The Last Tea Bowl Thief

by Jonelle Patrick

  That’s all the opening she needs. She scrambles for the door.

  The dealer turns to stop her just as another missile demolishes what’s left of the glass and hits him on the back of the head. He falls.

  She scurries through the showroom, out the front door, then hikes up the front of her kimono and runs. She doesn’t stop until a stitch in her side forces her to slow to a walk. Breathing hard, she slumps against a postbox and hangs her head.

  When she recovers enough to look around, she doesn’t see a single familiar landmark. She’s drained from her ordeal, but the lengthening shadows and deepening chill remind her it will soon be dark. She’ll have an even harder time finding her way back to the refugee barracks if she doesn’t push on.

  A shopkeeper points her at the glinting water of Shinobazu Pond at the end of the next cross street. If she follows the shoreline, it will lead her back to the refugee camp.

  43.

  Present-Day Japan

  TUESDAY, APRIL 8

  Tokyo

  Robin charges out of the Fujimori Fine Art building and strides toward police headquarters, seething from her encounter with the head of the auction house. She’d perched on a chair outside Mr. Fujimori’s inner sanctum for forty-five minutes, waiting for him to squeeze her in between appointments, but she’d barely warmed the visitor seat in his office before she was out the door again.

  Interesting tale, he’d said. Did she have proof? His frown said it all, as he silently regarded the photo of the empty boxes and passed it back. If she managed to find something more convincing before they delivered the tea bowl to the head priest of Senkō-ji next Monday, by all means bring it in. Until then . . .

  She stalks across the vast concrete plaza toward the skyscraper housing Tokyo Metropolitan Police headquarters. How is she going to stop this train wreck?

  The stoic-faced policeman standing guard with his wooden staff bars her path, asking what business she has there.

  “I’m here to sign a statement. A witness statement,” she snaps, in case he suffers from the national misconception that foreigners are responsible for most of the crimes keeping him in business.

  He lets her pass. She sails through the big automatic doors, gives her name to the receptionist, then sits on the edge of the last empty chair, waiting to be summoned by Inspector Anzai. Her knee jiggles. She stills it. Nips at a hangnail, then drops her hand to her lap, closing her fist around her smarting thumb.

  Why do encounters with Japanese bureaucracy always do this to her? Seems like every officer crossing the lobby is eyeballing her. Because she’s a foreigner? Because she’s female? Or do they sense she has a profoundly illegal bag of marijuana gummy bears shoved into the toe of her snow boot at home? Her underarms prickle. She’s never been able to figure out a safe way to get rid of the unwanted gift from the spectacularly irresponsible college friend who visited four years ago. Bury it in her kitchen garbage on Burnable Trash day? A neighborhood dog might sniff it out. Flush it down the toilet? What if a plumber came to snake the clogged drain and—

  Wait, is that Nori Okuda?

  It is. The spiky-ponytailed shopkeeper is crossing the vast lobby, aiming for the automatic door, eyes vacant, face shell-shocked. What had Anzai said to make her look like that?

  “Miss Swann? This way please?”

  She jerks to attention, follows the constable to a waiting elevator.

  But nobody seems to want her in their office for very long today. Ten minutes later, a succinct account of her first meeting with Nori Okuda has been stamped with her name seal, a vague answer about when to expect test results on Hikitoru given to Inspector Anzai’s assistant, and she’s back out on the plaza. Her own attempts to find out whether the police had discovered anything that might help her establish Hikitoru’s provenance died a quick death against the brick wall of “sorry, police business.”

  She blinks in the glare. If only people who weren’t gangsters could wear sunglasses in Japan without seeming rude. Squinting as she makes a beeline for the shade of the plaza’s token trees, it isn’t until she steps into their shifting shade that she recognizes the solitary woman slumped on a bench beneath them.

  “Okuda-san?” She stops a few feet away.

  Nori glances up, eyes red, face puffy. Quickly turns away.

  “Are you okay?” In all her time in Japan, the closest she’s come to seeing a Japanese woman lose her composure in public was the stunned face and rapidly blinking eyes of a fellow grad student who spotted her fiance emerging from a love hotel, and not alone.

  Robin perches on the other end of the bench and says, “I saw you coming out of the elevator. What happened?”

  Nori flinches away, repeating, “It’s fine. I’m fine. Really.”

  But any idiot could see she’s not. If Robin had been Japanese, it would have been inexcusably rude to ignore the body language screaming “go away,” but she hasn’t forgotten how to be a blunt foreigner, and the poor woman seems so alone.

  “Let me buy you a cup of tea, at least.”

  “No. Thanks. Really.” Nori jumps up, grabs her purse. “Sorry. Excuse me.” She sketches a head bob that barely counts as a bow and hurries away, stiff-legged, across the plaza.

  Confounded, Robin watches her go. What had upset her so deeply that she’d barely made it out of police headquarters before breaking down? Anzai must have threatened her, but with what? Nori hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. Her tea bowl was stolen, but she hadn’t even been alive in 1945, so she couldn’t be the thief.

  She might know who was, though. Robin starts back toward the office. They really only had Nori’s word for it that the tea bowl had been in her family since 1945. What if it hadn’t been? What if it had changed hands multiple times since it disappeared from Senkō-ji’s treasure house? Just last week she’d read an article about how stolen art—especially art too famous to sell—is being used by criminals as collateral in black market deals. What if—

  No, that’s ridiculous. A Kappabashi shopkeeper, neck-deep in arms running or drug trafficking? She’s got to stop watching so many gangster movies.

  But it’s a legitimate worry. If there had been multiple “owners” since 1945, who else might try to get their hands on Hikitoru after it’s handed over to one of the claimants? She needs to find out if there are other players. And who they are.

  Inspector Anzai might know, but they’ll be building snowmen in hell before he shares.

  He’s not the only one with that information, though. If she can get past the anger and hurt, Nori Okuda might help her. Maybe they can help each other.

  44.

  Wartime Japan

  APRIL, 1945

  Tokyo

  Chiyo drags her feet to a bench on the deserted lotus-viewing boardwalk that borders the Shinobazu Pond, shoulders aching beneath the burden that feels twice as heavy as when she set out that morning. She drops onto an empty seat, her cheeks wet with despair. All around her, the dry stalks whisper, thief, thief, in the shivery breeze. What’s she going to do now? She has no money, no buyer, and if anyone guesses her carrying cloth is filled with stolen goods, she’ll—

  “You should be more careful who you do business with, you know.”

  Chiyo nearly jumps out of her skin. It’s . . . the pickpocket from the marketplace?

  Snatching up her bundle, she squeaks, “What are you doing here?”

  “Followed you.”

  He plops down on the far end of the bench and occupies himself digging around in his jacket pocket, looking away politely while she tidies her face with a corner of her kimono sleeve. Drawing out a half-smoked cigarette and a magnifying glass, he leans into the last patch of afternoon sun and focuses the rays on the end of his fag until it begins to smolder. He sticks it between his lips and takes a drag.

  “Did I kill him or just knock him out?” he asks, blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth.

  “That was you?”

  “Best strikeout I ever pitched.”


  The memory burns. How long had he been standing outside that back window, witnessing her humiliation? A resentful bow hides her mortification.

  “Thank you,” she says stiffly. “For your, uh . . . help.”

  “You’re welcome.” He parks the cigarette in a corner of his mouth and tucks away his magnifying glass.

  “You shouldn’t be smoking, at your age, you know,” she scolds, trying to wipe the smug look off his face.

  “If I’m old enough to train for homeland defense, I’m old enough to smoke,” he retorts. Then admits, “At least, I will be next month.”

  He’s barely older than she is. She forgives him his bravado.

  He stands.

  “Come on,” he says. Walks away.

  She stares after him, then grabs her burden and catches up, planting herself in his path. “Where are you going?”

  “To someone who’ll give you a fair price for your stuff.”

  “Who?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Who?” she insists.

  “My mom.”

  “Your mom?”

  “Yeah.” He takes a drag on the cigarette and blows the smoke out with a world-weary twist of his lips. “My dad and my brothers are off fighting on some godforsaken island in the South Pacific, and someone’s gotta run the family business.”

  She falls in beside him.

  “What kind of family business?”

  “Pawnshop.”

  “She runs it alone?”

  “I help.”

  He pinches out the spark at the end of the fag and carefully stows the remnant in an envelope he draws from his jacket pocket.

  “My name’s Miura, by the way. What’s yours?”

  “Okuda. Chiyo Okuda,” she tells him, forgetting to lie.

  “Nice to meet you, Chiyo-chan.”

  He leads her through the backstreets of Ueno, promising “it’s just two more blocks” when her feet start to drag. It’s really more like four, but as they make their way down a quiet lane toward a building displaying a door curtain dyed with the characters for “pawnshop,” it’s the boy’s steps that slow, then stop. He studies a large black car parked out front.

  “I think we’d better wait until that customer leaves,” he says.

  She gapes at the shining beast.

  “Your customers ride around in cars?”

  These days, it’s pedestrians and bicycles that clog the streets of Tokyo. Every drop of oil is being funneled into the war effort, and gasoline is so severely rationed that even the rich can no longer afford to drive. A car could only mean—

  A man emerges from the doorway, flipping the curtain aside, his military bearing marking him as the one kind of person who can swan around in an automobile without being unpatriotic. He turns to receive a silk-wrapped box from the woman who follows him out. His driver is standing at attention next to the open car door by the time he straightens from his bow, but the woman maintains her deep, ninety-degree obeisance until they have pulled away and rounded the corner.

  The boy resumes walking, motioning for Chiyo to follow.

  ‘“Kaa-san!” he calls.

  His mother turns. She’d probably never been beautiful—her nose has a pronounced bump, and her features are too sharp to be fashionably feminine—but she’s so elegantly dressed in a willow-patterned silk kimono that it doesn’t matter. Her still-black hair (where does she manage to get dye of that quality during wartime?) is pinned up in a traditional nihongami hairstyle, a reminder of a more gracious era.

  When Chiyo gets close enough to be introduced, the sharp eyes behind Mrs. Miura’s gold-rimmed spectacles miss nothing, but her voice isn’t unkind as she holds the curtain and invites them inside.

  While the boy explains why he brought her back with him, Chiyo tries not to be distracted by the costly merchandise gleaming everywhere. The shop feels like a pirate’s cave.

  Mrs. Miura leads them down the hall to the office.

  Chiyo sets her carrying cloth on the well-used black lacquer table. Cups of tea are poured, snacks offered. Feet tucked neatly beneath her as she kneels across from Mrs. Miura, she nibbles on a rice cracker, nerves on edge as the pawnbroker’s wife removes her glasses and sets them aside. The boy kneels at his mother’s side, sharing the circle of light from a powerful lamp.

  Together, they work their way through the boxes. Once he asks, “Kutani or Hirado?” and when his mother refuses to answer, he grimaces and gets up to consult the reference books bowing the shelves along one wall. Occasionally, she passes him an object and he inspects it with the magnifying glass before muttering a cryptic comment like, “Jumatsu-ya.”

  Then she hands him one of the tea bowls. When he says “Yes?” after hefting it, she tells him to flip it over and check the foot. When he looks up, puzzled, and says, “Fake?” Chiyo stiffens with alarm, but his mother just smiles and says, “No. Look at the date on the box. It’s too old. Signing one’s work is a modern conceit.”

  After rewrapping each piece, Mrs. Miura pencils notations and figures into a notebook. Chiyo’s surreptitious attempts to read them upside down meet with failure, so she studies the small office instead.

  The Miuras appear to have been in business for nearly as many generations as her own family. About the same number of bookkeeping ledgers are lined up atop the filing cabinet as sat on the shelf at Okuda & Sons before the bombs fell, and although the Miuras’ wall calendar is a slightly different design than the one that hung on the wall on Kappabashi Street, it also features a weeping cherry tree for the month of March. The oddest similarity is that the Miuras’ resident Shinto gods occupy a shelf high up in the far corner, just like the deities in the Okudas’ office. They live in an identical wooden shrine building, with the same offering bowls set before it. She’s oddly comforted by this piece of home, almost as if the Okuda family gods had temporarily relocated and were still watching out for her.

  In the silence, her stomach growls and she shrinks as the boy’s mother looks up. But Mrs. Miura merely offers more tea, urges her to take another rice cracker. In fact, she says, taking in Chiyo’s hollow cheeks and pale skin, help yourself to as many as you like. Mrs. Miura returns to her task, and Chiyo finishes her second rice cracker rather more quickly than the first, her hand stealing across the table for another.

  Mrs. Miura opens the last box. It holds one of the fans. She passes it to her son, who gingerly unfolds it, revealing a gold quince blossom crest on a black ground.

  “Oda clan?” he guesses.

  “Yes.”

  He snatches up the box, looking for the date. “Do you think there’s a chance . . .?” His mother smiles.

  “Doesn’t matter, as long as the buyer thinks so.”

  Chiyo badly wants to ask what she means, but Mrs. Miura is already repacking the fan and hooking her glasses over her ears. Picking up her pencil, she ticks down the figures she’s written, adding them in her head. She makes a notation and circles it, then puts down her pencil.

  Chiyo leans forward, praying she’ll be offered enough this time to make it worth the risk.

  “Well, Miss Okuda, with the exception of the war fan—which has understandably seen some hard use—these pieces are all in good condition. These three,” Mrs. Miura says, moving the boxes containing the dance fan, the incense burner, and the plum blossom tea bowl to one side of the table, “aren’t one-of-a-kind, but they’re nice pieces, so they’ll be fairly easy to sell.” She picks up the war fan’s box. “This one is in the worst condition, but could end up fetching the most.”

  “It could?”

  “If it’s offered to the right buyer,” she says. “But that will require some groundwork.”

  “Groundwork?”

  The boy explains, “War fans were used by samurai, for signaling during battle. This one belonged to someone in the Oda clan—you can tell by the quince blossom crest. But it’s the date that’s makes it interesting. The Battle of Nagashino happened in Tensho 3. Which means this fan cou
ld have been used by Oda Nobunaga himself.”

  Oda Nobunaga? The legendary warrior who had unified all Japan?

  “How can we find out for sure?” Chiyo asks eagerly.

  “We can’t,” Mrs. Miura replies. “There’s no way to know if he used it or not. But,” she adds, a gleam kindling in her eye, “if the right whispers reach the right ears, some collectors might be willing to pay a premium, just for the possibility.”

  Chiyo is impressed. Maybe the gods are looking out for her. She nudges the boxes containing the tea bowl named Hikitoru and the gourd-shaped sake flask into the spotlight.

  “What about these?”

  “Those are . . . more challenging,” Mrs. Miura admits. “They’re named, which means they’re one of a kind. That makes them more valuable, but it also means they have . . . cultural baggage.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You might not be able to sell them for years.”

  “Years?” She doesn’t have years. She needs the money now. “I see. But . . . the others? Can they be sold right away?”

  “That depends on how soon you mean by ‘right away.’ They’re collectors’ items, so if you want to get full price, finding the right collector is important. That can take time.”

  “How much time?”

  Mrs. Miura considers the boxes on the table.

  “I could probably get a satisfactory sum for the first three within a month. The Oda fan . . .” She regards it, considering. “Getting the best price for that depends, frankly, on how the war goes. There are quite a few collectors of what we call ‘traditional Japanese cultural items’ in the current government, but their purse strings tend to be looser when the news from the front is good.”

  Which it hadn’t been lately.

  “How much difference will it make if we’re not so picky about the buyer?”

  “I’m afraid it could be thousands of yen.”

  Thousands? Not hundreds, thousands!

  Mrs. Miura is totting up a new total. She sets aside her pencil.