Bundori: A Novel of Japan (10 page)

The rouged, pigtailed, perfumed, and mounted head resting on the ground at Sano’s feet had belonged to a man perhaps forty years of age. He had heavy jowls, thick, bristly eyebrows, a lumpy, large-pored nose, and the shaven crown of a samurai. His glazed eyes stared straight ahead, and his thick lips had parted to reveal broken teeth. Even in death his features reflected the shock he must have experienced when the killer attacked.

An hour’s fast ride north out of the
banchō
, through the suburbs of Edo and the fields outside town, had brought Sano here to the Dike of Japan, a long, willow-shaded causeway that ran west from the Sumida River, paralleling the San’ya Canal, to the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter. News of the murder had spread along it via the men returning home to Edo after a night of revelry. Now, as Sano contemplated the trophy that the Bundori Killer had brazenly placed in the middle of the road, the bitter taste of guilt eclipsed his horror. There had been three murders, despite the extra security precautions he’d instituted. While no one could reasonably fault him for not solving the case in such a short time, or for not knowing where the killer would strike next, he berated himself for the poor service he’d rendered the shogun, and for costing this unknown man his life.

Deploring his naive assumption that his investigation would pose little risk to others, he addressed the man beside him: a member of Yoshiwara’s civilian security force, who’d greeted him upon his arrival at the scene. “Who is he?” Sano asked, gesturing to the head.

“I don’t know,
sōsakan-sama
.” The officer, dressed in a short cotton kimono and trousers, was a burly peasant who wore a wooden club at his waist. Unlike the Edo police, he’d been obviously glad to cooperate. Breaking up fights and ejecting rowdy drunks from the quarter comprised most of the Yoshiwara force’s work. They weren’t trained to handle any murders except the uncomplicated sort that resulted from street brawls and disputes over women. “But I’ve learned that he visited the Great Joy last night.”

The Great Joy was one of the quarter’s largest pleasure houses. “Who discovered the remains?” Sano asked, fearing that a valuable witness might have escaped before his arrival.

To his relief, the officer said, “A visiting samurai found the head; he’s down the road. He alerted the guards at the gate, who fetched us.” The officer indicated himself, and his four colleagues who stood in a circle around Sano and the trophy, holding off the growing crowd of spectators. “We found the body.”

Sano directed his attention to the surrounding scene. At this hour of the morning, the road to Yoshiwara was well traveled in both directions. Samurai and commoners moved toward the pleasure quarter, while last night’s revelers still straggled homeward. To the southeast, beyond the fringe of willows at Sano’s right where his horse stood, the San’ya Canal gleamed in the sunlight. Wild geese flew over the plowed but yet unplanted and unflooded rice fields on the opposite sides of the canal and the elevated dike where Sano stood. Ahead, tea stands lined the approach to Yoshiwara’s gate. Beyond them rose the walls and rooftops of the pleasure quarter.

“Has anyone reported seeing the murder?” Sano asked.

“No,
sōsakan-sama
.”

Anticipating another long search for witnesses, Sano wished he could have brought Hirata. But he’d left the young
doshin
to continue the as yet fruitless search for the suspect along the route leading from the
banchō
to the pharmacists’ street. More than ever Sano felt the lack of manpower. A curse upon Chamberlain Yanagisawa!

“I’ll talk to the man who discovered the head,” he told the officer, “and then you can show me the body.”

First, however, he bent to remove the label from the trophy’s pigtail, and saw characters inked in the same hand as those from the one on Kaibara’s head. “ ‘Endō Munetsugu, ’” he read, disconcerted.

This new development weakened his theory that the killer bore a grudge against the Kaibara clan. Like Araki, Endō Munetsugu had lived during the Sengoku Jidai and fought under Oda Nobunaga. But as far as Sano knew, the Endō and Araki-Kaibara families were not related. Nor had they owed allegiance to the same lord-the Endō had served not Tokugawa Ieyasu, but Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the general who had succeeded to power after Oda’s death. Despair replaced hope as Sano saw the scope of his case widen yet again. Another historical angle to complicate the investigation! Was the dead man Endō Munetsugu’s descendant? Was the killer obsessed with samurai from the past, and if so, why?

Sano tucked the label in his sash for later contemplation. Then, leading his horse, he accompanied the officers along the causeway toward Yoshiwara. Soon they reached the tea stands, each of which displayed a red lantern bearing the name of a pleasure house. There customers waited in line to buy sake or arrange liaisons with their favorite courtesans. Against the rear wall of the last stand on the canal side, a figure slumped dejectedly. Sano left his horse in the officers’ care and headed toward the samurai, who roused at his approach.

Dressed at the height of dandified fashion for a trip to Yoshiwara, he wore a white silk kimono and trousers, white surcoat, shoes, and wide-brimmed hat, and ivory-hilted swords. Beside him stood his white horse. But these affectations failed to evoke the intended glamour. The samurai looked much the worse for his experience.

“Ah, His Excellency’s
sōsakan-sama
.” Slurring his words, he lifted a glum face to Sano. “It’s about time. I’ve been waiting for hours.”

In his late twenties, he had a round, bleary-eyed face flushed by drink. He sat low on his spine with his legs sprawled awkwardly before him. A brown stain covered the front of his kimono; he’d evidently vomited on himself. Despite his sad condition, he held a sake decanter.

“Your name?” Sano asked.

“Nishimori Saburō. I serve Lord Kuroda.” Nishimori attempted to sit upright, then moaned, clutched his stomach, and bobbed his head in lieu of bowing. “Forgive me, but I’ve had the most terrible time. That head… ”

Shakily he gulped from the decanter, shuddered, coughed, and wiped his lips on his sleeve. “Have some?” he said, offering the decanter to Sano.

“No, thank you.” Sano winced inwardly at the stench of liquor and vomit. “Tell me how you found the head.”

Nishimori’s queasy expression indicated his reluctance. Then his eyes focused on the Tokugawa crest on Sano’s garments. “Oh, all right. Left Yoshiwara at dawn, first one out the gate. Had to get back to my post, and besides, my time was up.” There was a two-day limit on customers’ stays in Yoshiwara. “Glad to go, really. What money I didn’t spend on those overpriced women, I lost gambling. Then I get out here, and I find a… Now I ask you: Could there be a worse way to end what was supposed to be a good time?” His wet mouth pouted.

“Did you recognize the man?” Sano asked patiently.

“Can’t say as I did. One meets so many people, but not looking like that.”

“Did you see anyone nearby when you found the head?”

Nishimori closed his eyes. Saliva dribbled down his chin. “No.”

Sano deduced that the killer must have committed the murder and placed the
bundori
last night, after the Yoshiwara gates had closed. But what had the victim been doing on the road? Had the killer somehow lured him to his death? And from where had the killer come? Along the causeway from Edo, from a nearby village, or from Yoshiwara itself? Where had he prepared the
bundori
?

“I go looking for fun,” Nishimori complained, “and look what happens. I’m broke. Sick. A witness in a murder case.” With the decanter, he gestured toward Yoshiwara. “And they call that place lucky,” he said bitterly.

Sano pondered the allusion. Yoshiwara had originally been dubbed “reedy plain” for the land it occupied, but someone had changed the characters of the name to read “lucky plain,” because men went there hoping for luck. Now Sano wondered whether mere bad luck had situated the victim in the wrong place at the wrong time as the killer roamed in search of prey. Or had he been the target of a planned ambush?

Dismissing Nishimori, Sano rejoined the security force and continued toward Yoshiwara. Beyond the tea stands, before the road sloped down toward the pleasure quarter, stood the famous “Primping Willow,” where visitors stopped to groom themselves after their journey. Today the men gathered under the tree weren’t dusting off their garments or smoothing their hair. Avidly they peered into the field below the embankment.

“Here,
sōsakan-sama
,” the lead officer said. He skidded down the steep slope into the field.

Sano secured his horse to the willow and followed. Tall grass whipped his legs. At the foot of the embankment he saw two more Yoshiwara officers standing guard over a blanket-covered form. Ravens, crows, and gulls, drawn to the fresh kill, swooped and screeched overhead, periodically alighting nearby. In the field, rough dirt clods crumbled under his feet. He stopped a few paces from the body.

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 Endō 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 Endō.

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
yūjo
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.