Made in Japan

by S. J. Parks

  ‘Travelling with you I don’t get to smoke much,’ he complained.

  They ordered doria rice dishes from a plump teenager with bad skin, in a two-tone American burger-bar uniform.

  ‘Same from one vast factory supplying the whole country,’ he mused, regretting his decision, but he knew that they had to get up to Gifu that evening and all they had time for was fast food.

  The Mickey Mouse pad and pencil returned to offer fluorescent sundaes; crème caramels in a perspex holder. ‘American coffee or American coffee?’ he asked and ordered without waiting for her reply.

  ‘The teahouse garden …’ he began, his hands moving earnestly in front of him as if he were holding the subject as an entity. ‘That garden—’ He was momentarily drowned out by a chorus of welcoming waiters and began again. ‘That garden has two parts: an inner and outer section.’

  ‘I remember a gate on the path leading up to the pond. With a cedar bark roof,’ Naomi conferred.

  ‘So,’ he affirmed, reassured that she had understood him, ‘that garden has to be a journey’ He angled his head for emphasis. ‘The teahouse becomes a sanctuary for the tranquil spirit. Like a feeling you get after you climb the mountain. You are refreshed and pleased that you have completed that task.’ He paused to inhale deeply. He retrieved the stub of his cigarette from the ashtray.

  ‘In this same way, you are leaving the world behind like a … like a …’

  And here his English faltered as he stumbled for the correct expression.

  ‘Like a religious retreat?’ she offered. It was not his point.

  He reached for his water and, changing his mind, leaned across the table and took her water glass. He turned the glass around until the stain of her peach lipstick met his lips and he met her eyes with the challenge. He downed the water in one and slapped it to the table defiantly.

  It was unequivocal. She felt unthreatened out on the road trip with him and she picked up his glass and drank. And she took a swig without looking at him once. It might be a response. It might not.

  ‘Yes, yes. Okay, like Buddha goes up the mountain to meditate.’ He was encouraged to continue. ‘You have to let everything from the world outside fall away. You have to travel with the architecture of the garden, along the path. It takes you away on a set journey and you cannot see ahead. Your thoughts cannot wander from the path.’

  Was he urging her to make a journey? She drew on his eloquent passion for Zen, which she had already began to share.

  The waitress filled the water glasses and he lit another cigarette. Toying with the rim of the glass and watching her closely he said to her, ‘We have a room at Gifu.’

  ‘What do you mean, “a room”,’ she bridled at the assumption suddenly.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ He looked down. ‘It’s a Japanese room. Big and long, like everyone sleeps in. You can sleep at one end. I’m gonna sleep at the other end.’

  He threw it out as if matter of fact but it was news to her.

  ‘It is high season and, if it is okay for you, it’s cheaper for my company.’

  ‘No. Jesus. What sort of company is this?’ He shouldn’t assume.

  ‘My company got caught up in a lousy deal recently. We have a little financial trouble right now.’

  Naomi thought she could trust him. She didn’t doubt that much of the declaration was true. She said nothing.

  ‘Liquidity. That’s all.’

  His honest admission left her open to his vulnerability. He looked at her as though he depended on her. It was true hotel rooms in Japan were sold for multiple occupancy. She hesitated and lowered her guard.

  ‘The company booked it?’

  She made an excuse and left him for the restroom.

  She was precariously balanced over the porcelain hole in the floor and the cubicle was impossibly small. It all made her feel clumsy and unsettled. She stood aggressively on the low handle to flush it and on her return she found he had left the table. The trail of thanks and sayonaras from the waiters echoed in her wake as she left and, though a customary practice, felt they could be mocking her.

  He sat at the wheel of the car and looked resigned to not be getting his own way. Her sense of having been cornered evaporated; in the newly broken sunshine drew steam in the air.

  They drove out of Nagoya towards Gifu. The arterial road was lined in two-dimensional façades, like a movie set; pachinko parlours; car dealerships, and colourless neon signs like exhausted geisha caught sleeping in the daylight without their make-up.

  As they drove, her thoughts turned to Josh. He would have checked into his hotel room in New York by now. He always shaved at night before he slept. This saved him time in the morning. The suitcase would be open at the foot of the bed. Would he be relaxed about the room with Mochizuki? How would she feel if Josh was spending his first night in New York in a room with his female colleagues? It was a small revelation that it did not matter as much as it should to her.

  Chapter 58

  Tai: the Lucky fish

  Mochizuki hung so comfortably over the check-in desk he could have been a regular. The lobby was badly lit and two long-sleeved spinsters in kimonos hovered on the steps, unable to pull on a smile after years of disuse. They mumbled a vacuous greeting. The inter-war architecture was of a register deeply unknown to her, illuminated by two rice-paper lanterns, bookending a domineering reception counter.

  Naomi held back to avoid the watchful eyes of the receptionist as the sole room was allocated. She had agreed to the arrangements but now, under the scrutiny others, she wished she had not – but here in the lobby it was too late. She could take a look and then decide, but she already knew what would be.

  A porter in a happi coat stooped on bandy legs, waiting for their bags. As Mochizuki left to have a cigarette she made a point of not looking at him.

  Left in the cavern of the lobby she trailed the porter, following a dank smell of sulphur emanating from the hot spring somewhere in the bowels of the building. They took the elevator to the fifth floor.

  In the tatami room the shoji window was ajar, and from below the rock-bed stream sent a breeze that caused the fluorescent light fitting to sway, casting tidal marks that washed the painted fusuma wall panels of grey sumi-e. She stood in the middle of the room. Gnarled trees in early spring bloom were rendered in thin ink, and, on the opposite wall, the startling eyes of a searching, whiskered dragon. It was as if this long mythical creature had leapt from the top of the bell tower at the temple to join them. She would not give in to notions of being watched. Ancient Chinese dragons had masculine strengths, which might she thought, overwhelm her, but then again, this one carried the potential of a more feminine genii.

  Leaving her scrutiny of the ink paintings she made for the basement onsen. By following the tart odour, the spa was easy to find.

  She turned the clammy handle to the changing rooms.

  Two women chatted as they dressed, one naked but for plastic bathhouse sandals. Her waxy skin glowed a faint jaundiced tinge.

  Naomi began to remove her clothes and fold them as the woman drying her underarm released a salvo of words . But she understood nothing. The woman laughed as she rubbed her belly and Naomi left for the onsen.

  Palls of steam rose like smoke on a windless day, obscuring the surface of the water. She had the onsen to herself. Lying scattered across the stone floor were empty pieces of pale wooden bath furniture. Gathering up a small stool and coopered bucket, she sat beside a waterspout. Filling the naturally fragrant bucket she threw cold water over her bare shoulders. Her skin recoiled, tensing at the shock. The white curds of soap held to the curve of her naked inner thighs. She could feel the soft touch of her fingertips as if they belonged to somebody else. As she looked up, in the mirror, across the steam-filled bath, she could see she was not alone.

  Turning to the distant figure, she found Mochizuki sat on the other side of the second pool.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she shouted, incensed, partly that he had be
en watching and partly that he had the benefit of sitting neck-deep in steam-obscured water.

  He did not answer immediately, and then called back, ‘This time is reserved for the male guests. I was going to ask you the same thing.’

  You took your time, she thought.

  She could either leave or take to the waters. She picked up her bucket to march out but aware how comic this might appear, instead she made for the edge of the onsen bath with all the naked dignity she could muster.

  Cautiously, she sat on the edge of the mineral salted water. It was blisteringly hot. In a slow process of acclimatizing one limb after another, she entered until she too was up to her neck in scalding water, sitting on the pebbles at the bottom of the pool. But far on the other side she could see him leaving.

  Counting down before she could leap out, the acrid smell of sulphur curling her nose . She was a little afraid to stand and a little dizzy So this was how Japanese women famously kept their skin from aging?

  The lobby telephone clung to a pillar like a limpet. She lifted the receiver and stress-tested the cord before putting it back down. Should she make the courtesy call to Josh?

  ‘Well, how is it?’ he asked. ‘Nice hotel?’

  ‘It’s a traditional onsen.’

  ‘I thought this was a business trip. You’re at a spa?’

  ‘We just saw the publishers in Nagoya.’

  ‘Good room?’

  Should she tell him the booking was for one room?

  ‘How is the old man doing?’ he asked.

  He didn’t need to know, she decided. How would he understand?

  Chapter 59

  The soft wet breath of dusk fell as they took a stroll before dinner, heading for the river. Along the water’s edge, the lanterns were lit on the huts lining the banks, selling trips on the famous Nagara River. They were on business, she tried to fool herself as she walked beside him. Japanese folk music issued from flimsy structures so impermanent they might be swept away at the end of the evening like a pack of cards. From a hinged flap a hawker’s arching diphthong did its best to catch them as they passed.

  ‘U … k a … i … ikanga desuka?’ Shadowy figures came and went to offer a deal one better than the last. Easily rebuffed with the wave of his hand, the hawkers retreated like ghosts shown the daylight. He chose a lantern-dressed boat hut halfway along because nobody had made any overtures. The lights cast on the water only intermittently, like a poor transmission. Heavy with the smell of cheap citrus aftershave, a short rigid man leant against a bike stand outside the hut, and a girl in short skirt and boots clung to the silvered buckle of his belt, the magnet for aspirational wealth. Naomi thought the girl very young. They slipped apart at the arrival of customers.

  Mochizuki negotiated the boat hire and Naomi wandered further up the river, beneath the trees, looking out over the dark movement of the tranquil river, absorbing the sounds on the bank. She thought of Miho and Sam. Her musings were displaced by the sound of Mochizuki’s voice – ‘uso!’ – floating up in the midst of a warming conversation.

  She knew it to mean ‘lies’; the negotiations must be going badly. She wandered back unhurriedly on the soft dirt track through the trees to show some support.

  Mochizuki and the ferryman were down by the water’s edge looking into a flat-bottomed boat of a kind; she thought, that one should particularly never trust. She looked it over, prejudiced against the project from the start. The water was black and uninviting.

  Mochizuki was balking at the cost. ‘He’s not selling a cruise. We’re talking a small boat. A piece of driftwood. On the banks of the Nagara.’

  ‘Is he our boatman?’ Naomi doubted his skills and didn’t want to spend the evening with his citrus aftershave. It was a pleasure craft rowboat for two.

  ‘We don’t need him,’ he said. ‘I’m going to row.’

  ‘Can you row?’

  ‘You want to row?’ he barked, rounding on her short-temperedly.

  She was unflustered. ‘I,’ she said fulsomely, looking down at the splinter of a boat to see whether it had rowlocks, ‘would insist.’ An ironic, not fully informed decision.

  ‘So, okay. Me first.’ The negotiations had made him demanding and it took a while to cast off.

  He walked the short length of the rowboat, lowering his centre of gravity for stability as it bobbed. He took up a position on the transom, his back to the river and facing her as she stepped the short distance from the bank. She noted he left her to be handed aboard by the boatman. As they sat opposite one another in the darkness, his frustration amused her and she was indulgent of his bad humour. She watched him as he fiddled with the short oars that had been caught under against the sides of the boat.

  Slowly and quietly she announced, ‘My feet are getting wet.’

  One oar was secured and he was teasing out the second from its snare beside the seat. He didn’t notice the pools of water in the bottom of the boat and he managed to free it, becoming absorbed in positioning it in the rowlock. As she watched she became aware that he was falling a little beneath her line of vision. Her cry was plaintive this time and accompanied a very decisive retreat from the sinking vessel.

  ‘It’s going down.’

  His concentration broken, Mochizuki looked at the pooling water and hurriedly supported her towards the bank, clambering out to join her as water reached his knees. He was very wet.

  ‘You hired the Titanic.’ Naomi’s words were broken by a peal of spontaneous laughter.

  ‘Dame da yo.’ Heavy browed, he strode passed her to have words with the boat-hire, unable to share her sense of amusement.

  During discussions, a couple of wiry old men appeared like voles from the bank, and the upshot was they were offered a larger complementary boat with its own boatman. They sat on the upholstered seats, like a pair of economy-class travellers who got lucky on an upgrade In view of the satisfying sight of someone else pulling on the oars she finally sank back to relax, relieved to be with someone who knew the waters.

  They travelled down the river in silence, watching the oars move through the water and the boat stir the still air suspended over the river. They sat back, pleased to be out inhabiting the cloud-covered moonless night. Other boats of laughing parties paddled past them, making their way up towards the bridge.

  ‘Everybody has to see this when they come to Gifu,’ he offered as a token of his returning good humour. ‘I wanted you to see this.’

  Just beyond the bridge was the spot where the Ukai fishermen with their cormorant birds congregated.

  ‘Fishermen – we call it ukai – release the tethered birds to catch the fish but rings are so tight round their necks they can never swallow and eat the fish. The catch belongs to the fishermen, who take every fish.’

  Naomi sounded in sympathy with the cormorant.

  He began to laugh.

  ‘They get what they need. Every employer is a cormorant fisherman. A taker. I have my own master to contend with.’

  She remembered he had talked of earning favours once. But he had his own staff. ‘You’re one too,’ she responded.

  As they passed beneath the bridge, the oars ceased to slip through the water and they continued in a silent glide between the damp pillars. Out on the other side, in the limpid eddies protected by the arches, the boatman passed a line through a rusted metal ring. The line paid out as the current pulled them downstream until it jolted.

  Mochizuki moved in his seat. He watched the dart of light toying with the smooth curves of her cheekbones, damp with the exertion of gentle pleasure, caught in a radiance that skin only shows at night.

  Up ahead the bows of the cormorant fishers were lashed together. At the prow of each boat a fire of logs hung in spherical metal braziers swinging over the water through the darkness. Small sparks like fireflies floated on the wood smoke as it drifted across the water. The fishermen stood like mythical figures yoked to a chariot of fire driven by dark birds that took flight in the darkness. He watched Nao
mi as she turned in her seat to get a better view of the figures. On each boat a man stood upright holding a small flock of inky black birds tethered on leashes, strung out like musical notes on the water line. The fishermen were moving slowly in front of the braziers. The birds – black crochets, silhouetted against the light of the fires – were playing out an ancient ritual like the silent shadow performance of the Wayang Kulit puppeteers of Indonesia. A ring around the neck held each bird as they dived, swooping and splashing in a random staccato rhythm, and in their turn they caught a fish only to be pulled in by the strong arms of shadowy men. Time and time again a bird leapt into the water bringing in a fish, which was then torn from its gullet, like voracious young feeding from a parent.

  ‘These are the ukai fisherman,’ Mochizuki whispered.

  She didn’t respond; she was completely absorbed by the fishing and lured, like the sweet ayu fish, by the hypnotic light of the fire in the braziers. He had, for a moment, lost her to the spectacle. He asked the boatman to take them little closer to the cormorant fishers. The rope was loosened and the current brought them downriver towards a group of ukai; the boatman’s oars played with the current to keep them level with, but not too close to, the fishing boats.

  From this vantage point, Naomi watched closely as a cormorant perched on the side of the boat. It dived.

  ‘See. He will catch but he cannot keep,’ Mochizuki whispered.

  Its catch stuck in its throat with its unvoiced satisfaction. The ugly black birds flapped their bony wings in mild protest as the burnished face of the fisherman beneath his bandana neared to steal the fish from its bulging throat before releasing the bird to fish again. He lifted the neck ring, stroking its constricted gullet as one of the sweet fish, dazzled by the brazier light, emerged from its throat. Let loose to roam the length of its leash the bird went back, following an instinct, as playful as hunger, taking greater pleasure from its expectation than the catch.