JIAN
Eric Van Lustbader
Villard Books • New York • 1985
Copyright © 1985 by Eric Van Lustbader
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Villard Books, a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lustbader, Eric Van.
Jian. I. Title.
PS3562.U752J5 1985 813'.54 85-40184 ISBN 0-394-54328-9
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Doubleday and Company, Inc., for permission to reprint
an excerpt from "Haiku by Masaoki Shiki" from An Introduction to Haiku by Harold G.
Henderson. Copyright © 1958 by Harold G. Henderson. Reprinted by permission of
Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
98765432
First Edition
CALLIGRAPHY BY CARMA H1NTON BOOK DESIGN BY LILLY LANGOTSKY
VICTORIA, EUGENIE AND ELI, HENRY AND CAROL, HERB AND RONI, JUDY, AND SUE AND STU
Kung Hei Fat Choy!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Without my wife, Victoria's, invaluable and loving editorial contribution, Jian would be a far different book.
To all at the Asia Society who helped, especially Daisy Kwoh, for translations.
To all at China Books and Periodicals who helped.
Thanks to Henry Morrison for, as always, his expertise.
Editorial and psychic support: Peter Gethers.
Special thanks for their belief: Susan Petersen and Leona Nevler.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Except for easily recognizable characters out of history, no character in Jian bears any resemblance to any real person, living or dead.
Although I have been as accurate as possible, certain events have been moved up or back in the calendar year in order to conform with the internal logic of the story.
Proofer’s note:
The words domo arigato, jodan-uke, sento, shoji, dojo and jo-wasa are printed with bars over the o’s. Similarly, the words kyujutsu and furin have bars over the first u’s. The two characters are not part of the extended ascii character set. Also, since this book was written in English, most of the words containing accented characters are gratuitous anyway.
He who is prudent
and patiently waits for an enemy who is not,
will be victorious.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
There is no sin but ignorance
—Christopher Marlowe
Toshima-ku, Tokyo
The old man with the bent shoulders came out of the rain, furling his jan-omegasa—his rice-paper umbrella—as if it were a ship's sail. With some deliberation he climbed the slate step, crept past the carved stone pot into which clear water flowed from a cut length of bamboo just above.
There he paused a moment, cocking his head like the most attentive of pupils, listening to the confluence of sounds: the pitter-patter of the rain at his back, the cheery gurgle of the flowing water at his side. There was within that mingling, he thought, the precise mix of the melancholy and the joyous that made life so exquisite to live. 'There is sadness in beauty," he recalled his father telling him as a child. "When you can understand that, you will no longer be a boy."
The old man shook his head and, smiling thinly, pushed through the nawanoren's beaded curtain-doorway.
Inside, the room was small, crowded with men drinking and eating. Smoke curled in the air like dragon's breath, dissipating slowly, leaving behind a gray haze.
The nawanoren was a kind of neighborhood pub, its name derived literally from the beaded curtain that in the past served as its only entrance.
"Irasshaimase," was his greeting from friends as he brushed by a tall, kimonoed figure. The old man nodded, admiring the exquisite workmanship of the black-on-black kimono. He took his seat at a table where he was expected. A waiter set an iced beer before him and he nodded his grateful thanks. He ordered what he always loved to eat here, broiled hamachi head. Nowhere in Tokyo, he thought, do they make this fish better.
The beer cooled him, the food came, and he was soon totally engrossed in heated conversation with his friends. If he noticed the movement of the tall figure as it passed through the beaded curtain covering the back doorway, he gave no sign of it.
This was no typical Japanese pub, though its front room was similar to almost every one of the thousands of such small eating and drinking establishments that dotted the islands.
Off the hallway that led from the nawanoren itself was a series of rooms. Since all traditional structures in Japan were built around the size of the straw mat, the tatami—approximately six feet by three feet—rooms were measured by that standard.
The tall figure of Nichiren paused for a moment to take in his surroundings. Here, each of the larger rooms—eighteen tatami or so—was filled with a single long low boxwood table. Around it were grouped men in business suits. To a man, they were leaning forward, eyes gleaming, faces sweating, white shirts open, striped ties askew. Droplets of perspiration were caught in the short bristles of their hair, sparkling like diamonds in the lamplight.
Nichiren grunted his contempt for these men. Then his eyes moved. Interspersed among the intent gamblers were men bare to the waist. Instead of shirts or jackets they wore their skin like clothing. From wrists to neck, from shoulder blades to narrow waists, irezumi rippled over every square inch of their flesh. The art form of Japanese tattooing was like no other in the world. The insertion of the sumi, the colored ink made from pressed charcoal, was not performed with an electric needle but rather, as it always had been down through the centuries, with handheld awls and chisels manufactured especially for the arduous task. Nichiren knew well how many years it took to complete one body. He admired the iron will of these men; he felt a certain kinship with the pain they had endured.
The inspired designs leapt out at him as he glanced from individual to individual. Here were a pair of bowing courtesans in complexly flowing robes of intricately patterned silk; there was a rampant tiger, muscles rippling sinuously, leaping through underbrush, alongside a swiftly flowing river; here a dragon's head surrounded by meticulously drawn flames; there fishermen with their skeins and boats, hauling up their catch as, behind them, Fuji-yama humbled both man and ocean with its white-capped majesty.
Nichiren was blind to the great sums of money that lay along the table. Smoke hung from the low rafters of the room. From time to time geisha served sake and o-nigiri, or rice balls, from the nawanoren's kitchen.
A gambler rose. Perhaps, Nichiren thought, he was tired of the table. His poor luck needed changing, so he would spend more money. Nichiren laughed silently as he watched the poor wretch stumble down the hallway. He retired to one of the small six-tatami rooms farther back in the complex. There a woman or, for a premium fee, two would be sent him to sate other longings.
Nichiren moved on past the two large pools and numerous baths for the clients' relaxation.
Eventually he came to a fusuma, a sliding door. Removing his wooden clogs, he knelt before sliding back the door and, bowing formally, entered.
Inside was a nine-tatami room furnished only with a low black lacquer table. To his left sat Kisan, in the place of power. He was the owner of this establishment, and oyabun—chief—of Tokyo's most powerful yakuza clan.
Yakuza were gangsters. But, as in all things, the Japanese underworld was different from its counterparts in other countries. For instance, the yakuza clans were rigidly fixed, bound by a moral code of giri—duty—as stringent as that of bushido, the way of the samurai.
If one could say that there was honor among thieves, it would be among the yakuza.
Inlaid into the center of the table was Kisan's kamon, his family crest. It was a depiction of several interlocking masu, boxes of graduating sizes traditionally used to measure rice, the ancient Japanese symbol of wealth. Masu, therefore, also meant "to increase" and "to prosper."
To Kisan's left, in the traditional place of the honored guest, sat another man. He was whip-thin, with a sunken chest. His cheeks were emaciated, which served to accentuate his darkly burning eyes.
The three men bowed to one another and waited. Kisan had made green tea himself, serving the other men as a sign of honor and graciousness. Nothing passed between them, save polite greetings, until the tea had been made and served and the first sips savored on tongue, palate, and throat.
"The refreshment is most delicious," the man with the sunken chest said. He was dressed in a dark, chalk-striped suit with white shirt and striped tie. Except for the deep smallpox scars, he was indistinguishable from all the other gamblers in the eighteen-tatami rooms down the hall.
"Domo arigato, Higira-san." Kisan inclined his bald head. He was built low to the ground, like a miniature sumo. He was barrel-chested, with thick-thewed limbs and a bull neck. His features were powerful but coarse; some might call it a peasant's face.
In contrast, Nichiren's face was composed of delicate features. It was this curious, ethereal beauty that seemed, to the more superstitious, his almost mysterious source of power. Like Kisan, he possessed big hara, a centered assuredness that was as apparent when he was kneeling as it was when he was on his feet. His arching forehead and flat, planar cheeks caused him to be sought out by many modern Japanese artists who wished to capture on paper or woodblock that certain magic they all found in his face.
"It is always a pleasure to welcome you to O-henro House," Kisan said at last.
Higira smiled grimly. That was Kisan's wry sense of humor at work. Since o-henro meant "pilgrimage," the most serious of which was Hachiju-hakkasho, a circuit covering eighty-eight Buddhist shrines, his use of the word in naming this establishment was ironic indeed. "I'm quite certain that you would cherish seeing the last of me."
"Oh, not true, Inspector," Kisan said. "If you were gone, there would only be another to claim the fragrant grease. We would not know him and, I can readily assure you, would not think as highly of him as we do you."
Higira flushed at this unabashed flattery. It did not embarrass him. He never received such complimentary remarks from his superiors at the office.
"Domo," he said, bowing deeply, deliberately wishing to conceal the extent to which he was pleased. He glanced discreetly at his wristwatch. "Pardon me for my impoliteness, but time dictates my schedule."
"Of course," Nichiren said, but he made no move. A tension enveloped them, a quiet that quickly became so profound that the exhortations of the feverish gamblers came to them in waves down the long hallway, as if they were sitting near the sea.
Higira, despite the friendliness of the meeting, had begun to sweat. He felt Nichiren's glossy, depthless eyes on him with such intensity that he imagined they were causing him pain. His chest had tightened uncomfortably and it seemed to him as if he had forgotten how to get air into his lungs. Politeness prohibited him from uttering another word. But it was Nichiren's gaze that was like a talon in his throat.
Kisan watched Nichiren carefully but covertly so that his guest could not see. It was not only this extraordinary stillness that made him such a dreaded adversary, Kisan thought, but the manner in which he could, from this absolute state, explode into immediate force of such fearful intensity. Like the wind blown across the water, this power seemed elemental to Kisan and therefore that much more deadly.
In time, Higira could no longer contain himself and he began to fidget. In games of go, Kisan had observed that Nichiren employed just this tactic, engendering in his opponent an ill-conceived placement. Then, with an as-toundingly rapid series of moves, he would cleave to the secret heart of each game, penetrating his adversary's defenses, at last laying down the winning stone.
When beads of sweat could be discerned on Higira's forehead, scarring it like his concave cheeks, Nichiren's slash of a mouth curved upward at its ends.
From folds hidden inside his flowing black-on-black kimono he produced a gold key. This he applied to a lock hidden in the grain of the wood floorboards beneath the tatami. A section of wood came up. From within, Nichiren lifted a woven basket approximately the size of a woman's hatbox. This he placed on the lacquer table precisely over the spot where Kisan's kamon was embedded.
Higira was dumbfounded. "Is this it?" he asked somewhat stupidly.
By way of answer, Nichiren lifted off the top of the basket and laid it with a certain reverence on the tatami beside him.
"What is in there, please?" Higira's mouth was sticky with a lack of saliva.
Nichiren pushed his kimono sleeve back with one hand while plunging the other into the basket. When he pulled it out, Higira's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.
"Ooof!" he exclaimed, just as if he had been hit in the solar plexus. He saw, held up before him, a severed human head. Blood still oozed from the stump of the neck, and because it was being held aloft by the hair, the head twisted slightly to and fro.
"Amida! Shizuki-san!"
"Your departmental rival," Nichiren said softly. "You wished your own promotion assured, did you not?" His voice was high and singsong, a trait associated more with a Chinese than a Japanese.
"Yes, but . . ." The slight twisting motion made Higira queasy in the pit of his stomach. Even so, his eyes could not leave the grisly sight, like a bloody war banner before him. Thus mesmerized, his voice was as slurred as a drunkard's. "I did not mean this. I ... I had no idea ... I ..."
"Shizuki-san was favored by keibatsu," Nichiren said, his high, odd voice heightening the bizarreness of the scene. "He was scheduled to marry Tanaba-san's—your chief's—daughter. That would have, so I learned, sealed his fate . . . and yours. You had good cause to be concerned, Higira-san. The marriage would have pushed him ahead of you."
"You came to the right people," Kisan said, " to solve your problem."
"But this . . ." Higira felt as if he were in the grip of a nightmare. He wanted to feel elated, but he dared not. His terror at what his request had unleashed gripped him with iron claws.
"In another ten days," Nichiren said, "it would have been too late. Shizuki-san would have been married, part of Tanaba-san's family and therefore untouchable."
"You can see that there was no other alternative," Kisan said. He stared at his guest. "...
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