Agarwood Six Records · Side Story Three: The Shosoin's New Summons

Agarwood Six Records · Side Story Three: The Shosoin's New Summons

The letter from the Shosoin reached Liu Zhiqiang's hands on the first rainy day of that Tokyo winter.

It was a photocopy; the original remained in Nara. Wang Wanshu turned three pages with a pair of tweezers and stopped at the signature: Liu Shengjingma, of the Liu Sheng Incense House in Kyoto, current incense keeper of the Jiuju school. One line in small print gave the request — "To re-verify the Ranjatai by the incense yardstick, the Shosoin and the Liu family to supervise jointly."

"The incense yardstick." Liu Zhiqiang read the words once.

"He calls the Ranjatai a yardstick," Wang Wanshu said. "Your grandfather's *Manual of the Six Incenses* calls it that too. The mother incense is never burned; it exists only for verification. One yardstick measures the five fragrances — a hair's difference and the count fails." "What does Liu Sheng want to measure?" "Us."

Three days later, Nara. In the conference room of the Shosoin office, Liu Shengjingma sat at the far end of the long table in a gray suit, a strip of old silk showing at his cuff — the "incense credential" of a Jiuju keeper, said to have passed down seventeen generations. Spread before him was a photocopied volume: the daybook of the Liu family's Agarwood & Sandalwood Shop of Bianliang, Northern Song, and on its seventh page a line in Huang Tingjian's hand: "The Ranjatai is a yardstick, not an incense."

"Mr. Liu," Liu Shengjingma opened, his Chinese carrying a Kyoto accent. "In 1937 your great-grandfather sent this page to the Shosoin, with a letter saying the yardstick must not leave the vault. I checked; the Shosoin never answered." "The war," Liu Zhiqiang said.

"Not the war." Liu Shengjingma turned to the final page of the photocopy and pointed at a line of small penciled characters. "The Shosoin answered at the time; the draft is still on file. They wrote: 'With the yardstick present, the six fragrances keep their order; with the yardstick gone, the six lose it. The Liu family has kept the order — let it keep it still.'" Wang Wanshu raised her eyes. "You speak for the Shosoin?" "I speak for the yardstick." Liu Shengjingma closed the volume. "The Jiuju school has searched for the Ranjatai for a hundred and twenty years. My grandfather believed that gathering all six fragrances would bring the Great Unity; my father believed the mother incense was the key. My sister—" He paused. "She cleared landmines in Kosovo. In the last letter she sent me before she died, she wrote: 'Brother, that yardstick you've been looking for — has it ever measured a human life?'"

The room went quiet. Outside the window the Shosoin's log-built walls gleamed their old black; rain dripped from the eaves into the stone basin.

"I do not gather incense," Liu Shengjingma said. "I want to abolish the yardstick. The mother incense survives only in Japan. Your Liu family has guarded its share for a thousand years — but that share has been guarded for you by the Japanese. The Ranjatai in the Shosoin is a national treasure of Japan, not the yardstick of the six fragrances. I want the Shosoin to declare publicly: the Ranjatai will no longer verify any incense. From then on the six scatter, and no one measures anyone with the yardstick." Liu Zhiqiang did not answer. He remembered his grandfather's words: the Liu Sheng family — the prettier the words, the nearer the knife.

Qu Huaisha was connected by video. He stood in a storeroom of the National Museum, a row of infrared scans of Chu bamboo slips behind him. "Mr. Liu Shengjingma," he said, pushing his glasses up. "The people of Chu honored the orchid and used division to revere the gods. Division means separation — in the Chu slips the orchid is never stored in the same vessel as other fragrances. Abolish the yardstick and you abolish division. Without the yardstick the six have no separation; without separation, only gathering remains. Your grandfather's doctrine, in new words."

Liu Shengjingma was silent a moment. "Mr. Qu, you study Qu Yuan; I study you. In your paper you wrote that division is reverence, not isolation. I agree. But reverence needs a witness. Is the Shosoin a witness? It cannot open its vaults without imperial sanction. A yardstick locked in an iron cabinet measures no one — only dust."

Wang Wanshu spoke suddenly: "May I see your sister's letter?" Liu Shengjingma took a sheet folded four times from his inside pocket and slid it over. The writing was Japanese; the last line had been traced over in pencil: "A yardstick cannot measure human lives, but human lives can measure the yardstick."

"After my sister died, I burned the Jiuju's incense manual," Liu Shengjingma said. "Only this letter remains. Mr. Liu, I did not come today to seize the incense. I came to ask: your Liu family guards its share — until what day? The Ranjatai is in the Shosoin; you cannot even touch it. Is this share guarded by you, or guarded for you by the Shosoin?"

Liu Zhiqiang looked at the old silk at his cuff. "Liu Shengjingma — you burned the manual, yet you still carry the credential. A Jiuju incense keeper does not recognize the manual; he recognizes the credential. You can abolish the yardstick. Can you abolish yourself?"

Liu Shengjingma did not answer. He slipped the letter back into his inside pocket and stood. "I have submitted the summons. The Shosoin says it will deliberate only with the joint signature of the Liu family and Mr. Qu. I will wait for you." At the door he turned and added: "By the way — when I searched the register, beneath the Ranjatai entry there were six characters: 'Twentieth year of Shōwa, inspection.' I have gone through every Shosoin document; there is no inspection record for that year. The writing is in pencil, pressed directly beneath the Ranjatai entry, as if someone had noted it in secret."

After the door closed, Wang Wanshu said quietly: "The twentieth year of Shōwa — 1945. The year Japan lost the war." The Shosoin allowed them to see the register but forbade them to touch the Ranjatai. The volume had been rebound in the early Shōwa years, its pages yellowed; beneath the Ranjatai entry there were indeed six penciled characters: "Twentieth year of Shōwa, inspection." The scrawl was not the regular script of a Shosoin clerk.

"There is a print beneath this line." Wang Wanshu looked through a magnifying glass. "A fingerprint. Very recent." Liu Zhiqiang leaned in. The print sat directly beneath the two characters for "inspection," its ridges clear, its edges touched with the finest gray — not paper ash, but incense ash. The color was black, with a trace of purple.

"Purple incense," he said.

Wang Wanshu looked up at him. "The purple fragrance disappeared from the six long ago. Who burned it?" As the register was closed, Liu Zhiqiang noticed a very faint scratch in the blank space beside the fingerprint, as if a nail had grazed it by accident. It ran from "inspection" to the edge of the page; beyond the edge lay the binding. Caught in the seam was something smaller than a sesame seed. He lifted it out with the tweezers — half a crumb of agarwood, its cut face clean and even, shaved off with a knife.

"Someone came before us," Wang Wanshu said. "Before Liu Shengjingma, too." Liu Zhiqiang put the crumb into an evidence bag. "The seventh note," he said softly. "Grandfather said there is one note beyond the six — not on the manual, only measurable on the yardstick. The Ranjatai measures the five; it cannot measure the seventh note — unless someone has used it to measure."

Outside the window, the rain over Nara had stopped. The Tang-style gate of the Shosoin treasure house stood locked; in the iron cabinet the Ranjatai lay still, like a yardstick no one dared use.

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

— *Agarwood Six Records*, Side Story Three, end · next: Side Story Four

> This is an original serialized story from *Agarwood Six Records*; characters and plot are fictional. Common knowledge of agarwood and aromatics herein is compiled from public materials and does not constitute investment or medical advice.