Laura Rowland - The Fire Kimono

Hirata found Egen’s temple inside a small compound enclosed by a bamboo fence. A few worshippers lit incense sticks and knelt before the altar decorated with gold lotus flowers and burning candles in the main hall where Hirata approached an old priest.

“I’m looking for a monk named Egen who belonged to your order before the Great Fire,” Hirata said. “He worked as a tutor to Tokugawa Tadatoshi, cousin of the shogun.”

“I haven’t been here that long,” the priest said, “and unfortunately, the fire destroyed all our records.”

“Is there anyone here who might remember Egen?”

The priest took Hirata to an elderly monk who was meditating in the sunny garden outside the dormitory. The monk was as lean and tough as a rope. He had no teeth, and his ears and nostrils were filled with tufts of gray hair, but he wore a serene, content expression. When Hirata asked him if he’d known Egen, he smiled and said, “Ah, yes. We were friends. We entered the monastery and took our vows at the same time.”

Hirata thought it too good to be true that the old man had remembered so promptly. “Are you sure?”

The monk smiled. “At my age it’s easier to remember what happened fifty years ago than what I had for breakfast this morning. When you get old, you’ll see.”

“My apologies for doubting you,” Hirata said. “Can you tell me where Egen is now?”

“I’m afraid not. He left the order.”

“Oh. When was that?”

“The same year as the Great Fire.”

Hirata felt his hopes deflate, but he said, “When was the last time you saw him?”

“It was some twenty days after the fire.” The monk’s eyes chased recollections through the past. “The temple had burned down. My brothers and I had run for our lives. We tried to stay together, but we got separated. When the fire finally went out, I walked through the ruins, looking for the others. That was the only way to find anyone.”

Hirata remembered his parents talking about the fire’s aftermath and the thousands of people roaming the city in search of lost loved ones. Many of his family’s relatives had died.

“I managed to find eight of my comrades. We were all that was left of the fifty monks and priests from our temple,” the monk said sadly. “By that time, the bakufu had begun putting up tents for everyone who’d lost their homes.”

A city of tents had grown up in the ashes of the great capital. They’d been hurriedly stitched together from any fabric available-quilts, kimonos, canopies. Hirata saw it in his imagination, a sea of patchwork.

“People rigged up poles beside their tents and flew banners with their family names or crests,” the monk continued. “We put up the name of our temple, hoping our brothers would come. The only one who did was Egen. We were overjoyed to see him. We wanted him to stay with us and help us rebuild the temple. But he wouldn’t. He said he was leaving the order, leaving Edo.”

“Did he give a reason?” Hirata asked.

“He would only say that something had happened,” the monk said. “We asked him what, but he wouldn’t tell us.”

Hirata wondered if his reason had anything to do with Tadatoshi’s disappearance and murder. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he had a definite place in mind.”

Hirata envisioned the highways, the cities along them, and the villages off branch roads winding through mountains and forests. Even in this rigidly governed land, a man could get lost.

“Did you ever see Egen again?” Hirata said.

“No.”

“Have you heard from him since?”

“Not a word.”

Discouragement filled Hirata, but he couldn’t give up. “Do you know of anyone who might have information about Egen?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“How old would he be now?”

“About the same age as me. I am sixty-four.”

Hirata thanked the monk, who wished him good luck on his search. When he joined his men outside the temple, he said, “We’ve got a big manhunt on our hands. Arai-san, organize troops to ride along the highways and post notices asking for information about Egen.”

Arai looked doubtful. “There’s a lot of area to cover.”

“We’ll cover it as best we can,” Hirata said. “If we’re lucky, Egen is still alive and he’ll turn up.”

If not, Sano and his mother might be doomed.

“And we can always hope that Egen has returned to Edo,” Hirata said. The city was a magnet for all sorts of people, even those with reason to stay away. Maybe Egen had decided that after all this time, it was safe to come back even if he was responsible for Tadatoshi’s murder. “Inoue-san, you’ll help me mount a search in the city. We’ll start by checking the temples in case Egen has joined another order.”

As Hirata rode back toward town, he recalled his conversation with Midori. Working day and night for the foreseeable future wasn’t the best way to fix their marriage. And the odds were his search for Egen would fail. The tutor was one grain of rice among millions.

As Sano rode through the city with his entourage, he felt as if he were traveling into the past. He was about to meet people his mother had known before his birth, who knew things about her that he didn’t. He had an uncomfortable sense that he was digging up his own history as well as investigating a crime. He wasn’t the same man he’d been yesterday, oblivious to the trouble sleeping under the earth with Tadatoshi’s skeleton. And the city around him wasn’t the same city as before the Great Fire.

Gray and brown ceramic tiles covered the roofs of the buildings in the Nihonbashi merchant district. Thatch had been outlawed since the fire; it was too combustible. Sano passed through a gate and the square, open space around it, created to prevent people from being trapped while escaping fires. But these changes were superficial compared to the city’s wide-scale, profound transformation.

After the Great Fire, a legion of surveyors, engineers, and builders had swarmed over the ruins. They’d resurrected a new, improved Edo. Rearrangement had eased overcrowding and prevented fires from spreading. Tokugawa branch families had moved their estates outside Edo Castle; daimyo clans relocated farther from it. The lesser warrior class had moved into the western and southern suburbs. Peasants had gone farther west and colonized new villages; merchants and artisans had been dispersed to Shiba and Asakusa districts. The metropolis grew to more than double its previous size. Many of the new quarters were marshy, at inconvenient distances from the city center, and unpopular, but relocation was mandatory. The alternative for people who resisted was being convicted of arson and burned to death-punishment for fires that would result if they didn’t go.

Sano and his men traversed the Ryogoku Bridge, built to encourage settlement on the east bank of the Sumida River. Tadatoshi’s mother and sister lived in Fukagawa, in one of many villas built after the Great Fire. Noble families now usually had three different residences-an “Upper House” near Edo Castle, for the lord, his family, and his retainers; a “Middle House,” farther away from the castle, for an heir or retired lord; and a “Lower House,” a villa in the suburbs, for evacuation during emergencies or for clan members not needed in town. The villa at which Sano and his men stopped was located in a quiet enclave of samurai residences amid the townspeople’s houses and markets. Guards greeted Sano and his men, took charge of their horses. Ushered inside, Sano found himself in a reception room quaintly decorated with a mural of dragonflies and frogs on a lily pond. Servants bustled off to fetch the women.

They returned carrying Lady Ateki, a minute woman more than eighty years old, her bones as fragile as a bird’s under her gray kimono. Her nose was shaped like a beak, her sparse gray hair tied in a feathery knot. When the servants gently settled her on cushions, she resembled a dove on a nest. Her daughter sat protectively beside her. Oigimi wore a dark brown kimono, and a black scarf shrouded her head. She kept her face turned to her left, toward her mother, away from Sano.