Mas mentioned what he heard at the Yamadas’. “Some ole lady named Gushiken ova there at Keiro. Some relation?”
Juanita shook her head. “My relatives are all back in Peru. I just barely knew my grandpa. He came to visit every other year. He died last year.”
“Sorry.”
“Yeah, it’s almost surreal, you know. When someone you don’t see often dies. It seems like they are still around in their part of the world.”
Mas felt like that about his own parents, who had passed away after he had returned to America. He had not been back to Hiroshima for more than fifty years. He hadn’t taken the trek up to his mountain family grave site, looked at the names of his mother and father carved in the long granite obelisk. That would have made their deaths final, and Mas preferred their demise to lack finality.
Juanita explained that she had never gone to Peru. Her relatives ended up there after the quality of life in Okinawa had become so poor. “I mean, Okinawa is so beautiful, even better than Hawaii, but after the Japanese took over, they made everyone work on the sugar plantations, taxed them up the wazoo. No wonder when Peru, Brazil, and the rest of the Latin American countries started recruiting laborers from Okinawa, a bunch of them went over. Turns out that life in Peru wasn’t much easier, but it became home, at least for my grandparents. And my dad for a short time.”
During World War II, Antonio Gushiken and his parents had been literally kidnaped by the Peruvian government and brought over to a detention camp in Crystal City, Texas. It had been a deal made by the U.S. and Peruvian governments. With a fresh batch of people with Japanese surnames, the U.S. could now trade these hostages for American POWs. It didn’t matter that the Crystal City prisoners had little connection with Japan and that their first names were Antonio, Pedro, Juanita, and Maria.
“My dad doesn’t talk about it much,” said Juanita. “He was a kid, of course. My grandparents eventually decided to go back to Peru, but my father stayed.
“I’d like to visit sometime. Go to Machu Picchu—you know, the lost city of the Incas.”
Mas nodded. He had seen video footage of the ruins on a Japanese TV show on UHF and was amazed that such a place could exist. It was a sprawling stone palace amid jagged mountains and swirling mist. Mas knew that he himself could never see Machu Picchu, but sincerely hoped that someone he knew could.
They made more small talk until Juanita revealed the day’s plan of action. “We’ll meet the UCLA professor and then go over to the shamisen player’s house. Luckily, the professor lives in the South Bay. She agreed to meet us for breakfast in Gardena, not too far from the shamisen player’s home. That’s where he has his music studio.”
“He knowsu weezu comin’?”
Juanita had put on a pair of sunglasses, and it was hard to see any life in her face. “Sometimes it’s better to catch them off guard.”
Mas didn’t like surprises, and he figured that the shamisen player was not so different.
“So whatsu youzu gonna say?”
“Well, I may not be saying anything, Mr. Arai. I’m not sure that he can speak English.”
Mas stayed quiet. He hoped that Juanita wasn’t saying what he thought she was saying. He wanted to just go along for the ride, like a dog in the passenger seat of any other pickup truck. Dogs liked the window open so that the wind could hit their faces. They had no intention, however, of taking control of the entire car.
“Whyzu those people at G. I.’s party in first place?”
“I think that the restaurant contacted the Okinawa group. All of the halaus—you know, the Hawaiian dance troupes—were booked. I’m not sure why they went Okinawan.”
Mas tried not to stretch his mind to connect the dots too early. His experience was once you thought you figured something out, you inevitably ended up surprised in the end. He instead looked out the window. To the west of the freeway were clumps of palm trees in between rows of square homes that held precariously to their bits of dirt. Satellite dishes sat aimed at their targets in the sky while clothes dried on the lines. Life as usual in L.A.
They passed the huge monster Hustler gambling casino. Mas remembered when there had been only a small circle of card clubs in the area. Now that circle had exploded, and giant gambling dens as big as warehouses were clustered by the freeway.
Juanita finally parked the truck in a business district that seemed to be hanging on to the new and the old with each hand. An Italian deli with its crowd of suited men and women standing outside—early business meetings, perhaps? Across the street, customers waited their turn inside a Mexican pan dulce bakery to select pink and brown pastries with pairs of tongs and place them on pastel plastic trays.
Mas and Juanita walked two doors down from the Mexican sweet bread house to a meeting place, another Hawaiian restaurant, called Bruddah’s, but this one looked nothing like the place where G. I.’s party had been. Instead of a resurrected chain pancake house, it was in a narrow ramshackle storefront, the kind of place where bleary-eyed fishermen would feel at home. Simple booths on the sides and then a row of tables and chairs in the middle. The photocopied menu was folded next to the shoyu (not just any kind of soy sauce, but the Aloha brand, made in Honolulu), ketchup, and Tabasco. There were some old men, probably part-time gardeners like Mas, sitting scattered in a few of the booths. In the corner was a young couple with tattoos all along their arms and legs, and sitting at a middle table, a black woman who looked to be in her sixties.
The black woman rose as Juanita approached. “Ms. Gushiken,” she stated more than asked.
“Yes.” Juanita stuck out her hand, which the woman gripped firmly. “It’s so nice to meet you, Professor. This is my translator, Mas Arai.”
The woman took hold of Mas’s hand, and Mas was embarrassed that she could probably feel every callus knotted on the palm of it. She was a smart woman; she would realize in an instant that he was no translator, but a plain workingman who had little to do with words. She took out two business cards and presented them in turn to Juanita and Mas with both hands, Japanese style. “Genessee Howard. Please call me Genessee.”
Mas nodded, telling himself that he wouldn’t be calling the professor any name, especially one he couldn’t pronounce, if he could help it. Professor Howard was a small woman with a face round and squat like the shape of a garbanzo bean. She had a short, neat Afro and wore gold-framed eyeglasses and large earrings that shimmered like the inside of an abalone shell. In a strange way, she resembled Chizuko, and Mas was surprised to feel the top of his head go piri-piri.
“Thanks again for meeting with us, Pro…Genessee.” Juanita quickly corrected herself as they joined her at her table.
“Any excuse to eat at Bruddah’s.” She smiled, revealing a small space in between her front teeth—also just like Chizuko, Mas noted.
Genessee had already ordered, so Juanita and Mas quickly looked over the menu. Something called Loco Moco for Juanita and Hawaiian French toast for Mas.
“I ordered the French toast too,” Genessee said. “Theirs is the best, even better than a lot of places in Hawaii.” She went on to explain that she had lived in Hawaii as a child. “I was actually born in Okinawa. My father was in the service; my mother’s Okinawan.”
So-ka, Mas mouthed silently.
“You were probably wondering why this kokujin woman has such an interest in Okinawa,” Genessee said.
Mas shook his head, and Juanita just looked puzzled.
“You really do need a translator, don’t you?” Genessee said to Juanita. “Kokujin means black person. African American in my case.”
They waited as a waitress in T-shirt and jeans served them all coffee. “So how can I help you?” Genessee, putting some cream in her cup, asked Juanita.
“Well, as I explained to you over the phone, I’m a private investigator. I’m helping a friend with an unusual case. We’re trying to get some information about this.” Juanita took out a copy of the snakeskin shamisen photograph from her back pocket.
“A sanshin—what happened to it?” Genessee traced a finger over the shamisen image as if it had once breathed air.
“It was found at a scene of a crime.” Juanita was obviously not going to get into Randy’s death. “Does this instrument have any significance?”
“It’s hard to tell from this photo—the resolution isn’t that good.” Genessee adjusted her bifocals so that she could get a better look at the battered shamisen. “It certainly looks like pre–World War Two. Real python skin. Look—the pegs are animal bone. It may even date back to the early eighteen hundreds. The sanshin actually originated in China and then was developed in Okinawa, before eventually making it over to mainland Japan. The Okinawans used to use python skin from India, until it became too rare and expensive. After World War Two, when Okinawa was struggling to recover from all the destruction, they made them from tin cans and parachute strings. Now they use python skin again, but from Southeast Asia.” Genessee placed the photo back on the table and studied Juanita’s face.
“You don’t know much about Okinawa, do you?”
Juanita shook her head. “My parents are actually from Peru.”
“So many left for Latin America. Couldn’t blame them, with all the high taxes and limited economy.”
Before Genessee could complete her thoughts, their food arrived. Juanita’s was a mess of runny eggs over two hamburger patties and rice, all soaked in brown sticky gravy. The French toast, in contrast, was majestic, thick slices of sweet Hawaiian bread cooked golden brown, cut diagonally and resting so that its powdered-sugar-sprinkled crusts looked like snow-covered peaks.
“I was actually reading something about Okinawa over the Internet.” Juanita cut into her eggs and skillfully placed a bite of yolk, rice, and patty on her fork. “Read something about these Japanese warriors taking over Okinawa in the sixteen hundreds. I think they even kidnaped the king and held him hostage in Japan?”
Genessee poured maple syrup on her French toast. “Yes, that’s true. They were from the Satsuma clan. Japan at that time was divided into different territories led by these lords, or daimyo. The Satsuma leaders saw invading Okinawa, then an independent kingdom, as an opportunity to expand their territory and their wealth without letting the Edo government know what they were really up to. And they hid their relationship with Okinawa from China, who viewed the islands as their tributary. So the Chinese were proceeding with business as usual.”
“Yeah, I didn’t quite get that. So the Chinese didn’t know that Okinawa had been taken over by the Satsuma?”
Genessee nodded her head. “I know that it’s a bit confusing. But in order for trade with China to continue, the Satsuma forced Okinawa to pretend that it was still independent. So actually Okinawa had two masters in a sense: Japan and China.”
“Weird,” Juanita said. Mas had to agree. He hadn’t heard about all the duplicity involved in Okinawa’s early history.
Juanita wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “I also read that the king presented some secret sanshin music to a shrine in Kagoshima—that’s the headquarters of the Satsuma, right?”
“That hasn’t been verified. There’s a lot of original documents that have never been found. Like the banana-paper kunkunshi, for example. The kunkunshi are these early music scores that the Okinawan sanshin masters created. Famously missing is one created by Master Chinen Sekiko in the early eighteen hundreds. I’m a great fan of Chinen; he really blazed a trail for more modern-day sanshin musicians.
“With the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, so much was completely wiped out or stolen. Do you know that some Okinawan treasures, invaluable ancient texts and tablets, were discovered at a military officer’s house in Massachusetts in the 1950s? The government never revealed how the items got there, but they were eventually returned. The whereabouts of the royal crown is still unknown. It’s a tragedy. As I said, even this sanshin in the photo, it could have been constructed way before World War Two. It’s a pity that it’s been so severely damaged.”
Mas remembered seeing a documentary about the battle on a UHF television station. Something like 200,000 killed, half of them civilians. Present-day Okinawans, wearing masks and gloves, were still digging out remains from caves where many families had hidden during the explosives and gunfire.
“So, shamisen, maybe worth sumptin’,” Mas said out loud.
“Well, maybe to a museum. But sanshin aren’t really collector’s items. It would only be prized by obscure musicians, and academicians like me.” Again, Genessee flashed the gap in the teeth. “If you’re that interested in the sanshin, you should come to the concert at the Okinawan Association next Saturday.” She then swallowed the last bit of her coffee and informed Juanita and Mas that she had to leave to make her afternoon seminar. “I’d like to examine the actual instrument, if that’s possible.”
“It’s been entered into evidence at the Torrance Police Department.”
“You never told me what the crime was. Robbery?”
Juanita glanced at Mas, who hung his head down as if he had discovered something fascinating in his empty coffee cup.
“Murder,” Juanita said. “Someone was killed.”
Genessee visibly shuddered as if a cool draft had blown into the restaurant. “Well, good luck on your investigation.” She opened up her wallet, but Juanita shook her head and pulled the small plastic tray holding the bill toward her. “It’s on me,” she said, thanking the professor again.
Back in the truck, Juanita put on her sunglasses and turned to Mas. “Well, what do you think?”
“Nice lady.”
“Not her. But the stuff about the sanshin. Does any of it help?”
Mas really didn’t know how Okinawa’s past would have any relevance to the shamisen found with Randy’s body. “Dunno,” Mas said.
“Yeah, I’m not sure either. I hope I didn’t freak her out too much.”
The mention of murder probably had been too much. Mas didn’t think that they would hear from Genessee again. “Nice lady,” he murmured again.
Juanita drove less than a mile before she stopped outside a typical Gardena home. It was the color of mint toothpaste, with a square, flat cement porch and a front yard of Bermuda grass and sculpted pine trees.
They got out of the truck and attempted to peer through the large picture window’s blinds and drapes. The door was open, but a barred security gate insured the safety of the home’s inhabitants. The plucking of multiple shamisen sounded from one of the inside rooms.
Juanita tried the bell, but it seemed rusted over. She then dragged her keys along the bars of the security door like she was a prisoner seeking relief. After a few rounds of this, the older basset hound–faced man with bright white hair whom Mas had seen at the restaurant appeared at the door.
“Hai,” he said.
“Hello, are you Mr. Kinjo? I’m Juanita Gushiken. I’d like to talk to you about Saturday night. The night of your performance at Mahalo, the restaurant in Torrance.”
The man looked from Juanita’s face to Mas’s. “I’m teaching now,” he said in Japanese. His voice came out rough, like the edge of a saw. “This is a very bad time.” Yet he didn’t move.
Juanita stared at Mas, and he knew that he was on. “I’m very sorry.” Mas tried his best in the most polite Japanese he could muster. He had lived in Japan for seventeen years, but he had been in America for more than fifty. The Japanese language was full of rules that were difficult to remember. It was all about who you were and who you were talking to. If you were a boss, you would talk one way to your employee. If you were a servant, you would address someone higher than you in a completely different way. Throw in age and gender, and it would be again another ball of wax. Mas knew that he was tripping over his words. “This girl insisted.” Mas gestured toward Juanita. He was selling her out, but she deserved it. “Hired as a police…” Mas had forgotten the Japanese word for detective, so he just switched over to English. “Investigate. Lookin’ into murder.”
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br /> “Spoke to police already,” Kinjo said, ready to close the door.
“We’re looking into the sanshin,” Juanita spouted out.
The security gate slowly opened, revealing that the man wore a fleece vest over a flannel shirt, and loose khaki pants that were patched at the knees. Not much of an outfit, especially for a sensei, a teacher.
“Come in,” he said in English.
They followed the sensei to his sparsely decorated living room. He gestured for them to sit down on the couch while he tended to his class. In front of the couch was a glass-topped coffee table holding a lacquerware bowl shaped like a squat persimmon and a set of books in Japanese on Okinawan history and the sanshin. To the side of the couch was a standard ningyo, Japanese doll, in a glass case, and on the wall hung a large framed kotobuki, the Japanese character for longevity, assembled out of flattened gold-paper origami cranes. Mas always thought it was strange how Japanese Americans would fold a thousand and one cranes, and then arrange them into shapes of mon, family crests, or Japanese characters. Instead of pulling the wings of the folded birds and inflating them, women would lay the poor cranes flat, glue them down, and encase them under glass.
The plucking of strings resumed as Mas sat on the couch. Juanita was leafing through one of the heavy books. “Is this the music that Genessee was talking about?” She pointed to an illustration of symbols handwritten within a grid of squares.
Mas read the caption and section of the story beside the photo. “Um, so…” he said. “Datsu kunkunshi.” They reminded Mas of the sheets of musical notes that Mari practiced on her piano when she was a child.
Juanita sucked on the earpiece of her sunglasses as she continued to flip through the photographs in the book. Mas, on the other hand, almost nodded off until he heard a jangling and turning of the lock on the front security gate. The door slowly crept open to reveal a Sansei man holding a plastic bag that looked and smelled like takeout from a Japanese fast-food restaurant. He didn’t seem that surprised to see two strangers sitting on the couch.
Snakeskin Shamisen Page 7
