“And I told her no one had ever asked.” He smiles back.
“It’s truly astonishing.” Miura gazes at the jewels of green glaze winking in the lamplight. “And you say there were more? What a shame they were destroyed.” He raises an inquiring eyebrow at Uchida. “I don’t supposed you’d consider . . .?”
“No,” says the priest, glancing at Robin. “I plan to hang onto this one.” His eyes crinkle at the corners. “At least until it’s been thoroughly studied.”
He hands Robin the last box, but she passes it to Nori.
“Will you do the honors?”
Everyone leans a little closer. Nori unwraps the original Hikitoru, telling herself not to expect too much. It will no longer be in pieces, but it will still be broken. No matter how meticulously the kintsugi artist has mended it, this won’t be the same tea bowl that thrilled her to the core when she first lifted it from the shop shelf.
But as it emerges from the brocade wrapper, a collective sigh goes up. The pieces are now held together by seams of burnished gold. Nori cups it between her hands and is startled to discover it hasn’t lost its magic. In fact . . .
“I don’t know how it can be more beautiful than before,” she says, lifting it into the light. “But somehow, it is.” She studies it for a long moment, then passes it to Miura. “Too bad it’s not more valuable too.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he says, running his thumb over the dull gold mends, admiring the quality of the workmanship. “You have to understand something about collectors. Some things are valuable because they’re beautiful. Others, because they’re rare. But the ones that are most valuable are beautiful and rare . . . and they have a story.”
“Oh,” she says. “Like the war fan?”
“Yes. Hikitoru was exceptional before it was broken, of course, but this,” the golden rivers gleam in the lamplight, “this Hikitoru looks like it has a story. Buyers might actually pay more for it because it’s broken.”
“Yes, but . . .” Robin’s face fills with regret. “You know we can’t tell anyone it’s the real Hikitoru, right? I mean, I don’t know if my ex-boss kept it to herself about the substitution, or if it was Fujimori-san who decided to sweep it under the rug, but the minute the police showed that dipping bowl to the media and announced they’d solved the cold case, ‘the-tea-bowl-known-as-Hikitoru’ officially became the only tea bowl known as Hikitoru.”
“Of course it did,” Miura agrees. “But this one has a different story, and I suspect buyers will like it just as much.”
“What are you planning to tell them?” Nori asks, curious.
“Well,” Miura says, regarding the tea bowl thoughtfully, “A little bird,” he flicks her a glance, “told me that this tea bowl was broken by a priest. A priest,” he quickly adds, catching the alarm on Uchida’s face, “whose name remains shrouded in mystery. I heard it was broken in a secret ritual, in order to fulfill a vow made to its maker on his deathbed. That maker, as everyone knows—or will, once Swann-san’s paper is published—was a famous potter who believed that breaking his tea bowls would free him from his sins. And not only did he act on his obsession, he inspired a famous poet to write about it.” Miura sits back. “With a story like that, I wouldn’t be surprised if its sale price beats Snow Bride.”
Nori grins. That’s the best news she’s heard in weeks. “How soon do you think . . .?”
“We’ll have to wait until Miss Swann finishes her paper. Do you have any idea when might that be, Swann-san?”
“November,” Robin says. “My research is ahead of schedule, thanks to Hirosh—I mean Uchida-bōsan’s, help, and the first journal I approached jumped at the chance to publish it. If I make the submission deadline, it will be the cover story of the annual Japan Review.”
“Congratulations,” Miura says, with a pleased smile. “That’s exactly the kind of splash that bidding wars are made of. And I’m sure we can be ready to sell by then, if we start laying the groundwork now. Can you afford to wait that long?” he asks Nori.
“I think so. I suspect my grandmother has been calling our past due accounts behind my back, ever since her speech improved enough to use the phone. I nearly had a heart attack when I overheard her talking to one of them yesterday—she sounded so pitiful, I thought she’d had another stroke. She made a miraculous recovery the moment she hung up, though. In any case, checks are coming in nearly every day.”
“Glad to hear it.” He looks around the table. “So, that’s settled? If it’s November we’re shooting for, Daiki and I will get to work right away, polishing up the story.”
Nori crosses her arms.
“If we agree to let you represent us.”
Miura stiffens.
“I beg your pardon?”
“We haven’t discussed your commission yet.”
“You really are Chiyo Okuda’s granddaughter, aren’t you?” He shakes his head. “But there aren’t any ‘special circumstances’ now, so this sale will be much more straightforward. Shall we say . . . twenty percent?”
“Fifteen,” Nori counters, glaring.
“Seventeen.” He glares back.
“Fifteen percent of ten million is a million-five,” she points out. “And that’s if you do a lousy job and it doesn’t sell for any more than Snow Bride.”
“All right, all right,” Miura concedes. “Fifteen it is.” Then he laughs. “Your grandmother would be proud.”
EPILOGUE
TWO YEARS LATER
Tokyo National Museum
Fifty-seven minutes until she can clock out, but she s nearly finished. There’s just the National Cultural Treasures room left to clean, and then she can sit down on one of the hard benches and call her mother. Her o-kaa-san’s forgetfulness is beginning to worry her, because sometimes she doesn’t remember to eat the lunch left for her in the fridge. It happened again last week, and by the time her weary daughter pushed through the door after trudging home from the station, O-kaa-san had been famished and raging.
Dredging the heavy ring of keys from the pocket of her smock, she picks through them, then slides open the panel hiding the lock on the first exhibit. During opening hours, the lighting in this gallery is kept low, inviting visitors to stand in awe before each of the glowing jewel-box displays and speak in hushed whispers of the spotlit treasures within. On Mondays, though, when the museum is closed to all but curators and the cleaning crew, every corner of this room is garishly lit, so her supervisor can spot any speck of dust left behind or—she’d heard from Kimiko that this had actually happened—fingerprints left by someone who’d been lazy about wearing gloves.
Who would be stupid enough to do that? Not her, that’s for sure. She needs this job. Pulling on her white cotton gloves, she draws her feather duster from the cart and goes over the brass incense burner (seventh century, Kyoto), then moves on to the lacquer writing box (eighteenth century, Kyoto) and the dragon-headed pitcher (eighteenth century, Nara).
Slotting the duster back in her cart, she unlocks the next window, but the eighth-century gilt bronze water pot she expected to find there is gone. In its place is a new object. The museum must have acquired another National Treasure for its collection. This one is a tea bowl that’s both rough and smooth, seamed with gold.
Could something that’s broken still be a National Treasure? She’s worked here long enough to know that plenty of broken things are still mysteriously worthy of being displayed with great reverence, but she’s never seen one in this room before.
The name of the maker means nothing to her, but centuries ago (according to the tag) it had been owned by a poet. His name she knows. Everyone does. Is that why this tea bowl is so special?
She flicks the feather duster vigorously against a clean cloth to rid it of any fluff it might have picked up from the other displays, then reaches in to dust the new acquisition. But as she’s pulling back to relock the window, she spies a dark fleck beneath the clear acrylic stand that supports the tea bowl like a crown jewel.
/> Dead spider. Just her luck. Why did it choose to die in the one spot her duster is too fat to reach? She’s going to have to move the tea bowl to get rid of it. Reaching in with both gloved hands, she gently lifts the bowl from its stand.
As its slightly oval shape settles between her cupped fingers, a sigh escapes her lips. The objects she cleans are always old. Beautiful. Irreplaceable. But none of them have ever made her feel like this. The tea bowl curves into her palms as if it had been made for her alone. For the first time in all the years she’s worked in the museum, she wonders whose hands held it last. How many lips had tasted tea from its delicate rim?
A smile steals across her face, and she forgets all about her ailing mother, her tired feet, and her aching back.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dear Friend,
Thank you for choosing The Last Tea Bowl Thief—as a reader, I know how precious those stolen moments of relaxation are, and I’m honored you chose to spend them in Japan with me. If you know someone else who might enjoy The Last Tea Bowl Thief, I’d be forever grateful if you’d pass it on. I’ve always thought that a recommendation from a friend is the finest way to discover new books, and sharing a good read is one of life’s great pleasures.
With warmest regards,
Jonelle
JONELLE PATRICK is the author of five novels set in Japan, and has been writing about Japanese culture and travel since she first moved to Tokyo in 2003. She writes and produces the monthly newsletter Japanagram, and blogs at Only In Japan and on her travel site, The Tokyo Guide I Wish I’d Had. She teaches at writing workshops, appears as a panelist at Thrillerfest, and was the keynote speaker at the Arrow Rock Writing Workshop.
A graduate of Stanford University and the Sendagaya Japanese Language Institute, she’s also a member of the Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and Sisters in Crime. She divides her time between Tokyo and San Francisco.
AUTHORS NOTE:
What’s real and what’s not, in The Last Tea Bowl Thief
One of the most delightful things about reading good international mysteries and historical novels is that the fiction is built on fact, and you can learn all kinds of interesting stuff while enjoying a good tale.
All the places in The Last Tea Bowl Thief are real towns and neighborhoods, and I’d like to think the pottery stores of Kappabashi Street and the landscape surrounding the village of Shigaraki would feel quite familiar to you if you were to visit, especially in the spring.
Jakkō-in (the convent where Yoshi’s Kiri is sent) is also a real place with a healing Jizo figure that became even more legendary after being tragically destroyed in a great fire. Amid the ashes, mourning nuns discovered a metal box filled with over 3,000 smaller Jizo statues that had been secretly concealed within the great wooden figure, and the replica they commissioned to replace it became a powerful and much-visited symbol of rebirth.
The main Buddhist temples in The Last Tea Bowl Thief (Senkō-ji, Sengen-in, and Heizan-ji) are all based on real temples that exist in the places they’re situated, but I’ve changed their names and appearances to keep from tarnishing their noble histories with less-than-admirable priests and unlucky incidents. The rakugo storyteller’s temple is also real, and there really is a monument marking where fifty-three rakugo stories deemed too irreverent to perform during wartime were buried.
I made many visits to the Nihon Minka-en traditional farmhouse park outside Tokyo and Komorebi Village at Showa Kinen Park in Tachikawa, to get a feel for what it would be like to live in Yakibō’s old farmhouse. I’m deeply grateful to the long-suffering docents who demonstrated fascinating details about Edo Period daily life, like the way the “dirt” floor of the kitchen area had been infused with lime, so spilled water would wick away, leaving the floor dry and hard again within seconds.
Yodo Castle has been reduced to its stone foundations, but you’ll recognize its interior if you wander the halls of Ni-jo Castle in Kyoto or Hikone Castle in Shiga prefecture. Lord Inaba’s audience chamber is a real suite of rooms in Nomura House, a high-ranking samurai’s residence in Kanagawa that’s been beautifully preserved right down to the red bingara clay walls and secret cubbyholes in the corridors surrounding it, where guards would be stationed in case they had to leap out to defend their lord.
Chiyo Okuda’s wartime existence came to life thanks to the excellent curation of wartime living spaces and models of the black markets at the Edo-Tokyo Museum. I discovered very quickly how little information and how few photos have been published (especially in English) about the firebombing of Tokyo, but the curators and staff at the 東京都復興記念館 (Tokyo Reconstruction Memorial Museum), and the 戦災資料センター (Center for the Tokyo Air Raids and War Damage) gave me access to obscure historical photos and unpublished maps of the bombing—horrifyingly complete, with wind directions—to show the spread of the inferno.
The philosophy taught to Yakibō by his mentor Takanori jumps the historical gun a little, as the ideas so eloquently expounded by Soetsu Yanagi wouldn’t become widespread until the Mingei movement popularized them two centuries later. The curators and staff at the the 日本民芸館 (Japan Folk Crafts Museum), 甲賀市信楽伝統産業会館 (Shigaraki Traditional Industries Museum), and the 滋賀県立陶芸の森 (Shigaraki Ceramics Cultural Park) assembled beautifully curated exhibitions of rare Tamba-ware and Shigaraki-ware pieces that I was lucky enough to see, and the catalogs for those exhibitions were a goldmine of information about the what, how, and when of Japanese wood-fired ceramics. The staff at the Soto-en ceramics company, in the town of Shigaraki, whose magnificent wood-burning noborigama kiln has been in constant use since Yakibō’s time, were also very generous with their expertise.
Finally, The Last Tea Bowl Thief relied on many sources (in both Japanese and English) for a solid foundation of facts to build the fiction on, and if you’d like to learn more, here are some excellent places to delve deeper:
Everyday Life in Traditional Japan by Charles J. Dunn
江戸衣裳地図鑑 (Encyclopedia of Edo Era Clothing) by Hitomi Kikuchi
Art by Buddhist Nuns: Treasures from the Imperial Convents of Japan by Patricia Fister
Daily Life in Wartime Japan by Samuel Hideo Yamashita
The Great Tokyo Air Raids published by the Tokyo Memorial Association
Japanese Wood-fired Ceramics by Masakazu Kusakabe & Marc Lancet 日本のやき物信楽伊賀 (Japanese Ceramics: Shigaraki & Iga) by Rinko Otsuki
The Japanese Pottery Handbook by Penny Simpson, Lucy Kitto & Kanji Sodeoka
The Unknown Craftsman by Soetsu Yanagi (adapted by Bernard Leach)
Two notable things that are fictional in The Last Tea Bowl Thief: There is no Sorasenke School of tea ceremony (because I didn’t want to cast unflattering aspersions on the actual schools), and the story of the Edo Period aristocrat who was cremated with his Sesshu scrolls is based on a modern-day Japanese tycoon’s threat to take two of his Impressionist paintings (a VanGogh and a Renoir) into the flames with him. The paintings disappeared after his death, but it was later discovered that they had been sold.
I’ve tried to make the world of The Last Tea Bowl Thief as believable and factual as possible, but if I made any mistakes in that regard, the errors are no fault of my sources and are strictly my own.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Mika Kawana, who navigated me around the extremely off-the-beaten-track backwoods of Shigaraki and Jakkō-in, and helped name those elusive tea bowls, my gratitude and friendship forever.
Heartfelt thanks always to April Eberhardt, of April Eberhardt Literary—I’m so lucky to have the world’s most lovely, most capable, and most tireless agent.
Heaps more thanks to my excellent editor Dan Mayer, for his expert insight and advice, and for being so delightful to work with. Also bowing in deep gratitude to production manager Marianna Vertullo, copyeditor Patrick Smith, and cover designer extraordinaire Jennifer Do for transfiguring my heap of words into a t
hing of literary beauty, with all the apostrophes pointing in the right direction. And to Ashley Calvano at Seventh Street Books, along with Dana Kaye, Samantha Lien, and Hailey Dezort of Kaye Publicity, thank you for helping put The Last Tea Bowl Thief into the hands of so many fine readers. You’re the best.
If you made it all the way through this book without being annoyed by words used too often, Japanese customs that make no sense, and infuriating errata, you’ll join me in thanking my long-suffering manuscript readers, who pointed all that stuff out to me, so you don’t have to. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to Lisa Hirsch, JT Kalinka, Mary Mackey, Susan McCarthy, Chris Nolan, Marcia Pillon, Mac Salman, Paula Span, and Craig Tanisawa. The book was made infinitely better by your thoughtful questioning and benevolent criticism. I’m also grateful to the members of my real-life book club and other assorted friends who helped me figure out how to balance the narrative between the past and the present. Judy Avery, Connie Ballmer, Clarissa Daniel, Suzi Finney, Sue Henry, Annette Pollack, Steve Pollack, Emily Sellers, Anne Staland, Stuart Statland, and Sandra Sutton. I’m talking to you!
And finally, to my family, always and forever, my love and gratitude is utterly boundless.
CHARACTERS
EDO PERIOD (1700s)
TAKAMATSU family
Ceramic artists, specializing in tea ceremony ware
Yoshi Takamatsu – eldest son (later known as Yakibō)
Nobu – Yoshi’s younger brother (later known as Honzaemon IV)
SHIBATA family
Hereditary Masters of the Sorasenke school of tea ceremony
Saburo Shibata – third son, poet
OTHERS
Kiri – Yoshi’s beloved, daughter of a government official Sachi – Kiri’s maid
llinkan – abbot (rōshi) of Sengen-in monastery
The Last Tea Bowl Thief Page 30
