The Case of the Sharaku Murders (35 page)

“He said he could send it to me, but I thought maybe it'd be better if you went over and took a look at it.”

As surprised as Ryohei was to hear that the letter was addressed to him, his first instinct was to rush over and take a look at it. He knew where Yosuke's company was located. Telling Saeko he would call them up later that morning, he hung up the phone.

“All this!” blurted out Ryohei in astonishment when he saw the thick stack of typed documents Yosuke's colleague produced. There must have been over three hundred pages of A4-sized paper—just part of the research Yosuke had diligently been plugging away at over the years.

“Most of it's stuff related to ukiyo-e, but then there was this…”

The young man took out another envelope.

“This appears to be different. Not that I've read it or anything… I just glanced at the beginning. As soon as I saw your name on it I contacted Yosuke's sister. It looks like it might be a draft of a short story or something, so I thought I'd better…”

The man checked to make sure the contents were correct and handed the envelope to Ryohei.

It was certainly very long for a letter—over twenty pages. It wasn't surprising Yosuke's colleague thought it might be a short story.

What on earth could have prompted him to write all this?

Thanking the man, Ryohei left the office cradling the documents in his arms and ducked into a nearby café, too impatient to wait until he got home to read them. He hesitated for a moment before plunging in. To calm his nerves he lit a cigarette.

The first page was covered with black ink in that impersonal way printed documents always have. Ryohei glanced at the first line of text. The words “I'm catching a train for Sendai tomorrow morning” caught his eye.

Ryohei stiffened.

Yosuke went on to explain his reasons for doing what he had done.

IT'S NOW eight o'clock at night. I'm catching a train for Sendai tomorrow morning. I have to resolve this myself. If you're reading this, it means I didn't make it back. In case that happens, I thought it best to write down what I know. I want to explain why I've decided to go to Sendai alone
.

This series of events is all my doing. The anger, resentment, and jealousy lurking deep in my subconscious have propelled events in a direction I hadn't foreseen. It's fair to say this is all my fault—ultimately, it was my resentment that killed the professor
.

I knew Sato's catalogue was a fake before you even showed it to me. If only I'd told you, none of this would have happened. Instead I said nothing. I'll explain why later
.

If Yoshimura or someone rather than you had discovered the catalogue I think things might have turned out differently. Probably I... No, I won't say anything more about that. At this point anything I say would just sound like empty excuses
.

This is going to take a while. But the night is still young. I should be able to get through it all by morning
.

I have here with me one of Mr. Saga's notebooks. That night after I went drinking with you and Onodera I found it tucked inside the slipcover of one of his books on ukiyo-e, which I took down from my bookshelf that night out of a sense of nostalgia. He gave me the book in person several days before he died. Perhaps if I'd discovered the notebook sooner his death could have been avoided
.

I've read that book of his so many times I've practically got it memorized. For me it was sort of an introduction to the world of ukiyo-e. He knew that, and that's why he went to the trouble of giving me a signed edition. After showing me the inscription he put the book back into its slipcover and handed it to me. Then I put it on my bookshelf and forgot about it until that day. Perhaps he chose to give me that particular book because he knew I'd read it many times already. He must have foreseen that I'd put it away and not look at it. It's strange when one comes to think of it—the first time I met Mr. Saga I talked to him about that book. Then he forgot about it for two years until one day when he suddenly decided to give me a copy. It was stupid of me not to have realized he was trying to tell me something
.

That night I read the notebook. I was dumbfounded by the extraordinary nature of what it contained and I had no idea what it meant
.

It was an unbelievable confession given that I had only just been persuaded earlier the same night by Onodera's explanation of the motive for Mr. Saga's suicide.

In the notebook Mr. Saga wrote that he had committed a crime which, if it were to become known, would have shaken the ukiyo-e world to its very core. What's more, its sole purpose was to bring about the downfall of Professor Nishijima
.

I could only think that Mr. Saga had gone mad. At the same time, I felt a loathing for the professor, who had driven him to that point. To be perfectly honest, this is how I still feel right now. In my opinion Mr. Saga was one of the most brilliant scholars of ukiyo-e Japan has ever had, one who always had the best interests of ukiyo-e at heart. To a true scholar like Mr. Saga, Professor Nishijima was the very epitome of everything he despised. This wasn't some personal grudge but a reflection of the righteous indignation everyone who loves ukiyo-e felt toward the professor. How many young scholars' careers had he nipped in the bud? How much new research had he stifled? Mr. Saga's anger and my disappointment were two sides of the same coin
.

Mr. Saga was involved in the controversy surrounding the construction of a national ukiyo-e museum. Though I never told you, this was a major cause of my falling out with the professor
.

It happened about eight years ago, while I was still in college. The Ministry of Education had sounded the professor out about the construction of the museum. Apparently, they asked him to draw up a budget and an exhibition plan. The professor was thrilled and discussed his hopes for the project's success with us, his students. He said it heralded a reappraisal of ukiyo-e in Japan—he gave us impassioned pep talks about it on almost a daily basis. For our part, we wanted nothing more than for the museum to become a reality. We were prepared to move heaven and earth to help the professor. Those were heady days for all of us. There wasn't a single scholar in the field who wasn't following every new development with bated breath
.

Then, one day, Yoshimura got wind of a startling rumor—namely, that the idea for a national ukiyo-e museum had originated with the Ukiyo-e Connoisseurship Society. Someone from the UCS—so the rumor went—had gone to some bureaucrat at the Ministry of Education and passionately explained the need for such a museum. Moved by this impassioned plea, the bureaucrat had made a report to his superiors, who in turn had decided to sound out Professor Nishijima. The feeling at the ministry seemed to be that provided the Edo Art Association gave its approval for the idea, they would go ahead and start working out a budget
.

When Professor Nishijima heard this he was outraged. His words still ring in my ears: “If this was all the UCS's idea I'll make sure it never sees the light of day! I'm not their lackey!” From that day forward, the professor ranted about how the museum was all a dirty plot by the UCS and twisting other scholars' arms to get them to oppose the idea. When he was done, he submitted a report to the Ministry of Education on behalf of the EAA in which he dismissed the plan to build a national ukiyo-e museum as “premature
.”

As a result, the whole thing fell through. I've never felt so dejected in my entire life as I did at the moment. If the matter of the UCS had never come up, the museum would have been built for sure. At first I detested the UCS as much as everyone around me, but I quickly realized I had been wrong. The museum—in one shape or another—was the shared dream of everyone who loved ukiyo-e. There was no room for personal egos. But the professor had gone and smashed the dreams of the entire ukiyo-e world to smithereens—and after holding forth so passionately to us about the need for just such a museum! My despair knew no bounds
.

Why were we studying ukiyo-e? The only thing that kept us going was the conviction that someday ukiyo-e would become important to the world at large. But the professor wasn't thinking about the future of ukiyo-e. All he cared about was the present and himself. Otherwise, how could he have quashed the plan to build an ukiyo-e museum? The museum was key to ukiyo-e's—nay, to our—very future. I began to doubt the professor. Maybe he didn't give a damn about ukiyo-e after all? Harboring such doubts, I couldn't stand being around the professor any longer. I abandoned the idea of staying on after graduation as his research assistant and instead took a job that had nothing to do with ukiyo-e
.

For these reasons, I understood Mr. Saga's anger all too well. It was he who had taken the idea for the museum to the Ministry of Education. But he didn't have the clout to galvanize support among other scholars. That's when he hit upon the idea of enlisting his former colleague's—the professor's—support for the plan. He understood that what was important was not
who
got the museum built, but that it got built at all. Never in a million years did he think that the professor would sabotage the plan
.

When he found out, Mr. Saga cursed the professor
.

So long as the professor's supremacy over the ukiyo-e world remained unchallenged, he would continue to twist it to his own benefit. But the professor's power was too great for Mr. Saga to do anything about. Newspapers, magazines, journals, museums—there was hardly any aspect of ukiyo-e in Japan into which Professor Nishijima's tentacles did not extend. If Mr. Saga were to butt heads with the professor in the name of the UCS, he would only end up endangering its own existence. And as its principal member, that was something Mr. Saga could not do
.

So Mr. Saga resolved to take on the professor on his own. Only now do I realize that the reason Mr. Saga showed me such special favor was because the professor had expelled me from his inner circle. Mr. Saga was like a tiger preparing to pounce—watching and waiting for the perfect opportunity to destroy the professor
.

That chance finally came
.

One day Mr. Saga was shown over fifty Akita School paintings. All of them were unsigned. His brother-in-law, Mizuno Keiji, had brought them to him to have them appraised on behalf of a Tohoku art dealer
.

At first Mr. Saga had had no intention of doing what he did. But as he gazed at the paintings Mizuno had left with him, a plan gradually began to come together in his mind
.

In his notebook, Mr. Saga says the first thing that popped into his head was the Shunpoan forgery affair of 1934. It occurred to him he could replicate the same method to lay a trap for Nishijima and bring about his downfall. But the professor wouldn't be lured into the trap just by some very nice paintings. After all, his disdain for nikuhitsu-ga was legendary. Mr. Saga set to work on a plan at once. The important thing was to approach it the way a scholar would. His plan must be capable of fooling even himself. At last, he hit upon a ruse he was confident would succeed—Sato's painting catalogue
.

While, on the one hand, the professor disdained nikuhitsu-ga, on the other he had a weakness for anything printed. Mr. Saga realized he could exploit this weakness to draw Nishijima into his trap. Compared to a handwritten manuscript, a typeset book inspires confidence due to the huge expenditure of time and money that goes into producing it. There's a universal tendency to think that something must be true if it's printed in black and white. This is true even for a nikuhitsu-ga—once it's printed in a book we cease to think of it as a painting. This was the crux of Mr. Saga's strategy. And, more importantly, to fool one person it was only necessary to print one copy of the catalogue. Books are always printed in large numbers. If you come across a book you immediately assume there are hundreds more just like it. Who could think otherwise? It would never occur to you that no one else had ever seen it before
.

Even now I have to take my hat off to Mr. Saga—it was a brilliant idea. If the catalogue had been a simple handmade album with photographs pasted into it, it undoubtedly wouldn't have been enough to deceive the professor, however much he hungered for fame and fortune. Only a printed book could have caused him to cast aside any doubts he might have
.

Once Mr. Saga had perfected his plan he went to talk to his brother-in-law about it. Not surprisingly, Mizuno at first seems to have hesitated to sign up. But his own dealings with Nishijima over the years had left a bitter taste in his mouth, and in the end he was won over. It was really when Mr. Saga explained the part about the catalogue that Mizuno began to believe the plan would work. Mizuno had a very high opinion of Mr. Saga as a scholar. He promised his full cooperation. But the fifty paintings did not belong to him. Should they buy all of them or explain their plan to the dealer and try to bring him on board? It had to be one or the other. Mizuno opted for the latter
.

Thus they set to work creating Sato's catalogue. Of course, Mr. Saga didn't just make up the name Shoei out of thin air; he came across it in a book. The catalogue wouldn't have been credible if they had invented a completely fictitious painter whose identity couldn't be confirmed
.

In his notebook Mr. Saga doesn't say exactly where he found the name Shoei, but I've no doubt it was in
Painters and Calligraphers of Akita,
which you came across in the course of your research. The prerequisites for choosing an artist were, one, that his name could be verified from historical sources, two, that he have a strong connection to Akita, and three, that none of his paintings should have survived. After eliminating several possible candidates, Mr. Saga finally settled on Chikamatsu Shoei
.