THE
DEATH
CEREMONY
James Melville
FAWCETT CREST • NEW YORK
A Fawcett Crest Book Published by Ballantine Books Copyright © 1985 by James Melville
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
First published in Great Britain by Seeker & Warburg Ltd.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 85-25ISBN 0-449-21131-2
This edition published by arrangement with St. Martin's Press, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Ballantine Books Edition: October 1
AUTHOR'S NOTE
There are a number of tea ceremony schools in Japan, each headed by a hereditary Grand Master. Hyogo is an actual prefecture, and its police force is based in the city of Kobe. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs maintains a liaison office in Osaka, and British diplomats and consular officers are based in Tokyo and Osaka. I should therefore like to stress that all the characters in this book are entirely fictional and bear no relation to any living person.
Prologue
THE ANGLES HAD BEEN SO PRECISELY CALCULATED THAT it was of little consequence that the actual target would be invisible. The dimensions of the room were well-known: diagrams and photographs had been published more than once. The small rectangles in the latticed wood and paper shop screen formed an excellent grid for the marksman: and the laser sight on his rifle would ensure that there was no mistake.
It was now just a question of getting the timing right. There would be a tolerance of perhaps a second: plenty of time for an expert. He was filled with a fierce, holy pride at having been given this opportunity to serve, and was confident that all would go well. It seemed a lifetime since he had felt such an ecstatic clenching of the spirit, such a sense of absolute conviction as to the lightness of what he was about to do. He would not, could not miss.
It would not be long now, though in any case he experienced no impatience. He had gone beyond place and time; stepped out into a void which was a focusing of his whole being. It would be no more necessary consciously to aim the rifle than it is for a Zen archer to direct his shaft. It would be as though an invisible tendril would extend from the target to the bullet, drawing it inexorably home. Failure was inconceivable.
He was unaware that he smiled.
Chapter 1
Superintendent Tetsuo Otani leaned forward and opened his mouth to speak to his driver. He was about to say "You'd better let us out at the corner, Tomita," but stopped himself as a uniformed police inspector stepped from the side of the road into their path and saluted smartly as Tomita brought the car to a halt. Otani pressed the switch at his elbow and the window slid down.
"A Happy New Year, and welcome to Kyoto, sir. The Commander of the Prefectural Police presents his compliments, and regrets that he is unable to greet you personally. A special parking place has been reserved for your car, sir. Your driver will be directed after he has set you and your lady down."
Being in plain clothes Otani did not return the salute, but nodded instead in appreciation. "A Happy New Year to you too. You are most kind. A beautiful day. Please don't trouble too much over us. I'm sure you and your officers have many VIPs to take care of.''
"A number of distinguished Japanese like yourself, sir, and two foreign ambassadors. The first tea ceremonies of the new year are always big events, but we have plenty of experience of that sort of thing in Kyoto." The young man permitted himself a smile as he saluted again and stepped aside, and Hanae smiled back at him as their Toyota Police Special moved off and swept round the corner towards the main entrance of one of the most prestigious schools of the tea ceremony in Japan.
Hanae Otani was in the highest of spirits herself, and only wished that her husband were in a better humour. She had complimented him on his appearance before they left their house in Kobe's suburban Mount Rokko area, and indeed he looked calm and dignified in the newest and most expensive of his four dark suits, a new white shirt and the tie given to him by the Master of St Cuthbert's College, Cambridge, which he treasured above any other item in his wardrobe and wore only on very special occasions.
But then it was a special occasion, and they had both been taken by surprise when the invitation arrived. True, Superintendent Otani was a prominent public official in Kobe, but hardly of the status or profession which might be thought likely to gain them entree into the most exclusive circles of Kyoto society. His late father, old Professor Otani of Osaka University, had hobnobbed with such people in his later years, after the war, and when the ostracism and worse which he had previously suffered on account of his dangerously liberal ideas had been replaced by fawning respect; but that was quite another matter.
As the great day drew near Hanae's mood of pleased anticipation had been tinged with more than a little anxiety at the prospect of spending close on two hours in the company of a number of ladies whose social and economic standing was very much more elevated than her own. Now, however, she was honest enough with herself to realise that her heavy cream silk kimono, with the discreet touches of dusty pink and gold at the sleeves and hem, was perfect for the occasion. The cream and gold were festive, yet of a restrained dignity entirely seemly for a handsome matron of her age, while the pink hinted with charming subtlety at the prospect of the first plum blossom in the weeks to come. The wife of the head of the Hyogo Prefectural Police Force might not command the esteem or the bank balance of an ambassador's lady or of some of the leaders of Kyoto society, but Hanae doubted if they would be able to fault her on grounds of appearance, at least.
There were several policemen on duty outside the entrance, as well as a number of ushers or marshals in black suits with green and white armbands, all waving officiously. A glossy limousine was ahead of them, and Otani thought he recognised the slight, sprightly figure and full head of silver hair of one of Japan's leading industrialists as he stepped out and made his way through the ancient, much-photographed thatched gateway, followed at a decorous distance by his wife.
"It looks more like a funeral than a party," Otani muttered to Hanae. "All those men are just getting in the way of the police." Hanae gave him a sideways look, unsure whether he was in fact still in a tetchy mood or whether the drive to Kyoto along the Kobe-Nagoya highway had cheered him up at all. It was not that their house guest Rosie Winchmore was anything but friendly and chirpy, but there could be no doubt that she disrupted the tranquillity of the Otani household quite remarkably.
In reply to Otani's first complaints, which began when they received Rosie's letter, Hanae had teasingly pointed out that it was he who had invited her in the first place, while they were staying with their daughter Akiko and her businessman husband in London. Rosie had been their baby-sitter, a third-year student of Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and it was quite true that, flushed with the fuss that had been made of him at Cam bridge and several glasses of College Madeira, Otani had in a rash moment urged her to visit them in Japan.
As the day of Rosie's arrival drew near, Hanae had changed her tactics, pointing out that at least Rosie wasn't bringing her bearded bus-conductor lover with her; and that she would after all be with them for only a little over a week before going on to a short intensive course in spoken Japanese at Nanzan University in Nagoya, where she would be in the company of a group of fellow students and at a safe distance from the Otanis.
Rosie had actually arrived from T
okyo two days earlier, and Otani's nerves were already in shreds. Hanae met her at New Kobe Station, and the sight of her luggage made Hanae feel a little faint as Rosie struggled on to the platform from the sleek blue and ivory bullet-train festooned with carrier bags on the point of collapse, wearing an enormous red backpack and bearing a mysterious cardboard box from which she would not allow herself to be separated, even during the taxi ride to Rokko. The box turned out to contain a variety of health foods, mostly in unlabelled plastic bags, with which Rosie proposed to supplement those elements of the Otani diet which she expected to be able to eat.
Now she was ensconced in the little room which Akiko had occupied as a girl, and Otani was far from happy about it. Only that morning he had grumbled to Hanae about the two pairs of knickers hung to dry on the corner of the bathroom cabinet where he kept his razor and shaving cream.
The moment Otani's devoted driver Tomita stopped the car, both passenger doors at the back were wrenched open simultaneously, each by one of the marshals in question. Hanae had long since mastered the tricky art of alighting from a car in the confining folds of a kimono without revealing more than a glimpse of ankle, but it took her a little time. She was in any case sitting on the other side of the car, and by the time she joined her husband, Otani was sniffing the air appreciatively as he looked at the big car now rounding the corner.
"That must be the British Ambassador arriving," he said. "Look, there's a British flag on the front. My word, a white Rolls-Royce! There aren't too many of those in Japan, I imagine." Before their visit to Britain it is most unlikely that Otani would have recognised a Union Jack; or for that matter taken the slightest interest in the sight of a Rolls-Royce, whatever its colour. Hanae was encouraged by the thought that he seemed to be cheering up.
It would have been ill-bred to stare, so Hanae urged her husband on, and they made their way along a short path of flat stones set in gravel and bordered by velvety moss to the main entrance, where they stepped out of their footwear onto the highly polished wooden step inside, and Otani was given a numbered receipt by the old attendant who stowed his shoes and Hanae's zori sandals in a large rack in the porch.
Then there was a brief delay while Otani knelt at the low reception desk to one side of the inner entrance, handed over their cash offering in its ceremonial envelope and wrote their names and his title in the visitors' book. It was a beautiful book, of the finest handmade paper bound in silk brocade, and Hanae watched Otani as he put on his glasses and concentrated on the task. Although far from being a scholarly man, he had a stylish way with the brush, and the results were nothing to be ashamed of.
By the time he had finished, the large foreigner who^ must be the British Ambassador had followed them up the freshly watered path and reached the door. He was tall, gangling and tensely awkward in his movements, giving the impression of being about to bump into something even when no obstacle presented itself, and appeared to Hanae, as she managed a discreet backward look at them, to be complaining about something to the lady who must be his wife. She was small, dark and anxious-looking, with a pinched face and a fixed, strained expression halfway between a smile and the look of one who is bravely trying not to notice an unpleasant odour. In the half-second she allowed herself, Hanae also took in the unevenness of the hem of the British lady's drab coat and the peculiar mangy strip of fur wrapped around her shoulders weighed down on one side by the unfortunate animal's head.
Then Hanae and Otani were urged through a series of low corridors towards a waiting-room where upwards of half a dozen people were already assembled. It seemed quite a crowd, but after many polite hesitations they managed to find places on the strip of felt on the tatami mats near a huge ceramic bowl placed in the centre of the room.
This was two-thirds full of fine ash, on top of which a few pieces of live charcoal glowed dully through their coating of powdery silver. This hibachi provided the only form of heating in the chilly room which obviously never saw the sun, but it was comforting and reminded Hanae of her childhood to stretch out a hand and flex her fingers over the slight but penetrating warmth coming from the charcoal. The Otanis saw nobody they knew. They had not expected to, but it was nevertheless embarrassing for them as Japanese to be in a social context with others without anybody there to introduce them during a waiting period which might easily last half an hour.
Hanae and Otani had had some slight disagreement about what was the correct time to arrive in response to an invitation which specified 1 p.m. In all day-to-day situations their obligation would have been quite clear, namely to arrive by 12.55. However, like virtually all Japanese women of her generation and social background, Hanae had as a young woman gone through a course of training in the tea ceremony. She had also taken lessons in flower arrangement, and had secured the diplomas without which her marriage prospects would have been distinctly dim. In her day the third paper qualification for finding a husband of the right type, namely a driving licence, had not yet become as important as it did in the sixties and later.
Hanae therefore knew that a period of waiting, to encourage composure of mind and spirit, was regarded as an essential component of a formal tea ceremony, and that the higher the rank of the person performing it, the longer the wait tended to be. If Sen-no-Rikyu, the sixteenth-century founder of the institutionalised "way of tea", could keep the dictator of Japan waiting and make him humble himself by creeping through an entrance made deliberately low and difficult to negotiate, his twentieth-century successors as masters of the various schools derived from Rikyu's teaching were justified in applying the same principles.
Honoured and surprised as they had both been to receive an invitation in the name of the Iemoto, the head of the house or Grand Master himself, and more than willing to drive forty miles in each direction on a Sunday to be present, Hanae for her part was dubious about the philosophy of waiting, or hanging about, as she put it more bluntly to her husband. She had suggested that to arrive at about twenty past one would be perfectly satisfactory, being quite convinced that the actual ceremony was most unlikely to begin before one forty-five or even two o'clock.
Otani did not agree, and they had arrived on the stroke of one. Now, kneeling quietly by Hanae's side, he leant across to her under the pretence of shifting his position slightly and murmured that he was sure they had done the right thing, for had not the British Ambassador who must surely be the guest of honour arrived hard on their heels?
The arrival at their house of Rosie Winchmore in response to his ill-considered invitation had muted Otani's recent anglophile mood considerably, but the sight of the white Rolls-Royce with the gaudy little flag fluttering from its standard had brought on a momentary surge of sentiment, and he tried to make allowances for the ambassador and his lady who now entered the room, he in full spate of voluble but quaintly accented Japanese, she meek and silent in his turbulent wake.
"Thank you. Ah! This way, is it? Come along, Thelma, oh, splendid, there's Takayama-san!" He had spotted the industrialist, sitting complacently cross-legged by the hibachi. "Happy New Year, Takayama-san!" the ambassador boomed, his glasses flashing keenly round the room as he searched for other acquaintances. "You've met my wife, of course. And there's your good lady. Happy New Year to you, madam," he added to Hanae, who happened to be nearest to the famous tycoon on his other side. Hanae made a small gesture of disclaimer as the true Mrs Takayama bowed low and murmured a stream of courteous greetings.
Only slightly abashed, the ambassador glared briefly at Otani as though the mistake had been his fault, and began talking again. "A thousand pardons. Rather dark in here, isn't it? Hurtling is my name. British Ambassador. Look, Takayama-san, I suppose this isn't the time or place, but we ought to have a word about the Merseyside project. It's really high time your people came to a decision, and you know as well as I do that the union problem isn't anything like as bad as the Press here has been implying." More people in the room than he might have supposed understood as he switched briefly to En
glish. "Thelma, remind me to do a lunch for some newspaper presidents in Tokyo again, though I must say I might just as well talk to a brick wall."
He bumbled through the room as he talked, and although in stockinged feet like everyone else, managed to tread on Otani's ankle as he passed. Takayama had not yet said a word, but there was a slight twist at one corner of his thin, sardonic mouth, and one eyebrow was raised perceptibly higher than the other as he contrived to find space for the big Englishman and his crushed-looking wife. The other Japanese guests had been listening to the ambassador's monologue with open curiosity, none more intrigued than Otani. There was no doubt that the man could speak Japanese, nor that it was the Japanese of an educated person; but the blurting, machine-gun style of delivery and apparent obliviousness to the reactions of those around him struck Otani as being not so much alien as almost unbelievable.
It soon became disappointingly clear that Takayama, a past master of the art of neutralising hostile television interviewers, was not to be drawn on the subject of his company's much-publicised delay in deciding whether or not to invest tens of millions of pounds in a new factory in Britain. When the ambassador at last fell briefly silent, the industrialist greeted him in the conventional way, then firmly enquired after the health of Mrs Margaret Thatcher and of the member of her government who had recently visited Japan in yet another attempt to lean on him and his senior colleagues.
Otani caught Hanae's eye and she raised a hand quickly to conceal her smile. The ambassador was generating such a hubbub that she could safely have whispered a comment to her husband, but at that moment a new disturbance was caused by the arrival of yet more guests in the now quite crowded room. These were no less a personage than the Governor of Kyoto Prefecture and his wife, closely followed by a resplendent black couple in colourful robes who beamed fatly round at the assembled company with such refulgent goodwill that even the most inhibited of the Japanese guests responded with shy smiles.
The Death Ceremony Page 1
