The Case of the Sharaku Murders (16 page)

Meanwhile, not long after Naotake returned home to Kakunodate, he received an unexpected summons: he was to report at once to Kubota Castle (in Akita city, the feudal seat) and assume his new post as personal assistant to the daimyo. It was an unprecedented appointment for someone so young. Naotake picked up his belongings and moved to Akita, where he began instructing Satake Shozan in the techniques of Western painting. Shozan, who already had a solid grasp of the fundamentals of Japanese painting, proved a quick study. Thus, the Akita School was born. If painting was good enough for their lord, it was good enough for the samurai of Akita. Naotake must have quailed beneath the deluge of applicants seeking his tutelage.

One year later, in October 1778, Naotake returned to Edo, this time in the company of his lord, Shozan, who was required to reside in the shogun's capital during alternate years. As soon as Naotake arrived, he went to see Gennai to pay his respects to his teacher and excitedly informed him of the sudden success of the Akita School. Gennai could not have been more pleased. The two men toasted their reunion and talked of the future of Western painting in Japan.

It was at this time that Shiba Kokan, an apprentice of So Shiseki, began to frequent Gennai's house and to study Western painting with Naotake. But although the future looked bright, a cloud was about to descend on Naotake's world. Gennai's mental state began to deteriorate. He would get into heated arguments with publishers and patrons over the slightest things, and he barred his apprentices from his rooms, fearful lest they steal his work. When word of this leaked out, some within the Akita clan began to criticize Naotake for his affiliation with Gennai, even though the latter still enjoyed Tanuma's favor.

Then, in November 1779, Gennai was imprisoned for murder. Though the details are foggy, according to one account, a protégé of Gennai's came to see him one day; finding his master out, he entered his rooms without thinking and picked up some interesting looking book that happened to be lying about. When Gennai returned, the story goes, he found the man engrossed in the book, flew into a rage, drew his sword, and struck him dead. Anyway, whatever really happened, it dealt Naotake and the Akita School a decisive blow. Later that month, Akita officials decided to ‘censure' Naotake, although the reason is not recorded in the official clan register. Though this may not sound like much, it meant that Naotake was obliged to return to Akita and was effectively placed under house arrest. It also severed all relations between Gennai—a branded criminal—and the Akita clan. To Naotake, it must have felt as though he had been thrown into an abyss.

Returning to Kakunodate in disgrace, Naotake sank deeper and deeper into despair. On May 17, 1780, he died. He was only thirty-two. It is variously rumored that he committed seppuku, swallowed poison, or simply died of insanity. The death registry at the temple of Shoanji in Kakunodate where he was laid to rest simply mentions Naotake's posthumous Buddhist name, “Zetsugaku Genshin died May 1780, son of Odano Heishichi.” His real name is not mentioned. The shame he had brought on himself and his family persisted long after he was gone.

With Naotake's passing, the Akita School too died out. It had not lasted even ten years.

“IN OTHER WORDS,” said Ryohei, summing up, “Gennai was responsible for the birth of the Akita School as well as its death.”

They had finished eating lunch and were seated around the table drinking coffee.

“So who was the first artist in Japan to do oil paintings?” asked Nara.

“That's not entirely clear. It's commonly believed to be Gennai, but there are oil paintings that predate him.”

“But who did Gennai learn oil painting from?” asked Saeko.

“It's said he studied it in Nagasaki, but there's no proof of that. He probably just taught himself.”

“Taught himself?”

“There were lots of Western oil paintings coming into Japan through Nagasaki around that time. He probably just saw some and copied them. You know that painting said to be by Gennai called
Portrait of a Western Lady
?
The original it's based on is still in Nagasaki today.”

“He must have been extremely talented,” observed Saeko.

“Stubborn is more like it,” said Ryohei, smiling. “That's what drove him to make his electrostatic generator and thermometer. He wanted to prove everyone who said Japan wasn't as good as the West wrong.”

“I've heard of Gennai's electrostatic generator, but what's this about a thermometer?”

“Well, apparently the first time Gennai was shown a Western thermometer by his Dutch interpreter in Nagasaki, he immediately grasped the principle of how it worked. He even boasted to his friends that he could make his own in a couple of days. It was several years before he made good on his boast.”

“Why's that?”

“He said it was pointless. In the middle of summer when it's blazing hot, what good is it to know exactly how hot it is? It won't make it any cooler. That was his view anyway.”

“How true,” said Saeko, smiling. “But it sounds to me like he was just making excuses.”

“That's exactly what his friends said. Finally, a few years later, Gennai had some time on his hands so he made a thermometer and showed it to them. It took him more than just a couple of days—a week, apparently.”

“Not bad,” said Saeko, impressed.

“In fact, he made two. One he gave to Tanuma; the other he presented to the daimyo of Takamatsu, where he was born.”

“That's what I call one smart guy,” said Nara, shaking his head emphatically.

“That's why I say he probably figured out how to make oil paintings—the techniques, the materials—just by looking at one. Problem was, he wasn't a very good artist. So he started looking around for people who were. He wanted to popularize oil painting.”

“And that's when he happened to meet Naotake, is it?”

“That's right. Naotake was exactly the kind of person Gennai was looking for—young, bursting with curiosity…”

“But how in the world did he get hold of oil paints in Akita?” Nara asked skeptically.

“He didn't. Akita School artists didn't actually paint with oils. You're right; they
were
hard to get hold of. Instead, they painted Western-style pictures using Japanese watercolors. When they were done, they slapped something called ‘chian turpentine'—what we might call varnish—over the canvas with a brush to create the effect of an oil painting.”

“
What
turpentine?” asked Saeko.

“Chian—it's a substance made by diluting resin obtained from pine trees.”

“Wow, Gennai thought of everything, didn't he?”

“It didn't do any good knowing how to make oil paints, since the ingredients weren't available in Akita. So instead he figured out a way to make watercolors
look
like oil paints. I suspect it was his idea to use chian turpentine—all smoke and mirrors, very typical of Gennai.”

“Style and no substance, is that what you mean?” said Saeko, grinning. “So Kokan's Western-style paintings weren't really oil paintings either?”

“They came quite a bit later. By that time Kokan was able to get hold of proper oil paints. Only he didn't call his pictures ‘oil paintings'—he called them ‘wax paintings.'”

“Wax?” asked Saeko. “As in candles?”

“Yes. But it didn't really have anything to do with wax. It was all a question of image. If he used the word ‘oil painting,' Kokan thought people would confuse it with the oil they used to fill their lanterns.”

“When you say ‘quite a bit later,' how much later do you mean?”

“Not until around 1790. He probably painted one or two oil paintings before that, but most of the ones I know of are from the 1790s onward.”

“The 1790s—that's Sharaku's time period.”

“Right; which, incidentally, was about ten years after Gennai and Naotake died.”

“
That
much later? So the story about Kokan studying Western painting techniques from Naotake is made up?”

“No, it's true all right. Only, Naotake taught him
Western
painting, not
oil
painting. Kokan did make a number of Akita-style paintings using watercolors in the 1780s. You must have come across them in the library. He collaborated with Shozan on several works.”

“Oh, like that one where Kokan painted the human figures and Shozan did the background?”

“That's right, that's one of Kokan's early works. It's a watercolor painting.”

“When was that, roughly?”

“Let's see… Shozan died in 1785, so the earliest it could have been was around 1783.”

“But wait a minute… that was
after
Naotake died, wasn't it?”

“The picture's not dated, so it's impossible to say, but that's what scholars of Kokan's work believe.”

“So Shozan pursued Western painting even
after
Naotake's death.”

“Well, not with the same passion as before. Apparently when Shozan heard Naotake had died, he swore he'd never pick up a brush again.”

“I wonder how Kokan got to know Shozan.”

“I think Kokan sought Shozan out. It was around the time Kokan pioneered copperplate printing in Japan, and he was riding high. His timing was perfect too—by then, the excitement over the Gennai affair had pretty much died down and clan officials had relaxed their vigilance.”

“Did Kokan want Shozan's patronage?”

“No doubt that was part of it. Kokan was a pretty shrewd operator, he knew how to get ahead. He was probably in and out of Shozan's Edo residence all the time. I bet that's how he met Shoei.”

Saeko added, “Since Naotake was no longer around to introduce them.”

“Right. And Shoei didn't become Naotake's apprentice until after Naotake returned to Akita just before he died. By that time Kokan was already one of Edo's brightest lights. When Shoei found out that Kokan had also studied under Naotake, he probably felt drawn to him.”

“I wonder what Kokan thought of Shoei,” mused Saeko.

“I doubt he gave him much thought either way. But since Shoei was one of Shozan's vassals, Kokan wouldn't have snubbed him. In fact, knowing Kokan, he probably made a pretense of doting on the young man.”

“Kokan doesn't seem a terribly nice person.”

“What do you expect? According to Sato's catalogue, Shoei was born in 1762. That means he was only about twenty-two at the time. Having just arrived in Edo from Akita, he must have seemed a country bumpkin to someone as urbane and sophisticated as Kokan. Kokan was in his mid-thirties and thought of himself as avant-garde. He wasn't the sentimental type; he wouldn't embrace Shoei as a kindred spirit just because they'd both studied Western painting under Naotake. I doubt he even thought of Shoei as a fellow apprentice, let alone a colleague.”

“Yeah, ‘cause we're just a bunch of hillbillies up here,” Nara suddenly chimed in, breaking his long silence. He gave an embarrassed smile.

“Er… that's not exactly what I meant.”

Ryohei had forgotten he was not in Tokyo any longer.

“No good,” said Ryohei as he opened the car door.

He had just returned from the town hall. Nara and Saeko were waiting in the car.

Ryohei continued: “They don't know any more about the flood than we were able to find out at the library. Turns out the materials we were looking at over there used to be kept here. So now we're right back where we started—with no leads at all on Sato Masakichi. The girl working inside asked me, ‘Have you tried the local history museum?' She didn't have a clue where to begin. She disappeared into the back for half an hour only to return saying she'd been unable to find out anything. I guess I'll have to make a trip to Shizuoka. Apparently most of the mine supervisors around that time came from Tokyo or the Kanto area. ‘There's no record here even of their
names
,
' said the girl, clearly implying: How in the world do you expect me to find out anything about some guy named Sato Masakichi?”

Ryohei smiled wryly as he lit a cigarette. The strong smell of burning tobacco wafted through the car.

“Well, don't get too upset about it,” consoled Saeko. “After all, it's not as though
he
was Sharaku.”

“That's true!” Ryohei gave a loud laugh.

BY THE TIME Nara had finished showing Ryohei and Saeko around Kosaka and dropped them off at their hotel in Odate, it was well past six in the evening.

“Why the long face?” asked Saeko as she took a bite of her chicken sauté. They were seated in the hotel restaurant just like the previous night.

“I was going over my notes in my room just now when it suddenly struck me how unproductive this trip has been.”

“Really? I thought we'd make good progress.”