The Six Records of Agarwood — Side Story III: The Shosoin's New Note

The Six Records of Agarwood — side story, part three

The Shosoin's note reached Liu Zhiqiang's hands as the season's first winter rain fell on Tokyo.

It was a photocopy; the original was in Nara. Wang Guanshu turned three pages with her tweezers and halted at the signature: Yagyu Shizuma, Kyoto Yagyu Incense Hall, present-day incense-guardian of the Kukiku line. One line of small type under "request" — "re-verify Lan She Dai by the incense-ruler, jointly supervised by the Shosoin and the Liu family."

"The incense-ruler," Liu Zhiqiang read it once.

"He calls Lan She Dai a ruler," Wang Guanshu said. "Your grandfather's copy of 'The Six-Incense Manual' calls it that too. The mother incense is not burnt, only used to calibrate — one ruler measures the five incenses; off by a single li, it does not count."

"What does Yagyu mean to measure?"

"Us."

Three days later, Nara. In the Shosoin office meeting room, Yagyu Shizuma sat at the far end of the long table, in a gray suit, a strip of old silk showing at his cuff — the Kukiku incense-guardian's "incense-token," said to have passed seventeen generations. Before him lay a facsimile: the account-book of the Liu family's Chen-Tan shop in Northern Song Bianliang, and on its seventh page, Huang Tingjian's hand: "Lan She Dai — it is a ruler, not an incense."

"Mr. Liu," Yagyu began, his Chinese carrying a Kyoto accent, "your great-grandfather sent this page's photo to the Shosoin in 1937, with a letter saying 'the ruler must not leave the vault.' I checked; the Shosoin never replied."

"War," Liu Zhiqiang said.

"Not war," Yagyu turned to the facsimile's last page, pointing at a line of pencil small-print. "The Shosoin did reply then; the draft remains. They said — 'while the ruler is present, the six incenses keep order; once the ruler leaves, the six incenses lose order. Since the Liu house keeps order, keep it yourselves.'"

Wang Guanshu lifted her eyes. "You speak for the Shosoin?"

"I speak for the ruler," Yagyu closed the volume. "The Kukiku line searched for Lan She Dai a hundred and twenty years. My grandfather thought gathering the six incenses would bring Great Unity; my father thought the mother incense was the key. My sister —" he paused, "she defused landmines in Kosovo; in the last letter she sent me before she died she wrote: 'Brother, that ruler you all search for — has it ever measured a human life?'"

The meeting room fell silent. Beyond the window, the Shosoin's raised-floor storehouse timber walls showed their old black; rain dripped from the eaves into the stone trough.

"I do not gather the incense," Yagyu said. "I would abolish the ruler. The mother incense exists alone in Japan; your Liu family has kept the divisions for a thousand years, yet this 'division' was kept for you by the Japanese. Lan She Dai in the Shosoin is a Japanese national treasure, not the ruler of the six incenses. I want the Shosoin to declare publicly: Lan She Dai will no longer be used to calibrate any incense. From now the six incenses scatter each its own way; no one uses a ruler to measure anyone."

Liu Zhiqiang did not answer. He recalled his grandfather's words: the Yagyu, the prettier their words, the nearer their blade.

Qu Huaisha joined by video. He was in the National Museum storeroom, a row of infrared scans of Chu slips behind him. "Mr. Yagyu," he pushed his glasses. "The Chu people honored the orchid, to divide and revere the gods. 'Divide' means 'distinguish' — the orchid in the Chu slips is never stored in the same vessel with other incenses. You abolish the ruler, you abolish the division. Six incenses without a ruler, and there is no distinction; without distinction, only gathering remains. Your grandfather's doctrine, in new words."

Yagyu was silent a moment. "Mr. Qu, you study Qu Yuan; I study you. In your paper you wrote 'division is reverence, not isolation.' I agree. But reverence needs a witness. Is the Shosoin a witness? It needs the emperor's edict even to open the vault. The ruler locked in an iron cabinet measures no one; it measures only dust."

Wang Guanshu spoke suddenly. "May I see your sister's letter?"

Yagyu drew from his inner pocket a paper folded four times and pushed it over. It was in Japanese; the final line thickened in pencil: "A ruler cannot measure a human life, but a human life can measure the ruler."

"After my sister died, I burned the Kukiku incense-manual," Yagyu said. "Only this letter remains. Mr. Liu, I did not come today to seize incense. I came to ask: your Liu family keeps the divisions — until what day? Lan She Dai is in the Shosoin; you cannot even touch it. Is this 'division' something you keep, or something the Shosoin keeps for you?"

Liu Zhiqiang looked at the old silk at his cuff. "Yagyu, you burned the incense-manual, yet you still carry the incense-token. The Kukiku incense-guardian recognizes the token, not the manual. Can you abolish the ruler, and abolish yourself?"

Yagyu did not answer. He returned the letter to his pocket and stood. "I have submitted the note. The Shosoin says it will be considered only with the Liu family's and Mr. Qu's joint signatures. I wait for you."

He reached the door and added over his shoulder: "Oh — when I checked the register, under the Lan She Dai column were six characters — 'Showa 20, inspection.' I searched every Shosoin document; there is no inspection record for that year. The characters are in pencil, pressed directly beneath the 'Lan She Dai' entry, as if someone secretly noted it."

After the door closed, Wang Guanshu said quietly: "Showa 20 — 1945. The year Japan was defeated."

The Shosoin let them see the register, but forbade touching Lan She Dai. The book had been rebound in the early Showa years; its pages yellowed. Sure enough, beneath the Lan She Dai entry were six pencil characters: "Showa 20, inspection." The hand was hasty and careless, not the Shosoin clerks' regular script.

"There is a print beneath this line," Wang Guanshu said through her magnifier. "A fingerprint — very fresh."

Liu Zhiqiang leaned close. The print was pressed directly below the two characters "inspection," its lines clear, its edge carrying extremely fine ash — not paper ash, but incense-ash. The color was black, with a touch of purple.

"Purple incense," he said.

Wang Guanshu looked up at him. "Among the six incenses, the purple has long since vanished. Who inspected?"

As the book closed, Liu Zhiqiang noticed a very faint scratch in the blank space beside the print, as if made unwittingly by a fingernail. The scratch ran from "inspection" to the page edge; beyond the edge was the binding thread. Between the threads was pinched something smaller than a sesame seed; he lifted it with tweezers — half a flake of agarwood, its cut face even, sliced by a knife.

"Someone was earlier than us," Wang Guanshu said. "Earlier than Yagyu too."

Liu Zhiqiang put the flake into an evidence pouch. "The seventh scent," he said softly. "My grandfather said, beyond the six incenses there is one more, not in the manual, measurable only on the ruler. Lan She Dai measures the five incenses, but cannot measure the seventh — unless someone has used it to measure."

Beyond the window, Nara's rain had stopped. The Tang-style door of the Shosoin treasury was locked; within the iron cabinet, Lan She Dai lay quiet, like a ruler no one dared use.

And beneath those six characters in the register, the incense-ash in the fresh fingerprint was not yet dried.

— "The Six Records of Agarwood," Side Story III, complete · continues in Side Story IV