The Toyotomi Blades (18 page)

“All right then,” Nagahara-san said. “Please consider that we’ve given you an invitation to stay another week in Tokyo at our expense, and please come back on the show next week and tell about how much progress you’ve made.”

“That’s a generous offer,” I stammered. “I’ll certainly do my best.”

18
      

O
kay, I’ve got a big mouth. Sometimes it starts working before my brain is in gear. As soon as the closing credits for
News Pop
started crawling across the monitor screens in the studio, I knew I just had a major meltdown. I had an image of gears popping out of my ears as I tried to figure out why I had taken on this challenge.

If you’re raised with an Asian background, the consequences of a big mouth can be dire because of the problem of face. Face is the notion that your life is tightly entwined with your family, your ancestors, your clan, your village, your company, and your country. When some disgrace or insult falls on you, it also falls on all the entities to which you’re connected. The shame is magnified a thousandfold. Face is often used to excuse all sorts of ridiculous behavior in books and movies. Unfortunately, it’s also a motivator for some equally ridiculous real-life actions.

A few years ago the captain of a cargo vessel had the misfortune to get caught in a severe mid-Pacific storm. The captain might have avoided the worst of the storm by taking a longer route, but he was anxious to reach his destination. His ship was stuffed with Mazda automobiles and during the storm some of the cars broke free from their tie-downs and caused considerable damage. Almost one hundred cars were damaged.

Other captains might have been able to shrug off the incident. The marine insurance would pay for the damage and no people were injured. But this captain was Japanese, and he had lost face. So when the vessel finally came into port he went to the deck where the worse damage occurred and tried to commit
seppuku,
which is a ritual suicide vulgarly known as
hara kiri
(slit the belly). Unfortunately for the captain, his archaic gesture turned from tragedy to farce because of one little detail: He didn’t bring a big enough knife. In the old days they committed seppuku with a short sword. The captain brought a pocketknife.

He stabbed himself over twenty times. Stabbing yourself in the abdomen can be a painful and slow death, so seppuku usually involved an assistant who would cut off the head of the person committing the suicide. The captain had no assistant, and despite the number of stab wounds he had inflicted on himself, the crew was able to find him and get him to a hospital before he bled to death. Instead of dying to apologize for his lack of ability, the captain confirmed this lack in his botched suicide.

I didn’t have a penknife, but my mouth was able to inflict all the damage necessary. I was supposed to uncover more information about the Toyotomi blades by staying in Japan another week. The truth was that for all I knew I could stay in Japan another year and still not find out any more information. When I thought of it, most of what I had now was given to me by Sonodasan or Junko. My major contribution was figuring out that the blades might fit together to form a map, and I wasn’t even sure if that was accurate.

By agreeing to the challenge I ran the risk of embarrassing myself in a culture where embarrassment can be acute and serious. Of course, it wasn’t as if all my friends and neighbors would know what I had done. But I would know. The Japanese part of my Japanese-American heritage would be mortified by the loss of face if I didn’t come through with something.

Junko and Sugimoto joined us in the studio. Yukiko-chan and Nagahara-san seemed very excited after the show. Sugimoto looked glum, as if Nagahara-san’s interest in the story was somehow a personal slight against him. Forming the Yin to Sugimoto’s Yang, Junko was simply beaming and basking in what I took to be praise from Nagahara-san and Yukiko-chan.

When I asked Junko what they were telling her, she just smiled and said, “They’re very enthused about this story. We’re going to give it a big buildup over the next week. We got a pretty good response from the Sansei detective angle we played this week in our promos and next week should be even better because every school kid knows about Hideyoshi Toyotomi. This would be just like an American audience finding out about a treasure hidden by George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.”

“But I’m not sure that I can find the treasure,” I protested. “I just said that I’d try to get more information about the blades by next week’s show.”

“Oh, we know that,” Junko said airily. “Nagahara-san doesn’t expect you to solve the mystery. He just wants you to do your best over the next week. Whatever you come up with we’ll put into the most positive light possible. The big pull for next week’s show will be to find out what you came up with. You had a highly rated show in the States about Al Capone’s vault. When they opened it on live television they found a bunch of dirt and a few old bottles. The sponsors got their audience, though, which was the real point of the show.”

“But I’m going to need some help to work on this. I don’t want to end up looking stupid on next week’s show.”

“I called one of the executives at Nissan. The staff hunted down his home phone number for me. We discussed your need for help with computer enhancement and he agreed to get Nissan to help you.”

“But wouldn’t it be easier to get originals sent from Rotterdam or New York?”

“Sure, but that would cut into several minutes of video tape showing Nissan’s technological prowess. They’re one of our main sponsors and that kind of piece won’t hurt them and it certainly won’t hurt the show.”

“But what if I don’t find out anything new about the blades in the next week?”

“Oh, I’m sure you will.” Junko looked almost effervescent. She had an expression on her face that said the possibility that I wouldn’t find anything more about the blades was unthinkable. Unfortunately, that was all I could think of.

When I got back to the greenroom, Mariko gave me a big kiss. “We don’t have to worry about your makeup now! You looked great, but I didn’t understand what was going on. You opened your mouth and all this Japanese came out. I started giggling. It looked like one of those badly dubbed kung fu movies. The two anchors seemed extremely pleased at the end.”

“They should be pleased. I told them I’d stay another week in Tokyo and solve the mystery of the Toyotomi blades for them.”

“You what?”

“Well, actually I said I’d work on the mystery and see what I could come up with. But it’s obvious that they’ve got pretty high expectations.”

“Ken, why would you say you’d solve the mystery?”

“I didn’t say I could solve the mystery. I said I would work on the mystery. I don’t know if the mystery can be solved. It will let me stay another week with you here in Tokyo.”

“But what about the Yakuza who are after you?”

“I’d forgotten that little detail,” I said. “Thanks for reminding me.”

19
      

T
he world headquarters for Nissan Motors occupies two imposing towers on the outskirts of the Ginza district. It was walking distance from the Imperial Hotel, but I took a cab. The talk of the Yakuza the previous night did not go unheeded.

In a small courtyard outside the front entrance of the building were a series of ancient building blocks projecting from the stone floor of the courtyard like weathered dragon’s teeth. They looked centuries old and appeared to be pieces from some ancient castle. Just a few feet away was the lobby and showroom for Nissan, with new cars basking under lighting that made them look positively glossy. The dichotomy of old and new is the prevailing theme in Japan.

A crew from
News Pop
was there to film me walking into the Nissan building. They made me do it three times so they could get different angles of me walking into the building with the single camera they brought. It made me feel silly, especially as a small crowd gathered, and I was grateful when the camera crew left so I could go about the business of trying to enhance the fax images.

In the lobby I was greeted by a pleasant young woman sitting at a reception desk. Her English was weak, but good enough to understand that I was there for a meeting with a Mr. Kiyohara. I cooled my heels for a few minutes looking at the new cars and another young woman appeared to take me to an elevator. Once we were on the working floors of the building, the shiny newness of the lobby was left behind and the halls and decor became very austere. The office she took me to was very much like the others I had seen in Japan, with rows of tiny desks facing each other, all jammed together. The desks were cluttered with papers, little souvenirs, photos, and people. Although several employees looked up as I entered, most seemed hard at work.

At the end of each row was a slightly larger desk positioned so that the person sitting at it could look down the rows. Here the supervisor or manager sat. It gave the office a crowded but intimate atmosphere and allowed management to know almost through osmosis who was diligent and working hard and who wasn’t.

Mr. Kiyohara was a tall, thin man with a soft-spoken manner. He was quite handsome, with sharp cheekbones and a square-cut chin. His eyes sparkled with intelligence. His English had a mumbled quality to it, as if he wasn’t quite confident of his command of the language and didn’t want to speak out, but I found it very understandable.

“The television program explained what you’re trying to do. I hope we can help,” Kiyohara said after we had introduced ourselves. He seemed to be in his mid-forties and his face had a serious demeanor that I’ve noticed on other adult Japanese, but with Kiyohara I got the impression that the seriousness was a mask and underneath there was a lively sense of humor to match the intelligence shown in the eyes.

Kiyohara led me to a conference room. Like the rest of the office, it was positively spartan, with a gray metal table with chairs of green vinyl and metal. He introduced me to several younger Japanese whom he identified as team members who worked in the area of photo enhancement, and I noted that two of the team members were women.

“Ohara-san has explained to me that you’re interested in enhancing the image on a photograph,” Kiyohara began when we had all settled down around the table. “As you might know, Nissan not only makes automobiles, but we also get ourselves involved with a lot of other things. We make boats, looms for weaving, and even guided missiles. A Nissan rocket put the first Japanese space satellite in orbit, as a matter of fact.

“Because of our involvement with satellites, we’ve been working on image enhancing to improve the quality of weather photographs. One of the projects is a complete digital map of Japan that we want to use in a navigation system for cars. In addition to roads, the map will show all of Japan’s major features and many of its more significant buildings.

“To do this, we had to develop techniques that would allow computers to analyze photographs, pick up features, and resolve them into some kind of mathematical pattern. The United States is the leader in this area, but I think we still have the facilities to help you.”

I took the faxes out of my pocket and placed them on the table. “It would help enormously if we could get enhanced images of these. If you saw last night’s show, it should be clear how helpful it would be to see the patterns on the blades.” I pushed the faxes over to Kiyohara.

He picked them up and looked at them with interest. Other members of the team craned their necks to take a peak.

“You’ll notice the sword blade is clearly visible,” I said. “But because of the size of the photo and the quality of the fax, I can’t make out the symbols on the blade. Even if I get originals, I’m not sure about how the quality of the image will be maintained if we try to enlarge the photos to a size that’s useful for comparison with other images of blades I have.” I took the copies of the three blade rubbings I now had and gave them to Kiyohara. As promised, Hirota had given me a rubbing of my own blade, and I had Junko make a photocopy of this rubbing, too.

“Ideally, I’d like an image that was the same size as these photocopies of rubbings. I think the blades fit together to form a map, and I’d like to be able to manipulate the rubbings and images to see if I can fit them together.”

“How will you know what it’s a map of?” Kiyohara said. “Is there some reference point so you know what you’ll be looking at?”

I sighed. “No, and I’m actually missing a piece of the map because I don’t have a rubbing or picture of one of the blades. I think there are six of them, but as you can see I only have five represented with what I have. In fact, I don’t even know in what order they fit together, but I figure that I’ll just approach things one step at a time. With only a week until the next show I have to keep moving, even if I’m not always making progress.”

“Well, we can help you with movement and hopefully it will also be progress. Are you familiar with the technique of photo enhancing?”

“I know a little bit about it, but if you have the time I wouldn’t mind having an explanation about what you are going to do with the faxes.”

“Well, in concept it’s really quite simple, although it’s part art as well as part science. It does take a lot of programming and computer power to accomplish it on a large scale, but we have big computers at our data center to do all sorts of design and engineering tasks; photo enhancement is just one of them.