A calmness permeated the back streets of Ikebukuro. Away from the shopping district’s sonic barrage of pop music, indecipherable announcements and birdlike chirps of pedestrian crossings, new sounds began to untangle themselves. Crows calling to one another from unseen perches became distinct while a bike chain rasped in its rotations as a cyclist passed. Jonah pulled the collar of his denim jacket closer around his neck and Daigo pushed his hands deeper into the pockets of his own, the March chill more pronounced without the warmth of the crowds.
Jonah’s sketchbook slapped against his thigh in his satchel, as if reminding him he hadn’t drawn anything in this area on the last visit. He’d looked for familiar landmarks and couldn’t recognise them if they were there. The ubiquitous elements of Tokyo he’d seen over the last two weeks seemed to conflate with the present and formed a continuous suggestion of déjà vu. Had Daigo felt like this when he’d first led him through the suburban sprawl of Adelaide suburbs five years ago? He probably didn’t remember. It had been almost a year since Daigo had finished his Visual Arts Degree and moved back to Tokyo, but it seemed longer to Jonah. The daily interactions with each other in the past had become text messages and skype calls, often weeks apart.
Past two more blocks of residential housing and vending machines home to unfamiliar flavoured beverages, they reached Horikage’s house, a modest two-story post-war apartment. Daigo had explained that hardly any houses in the area had survived the firebombing during the last months of WWII, civilians included. A park across the street covered what was once a burial site for the remains of those caught in the blast, their bones rediscovered when a subway line was constructed in the eighties. Behind schedule, the workers had purified the bones with salt and put them back into the earth, hidden them again so that progress could continue and the past lay in the past.
As they waited at Horikage’s door, Jonah watched a man in a tracksuit walking his dog on the grassy expanse, oblivious perhaps, to what lay beneath his feet, the subway line rattling the bones below him.
‘Ojisan,’ Daigo said, slightly bowing his head as Horikage opened the door. “Uncle” Jonah understood, still unsure of which honorific to use himself without the ties of a bloodline. Mute with uncertainty, Jonah nervously bowed his head as Daigo had. Horikage laughed at this, sensed his awkwardness and patted him on the shoulder to put him at ease. After ushering them inside, Horikage waited as they took their shoes off in the lower section of the entrance. Jonah placed his on the tiles and turned them towards the door as he had been shown, then stepped up onto the floorboards of the slim hallway to hang his satchel on one of the free wall hooks. In the living area off to the left he saw Bonsai, Horikage’s cat, curled up on a pillow. It was still young, adopted by Horikage when he’d found it asleep in a plant pot. They walked past this room, the place where they’d sat drinking sake on his first visit, and took the stairs to the second floor. He wished he’d had a drink now. Thinned the blood though, from experience. Messy for both parties involved. Daigo sensed his trepidation and gave him a reassuring smile as his uncle slid a wooden door open at the landing.
The contents of the room seemed undefined, featureless in the muted light which leaked through a window mostly obscured by bookshelves. A flicked switch made the fluorescent tubing overhead tick and then hum before it settled to illuminate the small interior.
Books filled the shelves, dog eared volumes in various sizes with characters along the spines. Horikage gestured for them to enter, a white sleeve rising up his arm to show a row of thick black lines that curved and finished below the elbow. Daigo entered first and Jonah followed, felt the weave of tatami mats, stiff and textured beneath his feet. More shelves and cabinets surrounded them inside, some low enough to allow a view of the walls where framed woodblock prints of warriors hung in the limited space below the ceiling. The prints were like the ones Jonah had seen in an art gallery near Ueno, Kuniyoshi’s hero series, all of the characters with sections of skin covered in intricate patterns of flora, fauna and mythical creatures.
A single mask hung at eye level amongst the prints, a woman’s face, painted white and carved from wood with red lips slightly ajar. It looked indifferent, a skilled Noh performer able to imbue the features with meaning by manipulation of perspective.          
‘Dozo,’ said Horikage, indicating a space on the floor with an open hand.
There were no seats, only a selection of objects placed beside a padded blanket and pillow. Jonah took Daigo’s lead and lowered himself into a cross legged position, felt his legs reconcile with the contortion rarely experienced since childhood. The expression of the mask had changed from this angle, the lips curving downward now. It did not convey sadness exactly, more a look of nostalgia. Horikage joined them on the floor, having less trouble than Jonah with the movement at an age which must have been more than twice his own. Jonah watched as the older man rubbed the grey bristles along his chin and scrutinised each object laid on the floor in turn.
Horikage first took a shallow rectangular bowl from the items which looked to be made of black stone, one side deeper than the other, and placed a few drops of water onto its surface. The bowl made Jonah think of swimming pools, walking from the shallow end until his feet could no longer touch the ground. Next Horikage picked up a rectangular block between forefinger and thumb, held it up to show them, its colour shining like wet crows feathers as it caught the light. Rubbing the block against the stone in a circular motion, he talked while he worked. Jonah understood nothing.
‘My uncle says these sticks are made in Nara,’ Daigo said. Jonah had heard of Nara, but only as a tourist attraction. Four hours by train from Tokyo Station to see its temples and visit the deer park, a pamphlet in the hostel declared.
‘Soot,’ Daigo continued, ‘is collected from burning pine or lamp oil then combined with nikawa, a glue made from animal fat. Very old tradition, my uncle says. Priests brought the method here from China in the Hein period and were the first to make sumi. Ink.’
The compacted block shortened, filling the deeper end of the bowl with a viscous black paste. Pausing from his work, Daigo’s uncle looked up at him, smiled and moved his free hand in the air as if painting with a brush.
‘Calligraphy,’ Daigo said, ‘this was what the ink was first used for.’
Horikage poured the prepared solution into small ceramic cups and laid them to the side. From the other items he picked up a length of thin wood with an indent carved into one end and flexed it to demonstrate its pliancy. Bamboo, Jonah was told, is better than other wood which does not jump. Against the indent, Horikage held a selection of small needles soldered together at the base with one hand. The other took thread from a spindle, winding it clockwise to bind the needles and wood together. Placing the tool down, he took a candle, lit the wick and picked up the tool once more. With the candle inverted, drops of wax coated the tight lines of thread, securing it in place.
‘This was one of his first jobs as an apprentice,’ Daigo said, translating Horikage’s words. ‘The first year all he did was clean the studio for his master and watch. The second year he learnt how to mix the ink and make the tools.’
After blowing out the candle Horikage checked the needles with what looked like a jeweller’s loupe then repeated the process with a longer piece of bamboo and a greater selection of needles.
‘This tool is called a nomi,’ Daigo said, as Horikage performed the final checks of the needles, one greying eyebrow angled in concentration. Jonah looked at the pointed end of the tool and thought about the Horikage’s name, the name given to him from his master after years of training. Hori, Daigo had told him, comes from the word horu, to carve. Horikage smiled, his clear eyes asking Jonah to trust him, then made one of his hands fall down into an open palm. He understood. Lie down.
Jonah, shirtless now, laid on the padded blanket as Horikage kneeled beside him with a thin brush dipped in paint. Lines were applied to his left pectoral muscle where the skin was devoid of tattoos given to him by other artists with a machine.
‘Sakura,’ Horikage announced adding the final touches.
‘This means cherry blossom,’ Daigo said.
They hadn’t discussed what the image would be beforehand, only that Horikage would decide after meeting him. This would be enough, Daigo had told him, after their last visit, enough to understand Jonah’s character.
Horikage continued to speak, pulled the brush back from his skin and indicated that Jonah should look into the mirror behind him.
‘Mono no aware,’ Daigo repeated after Horikage continued to speak. ‘This is hard to translate. Mono means… “things”, aware means… “pity”, but this does not translate well to English. It is… an awareness of the impermanence of things, a feeling for them, like the cherry blossom that blooms for a short time then falls from the tree. An appreciation for the moment.’ Daigo paused to listen to Horikage speak more. ‘My uncle liked that you were interested in capturing your time here through drawing what you saw, in order to appreciate the brief experience, as you said. This is why the cherry blossom, he says.’
Jonah examined his chest in a mirror that sat on a lacquered chest of draws embellished with golden cranes. An outline of three small cherry blossoms now marked the skin below his collar bone. He recognised the split at the tip of the petals from the drawing he made sitting in Ueno Park with Daigo two days ago. A way to tell them apart from plum blossoms.
He laid back down and Horikage placed his left hand sheathed in a disposable glove flat on his chest below where the outline started. The right hand held the nomi, its needle tips dipped into the mixture of ink and laid against the left hand’s thumb as a guide. Jonah felt the needles push in and out of his skin, assumed they were following the outlines left from the brush but couldn’t tell, the sensation of their insertion expanding out too quickly from the point of impact. It didn’t hurt as much as he expected, unlike the relentless machine gun speed of a tattoo machine. There was a cadence with the motion, rhythmical, as if to an unheard beat, the sound similar to the use of a seam ripper as it unpicked loose threads to be resewn. No electrical whine that came with the machines he was used to in the tattoo parlours back home. Horikage paused, wiped the area he was working on with a wad of paper towel that smelt of sanitiser, and checked the work.
The outline finished, Horikage took the other nomi and spoke to him once more.
‘Now the shading,’ Daigo said, Jonah remembering what the last part of the old man’s name meant. Kage, shadow.
Jonah tried to watch Horikage’s movements but could only see the end of the nomi, the position changing angle as he felt the needles work around the design. Horikage wiped the excess ink with a new paper towel, leaving it stained, and spoke before commencing the same rhythmic movement.
‘He says that shading is the hardest part to master for tebori,’ Daigo translated. ‘The transition from dark to light requires using the nomi at different angles to make the ink thin or thicker, and a technique, hanebori, of flicking the needles upward while the tool is pulled back. It also depends on how the skin is stretched.’
Jonah felt Horikage’s free hand stretch the skin across his chest wider as the needles worked their way across his pectoral muscle. It was hard to make sense of this, and he could think only of his pen against paper, the shadows for depth made darker by alternating the direction of the line or continuing to mark the same area repeatedly.
Hours later, Horikage indicated he was finished. Jonah sat up, looked at his chest in the mirror once more and saw the cherry blossoms outlined with a precision that matched the black lines of the woodblock prints hanging from the walls. A pure black started from the base of the petals, gradually getting lighter as it reached the tips and left them the colour of his skin. A shadow.
Horikage opened a cupboard in the corner of the room and removed an old, heavy looking SLR Nikon. Bringing the camera to where Jonah sat on the floor, he pointed at the camera then to Jonah’s chest.
‘Uncle wants to know if you would be okay with him taking a photograph of the tattoo,’ Daigo explained. ‘He likes to keep records.’
‘Of course,’ Jonah said, nodding his head and smiling towards Horikage, the area of freshly tattooed skin on his chest beginning to take on the familiar feeling of sunburn.
‘He’s been taking photos of his work since the late 70’s,’ Daigo said as Horikage lined up his shot and adjusted the focus. ‘Refuses to go digital, even though I’ve offered to buy him a new camera. That old Nikon is a relic but it does what he wants and you don’t need to worry about him putting anything on Instagram. Ha, ha.’
Clothed, Jonah caught a glimpse of himself and Horikage in the mirror, none of their many tattoos visible in the reflection. Horikage never showed his tattoos in public, Daigo had explained to Jonah on the train to Ikebukuro, and not only because of the stigma in Japan. He believed that people got tattoos for themselves, that it was a personal experience, and he liked the allure of something beautiful that was hidden and not easily seen. This, Horikage thought, was related to Japanese culture in that they depict light by exploiting the shadows, use darkness to make sense of the light, not the other way around.
Horikage caught Jonah’s eye in the mirror and spoke.
‘He wanted to give you this tattoo to remember your visit,’ Daigo translated. ‘Something for you, to… thank you for looking after me when I lived in Australia.’
‘I wouldn’t say I looked after you,’ Jonah said. ‘You were always more sensible than I was.’
‘Perhaps, but I did not know anyone when I came to Adelaide, and I will always remember my time there thanks to you. I must have told this to my uncle many times.’
Jonah shrugged his shoulders, unsure what to do with the compliment, and felt the sting of the recent prodding at his skin as it stretched with the movement. He thought of the four years spent in Adelaide together with Daigo after meeting at art school and finding things to do while being poor, mainly watching old movies. Jonah had dropped out in the first year and swapped to an English degree but retained the friendship, eventually convincing Daigo to move out of his Aunt’s house and find a place with him. His Aunt had been the reason he chose to look for the Art School scholarship in Adelaide but he didn’t get along with her new Australian husband, so it wasn’t a hard sell. It was when they first moved in that Daigo had found Marcus’s boxes of VHS movies, enamoured with the art on the covers, and asked Jonah if they could watch them. He hadn’t opened those boxes since receiving them, avoiding the feelings the contents brought with them, but agreed to seek out a second-hand VHS player on seeing Daigo’s excitement.
Sitting in the living area with Daigo while Horikage made tea, Jonah stroked Bonsai who had moved onto his lap.
‘Are you feeling okay?’ Daigo asked.
‘Yeah, sorry. I was miles away. Just thinking about when we lived together in Adelaide.’
‘It was a good time. All those movies we watched.’
Marcus’s movies. “He would have wanted you to have them,” he was told by his friend’s mother after the funeral. Jonah knew he’d been ill but there was no indication of how serious, no one expecting him to not wake up that one morning. He’d stopped dropping in on Marcus as much when he’s started art school and working nights in a bar, always meaning to make time, not knowing how little time he had left. The guilt still followed him.
‘I remember the covers for those movies so well.’ Daigo said.
‘Yeah, it was quite the collection.’
Horikage brought them their tea and joined them at the table. Jonah listened while Daigo talked to his Uncle with the occasional translation, but his mind wandered back to Marcus, about all the things he’d taught him about music and movies when they were teenagers. He’d had mixed emotions about revisiting the memories of those black plastic tapes with Daigo, conceding that Marcus would have wanted him to share the experiences with someone new, just as Marcus shared them with him.  
Ready to leave, Jonah attempted to use what he had read was the highest form of appreciation, a clumsy “Domo arigato goziamasu,” causing Daigo and his uncle to laugh.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Horikage replied, the English syllables stressed in odd places.
‘Is my Japanese that bad?’ Jonah asked Daigo.
‘It’s not great but my Uncle thought it was nice of you to try. He also thought it was too formal for someone who is now his friend.’
Jonah, humbled by the remark, stopped at this and opened his bag. Finding the sketchbook with his illustrated experiences of Japan, he offered it to Horikage with a quick bow of his head.
‘Can you tell him I’d like him to have this as a way of saying thank you?’ Jonah asked Daigo to translate.
Horikage said something and waved his hand in a polite dismissal but Jonah pleaded, explaining it felt like the right thing to offer, an experience in exchange for an experience.
They crossed the park on their way back to the station this time, Jonah thinking about the bones again, of how they were a tangible reminder of an event even if they couldn’t be seen, like the new and old ink that sat beneath the surface of his own skin, his clothes like the grass and soil they walked upon. 


5 YEARS LATER



The trees in the distance, mere silhouettes through the inclement weather, bend with the force of the wind. She places the arm of her teaspoon diagonally across them, tracing new lines against its flat edge and moving it sideways on the page of her sketchbook. The rain isn’t perfect but it matches the angle she’s copied from the image on her laptop screen. A gist is all she’s aiming for, a rough interpretation, unlocking clues to understand how the piece might be described to Jasper.
The sound of a coffee cup smashing on tiled floor breaks her concentration, a barely imperceptible popping sound before the tinkling of ceramic. She looks up as everyone goes quiet in the café, a fraction of time interrupted, capturing the moment before the coffee cup rattles and indistinct conversations resume as before.
Concentrating back on the screen, the angle of the rain is more important than she first thought. Not just the rain. There are no elements in the image that are perpendicular. The small figures moving along the slope, the thatched triangular roof tops and the natural elements of the scene all tilt left or right, creating a key to the overall harmony of the work’s composition.
She checks her phone as the scent of a freshly warmed muffin wafts in her direction. She wishes she could eat, that her stomach didn’t churn before meetings after all these years, but there isn’t enough time now anyway. Packing up her things, she pauses to watch the rain, the real rain, enveloping the city through the window.

*

‘So, Charlotte…’
‘Charlie.’
‘Charlie. As stated in the itinerary sent to your email, we’ve organised a room for you at a hotel in Shinjuku. It’s not far from Tokyo Central Station so it will be easy to get around.’
Alice, her editor of four years at Exhibit A, sits beside her, listening to the interaction. The familiar smell of her perfume, woody with a hint of vanilla, puts Charlie at ease as she tries to pretend this is not the biggest job she’s ever been offered.
‘Thank you. When will I be able to meet Yumi?’ Charlie asks Jun Takagi’s image in the laptop screen. He was younger than she’d expected. Handsome. London accent. Educated abroad, she guesses.
‘She will meet you at the hotel the day after you arrive. We decided it might be easier this way so you can talk before the exhibition and get some background for the article. There will be an iPad and a phone installed with the software needed to view some of Yumi’s work waiting at the hotel, but if you need anything else you have my contact details.’
‘Thank you. I’m all set for the flight tomorrow, but I’ll let you know if I think of anything.’ She is far less nervous than she thought she’d be, due either to the interaction through Skype, or the calmness of Takagi’s voice.
After a polite goodbye to her and Alice with a slight bow of his head, Takagi’s image freezes momentarily, just like the café when the cup had been broken. The screen fades to black, reflecting a ghostly image of her own straight lipped face. She doesn’t recognise it at first, a blunt fringe above the eyes covering the forehead, an aesthetic tweak created by her hair dresser earlier that morning.
Charlie moves to the window of Alice’s office and looks down where Lygon Street bustles with midday traffic three stories below. Pedestrians hide their heads with umbrellas as rain falls in lines from a sky the colour of wet concrete. She thinks of the sketch in her bag she will take to Jasper’s, the quick study of the Hiroshige print, then checks her watch.
‘This is a good opportunity for Exhibit A,’ Charlie hears Alice say to her back. ‘A good opportunity for you as well as the magazine. I’m glad you decided to take the job.’
‘I never asked you why Takagi wanted me specifically?’
‘He liked the article you did about the Japanese art team last year. He was doing the PR for them at the time and said it was very moving.’
Charlie feels her jaw clench, sucking her cheeks in with the memory of the interactive nature exhibition.
It was six months ago, a review job for a new art collective from Tokyo who had set up various rooms with digital interactive displays. In the first room, the walls and floor were black, a dim light illuminating the edges of the room. No sound. As she walked to its centre, images of flowers bloomed in the wake of her footsteps. Testing the floor, she’d tapped her feet in various directions, watching more petals spread as she lifted her feet. In time they disappeared, not in reverse but decomposing until the floor was black once more.
The other rooms were filled with similar interactive representations, one with a stream on the floor that parted around the feet, and another with a cascading waterfall that one could put their hand against to break the flow. The last room of the exhibition had been different, the visuals triggering a response that makes her shudder in the present.
Bare branches crookedly reached out across the expanse of a long screen which filled the wall of a narrow room. When she approached, a branch burst into bloom, pink and white buds of cherry blossoms opening to cover the bark. As she walked to the edge of the screen, the image seemed to sense her distance, making the petals fall and leave the branch bare once more. She felt it then, the surge of emotion causing her to step back towards the branch. The blossoms bloomed again, holding her in place, not allowing her to move. In that moment, she wasn’t in the room anymore. She was trapped. In the car again, the seatbelt digging into her eight-year old collarbone and her mother’s tattooed shoulder exposed in front of her. Cherry blossoms. She’d yelled when she saw past the shoulder, saw the world upside down through the broken windshield, then again when she saw her mother wasn’t moving. She couldn’t remember how long she’d stayed with the branch in the gallery, unable to look away, to walk away and let the blossoms fall and die.
‘Charlie?’ Alice says, bringing her mind back into the office.
‘Sorry, what were you saying?’
‘I told Takagi you had some background with Japanese woodblock prints. You’re still doing that game with Jasper aren’t you?’
The “game”. It was more than that for both of them but it was hard to describe this to other people. ‘Yeah, I’m heading over to his house after I’m finished up here.’
‘You should be able to use some of that knowledge for this article.’
‘But this one is about augmented reality,’ she says, turning around to face Alice. Her eyes, blue grey with flecks of brown, stare back with kindness, able to pierce through any barrier Charlie thought she was presenting.
‘Yumi Nakamura’s work is, yes, but there are elements drawn from ukiyo-e prints as well as the Western influences. It sounds interesting. She’s relatively new in the Tokyo art scene but Takagi thinks she has the potential to tour the work here with enough media and a good article about her work. I’d like you to put something about augmented reality art in the article as well. It seems to be taking off over there.’
Charlie takes a seat across from Alice and looks back into her dim reflection frowning on the laptop screen, still uncertain about the fringe.
‘Come on Charlie, this will be good for you. Get you out of the country and get paid. I know you’ve been having a rough time recently and getting away from Melbourne for a week might be just what you need.’
‘I have always wanted to see Japan.’ This was not always true. She’d avoided the thought of visiting, scared of the association with her mother and the years she lived there as an English teacher before Charlie was born. The therapy had helped, and Jasper.
‘You’ll be fine. Keep in contact and call me when you get to the hotel.’
‘Will do. Thanks for getting me to do this Alice.’ Charlie stood, hoping she could still make it to Jasper’s on time.
‘Oh Charlie, one more thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I love the new haircut. I didn’t have time to tell you before the meeting with Takagi.’
Charlie feels a warmth lap across her face like a wave, the compliment taking her by surprise as she thanks Alice and leaves the office.
Composing herself while waiting for the elevator, she studies her reflection once more in the metallic doors. This one smiles.

Rain patters on the taut canopy of Jonah’s umbrella like amplified dust in the grooves of an old record. From behind him comes the sound of thongs slapping against wet tarmac in the narrow backstreet. The sound, and the person it belongs, to passes him, a young woman in shorts holding a Yakult Swallows baseball jacket above her head. There is a mark on one of her ankles above the thongs, he notices. A tattoo. A red heart struck diagonally by an arrow.
          On his last visit to Japan five years ago, the only tattoos he’d seen in public were on foreigners. The others, the ones on Japanese skin, he’d been shown in private, their intricate designs strategically placed for concealment. Daigo, his reason for returning, stops a few paces ahead and turns around to make sure he is still following. He looks older to him but perhaps it is the change in fashion sense, replacing the baseball caps with tortoise shell glasses and the skater apparel for shirts and cuffed selvedge jeans. Jonah raises his eyebrows in question and Daigo gives him a sign, a forefinger held close to the thumb. Not far.
          They continue on under low electricity lines slung between buildings of red brick and oatmeal colour. Above them, small balconies jut out above the unfamiliar Shinjuku streets. Local businesses have signs with names he cannot read, no English translations and none of the clustered neon of the commercial district.
          Through the streaked glass of a shop window he sees a boy working on an upturned motorbike with a wrench, the shell of the vehicle like an insectoid carapace. A motley assortment of parts, blackened with use, line the shelves behind the boy.
          The rain stops as suddenly as it started, and Daigo pauses to shake his umbrella. Jonah, following suit, lowers his own.
          ‘The cemetery is down here,’ Daigo tells him, pointing towards a narrow alley across from the window where the boy still turns his wrench. ‘Are you sure you aren’t too tired after arriving last night?’
          ‘I’m honestly fine. Need to stretch my legs,’ Jonah replies.
          They walk single file, sweat pooling under Jonah’s denim shirt from the humidity. He rubs at the stubble around his jaw and is thankful for getting rid of the beard before he came. July is typhoon season, the man sitting next to him on the flight to Narita had warned him, warm and wet. He wants desperately to roll up his sleeves, to let the breeze cool his skin, but does not. Not yet. Horikage wouldn’t have approved.
          At the end of the path they reach an entrance with a sloped roof incongruous with the surroundings, like it had been carried there and dropped between the apartment blocks during one of the storms. He follows Daigo through the entrance and down another path where dripping gingko trees cast shadows over the small graves on either side.
          Two serious men in black suits block a path branching off to the left, straight-backed sentinels who watch them behind sunglasses as they approach. Past them, another group in similar attire stands in the distance before a large grave stone. Daigo touches his arm.
          ‘Don’t look at them when we pass. Just keep walking,’ Daigo says under his breath. Jonah lingers, catching sight of identical pins in the men’s lapel’s. The pins show a crest of some kind that looks like a long-necked bird with its wings spread either side. He feels the gaze of the men on their backs until they are further into the shrine’s grounds and come to a modern looking temple, featuring a door with no handles.
          ‘Who were they?’ Jonah asks.
          ‘Yakuza. Gangsters. Visiting a member’s grave, I assume.’
          ‘I didn’t think they were a thing anymore.’
          ‘There are not many left. New laws make it hard for them to exist as they once did. Nothing to worry about but best to avoid.’
          ‘How could you tell?’
          ‘I’ve met a few through my uncle.’
          From his wallet Daigo takes what looks like a hotel keycard and presses it against a screen Jonah had mistaken for a monument near the entrance. It wakes the mechanism of the doors, sliding them apart and releasing the heady aroma of sandalwood from within. A golden buddha greets them upon a pedestal, flanked by walls with pulsing neon lights amongst the darkness, like a scene from some sci-fi imagining.
          Daigo looks at Jonah’s eyes, the confusion behind the reflection of lights.
          ‘I should have warned you? I forget you might not know about these.’
          The walls are not solid but a collection of square niches, each containing a glass statue in the shape of Buddha. They are all aglow with artificial light, like a display from an Akihabara store front.
          ‘What is this?’ Jonah asks, watching the wall of colour transition from neon blue to emerald green.
          ‘A place to keep ashes of the deceased. Cheaper than paying for a plot of land. The ashes are kept behind each statue and you use this to find your relative.’
          Daigo uses the keycard again, pressing it against another screen near the entrance.
          ‘You select the name here, then a buddha lights up to tell you where they are.’
          Jonah looks around until a single figure changes, glows white and pulses softly, as if the colour has been drained from it. Daigo moves towards it and place his hands together, speaking Japanese with his head bowed. Jonah understands nothing but hears his name.
          ‘I just said I brought you to visit,’ Daigo says. ‘He liked you. Asked when you were coming back to visit over the years.’
          Jonah looks at the glowing Buddha with a wave of guilt and thinks about the deceased hiroshi who called him a friend. The tattoo of cherry blossoms hidden under Jonah’s shirt acts now as his memento mori, and he can almost feel Horikage stretching his skin with forefinger and thumb. The black ink is more vibrant now, just at Horikage had told him it would be, unlike the other tattoos made with a machine which started bold and faded after a few years.
          Daigo takes a leather-bound book from his bag, Jonah recognising it as the gift he’d given Horikage. Opening it to the first page, he offers it to Jonah. ‘The Daibutsu at Kamakura. The Great Buddha. I found the sketchbook you gave him when I was putting his things in storage,’ Daigo says. Jonah looks at the sketch he drew in pen, the buddha sitting with hands pressed together over his lap upon a circular plinth made from stone.
          ‘I forgot about this. I drew this after you took me there. You said your uncle was born in Kamakura didn’t you?’ The image takes Jonah back to when he created it, the statue towering above the tourists, the green leaves of the trees shaped like a mountain that cut into the clear blue sky and the stones he touched, still holding their warmth from the sun.
          ‘Yes. He often took me back there as a child to visit and see the Buddha as I took you.’
          Daigo looks at the image again then gestures towards the small figure of glass. ‘It’s the same pose. It made me think of it when I found your sketchbook going through his belongings. I think he would have wanted you to have it back. Sometimes it’s good to have something to help you remember.’
          ‘I don’t think I could ever forget,’ Jonah says, touching his chest where the cherry blossoms lay concealed.