Counterfeiter and Other Stories (2 page)

THE COUNTERFEITER

THE COUNTERFEITER

(Arn Gisakka no Shogai)

I

A
LMOST
ten years have elapsed since
I
was commissioned by the family of the Japanese artist Keigaku Onuki to undertake the job of compiling Keigaku's biography, but I still have not fulfilled the contract. This spring I received from his family in Kyoto one of those printed announcements, with reply-postcard attached, inviting me to attend memorial services at a certain Zen temple commemorating the thirteenth anniversary of Keigaku's death. Frankly, I found it a bit difficult to face Onuki's people at that time. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I couldn't attend the services because of my work. But, the fact of the matter is that I was rather relieved that I
actually
could not attend.

When the contract for compiling Keigaku's biography was first negotiated by Onuki's heir, Takuhiko—I think that was around 1942—the original understanding was that there was no particular hurry about completing it. On the other hand, he had implied that he would like to distribute copies, as an offering to the spirit of the departed, to those who attended the seventh memorial services, so he wanted to have the work completed in time for publication prior to that occasion. The seventh anniversary was to be commemorated in April 1945, the year the war ended, and the feverish pace of life toward the end of the war was confused enough for both the Onuki family and me, even without Keigaku's biography. Consequently, my work on the biography reached a state of temporary suspension while I was still in the process of collecting material, and although I hadn't actually abandoned the project, my contract came to a natural dissolution. As it happened, the contract was renegotiated by the Onuki family after the war. They said that now that normalcy was returning, they couldn't wait and wanted me to complete the biography as soon as possible. So ever since then I have been getting postcards from Takuhiko, roughly once a year, asking about the status of my progress on the biography and hinting pointedly at the desirability of speed. At such times, in desperation, I have been forced to fabricate excuses in order to placate him.

Originally, I had been selected for the onerous task of doing Keigaku's biography for a variety of reasons. At that time I was a fine-arts reporter for one of the Osaka newspapers, and in the course of my work I had met with the late artist on many occasions. It seems also that the late Keigaku had held me in higher esteem than he held the reporters of other papers. There were all sorts of factors like that. Additionally, I was selected by the Onuki family and by Keigaku's disciples because they felt that since I was the most competent person to undertake the biography, it would be relatively easy for me to collect material. Also, as a fine-arts reporter with somewhat of a store of knowledge of the artistic world, my point of view was likely to be bought.

When I was first approached, I had jumped at the opportunity of taking on this arduous task. I was very fond not only of Keigaku's work but also of Keigaku as an individual. Besides, compiling a biography of Keigaku would be more than just writing a history of Kyoto's art circles with him at the core; it would be like writing a history of Japan's art world. I thought it would not be a bad idea at all to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me, a reporter, to do a study of the transition and change in Japan's art world from the Meiji period
*
on.

On taking a second hard look at the job, however, I found that it was not going to be as simple as I had thought. In the first place, one had to start from the beginning by drawing up a chronology. Before constructing the magnificent Kyoto mansion in which he lived in his declining years, Keigaku had changed his residence in and around Kyoto more than ten times—as his mood suited him. And, also as his mood suited him, for half of each year he was in a state of constant travel. Thus it was difficult to ascertain when, where, and at which ateliers his works, so publicized throughout the world, had been produced. Moreover, as I started to trace the course of his actions during a career of more than sixty years and tried to reconcile the contradictory stories of him told by all sorts of artists, disciples, art dealers, and exhibitors, the job turned out to be not so simple as it had appeared from the outside.

Another thing:

When Keigaku was fifty years old, he buried the wife who had been with him through thick and thin over the years. Thereafter, he lived with an aged housemaid who survived him by two years. He also always had one or another student staying with him, but these students were constantly shifting, unable to tolerate Keigaku very long because of his volatile personality. The one person who should have known the late artist's movements and actions best, his heir, Takuhiko, had lived in France for a long time and had only returned to Japan five years before Keigaku died. But he kept a separate house in Tokyo, and since he was a sort of eccentric egotist, as might be expected, he had almost no contact with Keigaku's way of life. Thus, it might be said that there was practically no one who possessed a detailed knowledge of Keigaku's private life. To all this, one more thing must be added—and this follows from the nature of Keigaku's independent, extravagant, and rustic character—he always frowned upon what we call The Art Circles and lived consistently isolated from the artistic world. Because of this, I encountered tremendous difficulties and obstacles when I reached the point of collecting the materials for his biography.

For all of these reasons, I was unable to proceed with any expedition even as far as a draft of the chronology, which I consider basic to any biography. After visiting town after town on the Inland Sea coast near his birthplace, where his earliest work was done, and after going to see the small cottage-industry villages of Hokuriku, where, curiously, Keigaku enthusiasts were concentrated and had assembled those masterpieces of his later years that he had produced for sale, I was scarcely able to fill two or three notebooks with notes. Then, as the war increased in intensity, I had to drop my work on the biography while I was still in the midst of the basic research.

After the war, this backbreaking but delicate and tantalizing job again stared me in the face. Whenever I began to feel that I really had to get started on what I had committed myself to, the mere knowledge of the peculiar delicacy of this job kept me from feeling that I would now be able to apply myself to the task with ease. Besides—and this was a matter of some fundamental importance to me personally—I unexpectedly quit the newspaper after the war, went up to Tokyo, and turned my attention to literature. Completely immersed in this new kind of work, and with the chronology incomplete and full of gaps, I kept procrastinating, with the inevitable result that my work on Keigaku's biography simply remained in the form of those two or three tablets of notes.

That's the way things went. Even so, when it turned out that the biography wouldn't even be ready by the thirteenth anniversary, and considering the fact that I had delayed so long after having undertaken the job, I couldn't face the Onuki family. With the announcement of this memorial service staring at me, I resolved that this year I would really have to do something. I would try to assemble my work on the biography and put it into some presentable even if unpolished form and finally get this thing off my back.

So, because my own work efficiency is habitually not very great in the heat of July and August anyhow, I determined that I would spend these two summer months working on the compilation of the Keigaku biography. To that end, I took as a working place a small retreat in a mountain village at the foot of Mount Amagi in my native Izu Peninsula. There I decided to devote every morning to this job, and if I ran across some obscure points or situations, I would go to Kyoto in the fall to clear them up. At any rate, I proposed to complete a tentative draft and by some manner or means get the job done.

I must say that work progressed rather smoothly during July. By scanning almost ten volumes of his essays and travel accounts, I was able to complete my notes on his travels and the principal works he produced at each of these locales and when he did them. Thus, I was able to finish the draft chronology, albeit only in rough outline. As a result, upon entering the month of August, I was ready to adopt a writing approach by which I could pull together those facts and data that could be confirmed and discard everything that appeared conjectural. Referring to my old notes, I completed the writing of the sections of the biography: from his infancy to his youth; how he studied successively in Kyoto under Isso Katakura, Gaho Yoshimizu, and others; how he received honorable mention for presenting his debut-work, "Lost Happiness," at the 1897 Artists' Exhibition; how, availing himself of this opportunity, he had started to build his reputation as an incomparably brilliant artistic genius; and how he successively presented the works that have been praised as the masterpieces of his early period, "White Night," "The Old Fox," "Light Snow," etc. But here, my pen suddenly came to a dead halt. In narrating the period when the young Keigaku was blossoming forth as a colorful artist, I had been interspersing here and there the unedited contents of an unpublished contemporary diary, something in his own handwriting which could be considered unique Keigaku memorabilia. That diary had been turned over to me when I first visited the Onuki family after the war. It had been discovered together with various and sundry scraps in a Chinese bag which was in the Onuki family's godown when they were evacuating during the war. It was given to me by Takuhiko, who had said, "We've found something rather rare. I wonder if you don't need it for reference." On Japanese paper, in small characters, daily events from the end of 1897 to the summer of 1899 had been chronicled in fragmentary handwritten personal memoranda. For understanding Keigaku at that time, this was material that could be termed unique, unequaled and priceless.

What interested me most keenly in this diary was the discovery that this proud and arrogant genius of a painter, who was believed to have been without a single friend throughout his life, actually did have a friend called Shinozaki during this period. The name of this Shinozaki appears in three places, but Shinozaki is the only person except for members of the family who appears in this diary.

"With the silver trophy in hand, visit Shinozaki at Kitano; drink sake and chat with him till the wee hours"
is one passage.

There is evidence, practically substantiated in earlier and later texts, that this refers to the time when he carried off the Special Award at the Kyoto Artists' Association Exhibition for painting "The Peacock." It would seem that in all likelihood he had taken the silver trophy with him and had gone to spend the night drinking and rejoicing with an intimate friend. Now, it is not difficult to imagine that this night was young Keigaku's most triumphant hour, and when you think about the fact that he was without restraint sharing that moment of glory with someone, you must look upon this Shinozaki person as someone who was decidedly intimate with Keigaku.

Next, there was:

"Am presented with a sea-bream by Shinozaki in the way of congratulations. Immediately go to visit Shinozaki at Shimotachiuri,
*
but he is out. Leave something in large characters on the door and return home."

This, too, can in all probability be interpreted as meaning that after having captured the prize at some sort of exhibition and on being given a sea-bream as a congratulatory gift by this Shinozaki fellow, he had been touched by this token of friendship and had gone to call on Shinozaki at his home or boarding-house. The expression
"Leave something in large characters at the door and return home"
does not clearly specify what was written. But, it would seem that either in order to explain the purpose of his visit or to express his thanks, he had, as he did so often in later years, written a Chinese poem or some impromptu verse because he had been presented with something as a congratulatory gift. It may possibly seem an extremely rash thing for me to say, but that action left a deep impression on me as being one of the most truly graphic descriptions of the artistic genius Keigaku in his youth. The date is not recorded.

Finally, the one other passage in which Shinozaki's name appears is,
"Shinozaki left Shoyama this morning and came to Kyoto."
This passage is in the last section of the diary and is dated August 3, Summer 1899. This statement standing by itself can only be interpolated. This one line cannot be regarded as related to anything before or after or as having any special significance. However, at that moment when I first saw the place-name Shoyama, the very fact that a certain Shinozaki appeared to have been Keigaku's most intimate friend suddenly caused an image of the counterfeiter Hosen Hara to flash across my mind.

I had a certain amount of knowledge of this man Hosen Hara, who had spent his gloomy and miserable life painting forgeries of Keigaku's works. But when I realized that this person, who had remained dormant in my mind until that instant, was identifiable with this Shinozaki and that he could be considered Keigaku's only intimate friend during his youth, I was struck with an indescribably weird feeling.

Of course, this is something that had not occurred to me until then, but I did recall hearing at one time that Hosen Hara, if he can be called that, was adopted. In Hosen Hara's small native hamlet, situated on the Hino River which runs through the Chugoku mountain range, there are many people who bear the surname Shinozaki. Although I had never inquired about Hara's original surname, by putting two and two together I was able very early to arrive at the indisputable fact that this Shinozaki person and Hosen Hara were one and the same.