The Case of the Sharaku Murders (8 page)

“I thought I might not recognize you, but I see you've hardly changed,” he said.

“What do you mean ‘hardly'?” shot back Saeko. “That's not the way to flatter a girl.”

“‘Girl'? I don't see any girls around here,” teased Yosuke. Saeko burst out laughing.

“Anyway, what does the professor think?” asked Yosuke, once he had finished grumbling that the whisky and water Saeko had mixed for him was too weak. In front of them on the table lay the painting catalogue, which they had just finished looking at.

“He refuses to commit himself either way, but he says it's within the realm of possibility.”

“‘Within the realm of possibility,' huh? For the professor, that's a rare admission,” responded Yosuke, his eyes flashing.

“I think it helps I'm his student.”

“That's irrelevant. The professor's not that considerate.”

Ryohei recoiled slightly at the vigor of Yosuke's tone. If Nishijima were more considerate, Yosuke wouldn't be in the position he was in; that was how Ryohei interpreted his remark.

“If the professor accepts your theory, things could get interesting,” went on Yosuke. “After ten years, Nishijima awakes!”

“It sounds like you are talking about Godzilla,” laughed Saeko.

“What do you know about Godzilla? That was before your time.”

“You took me to see it at the Meigaza in Shinjuku, don't you remember?”

“The Meigaza? Don't be ridiculous! They don't show movies like that,” snorted Yosuke before turning his attention back to Ryohei.

“At any rate, as I see it, there are several questions to consider: First, does the bio of Shoei in this catalogue check out? Second, is there a connection between the Akita School and ukiyo-e? Third, is there any evidence of a relationship between Shoei and Tsutaya's publishing house? Fourth, can you link Shoei to the riddle of Sharaku's identity? If you can't answer at least these questions, your theory won't hold water.”

Ryohei was speechless. Granted, he had only spent two days doing research, but so far he had not uncovered a shred of new information. In particular, when it came to the question of a possible link between Shoei and the publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo, the situation seemed hopeless. Ryohei had read all the available literature on Tsutaya while writing his article on Sharaku for
The Edo Art Association Journal
;
needless to say, he hadn't come across any mention of Chikamatsu Shoei. He said so to Yosuke.

“Well, what do you expect? You'll have to go back and look at the question again with a fresh pair of eyes. Up until now, everyone's been focused on trying to solve the riddle of Sharaku's identity. But they've always run up against the same obstacle, lack of historical evidence. Evidence is the key that unlocks the door to the next level of research and will eventually lead to the answer. But now the situation is reversed. Before this painting catalogue fell into your lap, neither you, nor the professor, nor I would ever have imagined that Sharaku was an Akita School painter. You already have the answer. Do you doubt it's the right one?”

“That's the problem; I don't know what to believe. It seems so far-fetched.”

“That's because you're an expert on ukiyo-e like the professor,” Yosuke shot back matter-of-factly. “For the uninitiated, ukiyo-e and Akita School paintings look pretty much the same. They're both Japanese. Haven't you ever looked at one of Kokan's Western-style copperplate engravings and been reminded of ukiyo-e?”

“Well, I don't know…”

“Your problem is you can't get the image of Kokan's ukiyo-e out of your mind. But if you ask me, if Kokan himself hadn't confessed in his memoir,
Shunparo Notes
,
to having published ukiyo-e under the name Harushige, no one would ever have thought of linking the two.”

Ryohei groaned. Yosuke made a valid point. True, the ukiyo-e Kokan had produced using the pseudonym Harushige did incorporate Western three-point perspective. But apart from that, Harushige's prints were stylistically more or less the same as those of other ukiyo-e artists. They were a far cry from the hard, naturalistic style of his copperplate engravings.

“If the only thing bothering you is the difference between Sharaku's style and Shoei's,” Yosuke went on, “then on that account at least I can only say it's well within the realm of possibility. But there's one more thing that struck me.” Yosuke paused to gulp down the rest of his whisky before continuing. “Doesn't the name ‘Shoei' suggest anything to you?”

Ryohei thought for a moment. Yes, of course! Ryohei was floored by Yosuke's insight. He felt his blood rush to his head.

“Shoeido Eisho,” muttered Yosuke, as though reciting a mantra. Eisho had been a contemporary of Sharaku's. He was famous for his prints of beautiful women, particularly close-ups. Like Sharaku, nothing was known of his actual identity except that he had been an apprentice of Chobunsai Eishi, a wealthy samurai and shogunal vassal who also happened to be an ukiyo-e artist. Although Eisho usually signed his work “Chokosai Eisho”—in tribute to his master—he sometimes used the pseudonym “Shoeido,” or “Shoei's Studio.”

“It just popped into my head a minute ago while you were talking,” explained Yosuke. “Now, let's just suppose Shoei
was
Sharaku. That means Shoei would have to be connected in some way to the ukiyo-e scene of the 1790s. But how can we prove there's a link? The most obvious clue is his name—reverse the Chinese characters in Shoei and what do you get? Eisho! We know Eisho sometimes signed himself Shoeido. You can only make this connection if you're working backwards from Shoei to Sharaku. Even if some scholar were struck by the similarity between Sharaku and Eisho, he'd never think of linking Sharaku to some obscure Akita School painter called Chikamatsu Shoei. That's all I'm saying. The same goes for linking Shoei and Tsutaya—you can't start by looking at Tsutaya. You have to approach if from the opposite direction. If Shoei was Sharaku then that connects him to Tsutaya,
ipso facto
.
The conclusion is inevitable.”

“Good point. I hadn't thought of that. So my methodology was flawed.”

“Not exactly. No scholar has ever found positive proof of Sharaku's identity, which this catalogue provides, so the problem never came up before. It's only natural you would have taken the position you did.”

“I don't know about that,” replied Ryohei. “Connecting Shoei to Eisho is quite an achievement. The ramifications could go way beyond simply establishing the fact that Shoei had links to ukiyo-e.”

“I assume you're referring to mica printing?” Yosuke said matter-of-factly.

Ryohei was amazed at Yosuke's perceptiveness. “Exactly,” he said.

“The only artists using mica in the 1790s, were Sharaku, Utamaro, Eishi, Shoei, Choki and… That's about it, I think.” Mica printing, otherwise known as sparkle painting or
kira-zuri
,
was a technique whereby glue mixed with flakes of mica, or sometimes mother of pearl, was applied with a brush to the surface of a woodblock print. This made the paper sparkle like a mirror, hence its name. Not only did it involve extra labor but the mica itself was quite expensive, meaning that only the top artists could afford to use it in their work. “Plus,” continued Ryohei, “both Sharaku and Shoei specialized in close-ups. Granted, Sharaku's portraits were mainly of kabuki actors, while Shoei's were of beautiful women.” Closeups, or
okubi-e
,
referred to portraits drawn from the waist up. Until Sharaku's time, ukiyo-e artists had always depicted full figures.

“Linking Shoei and Eisho is a major breakthrough,” he concluded.

“It can't simply be a coincidence.”

“Now, now—let's not get carried away,” said Yosuke, trying to restrain Ryohei's enthusiasm. He refilled his whisky glass.

“Listening to my brother, one would think scholarship was all about twisting the facts to fit one's conclusion,” put in Saeko, laughing.

“Now hold on a minute. I'm not twisting the facts. The police build entire cases on less circumstantial evidence than what we've got to work with. Anyway, don't just take my word for it. My theory's got the seal of approval of the protégé of the world's premier Sharaku scholar!”

“Okay, enough joking around,” said Ryohei. The mischievous smile on Yosuke's face was making him feel self-conscious. “Yosuke's right, Saeko. In this instance, I don't think we'll get anywhere unless we start from the hypothesis that Shoei
was
Sharaku. It's not a question of twisting the facts to fit the conclusion. It's just that, like your brother says, I think we'll find the answers to a lot of important questions if we assume Shoei was Sharaku. But if we don't find those answers then it means our hypothesis was wrong. Just because Sharaku's name appears on a painting in this catalogue doesn't mean we'll be able to convince anyone else of our theory unless we get more answers.”

“I couldn't have put it better myself,” said Yosuke, vigorously nodding his approval.

“You know, personally, I'm not all that into ukiyo-e. But I wonder about Kiyochika,” said Saeko enigmatically, looking up from the pages of the painting catalogue. She had just finished reading Kiyochika's preface.

“What do you mean—‘I wonder about Kiyochika'?” prodded Yosuke.

“Well, if he were an ukiyo-e artist himself, you'd kind of think he'd be into ukiyo-e.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Well, take this lion painting signed by this Sharaku guy. Why doesn't Kiyochika mention it in his preface? Didn't he know who Sharaku was? Was he as obscure an artist as all that?”

It was true that by 1907 Sharaku had been largely forgotten. The truth was, no one in the late nineteenth century considered ukiyo-e to be “art.” As incredible as it may sound today, in those days an old print by Utamaro would have fetched less than a new one by some third-rate hack simply because Utamaro's style wasn't fashionable any longer.

Ryohei was about to explain this to Saeko when Yosuke said flatly:

“I bet Kiyochika never saw this painting. You see, Sharaku might have fallen into obscurity, but if anyone had heard of him Kiyochika would have. Thanks to Saeko I just realized something… I should have picked up on this sooner. If you read Kiyochika's preface carefully, you'll notice he refers to the paintings as ‘great works' but he doesn't mention any of them in particular. What's more, his tone is a bit pat and dry. If you ask me, Kiyochika wasn't as close to Sato as he claims in his preface. I think he simply wrote it as a favor to someone else. Besides, Sato and Kiyochika are too far apart in age. He says he first met Sato in Shizuoka, what… thirty years before? Let's see, when did Kiyochika live there?”

“Around 1872,” answered Ryohei.

“Okay. And he was already in his thirties at the time. But, judging from Sato's photograph, which was taken in 1905, he was only about forty when he died. So in 1872 he'd have been a child of ten, if that. Well, I suppose he could have been the
son
of one of Kiyochika's friends in Shizuoka. It's probably true Kiyochika visited Sato in Akita, but I bet Sato didn't show him his art collection. Kiyochika died in 1915, so if he'd seen this painting and remembered seeing Sharaku's name on it, I'm sure he would have written about it somewhere.”

“You're right. Kurth's rediscovery of Sharaku's work happened while Kiyochika was still alive,” said Ryohei, breaking out in a cold sweat. That was another thing he had missed.

“But at the very least, Kiyochika must have owned a copy of this catalogue, right?” chimed in Saeko. “Wouldn't he have noticed the painting sooner or later?”

“I doubt he would have bothered to read it,” replied Yosuke. “As far as Kiyochika was concerned, the Akita School was a relic of the past. He probably wasn't all that interested. Sure, he might have flipped through the pages when he first received it, but then he probably put it away somewhere and forgot about it… Hey, don't look at me like that! I'm not twisting the facts this time. I'm just making a logical inference based on the fact that Kiyochika never mentions Sharaku's name. Even if he hadn't known who Sharaku was at the time he wrote this in 1907, he
must
have known who he was by 1910.

“I see…” Saeko replied. “Perhaps I judged you too quickly. You can be surprisingly persuasive when you want to be.”

“Spare me the ‘surprisingly.'”

“Just remember, you'll never get hitched if you're
too
persuasive,” shot back Saeko, giving Yosuke a meaningful smile as she rose from the table.

“Joking aside, I assume you plan to go to Akita right away to look into this,” Yosuke asked Ryohei, turning serious again as soon as Saeko disappeared into the kitchen.

“Yeah, I was planning to go up on Saturday. The professor was nice enough to say he could manage without me at the university for a while.”

“Too bad. I'm afraid I've got to work this Saturday…”