Waza

The Corpse of the Ogre
Takahara-san takes the call on the private line to his office in Takamatsu. Oshima-san is excited, of course. "The gaijin in your house is dead, I think," he says in a rush over a crackling line. "But he sits still in front of the Buddha in seiza. What should I do "

"Say nothing to anyone," Takahara tells him. "I will come as soon as I can. Perhaps tomorrow." He has not seen his American friend for many years, not since giving him the abandoned farmhouse to live in, so long ago. Could the old fellow actually have done it It is a rare event in modern Japan to find a corpse sitting upright in a posture of meditation. It is always assumed that the body is that of a Holy One. This one would be seen as even more strange, the corpse being that of a foreigner. The press would turn it into a sad joke.

He calls the sister in New York; he has her number though he's never met her. She says she will come immediately. She asks him to tell someone named Shinsen, a priest at Kyosenji in the Tosa mountains, so he has to call the old seal maker in the Hyogo-machi, the only person he knows who can get in touch with anyone at that obscure sect's temple. In a few hours the seal maker calls to tell him that this Shinsen will meet him in Takamatsu the next morning.

Shinsen turns out to be another gaijin, a tall, lean one, even if he is a priest with a Buddhist name. He is perhaps a few years older than Takahara, and he somehow seems once to have been athletic. His head is completely shaved. Black cotton trousers and turtleneck, huddling in a black pea coat against the cold wind. They take a cab to the airport and the company helicopter from there to meet the sister's plane in Osaka. They don't speak during the short flight.

The sister, slim, dressed in a ski jacket, leggings, heeled boots, bows to them formally after clearing customs, addresses Shinsen as sensei, and asks no questions. Her hair is long, red and wild, she moves like a young dancer, though her face reveals her age, early to mid-forties.

Now the black helicopter descends, hovers, settles on a level area between the brown ridge and the old wooden farmhouse. Takahara steps out, not waiting for the engine to shut down. He admires the logo of his company painted on its side, Takahara Enterprises, a circle in English surrounding stylized Japanese characters saying the same thing. He turns, his longish black hair blown by the last few turns of the rotor, extends his hand back into the cabin. The sister ignores it, jumps out easily. The gaijin priest is slower.

"This is Migijima," Takahara says, adding unnecessarily, "There is the farmhouse."

The three of them walk quickly across the field, some hundred meters to the house, past the well, the outhouse. A tiny iron bell with a tattered paper tied to its clapper tings in the wind. Takahara slides open a battered lattice door, whispers "I commit a discourtesy" and waits for the traditional reply. The bell rings again, the wind rattles the house. No other response.

They enter a dim, dirt-floored anteroom. There is a platform of wood before a paper door. To one side is a box for shoes, one pair of wooden clogs in it, a worn pair of western loafers. Next to it a rusty coffee can. There is a faint smell of urine.