Thomas Hoover - The samurai strategy

"Just turn off the clocks?" Sounded like a great idea.

"Well, now and then it's nice to turn them down a bit, don't you think?" He laughed self-consciously. "That's a contradiction about me you'll someday have to get used to. I like a high-tech office, but when I'm away I prefer to be surrounded by things that are very, very old." He leaned back. "Indulge me. Let me show you my favorite spot in all of Kyoto. A place time forgot."

This is going to be quite a trick, she told herself. Very little was left from years past. Maybe the city hadn't been bombed out during the war, but the blitz of urban renewal was rapidly accomplishing much the same result. Through the light of dusk, construction cranes loomed above the few remaining thatched roofs of neighborhoods about to be overwhelmed by steel, glass, cinderblock.

Kenji Asano, it turned out, deplored this immensely. As they rode along, he pointed out the latest construction sites with the sorrow of a man documenting the end of civilization.

"This, we hear, is the price of progress. I'm always tempted to ask, progress toward what?" He leaned back with a sigh and lit a Peace cigarette, nonfilter. "Someday I think we may have to ask ourselves if this modern world we've created for ourselves was actually worth the toll it's taken on our sensibilities."

Eventually their taxi pulled into a narrow side street, edging past a few women carrying small bundles of groceries bound in scarves, then easing to a stop before the ramshackle bamboo gates of a place that seemed abandoned to foliage and vines.

The driver helped carry their bags in through the gates and up the rocky, hedge-lined pathway leading to a wooden veranda. Ahead was a thatch-roofed, weathered house shrouded by towering elms. As they approached, an elderly woman in a dark kimono emerged from the recesses of the interior. She sang out a welcome, bowed deeply, and produced two pairs of leather slippers with an air of ritual solemnity. They were expected.

Off went the street shoes, on went the slippers as they melted into a world that would have been perfectly natural four centuries ago. When they passed the "lobby"-off to the side, tatami-floored, with a few ancient screens scattered about-Tam noticed that there appeared to be no "desk." But there was also no "check in"; the proprietress clearly knew the honorable Asano-san. She also must have known he was with MITI, since her honorifics soared into the upper reaches of politeness as she guided them along the interior hallway.

Tam realized they were in a traditional Japanese inn, a ryokan, surely the last vestige of classical Japan. As they moved out onto another veranda, this one circling a central garden and pond, the place appeared to be totally empty. The woodland vista in the center hinted of infinity, with stone paths and a wide pool dotted with shapely rocks. Although there were a dozen or so closed doors along the wooden platform, the inn seemed to be there solely for them. In the cool dusk clumps of willows across the pond masked the view of the other side, furthering the illusion that they had the place all to themselves. It couldn't be true, though, since chambermaids in kimono darted here and there balancing lacquered dinner trays.

When they reached the end of the veranda, their hostess paused before a set of shoji screens, knelt, and pushed aside the rice-paper covered frames to reveal a room entirely bare except for a low lacquer table. Well, not quite: on the back wall was the traditional picture alcove, tokonoma, in which a seventeenth-century ink-wash scroll hung above a weathered vase holding three spare blossoms. Their room had no keys, no clocks, no television. It was a cocoon for the spirit, a place of textured woods, crisp tatami, lacquer, and rice-paper.

The woman deposited their bags on the black-bordered tatami, consulted briefly with Ken concerning dinner, then backed, bowing, out of the room, leaving them alone together in another time.

"Ken, this is perfect. I needed someplace like this."

"We both did." He embraced her. "They're running our tub now. Afterward I have another surprise for you."

"What?"

"Allow me some mystery."

Whatever he had planned, she couldn't wait to throw off her clothes, don a loose cotton yukata robe, and pad with him down to the little wood-lined room where their steaming bath awaited. The floor was red tile, the walls scented Chinese black pine, the massive tub cedar with rivulets of steam escaping through cracks in its cypress cover.

While they perched on little stools beside the tub, he soaped her back, occasionally dousing her with the bucket of lukewarm water. Then she did the same for him, watching half mesmerized as the soapy bubbles flowed off his shoulders, broad and strong. Almost like an athlete's. Finally they climbed in, and amidst the cloud of vapor her last remaining tensions melted away.

"You know, I think of you every time I come to Kyoto, wanting to lure you back." He reached for the brush and began to gently massage her neck. "I honestly never dreamed Matsuo Noda would come along and try to hire you." He paused. "I wish I could help you make your decision. But the most I can do is warn you to be careful."

What are you telling me? she wondered.

"Ken, you seem troubled about something. What is it?"

"Tamara, powerful forces are at play here, beyond the control of either of us. Things may not always be what they seem. Just be aware of that. But please don't ask me any more. Just look out for yourself."

"I've had a lifetime of looking out for myself. I can handle Matsuo Noda."

"Just don't ever underestimate him. He's not like anyone you've ever known before. The man is pure genius, probably the most visionary, powerful mind in the history of this country. You've met your match."

"That remains to be seen." She leaned back. Ken was challenging her now. On purpose? Maybe he figured that was the only bait she would rise to. He wanted her to play along with Noda, but he wouldn't tell her why.

After they'd simmered to medium rare, heading for well done, they climbed out, toweled each other off, slipped back into their yukatas once again, and glided back to the room. She noticed that an interior screen had been pushed aside, opening onto another tatami room where a thin futon mattress had already been unrolled and prepared with white sheets and a thick brocade coverlet. Hot tea waited on their little lacquer table, but their bags had disappeared. She checked behind a pair of sliding doors and saw that all her things had been neatly shelved by some invisible caretaker. Even the clothes she'd been wearing were already hung in the closet.

"Now for my surprise." He was slipping on a black silk kimono. "They have a special little garden here that only a few people know about. I've arranged everything."

"Shouldn't I change too for whatever it is we're doing?"

"Theoretically, yes. But formality doesn't suit you." He cinched his obi. "Come on. You can be formally informal."

He led the way to the end of the veranda where they each put on the wooden clogs that were waiting. Then they passed through a bamboo gate into yet another landscape, this one lit by candles set in stone lanterns. At the back stood a small one-room structure of thatch, reed, and unfinished wood. A teahouse.

"Tam, can you sit here for a second, in the waiting shelter?" He indicated a bench just inside the gate under a thatch overhang. "I'll only need a few minutes to prepare."

Off he went, clogs clicking along a string of stones nestled in among the mossy floor of the garden. He was following the roji, the "dewy path" that led to the teahouse half hidden among the trees at the back.

Unlike the ryokan' s larger garden, this one had no water; it was meant to recall a mountain walk. The space was small, with natural trees, offering no illusion of being more than it was. But it was a classic setting for tea, a kind of deliberate "poverty." While she watched the flickering stone lanterns and listened to the night crickets, the cacophony of Kyoto could have been eons away.