The Incense Game: A Novel of Feudal Japan

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “Just as I thought,” Lord Hosokawa said with a smug smile. “But Higo Province had the best rice harvest in a decade this past year. I’ll make you a proposition.” His clan must have merchants in its family tree; he sounded like one now. “Investigate my daughters’ murders, and I’ll give you a million koban.”

  The huge sum astounded Sano. Here was his chance to kill two birds with one arrow—serve justice and fund the regime. Although tempted, he said, “I can’t accept. The shogun won’t approve of his chamberlain having to earn the money by working for you. You’re obligated to let him have it for free.”

  “I’ll give you an incentive to accept,” Lord Hosokawa replied promptly. “Many of the most powerful daimyo are tired of being ruled by the Tokugawa. It’s been a hundred years of paying tribute and swallowing their pride. But now the regime’s capital is in ruins, its castle is as full of holes as a sieve, its army is minuscule. Three hundred and fifty-one officials are dead. For the first time in a century, the Tokugawa is vulnerable.”

  The secret of the death toll had leaked out, too, Sano realized with alarm.

  “In contrast, we daimyo are in good shape,” Lord Hosokawa went on. “Granted, many of us lost estates in Edo and quite a few men, but most of our wealth and property and armies is safe in our provinces. The earthquake has given us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If we band together, we can conquer the Tokugawa and rule Japan.”

  Sano stared in shock at Lord Hosokawa, a friend suddenly turned potential enemy, the regime’s worst fear embodied. “Are you one of the daimyo who want to strike at the Tokugawa regime while it’s down?”

  “Of course not,” Lord Hosokawa said. “You know me better than that.” But an unfamiliar brazenness in his eyes told Sano that he didn’t know this man at all. Deranged by his daughters’ death, Lord Hosokawa had absorbed the evil that had pervaded the air since the earthquake, that led people to do things they never would under normal circumstances. “Mine is the voice that’s urging the hotheads to keep the peace. My clan is a barricade between them and the shogun. But that will change unless you do as I ask. Catch my daughters’ killer, or I’ll join forces with the others, fight alongside them in a civil war, and ensure their victory.”

  Flabbergasted, Sano stood. “That’s blackmail.” He had a nightmarish feeling that had plagued him since the earthquake, that the world had become a place of madness.

  Lord Hosokawa rose, meeting Sano’s gaze. “It’s the length I’ll go to to secure your cooperation.”

  “It’s treason to even talk about a revolt, let alone conspire to start one! It’s punishable by death!”

  “It’s only punishable if the revolt fails. If it succeeds, the shogun will be in no position to deprive us of our heads.”

  Sano grabbed Lord Hosokawa by the shoulders. “Stop this!”

  Lord Hosokawa emitted a sound that was half moan, half chuckle, and all awareness that he’d put himself in grave danger. He resembled a man who is crossing a river that gets deeper with his every step. He gazed at Sano as if Sano had thrown him a rope while the current swept him down a waterfall. “It’s too late. I’ve already said too much.”

  “I’ll have to report it to the shogun,” Sano said with regret. This was a double tragedy—first his daughters murdered; now Lord Hosokawa would go down for treason, his clan dissolved, its wealth confiscated. There seemed no end to the evils following the earthquake.

  “No, I don’t think you’ll report me,” Lord Hosokawa said, suddenly crafty.

  Sano tightened his face so it wouldn’t show the fear that trickled through him. “Why not? Because you’re going to kill me before I can leave this house?” He was alone here, his few troops outside no match for the Hosokawa army.

  “Certainly not. Remember, I need you to investigate my daughters’ murders. You will decide for yourself that it’s better not to tell the shogun what has passed between us.”

  As Sano frowned in disbelief, Lord Hosokawa said, “Think about what will happen if you tell. The bakufu will send what’s left of the Tokugawa army to arrest me and the other daimyo. Then we’ll have no choice but to fight. What would we have to lose?”

  “You won’t win,” Sano said, trying to convince himself as well as Lord Hosokawa. “The Tokugawa branch clans and hereditary allies will support the regime.”

  “You know they’re as weakened as the government,” Lord Hosokawa said. “Their domains are located near Edo, in the earthquake zone. Before they can get their troops provisioned and their rear ends on horseback, we’ll have our armies on the march from all over Japan, fully supplied with food, equipment, and ammunition.”

  Appalled by this all-too-realistic scenario, Sano said, “It won’t work. You can’t coerce me into doing what you want.”

  “If you bring my daughters’ killer to justice, I’ll hold off the rebels. They can’t win without me. I’ll hand over the money to you and persuade them that it’s better to donate money to rebuild Edo and shore up the Tokugawa regime than to gamble on coming out on top after a civil war. But if you don’t, you’ll be to blame for the end of the Tokugawa reign because you wouldn’t give up a few days of your precious time. Neither you nor your family will survive the wrath of the shogun, who will see you as the traitor.” Mournful yet triumphant, Lord Hosokawa said, “So, Chamberlain Sano: Which will it be?”

  Sano felt the sting of betrayal, the burn of outrage. Never had he been subjected to such a devious form of pressure to solve a crime, and from a friend, yet! Never had the price of refusal or failure been greater. He was as trapped as the earthquake victims who’d been buried inside their collapsed houses.

  Nodding in defeat, he said, “May the gods damn you to hell!”

  6

  BEARERS CARRIED A palanquin into Sano’s estate, whose outer wall was cracked in some places, entirely crumbled in others. Within the wall, sections of the barracks had collapsed. Once, these two-story structures had formed a continuous inner wall around the mansion and the estate’s other buildings. Now the few barracks that still stood resembled teeth in a mouth punched by a fist. Followed by four guards on horseback, the bearers plodded through the courtyard, where tents served as quarters for Sano’s homeless troops. They set the palanquin down by the mansion, also badly damaged. The front of the half-timbered building listed on its granite foundations. Timbers propped up the eaves that overhung the verandas. The guards dismounted, opened the palanquin’s door, and lifted Reiko out.

  “I’m all right now, Lieutenant Tanuma,” Reiko told her chief bodyguard, who held her shoulders. She’d regained consciousness a few moments after fainting in the tent city, but he’d insisted on bringing her home even though she’d wanted to stay. “I can walk.”

  The guards insisted on carrying her into the mansion. Because the private quarters had collapsed, Sano and Reiko had moved with their children into the mansion’s relatively intact front section, which contained offices and reception chambers. They lived in one reception chamber; Sano’s principal retainers slept in the others. The guards brought Reiko to her family’s chamber, which was crammed with tables, chests, charcoal braziers, other furniture, clothes, and personal belongings salvaged from the ruins. The maids who hurried to assist Reiko had barely enough floor space to spread the futon. Akiko ran in, calling, “Mama, Mama!”

  Mother and daughter didn’t have the easiest relationship. They often fought, but Akiko didn’t like Reiko to go out and leave her. Usually when Reiko returned, Akiko sulked and refused to speak to her. But now she seemed upset by the unusual sight of her mother being carried home like an invalid.

  “Don’t worry, Akiko, I’m fine.” Reiko touched the little girl’s hand as the soldiers carefully set her on her feet. But she still felt weak and shaky as she crawled into bed. When Tanuma sent for a doctor, she hadn’t the strength to object.

  The physician was a nice old man who treated her children’s colds and fevers. As he felt the pulse points on Reiko’s body, Akiko watched anxiously. He made
comical faces at Akiko; she giggled. Reiko heard Sano’s officials and secretaries talking and their footsteps in the corridors. There was little privacy or peace since the earthquake. Noise from the construction in Edo Castle started at sunrise and didn’t stop until dark. Reiko listened to cooks working in their makeshift kitchen, a flat wooden roof supported by posts in what had once been the garden. The kitchen buildings had burned down. Cooks and other servants slept under the roof at night because their quarters had collapsed.

  “How have you been feeling lately?” the doctor asked Reiko.

  “A little tired.” Reiko explained about her work.

  “Are your monthly courses regular?”

  Reiko started to say yes, but her mouth stayed open in abrupt, silent surprise. She remembered that shortly before the earthquake, her courses had been a few days late. After the earthquake, with all the turmoil, she’d forgotten. Now she realized that another month had come and gone. “I’ve missed two courses.”

  “Ah.” The doctor palpated her abdomen with his fingers. “Your little girl will be getting a new baby brother or sister.”

  Reiko had thought that Akiko and Masahiro were to be her only children. Although she was thankful to have them, she yearned to reexperience the joy of holding a new baby in her arms. She envied women who had big families, and she felt as if she’d let Sano down by giving him only two children, even though he never complained. Now she clasped her belly, which suddenly felt full and swollen. Her eyes welled with happiness.

  “Don’t exert yourself,” the doctor warned. “How many years has it been since your daughter was born? And how many between her and your son? You aren’t particularly fertile. You should be careful not to lose this child.”

  He prescribed herbal concoctions, to foster a healthy pregnancy, and a meat stew—normally prohibited by Buddhist dietary laws but allowed for medicinal purposes—to build up Reiko’s strength. After he left, Akiko crept under the quilt and snuggled against Reiko in a rare moment of closeness. Reiko hugged her daughter. But even as she lay smiling with pleasure, she thought of the many women whose children had been killed by the earthquake and fires, and she felt ashamed of her good fortune. She already missed her work in the tent camp. And now she looked forward to months of confinement, idleness, and boredom.

  Reiko could hardly wait for the baby’s birth and her return to action.

  * * *

  EDO JAIL WAS missing several watchtowers. Those, and much of the surrounding wall, had crumbled into the moat. The dungeon inside stood exposed, minus half its roof and walls. Prisoners were housed in a makeshift jail elsewhere. The bridge was gone. Hirata and the driver had to carry the bodies one by one across a new, flimsy plank bridge that couldn’t bear the weight of horses, oxen, or carts. The sentries waved Hirata through the gate with barely a glance at the wrapped corpses; they’d seen many earthquake victims brought in, and assumed these were more of the usual.

  Inside, Hirata and the driver set the bodies in a courtyard by a row of corpses covered with blankets. The morgue was a dumping ground for bodies unidentified and unclaimed. The stench of death was powerful. Hirata dismissed the driver, then looked around. Tarps draped the morgue where one of its scabby plaster walls and part of its shaggy thatched roof had fallen. The custodian shuffled out the door, a white-haired old man with a stern face, dressed in the traditional dark blue coat of a physician.

  “Hirata-san,” he said. His bushy brows rose in surprise; he smiled.

  “Greetings, Dr. Ito,” Hirata said.

  Once an esteemed physician to the emperor’s court in Miyako, Dr. Ito had been arrested for practicing science learned from Dutch traders. Convicted and sentenced to lifetime servitude in the morgue, he could conduct his experiments without fear of punishment. No one assigned to enforce the law against foreign science ever came to check on him; repugnance and the fear of spiritual pollution and physical disease kept most people away.

  Now Dr. Ito was well past eighty. Although his figure had shrunken and his shoulders curved, his eyes had lost none of their keen, bright intelligence. “What have you brought me? More victims of the earthquake?”

  “Perhaps they aren’t,” Hirata said.

  Dr. Ito nodded. He understood that Hirata had come at Sano’s behest and knew the reason why. “We’d better bring them inside. We’ll talk there.”

  Officialdom didn’t care what Dr. Ito did, but it was a different matter for Sano and Hirata. If the authorities got wind of their association with Dr. Ito’s science, they would be exiled. Not even men of their high position could break the strict law against foreign science and escape the consequences. Hirata took the risk for Sano, who sought Dr. Ito’s assistance only in rare, special cases.

  Dr. Ito called to his assistant. Mura came out of the morgue, a thin but sturdy figure clad in unbleached muslin coat, kimono, and trousers. Silver hair gave his square, clever face a distinguished appearance at odds with his social position. Mura was an eta, a member of the hereditary outcast class that was linked to occupations such as butchering and leather-tanning, which bore the physical and spiritual taint of death. Shunned by other citizens, the eta did dirty work, like collecting garbage and night soil. They also served in Edo Jail as wardens, corpse handlers, torturers, and executioners. Dr. Ito and Mura had become friends across class lines, and Mura did the physical work associated with Dr. Ito’s studies.

  Mura helped Hirata carry the bodies into the morgue and lay them on the tables. The morgue was cluttered and crowded; the cabinets, the stone troughs for washing the dead, and sundry equipment had been pushed away from the damaged section. The tarp flapped in the wind. Dr. Ito lit lanterns whose flames wavered in the cold drafts.

  “Who are they?” Dr. Ito moved toward the bodies.

  “An incense teacher named Usugumo. And her two pupils.” Hirata described how and where the women had been found. “The pupils appear to be members of the Hosokawa clan. Sano-san has gone to the Hosokawa estate to break the news to the family.”

  “He believes that these women were murdered?”

  “Yes. Poisoned.”

  Mura unwrapped the bodies. In their contorted poses, the women looked even more bizarrely lifelike than before. Their hair stirred in the draft. The lanterns lit sparkles in their terrible red eyes. Hirata almost expected them to stretch their stiff limbs and sit up.

  “Ah.” As Dr. Ito beheld the women, his eyebrows flew up in astonishment, then slanted downward in an expression of concern. “I shall have to perform an internal examination. On which one would you prefer?”

  “The teacher.” Hirata figured it was wise not to mutilate the bodies of persons from such an important clan as the Hosokawa.

  Mura fetched a long knife with a sharp steel blade. He cut the stained, dusty, dark green kimono and white under-robe off Usugumo, then positioned her on her back. She lay naked, arms bent upward, knees flexed. Her skin was white, smooth for a woman her age, her breasts and stomach firm. Her open mouth in her triangular cat’s face made her look as if she were hissing. Her red eyes glared as if she took offense at this rude treatment. Hirata shivered.

  Directed by Dr. Ito, Mura made a cut that went straight down the middle of Usugumo’s chest then branched in two diagonal cuts across her stomach. He peeled back the flesh. When he opened her abdominal cavity, the strong, pungent odor of garlic arose.

  “That’s one sign,” Dr. Ito said.

  “Of what?” Hirata asked.

  “Arsenic. It’s a mineral that’s been used in Chinese medicine for thousands of years, in small doses. In larger doses, it kills. It also delays putrefaction. The Koreans blend it into a drink that’s given to criminals of high political status who’ve been sentenced to death. More commonly, it’s a poison for rats.” Dr. Ito leaned over Usugumo’s body, his eyes agleam with fascination, and pointed. “Observe the other signs.”

  Her abdominal cavity was as bright yellow as if coated with yellow paint. Hirata stared, amazed. He’d seen plenty of bodies ev
iscerated during combat, but nothing like this.

  “The color is caused by the mixing of arsenic and bodily substances.” Dr. Ito added, “Arsenic is used by artists, as a pigment. Some have accidentally poisoned themselves by breathing the powder or licking their paintbrushes. Mura, please cut open the lungs and the stomach.”

  Mura obeyed. The lungs were congested with lumps of clotted blood, the tissue covered with purple spots. The inside of the stomach was as red as a boiled lobster.

  “Note the residue of the stomach contents. Perfectly preserved,” Dr. Ito said. “My diagnosis is confirmed.”

  Hirata looked at the chewed-up rice, greens, and tofu in brown liquid. His own stomach felt queasy. “How was the arsenic administered?”

  Dr. Ito examined Usugumo’s nose, mouth, and throat. Her tongue was thickened, the membranes red and enflamed. “She inhaled it, I would surmise. Although her digestive tract would look the same if it were taken in food or drink. Did you find any clues at the scene?”

  Hirata removed the green paper packets from the pouch at his waist. “Incense samples from the game.”

  Dr. Ito picked up the open packet and shook the small, round, dark brown pellets onto the table. “Let’s try a test.”

  He went to a cabinet and fetched a pair of fine tweezers and a knife with a wide, flat blade. He lifted down a lantern from its hook on the wall. He held the knife over its flame until the blade glowed red-hot. Then he used the tweezers to pick up an incense pellet and drop it onto the hot blade. The pellet burned and smoked. There came the sweet incense odor, then the stench of garlic. Dr. Ito quickly carried the knife to the open window to disperse the fumes.

  “The test is positive. Iron and heat plus arsenic produces a garlic smell. The arsenic was administered by way of this incense sample.” Dr. Ito added, “The women may have inhaled only a little poisoned smoke, but it went straight into their lungs and was enough to kill them. The incense probably continued burning after they were dead. The fumes accumulated inside the house and preserved their bodies.”