Death of a Doll Maker

by I. J. Parker

  “Good!” Koji clapped his hands, grinned, and ran out.

  “Now then, Masashi. Sit up and explain.”

  The clerk did indeed look pitiful. He was pale and trembled uncontrollably. His stringy hair hung into his face, and his clothes were torn and dirty. He wept again, quite noisily.

  “Calm yourself now, “Akitada said a little more firmly. “There is nothing I can do for you unless you speak freely.”

  Masashi nodded, hiccupped, and wiped his blubbered face with a dirty sleeve. “Ling came to kill me,” he managed. “I got away, but he’s looking for me.” He pulled the shirt from his neck and pushed his hair back. Masashi’s neck was covered with huge bruises. There were other bruises on his arms and on the side of his face.

  “Why did he do this?”

  “The master sent him. Just as with Hiroshi. Ling kills people for the master.”

  No surprise there. Akitada regarded the clerk with an encouraging smile. Surely Masashi was about to give him more proof of Feng’s crimes. “I suspected as much,” he said. “Why did you come here?”

  “Where else could I go? Nobody in Hakata would help me. They’re afraid of Feng or owe him money.”

  “Hmm. I take it you know we found the governor’s body?”

  The clerk nodded.

  “Did Feng kill Governor Tachibana?”

  Masashi looked frightened. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Surely not even Ling would have dared touch one of the good people.”

  “What about the courtesan Fragrant Orchid?”

  “Feng bought her house and set her up. He introduced her to Lord Tachibana.”

  “Did Feng have anything to do with her death?”

  Masashi gave him a startled look. “They said Fragrant Orchid killed herself out of grief over Lord Tachibana leaving.”

  “She was poisoned because she wanted to speak to me. What sort of secret might she have had knowledge of?”

  Masashi became agitated again. “Oh, this is terrible,” he moaned. “That Ling is a monster.”

  “He is Feng’s monster. Did Feng send Ling to kill Fragrant Orchid?”

  “Maybe. Feng told Ling, ‘The woman is going to talk. Take care of her.’ And he gave him something wrapped in paper. I thought it was gold and he meant to pay her off to keep quiet. The governor must have told her about Feng’s business.”

  Koji came back with a tray of food and a flask of wine. Giving Masashi an encouraging nod, he set these down before him and left.

  Akitada thought back to the alleged suicide letter. It did not fit. He decided he had been wrong about the killer leaving it. Ling was not clever enough. Perhaps it had been something Fragrant Orchid left lying about, something she had saved from her affair with Tachibana.

  But the rest was falling into place. Feng’s business indeed! Masashi was a godsend! “Go ahead! Eat and drink,” Akitada urged.

  Masashi eyed the bowl of rice cakes hungrily, but settled for a gulp of wine instead. He was not shaking quite as badly as before.

  “And what was Feng’s business exactly?” Akitada prodded.

  But here Masashi was no help. “I don’t know. He didn’t trust me. I don’t think he trusted anyone, not even Ling. He did a lot of business with China, but this is permitted.”

  “In his case, probably not. What about those dolls Ling wouldn’t let me touch?”

  “Ling was very rude. Feng really doesn’t like him waiting on customers. The dolls were a special shipment meant to go on the ship to China. I couldn’t see it myself. The other dolls were much better made. These were careless, as if the Mitsuis had rushed the job.”

  “Did Feng ask you to pay Mrs. Mitsui five pieces of gold for them?”

  “Five pieces of gold? No. That would have been crazy.”

  No doubt Feng had dealt with Mrs. Mitsui personally. There was no proof, of course, but Akitada thought about it and decided Mitsui had not been involved in the special dolls. Feng had spoken to his wife, probably because she was also Chinese and could be trusted to keep the secret from her abusive husband. Too bad Hiroshi had found out about the gold.

  Masashi had nothing else to tell him. Like Shigeno, the clerk would stay at the tribunal under guard. Masashi was grateful. Akitada did not tell him he would still have to face charges, though he seemed to have been kept in the dark by his master. He made him repeat his tale for a scribe and sign his statement.

  Akitada finally changed his clothes and brewed his cup of tea. He sipped it while reading through Masashi’s statement. Then he rode back to Hakata, where Maeda received Masashi’s testimony with great excitement. “All we need now is Ling!” he cried. “And we’ll get him. There’s no place he can run. The Chinese ship isn’t leaving Hakata until this is settled. And look what we found on the ship.” He pointed to a box beside his desk. In it stood nine plain dolls beside the shards of a tenth. And among the shards lay a handful of gleaming gold nuggets.

  Akitada touched them. They looked just like the gold he had seen and touched on Sado Island. He remembered Shigeno’s story and said, “So Feng hid this gold in the dolls and was sending it to China. I wonder why. The convict Shigeno was involved in a land dispute over mining a mountain in Osumi. What happened to that land after he was sentenced?”

  Maeda looked blank. “No idea. Okata handled the case.”

  “Well, since Shigeno was sentenced to transportation here, get me the trial notes. I think Feng planned to sell information about the gold mine to the Chinese. He was sending the gold in those dolls as proof. We need Okata. You have enough to charge him. Why hasn’t he been arrested?”

  Maeda flushed. “I sent my sergeant with some men. I thought I’d better stay here, what with Feng and the Chinese ship.”

  “Yes, of course. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Too many things are happening; it’s hard to keep everything in mind.”

  Maeda grinned. “It’s exciting, though.”

  Akitada really liked the man.

  *

  An hour later he had the paperwork on Shigeno’s trial. It confirmed what Shigeno had told him. Of even greater interest was the fact that Captain Okata had played a significant role in the investigation and that he had managed to lose three witnesses whose information would have confirmed the prefect’s involvement in Shigeno’s father’s death. Akitada would see to it that these witnesses would be called. This time Shigeno would fare better.

  They brought in Okata toward evening. He was full of outraged bluster until confronted with the charges against him. These ranged far beyond what he had done to Tora. Akitada informed him of Feng’s arrest and then revealed his intentions of reopening the case against Shigeno with particular attention to Okata’s involvement in Feng’s plot to exploit the gold of Kyushu. He might well have brought about an invasion by China.

  Treason of this magnitude carried the death penalty. Okata started talking.

  30

  YESTERDAY’S BLOSSOMS

  Ling was not caught until a week later. By this time Akitada no longer cared. When Maeda informed him, he only said, “Do whatever it takes to make him talk.” Ling confessed quickly. He died on his way to Tsushima.

  When Feng was confronted with the evidence against him, he took poison, having been supplied with the means either by accident or design. Akitada did not care about this either.

  The Chinese ship was released with a warning, and Korenori, the assistant governor general, congratulated him on solving the murder of governor Tachibana and stopping a dangerous plot against the nation.

  Okata was condemned to death and transported.

  Matters of much greater importance had happened after Okata’s arrest.

  Akitada had returned to the tribunal in the knowledge that he had stopped a dangerous man and a possible invasion by the Chinese. He looked forward with considerable complacency to making his report to Fujiwara Korenori.

  But first there were letters from home.

  Tora and Saburo were already waiting anxiously for him to op
en the thick package of official and personal mail. They sat in his study as he undid the oiled cloth that covered mail sent by ship. Laying aside official documents and some letters from friends, Akitada opened a separate package, lovingly tied with a scrap of silk ribbon.

  Letters and drawings from the children fell out first. Then he saw a letter from his sister Akiko. Akiko was willful and too conscious of status, in his opinion. Lately she had begun meddling in his work. He laid her letter aside with those of the children. Hanae’s handwriting he recognized and passed to Tora. There were also some missives for Saburo. Finally there was nothing left but a disappointingly thin sheet, folded somewhat badly. It had no superscription, but when he unfolded it, he saw it was from Tamako. The writing was oddly uneven, a mere scrawl, and the letter was only a few lines long.

  “My dear husband—we had a son—alas, he died. Forgive your loving wife.”

  The death of the child was an unexpectedly painful blow. It was, of course, a common occurrence that newborns died, and this child had been born before his time to a mother who was no longer young. He had not expected to grieve for a creature he only knew from feeling its movements inside its mother’s womb. How like Tamako to ask his pardon in her own grief. There was nothing to forgive. Fate frequently opposed human hope. He sighed and reminded himself that Tamako had already given him two beautiful children—no, three. Yori had also fallen prey to the cruel hand of fate. It was the human lot to suffer such losses. He would write to Tamako. He did not need more children to find happiness in his marriage. She was all he had ever wanted and needed.

  He laid her note aside and started to tell Tora and Saburo about the death of the baby. To his surprise, they looked stricken. He said, “It was a boy, but he died.”

  Saburo shook his head and wiped away tears. Tora said in a thick voice, “Read the other letter, sir.”

  Later he would not be able to say when he knew. Was it Saburo’s face when he had smeared Tamako’s make-up by wiping tears from his eyes, or Tora’s choking voice?

  Akiko’s letter explained it. It was a short letter for her. He read it and felt the room spin. He read it again, and his hand started shaking so badly that the letter fell from it. He did not have the strength to pick it up.

  “I’m very sorry, sir,” Tora said in a half-stifled tone.

  Saburo wept openly now. “Me too, sir. We’d both give anything to undo this.”

  Akitada could not speak. He nodded and waved a hand, and after a moment they rose and left the room.

  Tamako was dead!

  Her short note had been her last words to him. An apology. She had barely had the strength to hold the brush; Hanae had helped her. And then she had died. Without him by her side. He had been chasing after villains who meant nothing to him. For a government that had demanded the ultimate sacrifice from him.

  Now he was alone and would remain alone. Tamako was such an essential part of him that her place could not be filled—not by the children, though he loved them—not by Tora or Genba or Saburo, though they were his closest friends.

  He was alone and nothing mattered any longer.

  After a long time, he got to his feet and walked outside. The ground beneath the little tree was white. Snow, he thought. Snow, as pure and cold as death.

  But it was not snow. The little tree had shed all its blossoms overnight, and beauty had left the world.

  Historical Note

  Kyushu—the name means “nine provinces”—is the southernmost of the large Japanese islands and closest to Japan’s neighbors, China and Korea. Historically this is significant because Japan took much of its cultural identity from China, either directly through embassies and an exchange of travelers or via contact with Korea. This included, for example, Buddhism, the structure of its administration, its official language, its art and architecture, and much of its learning.

  Diplomatic wrangling required that both China and Japan consider the other nation as a vassal and exchange gifts that were received as tribute. In time, Japan tired of the exchange and closed its borders to foreign visitors. All shipping and travel between Tang China, Korea (Koryo), and Japan was strictly regulated and had to stop in Kyushu, where the Tsukushi Lodge, a reception area for foreigners (Korokan) was built near Hakata. Kyushu was heavily fortified against invasions, and its government center was located inland at Dazaifu behind a massive dyke or water fortress (Mizuki) and numerous mountain fortresses guarding its access road. Frontier guards guarded Hakata Bay.

  The administration of Kyushu was from the beginning a particularly sensitive one. It was a long distance from the capital so that it took weeks to transmit reports and instructions; it was settled by land-owning nobles frequently hostile to the central government; and it was close to both China and Silla, an enemy on the Korean peninsula. Thus it was administered by a type of viceroy, called a governor general (sotsu), from a heavily protected administrative center located at Dazaifu. The governor general was always an imperial prince, who remained in the capital while the business of Kyushu was handled by the assistant governor general, a high-ranking nobleman. He supervised foreign trade and travel, military facilities, and the eleven governors who administered the individual nine provinces of Kyushu and the two island provinces of Tsushima and Iki.

  Early on, merchants from Korea and China came in numbers, but in the ninth and tenth centuries formal relations with China and Korea stopped, and trade diminished. Foreign pirates ruled the seaways. In the late tenth century, Kyushu was invaded by the Toi, (”barbarians”), from Mongolia and Northern China. The defense of Kyushu as the gateway to Japan became a priority. The system of importing frontier guards from other parts of Japan was abandoned and local forces were used instead. This strengthened local landowners greatly and led to their gaining power and influence in the administration at Dazaifu. Military control in Kyushu passed to them, and they filled both military and administrative positions where they pursued their private interests.

  By the eleventh century, some restrictions against trade with China and Korea loosened because of demand for luxury goods by the ranking nobility and the court, and because of efforts of Buddhist centers to acquire religious documents and art. Foreign merchants managed to bypass government controls by dropping anchor in privately owned harbors to load and unload their goods.

  It is against this background that Akitada’s assignment to the office of governor of Chikuzen province must be seen. Chikuzen included Hakata, a major port city on the Inland Sea, Dazaifu, where government headquarters were located, and the Tsukushi Lodge (korokan), where all foreigners stayed. The headquarters at Dazaifu, a smaller version of the Greater Imperial Palace (Daidairi) in the capital, severely restricted the powers and independence of Kyushu governors. To add to these problems, Hakata had attracted settlements of Chinese and Koreans who had arrived during more favorable times and stayed, while local nobles had usurped certain powers and frequently served in administrative positions. Meanwhile, the central government in the capital was extremely nervous about the erosion of trade restrictions and the threat of new invasions from China or Korea.

  As the central government in the capital tried to control distant provinces of the country in order the levy rice taxes and corvee labor, provincial administrations were headed by court nobles from the capital. These men brought their own small staff, but most of the bureaus in the provincial headquarters were headed by local men. Provinces were further subdivided into prefectures (gun) and the prefects were again local men. In time, the system eroded further in that governors were absent, leaving the work to the local appointees, or letting a lower-ranking member of the central government substitute. This was certainly the case with the Dazaifu office.

  Akitada would have found a poorly staffed headquarters or tribunal, probably lacking the usual amenities, such as military barracks, jails, granaries and storehouses for tax goods, a tax office, and provincial archives. He could not expect help from an assistant governor, an executive officer, an in
spector, and a chief magistrate, not to mention tax grain chiefs, corvee directors, scribes or a minimum of four servants for each of these. He could also expect local appointees to be uncooperative.

  The manufacture of elaborate dolls is a more recent development in Japanese history, and Hakata dolls are famous. This suggested the idea of the doll maker and the hollow dolls. However, dolls certainly existed long before Akitada’s time. By the eleventh century, they were made both as toys for children and as ritual objects intended to protect a child from evil spirits, either by confusing them or by drawing them into the doll which could then be disposed off.

  In the early years, Japan was poor in both silver and gold. As these metals were needed for trade, there was always a great interest in discovering deposits. Silver was being mined in Tsushima early on, but in the Heian period, the only gold came from the north of the country. The gold mentioned in this novel is a fiction, though a rich gold mine was eventually discovered in Osumi province in modern times.

  As for details of the location of the places mentioned here, modern archeological digs have confirmed Dazaifu, the korokan, the elaborate dam protecting Dazaifu, and the mountain forts that protected it and the Kyushu coastline against foreign invasions. The rest of the historical facts comes from documents dating to the time. Bruce L. Batten’s book GATEWAY TO JAPAN: HAKATA IN WAR AND PEACE, 500-1300 is a good source of information about the area in early times.

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