The Case of the Sharaku Murders (7 page)

The thought struck Ryohei like a thunderbolt.

“But that seems unlikely,” continued Nishijima. “It's dated 1789, three years after Sharaku stopped producing ukiyo-e. Now, if it were signed ‘Utamaro' that would be one thing, but at that time there'd have been no reason why another artist would want to forge Sharaku's signature. You've probably heard this story before, but toward the end of Tokugawa rule in the mid-1800s, one of Utagawa Toyokuni's apprentices left Edo and was traveling through the countryside. Somewhere some yokels asked him what he did. When he replied he was an ukiyo-e artist, they asked, ‘Oh, are you a student of Utamaro's?' This despite the fact that Utamaro had been dead for decades! ‘No, Toyokuni,' the artist replied huffily; naturally so, since at that time Toyokuni was the brightest star in the ukiyo-e universe and had hundreds of apprentices. To his astonishment, none of the yokels had ever heard of his master.

“This story is always told to illustrate how Utamaro's fame echoed far and wide long after his death. But it also shows that people outside of Edo knew nothing about other ukiyo-e artists. One might be a household name in Edo, but step outside the capital and one became a complete unknown. This was all the more true for an artist like Sharaku who specialized in actor portraits. Why would people who had never seen a kabuki play in their lives give two hoots about a picture of an actor? By the way, the punch line of the story is that those country bumpkins told the artist that they had never heard of Ichikawa Danjuro either, the most celebrated kabuki actor of them all! In Edo, it was said that children as young as three knew his name. In short, we can conclude that there would have been no incentive for this Chikamatsu Shoei up in Akita to forge Sharaku's signature. We can also rule out the possibility that there were two artists living at that time with exactly the same name.”

“In that case,” said Ryohei, struck by a sudden thought as he listened to Nishijima's story, “could Shoei have been a protégé—you know, a former apprentice of Sharaku's?”

“His protégé? Well, I suppose it's possible but…”

“That would explain why the style of this painting is so different from Sharaku's.”

“Well, until a woodblock print turns up clearly identifying Shoei as Sharaku's protégé, I'm afraid it's only a theory. Plus it's highly doubtful Sharaku was in a position to have apprentices. I think if he'd been in such great demand as a teacher we'd know more about him than we do. And if that information existed, then the riddle of Sharaku would have been solved long ago.”

“I see what you're saying, but it would lend support to the Sharaku Workshop hypothesis.”

The ‘Sharaku Workshop hypothesis' held that Sharaku had not been a single individual but a group of artists. Sharaku was active for just ten months between May 1794 and February 1795. In that brief span of time he produced over one hundred and forty woodblock prints. That works out to a new print every other day. Could one artist really have accomplished such a feat? The Sharaku Workshop hypothesis arose to explain this apparent impossibility. In short, it proposed that Sharaku's prints were created by a group of people, each responsible for a specific task, like an assembly line. Taking this theory one step further, it was not unreasonable to think that ‘Sharaku' might have had a protégé. Or so Ryohei thought.

“The Sharaku Workshop, huh?” snorted Nishijima. “That's never progressed beyond mere speculation. The question of Sharaku having a protégé just complicates matters unnecessarily. To begin with, I don't think Sharaku's output is such a big issue. Harunobu produced over a hundred prints a year, while Kunisada churned out several times that many.”

“But in Kunisada's case, weren't many of his prints actually made by his apprentices under his name?”

“Yes, but so what? That was normal for the time. Just because artists didn't openly admit to the practice doesn't mean there was anything wrong with it. What's more, publishers preferred having Kunisada's name on a print rather than some unknown artist. It's as simple as that. If Sharaku had employed the same
modus operandi
no one would have criticized him. In those days people didn't talk about woodblock prints as ‘art.' Rather than worrying about whether any given work from that time can definitively be attributed to a single artist, one ought to assume that if an artist had apprentices then his work was not entirely his own. But I've never seen any evidence Sharaku had apprentices. This so-called workshop hypothesis is just a way of saying Sharaku couldn't have done it all on his own. That's why I can't subscribe to it. There's no mystery to Sharaku's prolific output. If there is a mystery, it's not
how
did he produce so many prints but
why
did he publish them exclusively with Tsutaya Juzaburo?”

“That certainly seems to make sense,” replied Ryohei, won over by Nishijima's argument. Never before had he heard the professor talk about Sharaku in this way.

Nishijima continued: “So the signature isn't a forgery; it's not by Sharaku's protégé; the artist didn't just happen to have the same name… That leaves just one conclusion: this painting is by Sharaku.”

A slight shiver went down Ryohei's spine.

“That is, provided it's not an out-and-out fake.”

“Do you think it might be?”

“Didn't the possibility occur to you?” asked the professor, looking somewhat surprised.

“Yes, that was my immediate reaction when I first saw it. But this catalogue was published in
1907
,
” said Ryohei, emphasizing the date. Nishijima said nothing. His mind seemed to be processing what Ryohei had said.

“
Before
Kurth…” he mumbled at last, as though seeking confirmation from Ryohei. He was sweating slightly.

“Yes, that's right,” replied Ryohei, flipping to the back of the book and showing the professor the copyright page—it read, “December 25, 1907.” It left no room for doubt.

The professor sighed.
“
Before
Kurth…” he repeated again and again.

It was not so long ago that Sharaku had been all but forgotten in Japan. That changed in 1910 when Julius Kurth, a German art historian and scholar of ukiyo-e, published his seminal work,
Sharaku
.
In it he declared the Japanese artist to have been one of the world's great caricaturists, and he placed him alongside Rembrandt and Velazquez as one of the three great portrait painters of all time. Kurth's book catapulted Sharaku to fame in the West and received an ecstatic reception in Japan, where it provoked a reassessment of his work.

Sharaku quickly became a household name in Japan. Everyone was talking about him, even people who had never seen an ukiyo-e print in their lives. All because some foreign scholar had singled him out for praise. That was what made all the difference. At the time, the opinion of one foreigner was worth that of a thousand Japanese. Those were the days when the Japanese were burdened by a sense that culturally speaking theirs was a backward country.

Before Julius Kurth came along, Sharaku had been virtually unknown in the land of his birth. The 1903 edition of
Who Was Who in Japan
,
for example, lists Hokusai and Hiroshige in the section on artists but makes no mention of Sharaku. His name was only whispered among a small number of art dealers and connoisseurs. And even
they
only thought of him as a second- or third-rate artist. He certainly was not an artist that an art dealer could have hoped to make any money off.

“So if the catalogue was published before Kurth's book,” said Ryohei, pressing Nishijima, “the possibility that it's a fake—”

“Is nil,” the professor conceded. Then changing the subject he asked: “Have you managed to find out anything about Shoei?”

“No, nothing.” Ryohei had spent two days looking through every biographical encyclopedia and book on art history he could find in the professor's office and the university library, but he had turned up absolutely nothing about Chikamatsu Shoei. He gave the professor a detailed account of his efforts.

“Well, I couldn't have done any better,” Nishijima said encouragingly. “If there's nothing on Shoei in any of the published literature, then the bio of him in this catalogue must be based on some old manuscript or an inscription on a box used for storing one of the paintings. I guess the only thing you can do now is go to Akita and do some research.”

“To Shoei's hometown, Kakunodate?” asked Ryohei, trying to conceal his pleasure at the swiftness of Nishijima's unexpected response.

“Yes. Of course, while you're there you should go to Kosaka and try to find out something about this Sato fellow Kiyochika mentions in his preface.”

“Good idea. But that'll be difficult; it was written in 1907 after all.”

“You may not turn up anything. But it's important to find out for sure. Where exactly is Kosaka anyway?

“Near lake Towada—on the border between Akita and Iwate.”

“Is that right? Fancy Sharaku living in a backwater like that!” Ryohei watched in silence as the professor reached for his sake cup, a look of disbelief on his face. “Well, well, well… the world is full of surprises!” Then under his breath he added, “Saga's suicide for one.”

A slight smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.

October 26

THE TELEPHONE rang and rang but nobody answered.

When he had counted fifteen rings, Ryohei gave up. He'd been told it wasn't a big apartment. Yosuke must be out. He was just about to put the receiver down when suddenly the ringing was interrupted.

“Hello?” It was the voice of a young woman. Ryohei was taken aback.

“Er… is Yosuke there? My name is Tsuda. I'm a friend from university.”

“Ryohei, right?” replied the woman giggling. Her voice had a note of familiarity.

“Huh? Saeko, is that you?” Ryohei felt his heart begin to flutter.

Saeko was Yosuke's younger sister. He had met her many times back when she was going to college in Tokyo and he was in the habit of hanging out at Yosuke's apartment. Though a bit willful, she was pretty and charming, and Ryohei had secretly had a crush on her.
She must be twenty-four now
,
he thought; she's probably married. In fact, he had wanted to ask Yosuke about her the other day, but in the end he hadn't been able to summon up the courage to broach the subject.

“How are things? How long has it been, anyway?” asked Ryohei, trying to sound nonchalant.

“I hear you haven't changed, Ryohei.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“My brother was talking about you. He said you haven't changed a bit.”

“Same ol' Ryohei, is that it?” he said laughing.

“Actually, I was relieved…”

“About what?”

“That you're still single.”

Ryohei felt himself getting flustered. It was not the sort of remark he expected to hear over the phone. He was at a loss for words.

“Er, is Yosuke there?” he asked at last, ignoring her remark.

“He'll be right back. He's just gone out to the store for some cigarettes. My brother's such a poseur; he smokes Gelbe Sorte or something like that. You can't buy them from a vending machine. Oh, I think that's him now. Don't tell him what I said.”

Ryohei heard the sound of the front door being opened followed by Yosuke's voice. Shortly Yosuke picked up the receiver.

“Hey, good timing. Saeko's just arrived from Sendai; we've just returned from lunch.”

“Oh, is Saeko living up in Tohoku now?”

Yosuke explained that when his sister had finished college two years ago their parents had wanted her to return home to Okayama, but instead she had taken a job at a public library up north in Sendai. Once or twice a month she came to Tokyo to clean his apartment and hang out.

“Cleaning's just a pretext,” he quickly added, lowering his voice. “She really comes to hit me up for pocket money.” Yosuke laughed.“Anyway, what are you calling about? Anything urgent?”

“Not really. I just have something I wanted to show you.”

“I see. Where are you now?”

“At a café in Shinjuku.”

“Well, how about coming straight over. Saeko's here; I'm sure she can whip us up something to eat.”

“Are you sure that's okay with her?”

“No problem. She'll be delighted,” Yosuke replied with a loud laugh.

AN HOUR LATER, Ryohei alighted from a train at Fuchu Station. Yosuke was waiting for him at the exit clutching a large bag of groceries from which a bundle of green onions protruded. I hope he didn't go shopping on my account, thought Ryohei, feeling bad for putting his friend to such trouble. Yosuke began walking. Ryohei walked beside him thinking only of Saeko.

“Your beloved Ryohei is here!” Yosuke called out as they entered the apartment.

“Stop that! You'll scare him away,” replied Saeko, appearing from a back room. Of a robust constitution during her student days, she seemed to have lost a bit of weight since she began working. But she was as beautiful as ever. Back then long hair had suited her, but she looked just as pretty with it cut short. When she smiled a dimple appeared on her right cheek, just as Ryohei remembered. He felt he alone had aged while Saeko had remained exactly the same.