Zen Attitude Read online

  Contents

  A Special Note

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Excerpt from The Typhoon Lover

  Chapter 1

  About the Author

  Praise

  Also By Sujata Massey

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  A Special Note

  Kamakura is a lovely Japanese city with many Zen temples, some of which bear similarities to the temple described in this book. My Horin-ji is fictional, as are many other Kamakura sites. While Kamakura is famous for its festivals, the Tanabata Festival is not celebrated within its city limits but in Hiratsuka, a nearby town that is definitely worth a stop in early July. For historical and geographical details, I must credit Trails of Two Cities: A Walker’s Guide to Yokohama, Kamakura and Vicinity, which was written by John Carroll and published by Kodansha International in 1994.

  Many friends who have helped since the beginning of my adventures in fiction contributed to Zen Attitude. I am especially indebted to John Adair, owner of Kurofune Antiques in Roppongi; Shinji Kawasaki, of Kyoto Screen; and Tetsuro Kono, of the Tokyo National Museum. Kamakura residents Shizuko Asakura, Junko Katano, and Eiko Mori provided wonderful access to their town and Tokei-ji Temple. Two alumni of the Tokyo University Aikido Club, Koichi Hyogo and National Police Superintendent Naoto Yamagjshi, continue to steer me through Japanese police procedure. I also thank Rusty Kanakogi, the former U.S. judo champion and Olympic coach; Christopher Belton, the novelist and translator; the monks of Dai Bosatsu Zendo, a Zen monastery in New York State; and J. D. Considine, pop music critic for the Baltimore Sun. As always, any mistakes should be attributed to me and not to the above people.

  I welcome comments from readers who are interested in mysteries and Japanese culture. To send me a note or learn more about the Rei Shimura series, visit my Internet home page at:

  http://www.interbridge.com/sujata.

  Sujata Massey

  Baltimore, Maryland

  1998

  Cast of Characters

  Rei Shimura: Japanese-American freelance antiques buyer.

  Nao Sakai: Owner of an antiques concession within the Hita Fine Arts tourist shop.

  Jun Kuroi: Flashy car salesman working at a dealership in Hita.

  The Glendinning brothers: Hugh spends long days working as an international lawyer for Sendai Limited. Angus, his black-sheep brother, is a world traveler.

  Yasushi Ishida: Aged antiques dealer who serves as Rei’s mentor.

  The Mihori Family: Owners of Horin-ji, a famous Zen temple in the historic city of Kamakura. Abbot Mihori oversees the property, while his wife, Nana, collects antiques and works to preserve land in Kamakura. Their only daughter, Akemi, is a former judo champion at loose ends. Cousin Kazuhito was formally adopted into the family in order to become the next abbot.

  Mohsen Zavar: Iranian immigrant who came to Tokyo for a better life.

  Nomu Ideta: An aged, bedridden antiques collector who lives in Tokyo’s high-class Denen-Chofu neighborhood. His sister, Haru Ideta, devotes herself to caring for him.

  Lieutenant Hata: Roppongi police detective.

  Yoko Maeda: Owner of Maeda Antiques, a small shop struggling to stay open in Kamakura.

  Wajin: A mysterious monk who works in the garden at Horin-ji.

  Junichi Ota: Hugh’s long-suffering personal lawyer.

  Mrs. Kita: Rei’s customer with a healthy appetite for antiques and gossip.

  Plus a collection of monks, salarymen, illegal immigrants, and ladies of leisure, all searching Japan for spiritual or material riches.

  ZEN ATTITUDE

  Chapter 1

  From the beginning, I suspected that Nana Mihori’s tansu would cost too much.

  The Japanese antiques market is brutal. There are hardly any good pieces left anywhere, so even if you have the cash, the chances of finding a dream piece are slender. Going into the assignment, I expected trouble. Still, I never expected that a chest of drawers could cost me almost everything I owned.

  The first thing I lost was a vacation. Hugh Glendinning, the man I moved in with on Valentine’s Day, had stopped pleading and waving tickets around and simply flown off to Thailand by himself. I was left with nothing but work: chiefly, the pursuit of an antique wooden chest I was becoming convinced existed only in my client’s imagination. During the last two weeks, I’d driven from my home base in Tokyo north to Nigata and then west to Kyoto. On the way, I’d suffered a flash flood and enough mosquito bites to keep a small anopheles colony drunk for a while. The rainy season had ended and I was into July heat, all without finding the tansu.

  I was obsessing over my various failures while caught in a massive traffic jam on the Tomei Expressway. Adding to my irritation was the fact that everyone in the surrounding cars seemed to be triumphantly setting off on their holidays. Fathers manned the steering wheels while mothers passed snacks to children battling with inflated plastic water wings. I was contemplating grabbing a pair of wings and floating off to Phuket when the cellular telephone rang.

  “Rei Shimura Antiques,” I answered while fumbling with the receiver. I had recently read that carphone users were as dangerous as drunken drivers, and given my lack of coordination, I believed it.

  “Rei-san, where are you exactly?” Nana Mihori’s patient voice crackled across the line. We’d talked every one of the last thirteen days, including the day before, when I’d called her from outside Nara to say I was going home. I’d seen many chests that almost met her requirements, but she wanted a special tansu she’d seen in a book. All my clients wanted something they’d seen in a book.

  “I’m pretty close to the Izu Peninsula. I think.” I squinted at a road sign far ahead of me, thinking how unfortunate it was that I was still nowhere near knowing the standard base of 1,500 to 2,000 kanji, or pictographic characters, needed to be a literate adult. I’d grown up in San Francisco with an American mother and a father from Japan. Speaking was easy for me, and usually all I needed for my job as a freelance antiques buyer.

  “It is convenient that you are still outside Tokyo. I’ve learned about a very nice store in Hita that carries high-quality antiques from all over the country. My friend Mrs. Kita found a handsome clothing chest there last week.”

  “Isn’t Hita near Hakone?” The hot-springs region she was talking about was far from my route.

  “Rei-san, you have been working so hard for me, I want to make sure you get your buyer’s commission. But after all your travels, I worry it’s an imposition to ask you to stop. . . .”

  “Oh, it’s no trouble at all. Where’s the shop?” I balanced the phone against my shoulder and began digging around for a pen. The truth was, I needed her badly. My business was five months old, and the foreign expatriate clients I’d hoped to attract had turned out to be pretty stingy. My Aunt Norie had recently introduced me to Nana Mihori, the wife of the owner of a famous Zen temple in Kamakura, a picturesque city an hour south of Tokyo. Nana’s funds were unlimited, as was her potential for good word of mouth. I couldn’t let h
er down.

  Saying good-bye to my customer, I noticed that a boy and girl riding in the Mitsubishi Carisma on my right were imitating me by talking into their soft-drink cans. I mouthed moshi-moshi, the standard telephone greeting, at them. The kids giggled and said something back. What was it?

  Abunai, I realized belatedly as something big and brutal jolted my car. Danger!

  I dropped the phone and clung to the steering wheel that had loosened under my fingers. I stomped on the brake and glanced in the rearview mirror. It was filled with the sight of a small commercial truck whose driver was waving me toward the expressway’s narrow shoulder.

  How I could crash a car in all-but-stopped traffic was beyond me; I was the queen of bad luck. Repairs to the luxurious Toyota Windom would probably be astronomical. And the worst part was that it wasn’t even my car; it belonged to Hugh.

  Feeling numb, I watched the truck driver emerge wearing a cheerful yellow jumpsuit and matching cap. Under other circumstances, I would have smiled.

  I crept out of the Windom, aware of how disreputable I appeared: a vaguely Japanese-looking woman in her late twenties with short hair, shorter shorts, and a shrunken UC Berkeley T-shirt. I hurried toward him in my flip-flop sandals, my Japanese driver’s license and Hugh’s automobile registration clutched in hand.

  The trucker was carrying something too; a small unopened can of Yodel Water. He offered it to me in a bizarre gesture of hospitality. I accepted, glancing at the cheery slogan written in English: ALWAYS MAKES YOU FRESH AND COOL WHEREVER YOU TRY IT! Not today, I thought, my T-shirt already beginning to stick to my back.

  Together we surveyed the results of our collision. The truck’s damage appeared minimal: a bit of the Windom’s shiny black paint had rubbed onto his fender. But my left taillight was smashed. The driver picked delicately at the remaining glass chips, wrapped them up in a tissue, and handed them to me.

  “Dōmo sumimasen deshita.” The man’s formal apology startled me before I remembered that under Japanese law, the vehicle hitting the other is automatically at fault.

  “I’m sorry, too. I was distracted,” I babbled.

  “It is solely my fault. And look at what I’ve done to your beautiful car.” The man’s voice cracked. I realized then that he was probably worried about having gotten into an accident while driving a company vehicle. I was going to reassure him that I wouldn’t sue, but he already had his hand in his wallet.

  “What about the paint on your truck? Are you sure you won’t have trouble at work?”

  He looked at his fender and shook his head. “It is ordinary depreciation they will not notice. But I must reimburse you. I will not leave until I do so!”

  I had been drifting. He had been nosing into my lane. I supposed we both were at fault. I took the money without looking at it, still feeling guilty. “If you give me your address, I can send you a copy of the bill and any change—”

  “Please don’t trouble yourself!” He had jumped back into the truck again. Since no names or information had been exchanged, he could rest securely and believe that the matter had ended. I tried to push my unease aside as I sipped the sweet Yodel Water and steered back into traffic.

  Two hours later I was in Hita. I had called ahead to the shop Mrs. Mihori had told me about and learned that Hita Fine Arts did have a number of antique tansu in stock. The antiques dealer told me he had one tansu that probably came from Yahata, a wood-working town on Sado Island I had already fruitlessly searched.

  “Where did you acquire the piece?” I asked, resentful of his good fortune.

  “From a good source. It’s available at the moment, but I’d advise you to hurry. A woman customer came in yesterday and asked me to hold the tansu for her. She didn’t return, so I have just decided to release it for sale.”

  Appearing slightly uninterested can lead to discounts, a very good thing. But I had no time or energy to play games. I drove straight into Hita’s shopping district, nabbing an illegal spot in front of Hita Fine Arts. I wasn’t worried, because I’d know pretty quickly if the tansu was worth buying.

  I wasn’t hopeful. The shop screamed tourist trap, with an exterior that mimicked the red and gold splendor of a Shinto shrine. The first floor was crammed with mass-produced ceramic fishbowls, brightly gilded screens, and tacky acetate wedding kimono, all pseudo-Japanese items that were probably made in China.

  Nana Mihori had wanted me to come. I reminded myself of this as I made my way to the main desk where a sign boldly proclaimed, WE SPEAK ENGLISH! WE TAKE DOLLAR!

  “Nao Sakai works upstairs in furniture,” the receptionist said when I asked for the antiques salesman I’d spoken to on the car phone. “That’s behind the T-shirt section and next to the stamps.”

  It didn’t sound as if there was much priority given to antiques. Upstairs, though, the section was surprisingly well stocked. I checked out a gorgeous kitchen tansu and a few smaller chests that looked as if they’d been crafted in Sendai and Yonezawa.

  A slender man with sharp features was sitting cross-legged at a rosewood table, chatting on the phone with someone. He looked at me and said, “If you wish to buy a new T-shirt, they are over by the window.”

  “I’m Rei Shimura. I telephoned earlier about the tansu.” I crossed my arms over my wrinkled shirt and stared him down.

  Sakai smiled widely, reevaluating me. “Shimurasan? I’ve, ah, kept the piece for you in the back.”

  I followed him into a dim stockroom filled with a forest of cardboard boxes. Through the gloom, I saw a dark maroon chest of drawers adorned with ornate, hand-chased iron hinges and lock plates.

  Mrs. Mihori had sketched what she wanted, so I pulled out her drawing to make comparisons. She was looking specifically for a kasane, a bridal chest in two sections, each with two drawers, that could be stacked on top of each other for a commanding appearance. She wanted the wood to be top-quality paulownia decorated with cranes and turtles, symbols of good luck that often marked furniture built in the Sado Island town of Yahata. The metalwork on this piece was burnished black but not too dark, as it might be if it had been artificially aged. The hand-forged nails with irregular heads also looked right for the mid-nineteenth century.

  “You know furniture,” Mr. Sakai said flatteringly as I began pulling out the drawers for inspection. They were smoothly joined, and there was also the happy circumstance of no insect holes. In my time spent shopping around Japan, I’d been saddened to find that many tansu interiors had been devoured by wood-eating moths. These fresh-smelling cedar drawers were pristine and appeared to have been recently sanded, which made me pause.

  “Did you refinish this?”

  “Absolutely not! This is a small business, neh? I just take consignments and turn them over as fast as I can.”

  There was no price tag on the chest. As if hearing my unspoken question, Mr. Sakai said, “The old gentleman is having some hard times, so he will part with it for a very reasonable price: one million, five hundred thousand yen.”

  He was asking a little over twelve thousand dollars, which was fair but worth testing. “Is there any way you could make it a little cheaper? I’m sort of on a budget.”

  “Hmmm. You come from Tokyo?” He studied me carefully. I hoped my story had not lost credibility because of my high-priced address. “I could include the cost of delivery, I suppose.”

  “Okay. I just need to make a phone call to my mother.” There was no need for him to know I was buying for a client, especially since I was getting him to comp the delivery. He agreed, looking somewhat wary, and I ran out to use the Windom’s telephone. A young man with greased-back hair and a lime-colored rayon suit was standing outside, examining my smashed taillight. People in Japan always worried about other people’s troubles, so I smiled at him and bowed slightly, indicating that I knew about the damage.

  I slid into the Windom, keeping the door open to catch a breeze while I was on the telephone. Miss Tanaka, Nana Mihori’s housekeeper, said that her mistress was busy wi
th a delegation of visitors. I hung up, wondering if I should buy without authorization. I didn’t think so, since she’d rejected two other tansu I’d found on the trip.

  I took out Mrs. Mihori’s sketch again. It was unlikely I’d ever find such a beautiful Sado piece again. I couldn’t lose it. Maybe I could put it on hold. I hurried back into the shop, where I found Mr. Sakai talking to a new customer: a woman in her forties wearing a silk blouse and skirt the color of green tea. She looked exquisite until she turned, revealing a large black mole on her left nostril.

  “The problem is that there’s a new customer.” Mr. Sakai indicated me with his hand.

  “But I’m ready to buy and I have the money right here!” The woman waved a handful of yen notes at him, very bad form. I realized that she was probably the customer who had put the tansu on hold.

  “Excuse me. I’d like to get things settled with the Sado Island tansu,” I said.

  “She’s not talking about my tansu?” The customer looked coldly at me.

  “Actually, it’s a difficult situation now,” Mr. Sakai apologized.

  “I’ll buy the tansu if you just give me a chance to contact my mother,” I said, nervousness growing. “I can give you an answer within a couple of hours.”

  The woman gasped, and Mr. Sakai looked pained at my insolence. “That is impossible, I’m afraid.”

  “Yahari hafu da,” the woman murmured to Sakai. The phrase meant “because she’s a half blood”—implying that my racial makeup allowed for my rudeness.

  “There can be no more holding of this tansu. Whoever is ready to buy it will receive it.” Mr. Sakai cleared his throat and looked at the small crowd that had collected: two salesclerks from the souvenir department and a few shoppers.

  Making an executive decision, I whipped out my credit card with the ultra-high limit.

  “Because of the consignments, I deal only in cash.” He looked at my card as if it was dirty.

  A store this big had to accept credit cards, but Mr. Sakai was probably playing tough in order to avoid paying percentages to anyone. Knowing this system, I had brought more than I needed—about 2.2 million yen jammed in several Pocky pretzel boxes in the bottom of my backpack. I shrugged and said, “Fine. I’ll pay cash.”