease of man of privilege. He finally smiled.

‘Half my waking life waiting for you, then a little more time waiting for the apology.’

‘I am sorry,’ she said, throwing the map on the table and sitting down.

He cut her no slack at all.

‘I nearly drowned in the crowd.’

He glanced approvingly at the close-fitting knee length skirt she had chosen. She had good legs.

‘You’re a good swimmer, Naomi.’

She thought of the girl in the cotton dress, cum lifeguard.

‘Nice choice.’ She surveyed the apocalyptic interior of the café, ready to acknowledge that there were some good reasons for coming to Japan; if only to see at first-hand the architectural experiments.

‘You want to order coffee? You’re too late for a bite.’

Josh proceeded to pick up the map and painstakingly refold it along the original lines, the fissures in his complexion lost in his flexing jaw.

‘You been having a picnic with this?’

Often he left the hotel room early to get to the office because he was keen and he finished his working day late as London woke and Sydney was a sparkling hour ahead. Some days he tried to cover it all. Because she hadn’t yet found them an apartment he had been obliged to take control.

‘The apartment we saw yesterday was great and I just don’t get why you don’t like it. Great views, central …’

‘It was just so soulless. We could be anywhere in the world.’

‘With Tokyo Tower on the skyline?’

‘It’s a warren. A ghetto exclusively for Westerners. We should live like locals while we are here.’

‘Is international so bad? With a gym and pool, and when else do we get to live in a condominium?’

Josh looked out over the expansive pavement. A smell of sweet soy baking drifted on the air. He had persuaded her to uproot and he supposed he should give her a say in where they lived.

The sun was still struggling to break through the heat haze and, just as she ordered ice tea, the diminutive figure of Mr Kami, the rental agent, left his motorbike and came towards them, swinging his helmet from its retro leather strap.

He laid it on the table wearily as he surveyed them. Slight as a jockey, his simian face ridiculously wizened.

Naomi shook his hand, entranced as he rolled a matchstick between his yellowing teeth.

‘I show you a Japanese traditional style without fear or favour,’ he said proudly, retrieving his helmet. The girl was certainly opinionated and had wrong-footed him yesterday over the luxury apartment he had felt sure he would secure for them. They were so young yet sky-high real estate values that made his eyes water were within their budget because a company allowance would cover it. Quite why she carried so much weight in the decision when the guy had liked it was a conundrum. His own choice was limited to the pigeon coop he called home.

Josh gave Naomi a knowing look. The man was a walking set of idioms and ‘without fear or favour’ was his catchphrase.

‘Excellent,’ she emphasized as Josh recovered his Economist.

Mr Kami opened his arms expansively and swung them, helmet and all, in the direction he intended to take them. He would bring them to their senses. They, or more precisely she, had asked for a property with character. Well, he would show them a rental with character. Given his wealth of experience, this was just one step in a well-worn process. The property he had in mind was one they would be unable to settle on but fitted her revised brief and he knew it would send them straight back to the Tower of Babel and the cloying luxury that people mistook for privilege in Hiroo. The detour this morning would ultimately save him more effort in the end. That said, she was wasting everyone’s time, including her own. What she was looking for did not exist. She was a romantic, impractical girl, looking for a Japan lost some time back with the shogunate.

The house was indeed traditional. Just a short walk from the prime real estate of Shibuya, set in gardens of a quarter of an acre that some family feud or canny speculator playing the long game had retained. She hung back with Josh as Mr Kami spoke with the occupant in high whispers of disagreement.

Josh lost patience. ‘What are we doing here? I should be at work.’

She wasn’t going to let him have it both ways. ‘Why are you here? I could go round on my own. You didn’t have to come.’

Josh looked at her from the full height of his education.

‘Look, my Bohemian princess, we could end up with a very shaky decision if left up to you. This place looks condemned.’

‘You would have me live in a box on the forty-third floor? Did I leave London for the penal colony of apartments in Hiroo Garden Hills?

‘Correction: it wasn’t a box, it was bigger than, this wooden … this …’ he paused, attempting to retain some tact ‘… this garden shack.’

She had to agree it looked as though it would be over-ventilated in the winter and the towering real estate around it left it in permanent shade.

As Mr Kami beckoned them from the porch, she saw him watching mischievously for her response. She would uphold a pretense with him.

‘What a contrast.’ She smiled benignly.

‘We Japanese are about contrasts,’ he said sagely, scratching his bald head.

It was open-plan, dingy and ill-lit. In the entrance hall stood an oxblood chest with an intricate black, metal phoenix over the lock. Unable to resist, she ran a finger along the top. A line in the dust came to a halt at the photograph of an elderly couple beside an incense stick, alight and trailing coils of spent ash on a strip of brocade. The face of the elderly woman in a kimono carried a demure smile as if she too were in on a joke. A figure passed across a curtained doorway ahead of them.

‘Very nice.’ Naomi said vaguely, searching Josh for what would be a charged reaction but finding he would not return her glance. His arms were folded across his blue summer suit to contain his patience.

‘And which room is that?’ she asked, pointing in the direction of a figure passing in the distance.

‘That is the other half of house, belonging to the owners,’ Kami announced.

‘So a mere curtain divides the two dwellings?’ she asked incredulously.

‘There is a possibility to make an adaptation,’ he said almost genuinely.

She couldn’t help herself but burst out laughing. A large generous English laugh that was full and deep had the effect of throwing her head back and making her pale hair resonate with the sound. She finally came to realize that she was laughing alone and had angered the two men for different reasons. That she was the object of their astonished attention was for a moment a greater cause for amusement. She held her slim arms and pursed her lips in an effort to rein in the uncontained mirth.