The Toyotomi Blades

25

Junko announced, “I’m going to take a shower and then I’m going to bed.”

“Are you sure? Mariko and I are going to play some hanafuda after our bath. You’re welcome to join us. We’re going to play for loose change, and I’m always willing to have another source of money in the game.”

“Can you get hanafuda?”

“Mrs. Sakurai will bring us some hanafuda. I managed to ask during dinner,” Mariko said.

Hanafuda are Japanese playing cards. The name means flower cards. They’re printed on tiny pasteboards, about two and a half inches by one inch. They have suites with things like the moon, plum blossoms, bush clover, pine trees, or maple leaves. Some of the card designs are quite beautiful, with things like deer in a maple forest, birds flying across a full moon, or irises in the rain.

“No, I really am very tired and I want to go to sleep. We should get an early start tomorrow,” Junko said.

“Okay. If you’re going to use a Western-style shower, then Mariko and I will use the Japanese o-furo. We’ll see you in the morning for breakfast. Good night.”

“Good night,” Junko said.

When Junko left, Mariko and I went into the Japanese-style bathroom. The Japanese o-furo tub was a big wooden affair set along one side of the room. The tub was already full and there seemed to be a constant stream of hot water flowing through it from an opening set in the tub’s side. Two benches faced each other in the tub, so it was designed for cozy couples.

I know about o-furos, but I had never actually been in one. I have some non-Japanese friends whose daughter married a Japanese national. When they went to Japan to visit their in-laws, they were offered use of Japanese-style bath first, which is the place of honor. When they were finished, they pulled the plug, draining all the water, which is a social faux pas because it takes so long to heat up the enormous tubs. This mistake was never mentioned by their in-laws, of course.

This difference in bath customs can cause problems in the other direction, too. When my friends had their Japanese in-laws visit them, the Japanese parents of their son-in-law were offered the use of an upstairs bathroom in my friend’s two-story house. This bathroom is tiled, just like most Japanese bathrooms. Unlike most Japanese bathrooms, however, it doesn’t have a drain in the middle of the floor, a detail the Japanese in-laws didn’t notice. My friends were sitting in their living room when they noticed their stairs had turned into an indoor waterfall. Rushing upstairs, they found water flowing from under the bathroom door. Their Japanese in-laws had used the handheld shower mas-sager to clean themselves off before getting into the tub, Japanese style, and the water had caused a flood.

There must have been foreign tourists staying at the ryokan before, because I noticed with amusement that the drain plug on the bath had a little brass padlock on it, making it impossible for a guest to drain the bath. Because the bathwater is not drained between users, it’s tremendously bad etiquette to enter a Japanese tub dirty. I sat on a small plastic stool next to Mariko and soaped myself up and rinsed myself off using a small bucket and wash cloth. The water from this cleansing went into a drain set in the bathroom floor. The erotic possibilities of soaping up Mariko entered my head, and I helped her get clean with verve. Any visions of hot tub orgies I may have had, however, diminished as soon as I started to get into the o-furo.

The water in a hot tub is pleasantly warm, but the water in an o-furo is scalding. It took me a good five minutes to lower myself into it, inching down into the steaming water by slow degrees. Mariko was able to plunge into the water in just a few seconds.

“I feel like the featured dish in a Louisiana crab boil,” I complained.

“Yeah, but after you get used to it, you’ll find the hot water tremendously relaxing. I could see falling asleep in here.”

“If you did you’d be in the burn ward of the local hospital.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“That’s a matter of opinion. There seems to be a constant stream of scalding water coming into this tub.”

“You’re supposed to like it. It’s cultural.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, culturally I’m American, not Japanese.”

As soon as I said that I realized that I meant more than just my preferences in bath water. From the moment I came to Japan, when the customs agent spoke Japanese to me, I was trying to sort out what it meant to return to the land of my ancestors. I felt strangely comfortable in Japan. Sights, sounds, customs, and the faces of the people had a resonance with me that reminded me I come from Japanese stock. But this was an ease that came from preserved memories, not from actually fitting in. Foundations of culture transcend race, and I realized that my culture is American.

No matter how much interest I might have in Japan, no matter how much I learned about it from books and documentaries and even visits, I would never be Japanese. That might seem obvious, but like Buzz Sugimoto, who was dumbfounded when I pointed out that his symbols of rebellion over Japan becoming too Westernized were actually Western, I achieved resolution from a statement which should have been clearly apparent. No matter how uncomfortable I may sometimes feel in America as a minority, I will never fit in better elsewhere, even in Japan where I’m part of the racial majority.

When Mariko and I got back to the main room, the hanafuda cards were waiting for us. We played a game called koi-koi, which is a simple matching game. You pick up cards on the table by matching them to cards of the same suite in your hand. You try to get the highest-scoring cards, and simple design changes on the cards, like a colored ribbon as part of the design, indicate the value of cards. It’s mostly luck, or at least that’s what I told myself as Mariko wiped me out in short order. If I had won, then I would have opined that koi-koi is a game of skill, of course.

“Can I ask you something, Ken?” Mariko said as she leaned forward and scooped up the winnings from her latest hand. Her yukata was left open, revealing an expanse of skin and one breast. I don’t know if this was through negligence or if it was a ploy to distract me from the game. If the latter, it was working.

“Ask me what?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“You mean playing cards? With the winning streak you’re on, I’m asking that myself.”

“No, I mean getting involved in another mystery. You were sort of pulled into the first mystery, but with this one you seem to be the one pursuing things. You’ve been running some awful risks with those guys after you. You think some people have been murdered for those swords, and yet you push on.”

“I’m doing this because I don’t have much going in my life, except for you. I’m over forty and unemployed and my life is half over. I don’t want to play the second half as safe as I played the first half. This mystery has become important to me, and failing to solve it would be a kind of road block on the new path my life seems to be going down.”

I said more than I intended, but I felt good about saying it. Mariko leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. It was a soft, gentle, loving kiss.

“Now,” Mariko said, “even though we’ve had this tender moment that doesn’t mean that I don’t intend to take you for every penny you have. Dig into your pockets and produce the rest of your loose change. Japanese or American money cheerfully accepted. Shuffle the cards.”