“But the name on the envelope is Shimura. What a coincidence.”
“Why don’t you sit down at the table to properly examine everything?” I suggested. “I’ll make you a cup of green tea.”
While I waited for the water to boil, I heated the teapot and thought about how slow my life had become. I’d never thought the arrival of a handwritten letter could be the most intriguing part of my day. A few months earlier I’d fought for my boss’s life and my own in a dank Tokyo garage, as part of my occasional work as an informant for the Organization for Cultural Intelligence, a secret American government group. The woman I’d been, dressed in a winter-white Yves Saint Laurent trench coat and patent-leather boots, was a far cry from the current me slouching around in a Japan-America Society T-shirt and yoga pants. Now I had plenty of exercise, and time to sleep and read. I was only slightly bored.
I set a tray with the tea, a strainer, and my favorite cha-wan, a rough teacup made by a famous Japanese potter. When I went out to the dining room, my father had clearly finished the letter, and had set it in my place.
“This letter…it’s remarkable. It’s made me feel better than anything since my surgery.” My father looked at me eagerly. “Please, take a look.”
“Thanks, Otoosan.” When I read the first line in the letter, I suddenly recognized why the envelope had looked so alien. My father’s name, Toshiro, was spelled with a short line over the first ‘o’ in my father’s name, a symbol sometimes used to signify a long, double vowel. My father didn’t write his name this way, because there wasn’t a double ‘o’ sound in Toshiro.
Aloha, Toshiro!
Let me introduce myself. I am the son of Yoshitsune Shimura, who was born 88 years ago and is blessed to be celebrating beiju on July 6 of this year. Our families are linked because my father’s mother was the late Harue Shimura, who arrived in Oahu in 1918 to marry.
After almost a century apart, it’s time for our families to get acquainted. And most folks are happy to learn they have kin in Hawaii! If you like, I will help you find suitable accommodations. I recommend you stay at least a month for the birthday celebration, because there will be lots of family events to fill up your time. Please bring your eldest son, if he can make it too, and call me as soon as you get this letter so we can make arrangements.
Your cousin,
Edwin Shimura.
I raised my eyebrows at my father when I’d finished reading. “This is a big surprise.”
“What wonderful news that we have more family. Thank goodness I lived for this news.”
“Yes, but…” I paused, not knowing how to express what had dogged me when I’d tried to fall asleep a few hours earlier. “When I traced our family history a couple of years ago, I didn’t recall your grandfather having any siblings other than his brother Koizumi-the one who moved to Kyoto and entered a monastery.”
“Actually, there always were some whisperings about a younger sister in my grandfather’s family, who was no longer part of the family, when my father was a child.”
“Whisperings?” Now this was something I was interested in.
“I once asked my grandfather, but he became upset with me, so I never dared speak of it again.”
“So if this lost great-aunt of yours existed, why would she go to Hawaii?” I thought my father was too quickly jumping to conclusions.
“I imagine she was a picture bride. Thousands of Japanese women were exported to marry Japanese expatriates working on sugar plantations. It was a social phenomenon in the first quarter of the twentieth century. I believe there were Korean picture brides as well…”
“Oh, right. I saw a movie about that years ago.”
“Harue Shimura-my great aunt, now deceased.” My father’s voice was sober. “And now we have learned that another branch of our small family exists, in Hawaii.”
“But then, why-if Harue Shimura married and had a son-why would their name still be Shimura?”
“As you know, Japanese men do take women’s names in marriage, if it’s the only way to keep a clan name alive.”
“But there were two brothers to carry on the family name-your grandfather and your great-uncle Koizumi, although he of course had no children. Maybe Harue remained a Shimura because she didn’t actually get married. Did you think of that?”
“Why be so negative? I’ll find out the facts when we arrive there, I’m certain.”
“You can’t seriously be planning to go.” I caught my breath. “This is the first we’ve ever heard of these people, and you’re still in recovery.” I didn’t add that his chances of suffering a stroke within the month were about thirty per cent.
“But it’s for beiju. A very important birthday. Do you know its meaning?”
“Double luck,” I said dully. “If one turns the kanji character for the number eight upside down, it looks just like the kanji for luck. So if two eights are rotated, it’s twice as lucky.”
My father nodded. “Eighty-eight is a marvelous birthday-I can’t wait to celebrate mine-and Hawaii is a lovely destination. I see you shaking your head, but please remember how Dr Chin told you I needed time to relax.”
The neurologist had spoken about relaxation when we were reviewing my father’s release. But as I’d understood it, relaxation meant eating right, walking, and mild weight-bearing exercise. “It’s a six-hour flight. What if you have medical trouble on the plane?”
“Usually there’s a physician on the plane who can help with those matters.”
“You’re the one who always helps. Remember?” Even though my father’s medical specialty was psychiatry, he was often the only physician aboard when the occasional in-flight emergency occurred. At least, the only one who volunteered.
“Very well. I shall ask Dr Chin his advice before deciding when to go.”
2
MY PARENTS HAD no idea that I had spy training, which at this moment seemed advantageous. I intended to start simply, but would go to whatever lengths were needed to trace the backgrounds of Yoshitsune and Edwin Shimura, to make sure this letter that had fallen into our house came from true relatives, and not hucksters.
That evening, after delivering a steaming cup of chamomile tea to my father’s bedside, I made a second cup for myself and went online.
Yoshitsune Shimura’s name didn’t surface anywhere in my preliminary search, although it didn’t surprise me that a man of eighty-eight wasn’t a blogger or MySpace member. But Edwin Shimura, the cousin who’d written the letter, was a quick and plentiful hit on Google. Once I’d screened out a seven-year-old chess whiz at the Mid-Pacific Institute and a twenty-five-year-old Nickelback fan, I located our very own Edwin Shimura, a fifty-five-year-old man with a residence on Laaloa Street.
So this is my second cousin, I thought, studying a picture of a man holding a sign over his head that read RETURN OUR LAND! He looked a little like my father around the eyes; but the face was longer, no doubt the influence of whatever other genes had entered our family during the course of almost one hundred years in Hawaii.
I marveled at another picture of Edwin Shimura marching with Polynesian-looking men, holding a sign declaring MY LAND STOLEN TOO.
So Edwin was an activist for Hawaiian land rights. I’d taken a history elective during my long-ago botany program, and I’d learned that foreign missionaries and their descendents living in Hawaii had pressured King Kamehameha III into dividing up land that had previously been held by the crown. The Great Mahele allegedly led to the American overturn of the Hawaiian monarchy and the establishment of Hawaii as a US territory.
As I read on, however, I discovered that Edwin’s interest in gaining land was not an issue of righting past wrongs. I followed a trail of articles in the two Honolulu papers, the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser, describing how Edwin Shimura was going to court over rights to a prime parcel of waterfront property on the Leeward Side of Oahu. The land was owned by Pierce Holdings, a company founded by early sugar planters who came to Hawaii from New
