Bundori: A Novel Of Japan

Blood darkened the surrounding earth. Sano could smell the cloying odors of death masking those of fertile earth and night soil. His stomach spasmed when the men, grim faces averted, gingerly peeled back the blanket.

The paunchy, headless man lay on his back, knees bent, arms splayed. Drying blood reddened his kimono, leggings, split-toed socks, and straw sandals. Already insects swarmed over the corpse; flies seethed thickly upon the severed neck. The unclean feeling of defilement stole over Sano. As he bent to examine the cut, he found relief in envisioning Dr. Ito’s face, and in imagining his friend at his side.

“A clean and expert single slash,” he said, “just like the last.”

Wondering how the killer had lured the man off the road, he caught a whiff of liquor. Had the man been drunk, and thus, like Kaibara, unable to defend himself? Sano examined the rest of the body and found no other wounds. But two unexpected sights surprised him.

“Where are his swords?” he asked the officers. Had the killer taken them? Would their presence among a suspect’s possessions eventually establish his guilt?

When the officers professed ignorance, Sano turned his attention to the strip of unwound loincloth protruding from the man’s kimono. Then he understood. The victim had left the road to defecate; the killer had seized the opportunity to attack. This murder, too, had the look of a bizarre but meaningless act of violence against a handy victim. Yet Sano couldn’t believe that the killer had picked Endo Munetsugu’s name at random, from among those of all Japan ’s great war heroes. He doubted that Kaibara’s relationship with Araki Yojiemon was pure coincidence, either. Now he must prove this, first by exploring the connection between the new victim and Endo.

Sano told the officers, “Send the remains to Edo Morgue.” Perhaps Dr. Ito would find clues he’d missed. “Now I want to question everyone who was at the Great Joy last night.”

As they followed the dike’s final, zigzagging slope down toward Yoshiwara’s gates, reluctance dragged at Sano. In the pleasure quarter, prostitution of all kinds was legal; food, drink, and other diversions-music, gambling, and others less innocuous-were available in abundance for a price. Men went to have fun. But for Sano, Yoshiwara had painful associations.

A recent night of violence and death had colored his view of the quarter, obliterating pleasant memories. When he approached the armored guards stationed at the gate’s roofed and ornamented portals, their polite greetings couldn’t make him forget their primary function: to make sure no yujo escaped. Most of the women had been sold into prostitution by impoverished families, or sentenced to Yoshiwara as punishment for crimes. Many, mistreated by cruel masters, tried to flee through the gates disguised as servants or boys. Sano swallowed his distaste as he addressed the jailers who enforced women’s misery.

“The man who was murdered last night. Did you see him leave?”

“How could we have missed him?” one said. “He was so angry he cursed us and kicked the gates.” But neither knew the reason for his early departure, or his anger.

“Did anyone follow him?” Sano asked.

“No. He was the last one out before closing.”

Asking the guards whether they’d seen a tall, lame, pockmarked samurai brought another negative reply. Sano saw the futility of trying to establish an individual’s presence in the busy quarter, where many men-including priests, daimyo, and high-ranking bakufu officials-came in disguise. Some did so in compliance with the seldom-enforced law that forbade samurai to visit the pleasure quarter. Others merely wanted to preserve their privacy. One furtive, cloaked figure would have attracted little attention.

Sano thanked the guards and entered Naka-no-cho, the quarter’s main street. It, too, had suffered an unhappy alteration in his eyes. The wooden buildings, once picturesque, now looked shabby and sad. The bold signs advertising the teahouses, shops, restaurants, and brothels failed to stir anticipation. The pleasure houses’ empty barred windows, where the courtesans sat and solicited customers at night, seemed less like showcases for female beauty than like cages for trapped animals. The lushly flowering potted cherry trees that decorated the street only reminded Sano of the transience of pleasure, of life.

And the murder had cast a pall over the quarter. Visitors clustered in nervous groups along the street and in the teahouses, their customary boisterousness restrained. Servants slunk about their business. Samurai strode warily, hands on their sword hilts. All seemed loath to meet one another’s gazes, or Sano’s. A palpable aura of fear and mutual suspicion hovered in the air. Sano felt an increasing pressure to conclude the investigation quickly, before violence could erupt in this place where men’s passions were already overstimulated by drink and sex.

The Great Joy, located on a side street off Naka-no-cho, was one of the most prestigious pleasure houses. The wooden window lattices, walls, and pillars looked freshly scrubbed and polished. Scarlet paint brightened the balcony railing. Curtains of the same shade, emblazoned with the house’s white floral crest, hung over the entrance. As Sano and his escorts reached the house, these parted and a man dressed in gaudy silk garments stepped out.

“Greetings, sosakan-sama,” he said, bowing. Of some indeterminate age between forty and sixty, he had a fattish, pear-shaped body and a head to match. His knotted hair was streaked with gray. Yet his face, with its flat nose and cheeks, was unlined, perhaps preserved by the oiliness of his complexion. “I’m Uesugi, proprietor of the Great Joy.”

His bow-shaped mouth seemed fixed in a permanent smile, but his shiny black eyes were like the counting beads on an abacus- hard, cold, calculating. “This murder is a very serious matter. However, let me assure you that the Great Joy has played no part in it.”

To Sano, Uesugi’s hasty disclaimer indicated the opposite. Was he hiding something? His uneasiness might result from a combination of class consciousness and concern for his business. While prominent Yoshiwara brothel owners held high places in peasant society, samurai snubbed them as money-worshipping flesh merchants. Uesugi wouldn’t welcome an encounter that could embarrass him. And his establishment would suffer from association with the Bundori Murders.

“I’ve no reason to believe that the Great Joy is at fault,” Sano said mildly, wanting to put Uesugi at ease and off guard. “I only want to know who the murdered man was, and with whom he spent the time up until his death. Can you tell me?”

As a pointed hint, he directed his gaze to the curtained entrance, then back to the proprietor.

Uesugi’s smile remained, but his eyes jittered back and forth as he assessed his options. In a flat voice stripped of its former unctuousness, he said, “Is this really necessary?”

Sano didn’t bother arguing. Uesugi was just stalling; he knew he had no right to refuse a request from a bakufu official. “Your house will get less bad publicity if we talk inside,” Sano said, gesturing toward the swelling crowd of gawkers in the street.

Admitting defeat with a curt nod, Uesugi stood aside and lifted the curtain for Sano. On the right side of the entrance hall the watchman’s bench stood vacant. Uesugi opened a door in the lattice partition to the left and ushered Sano into the main parlor, where two maids were sweeping the floor mats. This room, the scene of many gay parties of courtesans and clients at night, looked drab and unwelcoming by day. Uesugi’s smile grew strained, though whether only because he disliked having a potential customer see the house in this unglamorous light, Sano couldn’t tell. He let the proprietor show him into an office behind the parlor’s wall mural.

“Please be seated,” Uesugi said stiffly.

Kneeling behind the low desk, he called a servant and ordered tea, which came almost immediately. While they drank, Sano studied the room and its owner. The office was not unlike that of any prosperous shopkeeper. Sunlight filtered through a wall of paper windows, opposite which stood wooden cabinets and fireproof iron chests for storing records and money. Uesugi seemed even more ill at ease here than in the street; he sat unnaturally still, and his gaze wouldn’t quite meet Sano’s. Was he ashamed of the sordid side of his business-or fearful that he might incriminate himself?

“Who was the dead man?” Sano asked.

Uesugi glanced toward a ledger on the desk, which he’d probably consulted before Sano’s arrival. “His name was Tozawa Jigori, and he’d just arrived from Omi Province. When the watchman questioned him at the door, he admitted he was a ronin. He engaged the company of a courtesan named Sparrow.”

The proprietor delivered these facts willingly enough, but his face now shone with nervous sweat as well as oil. Sano, remembering his examination of the corpse, thought he knew why; Anger stirred within him. “When did Tozawa arrive?” he asked evenly.

Uesugi hesitated. “The day before yesterday.”